A different CMx2 "problem"

[Smaragdadler]

CMSF is an advanced virtual simulation of tabletop figurine wargaming with a modern setting.

Simulation would be ARMA or Steel Beasts Pro.

My two €-cents.

[Yair Iny]

Lomir, good points. I'm aware of the difference between cover and concealment, but you're right in that cover is relative to what is shooting at you and both are relative to where you are being looked/shot at from.

I agree too, with your other point in that I'd also rather have any new gameplay feature than a UI enhancement along those lines. I was trying to make a quick suggestion that I thought could be done quite easily, but there's always a bit more depth to it that seems at first glance.

Cheers

[Paper Tiger]

Hirr Leto

Seriously mate, you really need to listen to this. It's just a game. It's a hobby. You don't like it. Oh No! Who cares? It's time to put it all behind you and move on. There really have to be more important things for you to do in your life than waste your gifts fretting about a game you don't like or the people that do, aren't there?

[dkchapuis]

Hirr Leto

There really have to be more important things for you to do in your life than waste your gifts fretting about a game you don't like or the people that do, aren't there?

Leto has gifts???? Is long-winded rambling a gift????

[Battlefront.com]

Leto,

This is really more evidence that CMSF and CMx2 is NOT a wargame. It is a simulation. I really think there is a difference here, being a wargamer all my life.

I've been a wargamer most of my life (at least since I was counting my age in single digits) and I've been a wargame designer/developer most of my post-college life. I'm also one of the primary reasons why both CMx1 and CMx2 exist. So I guess what I say should be taken with a grain of salt

There is no difference between CMx1 and CMx2 in terms of the development philosophy. The philosophy for both was to make the most realistic portrayal of tactical warfare possible, given certain constraints (time, marketability, computing resources, etc.). Therefore, the differences between the two systems is simply that CMx1 was necessarily more crude.

CMx1 was the first tactical ground combat game we ever made. It was produced for hardware that has long since been stripped by 3rd world kids working for shady "recycling" companies. We pushed a lot of realism into CMx1 that never, ever could have been done in a board game and was never tried in a computer wargame. But we could only push so much because of the constraints of the time.

CMx2 is simply a continuation of our goal towards the most realistic portrayal of tactical ground warfare. It is no more or less a "wargame" or a "sim" when compared to CMx1 since both were designed with the same intent and same level of detail relative to the then current hardware.

The way to think of this is Falcon 1, or some other long running flight sims. The early ones, which ran on 286 PCs with a couple hundred K of RAM were flight sims. Crude and with tons of "gamey" shortcuts, true enough, but the intent was for them to be as realistic as possible. Falcon 1 is no more, and no less, a flight sim than something like IL-2.

Everything is on a continuum. There are plenty of people that think CMx1 wasn't a wargame either, since it didn't have a top down view and IGOYOUGO gameplay. Lots and lots of people refused to play CMx1 and stuck with things like Steel Panthers. Those guys still exist and we wish them the best of luck with whatever floats their boat. Should we have scrapped CMx1 because some people didn't want to change? Hell no Now we have CMx1 players who have the same feelings towards CM:SF that others had towards CMx1. Same response... if you want to come with us, fine, but don't try to hold us back.

I've said this over and over again since CM:SF has come out and I have never, ever, not even ONCE had someone like Leto give a rational response (or even an attempt at one ) to the following question:

Should we have listened to the Steel Panther guys during development and not made CMBO the way we did, or should we have not made CMBB and CMAK because of the outrage Steel Panthers fanatics hammered us with after CMBO's release?

If the answer is "no", then I don't see why someone who loves CMx1 should be giving us grief for refusing to be in a state of arrested development. Some people don't want change. We get that. The best thing to do, for everybody, is to recognize that is at the heart of the issue and to just stay out of the way of people who do want change. After all, there would be no CMx1 to talk about in the first place if we listened to people who wanted nothing new to experience.

Steve

[sonar]

On the issue of cover, in cmsf, do the soldiers "know" when they are in cover. I mean if they take up position and then come under fire will they attempt to re-orientate and move into better cover in relation to the incoming fire i.e. crawl back from the crest of a hill, or will they stay in position while the casualties mount? if this is the case then you can judge roughly what will be a good covered position and let the troops tweak it themselves, to use it to it's best advantage, in the given situation.

[GSX]

This is really more evidence that CMSF and CMx2 is NOT a wargame. It is a simulation. I really think there is a difference here, being a wargamer all my life.

I would take the opposite view here. I think that Sf is a wargame rather than a simulation. For a start a whole lot of the game is pure guess work concerning unit capabilities, armour for instance. Also, infantry is not accurately modelled in its behaviour or immediate actions.

If you play around with the game it is immensely fun and in the majority of ways far ahead of cm-1 games. You just have to find the situations that work best for you.

[SlowMotion]

If you play around with the game it is immensely fun and in the majority of ways far ahead of cm-1 games. You just have to find the situations that work best for you.

A good scenario with infantry can be especially fun to play. Infantry units do quite interesting things in 1.20 and IMO that part of CMSF is now clearly better than CMx1.

[MikeyD]

I've seen some CMx2 players/designers "trying too hard". A 40 minute scenario with a platoon taking a farmhouse can just as satifyfing as covering 2km+ in 3 hours+ with two companies of MOUT heavy mechanized infantry on a faithfully replicated Damascus map. Too much of a good thing is not always the optimal play method.

[Battlefront.com]

Sonar,

Yes, soldiers do know when they are in cover. Yes, they can also shift positions to get into better cover. To a point. Soldiers won't move radically because that can cause other problems, which usually turn out to be far worse. Therefore, if you feel your guys are exposed it's up to you, the player, to get them to a better spot. Once there the soldiers will take the best cover that they can based on Facing and other factors.

GSX,

Well, the way I think of it "simulation" is more about the intention rather than the execution. Early flight sims couldn't possibly simulate an aircraft and all its peculiarities. Either because they didn't know what those peculiarities were, or because (mostly) the hardware was already being asked to do too much. But the intent was to have a SIMULATION and not a GAME. I mean, nobody in their right mind would put Falcon (a serious minded sim) in the same category as Afterburner (a stand up arcade game) even though Falcon has all sorts of significant shortcomings to it.

Like everything, things are on a spectrum. Is the best commercial flight sim out there in the same league as what the commercial airlines and military use? Absolutely not. But there is far more similarities between those two than there is between some shoot-em-up on X-Box and IL-2.

But unlike flight sims, CMx2 has nothing "better" than it in terms of simulations. Obviously there isn't anything on the commercial market that even comes close to it. The only other place that could potentially have something "better" would be a military out there, and they most definitely do not. There are few wargames, even, that try to cover what CMx2 covers, not to mention CMx1. But there are TONS of "games" out there that deal with the same subject matter.

Not that it matters People buy what they buy because of the type of experience they are looking for. Whether the game is marketed as a game, sim, wargame, whatever... who cares? The games are what they are regardless of what their label is. But since people do like to use labels, it's useful to try and be on the same page.

Steve

[Ryujin]

I actually find this thread interesting, since I have had the opposite problem to the thread starter, I played the CMx1 games and they were neat and stuff, but had less idea of what to do there and felt too abstracted I didn't get a good feel for the battle, since a lot of CMx1 was behind the scenes and in your head. CMx1 also felt more gamey and probablity based (which I'm sure CMSF is also to a lesser degree, but it was very pronounced boardgame feel to it).

CM:SF on the other hand just clicks, probably because I know modern equipment and tactics like how the CMx1 people know WW2, so the ATGMs, insurgents, and so on make tactical sense for me. Unlike CMx1 it feels like I can use much more real world tactics to their full effect and develop a plan to crush the enemy. I also prefer the more "fuzzy" and less board game approach to things.

I agree with steve that CMSF is more of a sim than a wargame, to quote Leto "For those die hard gamers that want rules, probabilities and pure tactical game play, not pure realistic game play, this game is not for you". That right there is probably what separates it at a gameplay level, being more realistic there are a lot less hard and fast rules and probabilities for situations. You deal with imperfect information that you have to quickly utilize on a possibly a real time basis (I personally think realtime is the best mode for CMSF). In CMx1 it sounds like every 60 seconds people would carefully stop time, examine the situation and determine the probabilities of hits and which tank can price who's armor and calculate it out. With less abstraction in CMSF you get a more realistic command experince (as will probably be CM:N). From what I hear it seems many people's problems with the difficulty of the game stem from that CMx1 tactical mindset.

[GSX]

I would have to agree with most of the above, except the simulation bit. I think a lot of people that have trouble with playing the game (SF) is that lack of information. In CM-1 we have firepower charts and armour values etc.

In SF everything is hidden under the hood and so we dont know the armour value of a soldiers body armour compared to a Syrian and we dont know how much punishment a Challenger can take. I think this is off putting to those people that like to play with every piece of information at their fingertips and like to weigh up chances and probablilities and treat the game more like battlefield chess rather than an actual battle situation.

Ive never been a QB fan but I imagine not having proper pick and choose QBs also annoys these types of players as 'kit picks' were an awfull big part of their gaming.

Still, as Ive said before, if after 2 years the game still isnt for you, wait for something else, its far past the time to stop moaning about it. But, remember that CMN when it comes along isnt going to be CM-1 v 2, its going to be CM-2 Normandy so all of the things you dont like about it are probably still going to form the core gaming experience.

[Battlefront.com]

Ryuijn,

I agree with steve that CMSF is more of a sim than a wargame, to quote Leto "For those die hard gamers that want rules, probabilities and pure tactical game play, not pure realistic game play, this game is not for you". That right there is probably what separates it at a gameplay level, being more realistic there are a lot less hard and fast rules and probabilities for situations.

I definitely agree that the key is how much the game (and CMx2 is a game at heart, of course) leans towards simplified, artificial conventions vs. simulation of real world elements. And that the difference dictates the overall atmosphere of the game environment in a fundamental way. However, as I stated above CMx1 had to go with simplified, artificial conventions simply because the hardware couldn't handle more explicit detailing and/or we simply lacked the experience/foresight to program things a certain way.

GSX,

I would have to agree with most of the above, except the simulation bit. I think a lot of people that have trouble with playing the game (SF) is that lack of information. In CM-1 we have firepower charts and armour values etc.

Correct. However, there was more "hidden" than displayed. It just so happened that some of the major stuff was either so abstracted that it did (barely) lend itself to a simplified explanation or was straight forward bean counting (like x vehicle has y sized gun and z sized MGs). Partly the systems that were simple enough to explain were that way because technology was relatively primitive and similar. Armor penetration is a perfect example of that.

But for the most part the core of CMx1's game mechanics were kept "hidden" because they were too complicated and/or situationally dependent to show to the user in a meaningful way. Things like how Morale worked, artillery accuracy probability, how Experience affected combat capabilities, as well as cover and concealment. These things did NOT lend themselves to easy "CRT" descriptions, and so we had no choice but to keep the data from the players. We had endless discussions of this at the time and the traditional wargamers didn't understand, because they couldn't comprehend, that the systems were so complicated that you'd need a computer program to compute the results using specific input. Which about 1 in 10,000 customers would have found an enjoyable way to play the game

In SF everything is hidden under the hood and so we dont know the armour value of a soldiers body armour compared to a Syrian and we dont know how much punishment a Challenger can take. I think this is off putting to those people that like to play with every piece of information at their fingertips and like to weigh up chances and probablilities and treat the game more like battlefield chess rather than an actual battle situation.

Oh, totally agree there. And we got hammered for this by traditional wargamers starting with the CMBO Beta Demo. It's probably why a lot of Steel Panthers guys were never willing to make the jump to CM.

Still, as Ive said before, if after 2 years the game still isnt for you, wait for something else, its far past the time to stop moaning about it. But, remember that CMN when it comes along isnt going to be CM-1 v 2, its going to be CM-2 Normandy so all of the things you dont like about it are probably still going to form the core gaming experience.

For the most part, true. However, CM: Normandy will have two major things going for it that CM:SF still does not have. At least for a large segment of CMx1 fanatics. And those two things are:

1. WW2 ETO setting

2. Cherry Picking QB system

We expect that the majority of people who loved CMx1, but have not enjoyed (or even purchased) CM:SF, will enjoy CM: Normandy quite a lot.

Still, I do agree that someone who fundamentally dislikes the game system of CM:SF v1.20 will probably not like CM: Normandy any more than someone who hated CMBO would like CMBB or CMAK. Which is something I've been saying since before CM:SF was announced

Steve

[c3k]

Blah, blah, blah. CM:N this, CM:N that. It's all just a lot of talk. Now, I've heard that a picture is worth a thousand words. Hmmm, a screenshot would be just the thing!!

Ken

[76mm]

76mm, I can only suggest that you grab a topo map from your general area (but one that you haven't been to yet), select a spot on it and try to deduce from looking at the map what you're going to see, then go to the spot and look around. Chances are you will be thoroughly surprised

Uh, I served in the military for 4 years and am well aware of this. I am talking about when the commander is on the ground, and looking at another piece of ground, not the map. You think people can't see the folds in the ground, obstructions, etc. that provide cover and concealment? Sure, you can't tell with perfection, but you can tell much better than you can in the game, especially when the pixeltroopers don't stay behind the cover or folds of ground that would be obvious to someone on the ground.

Obviously it is impossible in the game to replicate someone's ability to this on the ground, but it should be better than it is (note--I have not played CMSF in many patches, when there were significant LoS issues--many of which may have been fixed by now...)

[GSX]

2. Cherry Picking QB system

Can I ask why this cant be put into the current SF game? You have often said that the CM-2 code is far easier to work with than what came before and that things can be dialed in far more easily. So why is it not possible to dial it into SF?

[SlowMotion]

How much would you pay for this new QB system?

[MeatEtr]

How much would you pay for this new QB system?

Which is exactly what I mentioned awhile back, IIRC Steve said "anythings possible". Reason being, it will be quite sometime(4+ yrs) until we see CMSF 2(modern theatre) again.

The main draw would be of course the new QB system, but add a few more units and a new campaign and call it the "CMSF: Gold" module or something. Maybe at a reduced price($20) since it's mostly only the QB system and that the CMSF family will be showing it's age by then, year from now or so.

[dkchapuis]

If you decide to give CMSF another shot...or if you plan to get Normandy(why wait to learn the games tactical do's and don'ts?) ... I'd be glad to PBEM with you. mark.ezra3591@gmail.com It was How I learned to play CMx1and CMx2 as well.

Ezra and I are having a go at it. Lets see how this goes. Should be lots of things getting blown up, at least on my side.

And Now that I am playing again, I think at least some of my dislike is with the setting. I never cared at all for cmak desert maps.

[Paper Tiger]

And Now that I am playing again, I think at least some of my dislike is with the setting. I never cared at all for cmak desert maps

I don't like Desert settings very much either although there are some really spectacular Desert maps in the Brit campaign. I was sufficiently impressed to comment on their look while playtesting them. Some scenario designers like to create more temperate looking maps and this is not unrealistic as the northern area of Syria (around Aleppo etc) is very fertile.

[Wengart]

I would not be opposed to paying 10$-15$ simply for a cherry picking QB system for CM:SF, and if they were feeling especially beneficent they could plug it into CM:A too! Heck BF.C could even do a pre-order sale to see if their is enough initial interest to make it worth it.

[Battlefront.com]

GSX,

Can I ask why this cant be put into the current SF game? You have often said that the CM-2 code is far easier to work with than what came before and that things can be dialed in far more easily. So why is it not possible to dial it into SF?

Because it's all relative. Anything was possible to do in CMx1 too, in theory. The problem was the threshold of pain for most things people wanted was so high that the requests weren't practical. While the threshold is far, far lower for CMx2 it isn't the case where there is no threshold at all. Or put another way, just because we have better code to work with doesn't mean snapping our fingers is all we need to do.

As I've explained in the past, backwards compatibility is a problem. Or a potential problem. Anything having to do with units is one of these problems. The entire way CMx2 deals with unit data has been radically altered. The current code is capable of handling the old way (CM:SF and Afghanistan) as well as the new way (Normandy and beyond). The issue is that all of the unit information for CM:SF (and Afghanistan, for that matter) is in a format which does not work with the Normandy sub systems. Those sub systems include the new QB system.

It is possible to redo the thousands of TO&E entries for CM:SF so that they work with the new QB system. But we'd also have to upgrade many other aspects which are, currently, specific to CM:SF. Put another way, there is a cascading effect which creates more and more work for us at the same time we're trying to concentrate on moving ahead on other things.

MeatEtr,

Reason being, it will be quite sometime(4+ yrs) until we see CMSF 2(modern theatre) again.

Oh good lord no CM:SF 2 will be started in a few months. Because so much has been done for the modern and temperate settings already the timeline for release will be about one year. Hopefully even less. CM:SF 2 development will be in parallel to WW2 development. We just have to work out a few more kinks in the 3rd Party tools to make that happen. That's my job for next week.

Steve

[Vergeltungswaffe]

Oh good lord no CM:SF 2 will be started in a few months. Because so much has been done for the modern and temperate settings already the timeline for release will be about one year. Hopefully even less. CM:SF 2 development will be in parallel to WW2 development. We just have to work out a few more kinks in the 3rd Party tools to make that happen. That's my job for next week.

Steve

:eek: :cool:

[Paper Tiger]

CM:SF 2 will be started in a few months

I genuinely could care less about WW2*. THIS is what I want!

*I am prepared to eat my shorts when WW2 is released as I'll probably love it too

[Lanzfeld]

Don't you mean you couldnt care less?