1-1 Infantry - Improvements

[Other Means]

Cover values have always struck me as a no longer needed compromise. You could be lying on a sheet of glass but if you've got great cover between yourself and the shooter you'd survive.

[c3k]

Obviously, giving grass a value of .0325 deserves a thread of its own.

Ken

[TheVulture]

It has changed my tactics completely. Now the entire focus of my MOUT tactics are to get a LOF to the back of a building before I try to take it. Which jives nicely with several detailed AARs I read about Fallujah, and gives great confidence BFC is getting the bigger picture right.

It is a beautiful thing to watch a red squad scurry out the back into the LOF of a crack sniper team.

It took me a while to remember the new AI bug out behaviour. I lost any number of guys to it. Find enemy in building. Roll up some 30mm HE chucker and plaster the building for a minute or two. Run a squad in to deal with the suppressed and half-dead enemy, and find them standing in the next building along happily shooting the hell out of your guys as they charge in. Ouchies. I've gradually learned to plan my moves knowing that this is what will happen now though.

Getting LoF to the back of the building is nice if you can. But it makes multi-building buildings absolute deathtraps. The enemy move off to a building segment deeper in, and are absolutely impervious to anything outside. Sometimes you don't have much choice (aside from leaving them there and coming back later from all sides...).

[JonS]

... are absolutely impervious to anything outside. Sometimes you don't have much choice (aside from leaving them there and coming back later from all sides...).

Sage advice, and well worth remembering.

[dan/california]

God bless the JDAM!

[Dietrich]

God bless the JDAM!

That's what I would have said while playing the "Pooh" mission, had I been provided any fixed-wing CAS! lol

It took me a while to remember the new AI bug out behaviour. I lost any number of guys to it. Find enemy in building. Roll up some 30mm HE chucker and plaster the building for a minute or two. Run a squad in to deal with the suppressed and half-dead enemy, and find them standing in the next building along happily shooting the hell out of your guys as they charge in. Ouchies. I've gradually learned to plan my moves knowing that this is what will happen now though.

Getting LoF to the back of the building is nice if you can. But it makes multi-building buildings absolute deathtraps. The enemy move off to a building segment deeper in, and are absolutely impervious to anything outside. Sometimes you don't have much choice (aside from leaving them there and coming back later from all sides...).

While playing the second mission of Webwing's "To Catch A Ghost" campaign, I sent a full-strength rifle squad Hunt-ing up to the top of a minaret, and halfway up the squad got ambushed by three or four Uncons and took 50% casualties. Having learned the hard way that there were insurgents in there, I sent a second intact squad Assualt-ing (as described in the "Assaulting a building fierce and agille" thread) up through the minaret: I assigned a waypoint in the overall Assault move order to each floor, and starting two floors below the one where the WIA/KIA from the previous rifle squad were, to each of the two following waypoints I assigned an Area Fire order to the floor above. This made the second rifle squad in effect practice room-clearing drill and, using their grenades as well as their carbines and SAWs to good effect, they took out the lurking insurgents without loss, then tended to their wounded comrades.

After all that elaboration, though, it confirms TheVulture's point that the building in question, though multi-story, was tall and very narrow.

[dan/california]

Truly Pooh calls for a B1's entire bomb load in order to be flushed properly. Great scenario though.

[Battlefront.com]

Good points about getting into buildings. In real life if you enter a building, even cautiously, you risk being caught unprepared. Going in "stacked" (which is what Assault represents) means that you're 100% keyed up to hit anything that is even hinted at and hit hard. But Assaulting is extremely intensive and slow. Which is why JonS pointed out the sage advice from TheVulture... sometimes the typical "if you see it, kill it" strategy is not a very good one.

Steve

[Wodin]

First off after delaying buying the game until last month mainly because of the area of operations I have had an excellent gaming experience. I love the infantry combat. Something like this is what I wished for in the older games. Its a shame the game needed a fair few patches as I believe the game is far superior to when it was first released.

I really am impressed with the game engine and am itching for the release of CM Normandy.

I hope the infantry combat side of the game gets further improvements as the new patches arrive. I'd love to see formations added in the future. I also love the new hunt animation. Finally maybe Im a little sick but how about some extra death and wounded animations. An option for blood maybe? How about when infantry are near a large explosion they get blown of the feet. Also I'd like to see concussion\dazed so the said soldier takes a few minutes to get his bearings. Close Combat had some great morale and other chrome features. Not sure if gun jams are in the game, if not would be good to see aswell.

Finally I'd love to be able to review each unit at the end of game ala CMBB and CMAK. That is one aspect of immersion I sorely miss.

Keep up the superb work chaps.

[panzermartin]

Blast throwing away soldiers would be nice. It didnt bother me in CMx1 due to abstraction but in 1:1 you want to see everything getting as real as possible. Would require a ton of animation work though.

[Dietrich]

On the one hand, the existing WIA/KIA animations perpetuate the Hollywood-istic falsehood that getting hit by a bullet knocks you backward. (If a very small supersonic projectile has enough penetration power to go through your armor vest, it is plenty capable of simply going through you, and thus it isn't going to do any knocking over.)

"Hey Sarge! I found 'em!"

"My leg, my leg!"

On the other hand, the existing WIA/KIA animations look right for getting knocked off yer feet by a concussive blast.

[YankeeDog]

Even the bullets of larger caliber small arms (7.62mm etc.) just don't have the momentum to actually knock a human over due to the simple collision physics. Any perceived "knock down" effect is actually due to the surprise of being hit and the internal trauma. Simply put, the Law of Conservation of Momentum means that a non-exploding bullet can't "push" on whatever it hits any harder that the recoil "pushes" on the firer of the weapon. And, in fact, the "push" of the bullet will be substantially less than the recoil due to loss of momentum to air resistance, imperfect transfer, etc. So it take a really big and fast projectile (at least 12.7mm, probably larger), to actually knock someone over by momentum alone.

Explosions are a whole different matter. But my understanding is that you don't start to see bodies actually being thrown up into the air until the boom is pretty large. So no bodies thrown around by detonating hand grenades. The really big stuff is a different story, of course. But I have to wonder if it's really worth the effort to put in the animations for bodies being catapulted around when it would only potentially apply to a pretty small percentage of hits.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Adam,

Eventually we will have the computer resources and AI to have individuals running away in some way that can be seen as realistic. Until then the "!" will remain.

I hope it is not too far off in to the future.

I've always regarded shooting the fleeing enemy as my reward for success. The "!" has deprived me of this.

I've on occasion requested an opponent play through when I've defeated him purely for the satisfaction of putting the boot in. I feel that in warfare it is kinda the point of the whole thing to make the enemy turn his back so you can shoot him more easily.

"!" is like porn without the money shot. :eek:

[Dietrich]

Come to mention it, why is there no surrendering? Is the absence of surrendering based on an assumption about the theater of operations, i.e., Syrian troops (not including uncons) would most likely either fight to the death or flee (turning into a three-dimensional exclamation point and then disappearing)?

If one is willing to consider the assertions of von Clausewitz and John Keegan (to name just two), then the greater amount of casualty-suffering happens when one side takes to flight and the 'victorious' side pursues them with fire.

[benpark]

I'm fine with the "!", but I sure miss it when the enemy throws their hands in the air.

[Other Means]

I think the rationale is that surrendering happens on an individual level so, e.g. a unit of 10 could under the right conditions become 10 units of 1 and cripple the PC.

Personally I'd be happy with a unit - or at best a team - surrendering as one. I'd also be happy with individuals who are too far below the group median and would surrender individually when the group wouldn't to act as now.

[Alan8325]

Explosions are a whole different matter. But my understanding is that you don't start to see bodies actually being thrown up into the air until the boom is pretty large. So no bodies thrown around by detonating hand grenades. The really big stuff is a different story, of course. But I have to wonder if it's really worth the effort to put in the animations for bodies being catapulted around when it would only potentially apply to a pretty small percentage of hits.

This is one of the things that really pisses me off about the physics in most FPS games. An explosion should realistically throw small objects like rocks, drywall, sand particles, glass etc. way further than anything nearly as heavy as a human body. In many games however, you see bodies flying out of hand grenade explosions like they got shot out of a cannon. "Cool" factor for kids, I guess.

[Battlefront.com]

OtherMeans is correct. The danger of overwhelming the system is a big concern of ours. From the code's perspective there is almost as much overhead for a Team of 7 men (the max) and a Team of 1. So seven 1 man Teams is similar to seven 7 men Teams, not one 7 man Team. Things like LOS, LOF, spotting, AI, Pathfinding, general "accounting" RAM footprint, etc. are all expensive processes already, which means increasing them is to be avoided when possible.

That being said, we have some ideas on how we can handle surrendering without crippling the system. It probably won't be like CMx1's "prisoner herding" feature, which I personally liked but some were annoyed by it, but I think we can do better than we have now. Which is, effectively not much of anything

Steve

[Flanker15]

On the death animation thing, I think the "knockback" could be created by the person instead of the bullet. As a reflex or from shock the person moves in that way as a reaction to being shot, could be possible (I don't mean fly through the air hollywood knockback but the fall backwards like in CM:SF)?

I'd enjoy a couple more death animations for varity like a fall forwards or a grab torso and collapse kind of one.

On routed/surendered guys: for routed could the unit just run off the map with no AI/LOS/anyhting just a model running off the map. For surrender it could just be like a new death animation where they surrender?

[Wodin]

Hey Im not asking for men to fly around after a grenade has gone off. Maybe when they are close to a heavy arty round or a 500lb bomb. As for the getting shot animation I'd like to see a few more variations, not necessarly getting knocked of their feet. Also it is hard to distinguish at first glance whether your men are cowering or have been shot. The postures are very similar. Wounded good actually lift an arm or something or show some kind of life as they call for a medic maybe.

Its all chrome I know but will add to the immersion factor quite abit.

FInally (sorry Im going to shout here) BRING BACK THE ABILITY TO REVIEW THE UNITS DURING AND AT THE END OF THE GAME 'ALA' CMBO CMBB AND CMAK. Seeing how well a unit performed was a great touch in those games.

[Cpl Steiner]

That being said, we have some ideas on how we can handle surrendering without crippling the system. It probably won't be like CMx1's "prisoner herding" feature, which I personally liked but some were annoyed by it, but I think we can do better than we have now.

Steve, when you design surrendering and prisoners into CMx2, please try to make it as flexible as possible so mission designers can create some really great missions. For example, if it's possible for prisoners to be under guard in the game as a result of surrendering, allow them to be there at scenario start as well. That way we will be able to do "Raid on Iran" style hostage rescue missions.

[Guest Guest]

deleted per user request

[Battlefront.com]

BTW, we have the guys fall backwards when hit because it makes the hits more obvious when you are at a higher camera angle. If they fell forward they would look more like guys going prone. Though come to think of it the cross symbol would probably clear that up.

Steve

[Guest Guest]

deleted per user request

[Guest Guest]

deleted per user request