Feature request: waypoint trigger

[SlowMotion]

Currently when you plan moves there is only way to control how some unit moves from a waypoint to next: you can add pause time to waypoints.

I was wondering if one could use other kind of controls as well: trigger conditions that would control when to start moving towards next waypoint. These could be things like "current target destroyed", "enemy unit sighted", "armour unit sighted", "unit condition better than XXX", "AT ammo left".

I think this kind of triggers could make both turn based and real time games better. For example: instead of trying to guess how long it will take for a tired unit to get back to normal condition, you could use a trigger which would wait until the condition is Normal and then it would start executing next movement. Or if some unit has spent all its AT ammo, it could change position.

[Jonny(FGM)]

I'd personally just be happy to go back to the good old fashioned CMx1 move to contact and hunt orders.........

[Wodin]

^ me too. I agree with both.

I play in wego and find it difficult to time my moves perfectly. Sometimes I've overestimated the time a move will take and my men have just stood there for 15 seconds. Maybe if a rough estimate of how long a move will take at the end of each waypoint would help.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Disagree, you don't want to overburden the UI. Especially not for things that cater almost exclusively to the more control freak minority.

The old Move to Contact and Hunt orders would be good.

[Jonny(FGM)]

Would it be possible for the infantry to have both commands too (presuming these orders are to be reintroduced, which i actually highly doubt). It's annoying when you want your troops to have high situational awareness but still move the distance.

IE you start to move out a squad, they get opened up on by a small (>5 man) unit which they quickly blast away, and then just sit there for the rest of the turn. Obviously if you play real time this isn't an issue, I get the feeling this engine was designed for RT and then fudged to include WEGO (I think the lack of a WEGO TCP/IP mode proves this to me). I find that rather strange as it states in the CMAK manual

We chose this arrangement because we feel it is conducive to

playersÕ development of thoughtful and realistic strategies, rather

than the Òclick festÓ that some fully Òreal timeÓ games can become,

where all the orders and action occur simultaneously. It is our

opinion that pure Òcontinuous timeÓ works (very well) only at a very

small scale, where there are perhaps just a few soldiers under a

playerÕs command. It does not work well at the scale of a full

company or battalion, which is the level simulated by Combat

Mission.

I wonder what made BF change their minds?

[Elmar Bijlsma]

I think you are making a bit of leap there. The failure to include Ye Olde Hunt doesn't really say anything about the WEGO component being an afterthought. Sufficient work has gone in to WEGO specific issues to show that hasn't been the case.

Though I can't recall if there ever was an explanation as to why Hunt didn't make it it nor hasn't made a return in the patches.

[Jonny(FGM)]

Sufficient work has gone in to WEGO specific issues to show that hasn't been the case.

Surely the fact that WEGO specific issues had to be resolved in the first place shows that the game was designed for RT and then fudged to be WEGO to keep all us CMx1 vets happy. Of course i could be totally wrong and the game could have been designed for WEGO and fudged for RT but i somehow doubt it.

PS i'm not having a dig at the game engine, overall it handles WEGO just as well as CMx1 did, I just find it strange that BF moved towards RT after stating they felt it became unmanagable above platoon level.

[DaveDash]

It's probably more a case of RT being 'new' probably had to be designed from the ground up, so a lot of the code was based around that rather than WEGO being an afterthought.

For all we know it may have been impossible to design RT around WEGO (and that seems logical to me). The whole new C2 system seems to be more geared for WEGO players for example (as in RT you can pause and area fire immediately at someone elses contact, for example).

I find in RT with the given commands you can pretty much achieve what you want to achieve. WEGO makes this more difficult but in my opinion, the charm in WEGO is pretending youre more a real commander and letting your troops decide. Yes they do some dumb things and are not efficient as you'd like, but they are probably thinking the same thing about you!

[Jonny(FGM)]

It's probably more a case of RT being 'new' probably had to be designed from the ground up, so a lot of the code was based around that rather than WEGO being an afterthought.

That's sort of what I was trying to say, I wasn't really saying that WEGO was an "afterthought" as such, just that the game obviously hasn't been designed around it. I'm just curious why they included RT at all

[SlowMotion]

Would it be possible for the infantry to have both commands too (presuming these orders are to be reintroduced, which i actually highly doubt). It's annoying when you want your troops to have high situational awareness but still move the distance.

IE you start to move out a squad, they get opened up on by a small (>5 man) unit which they quickly blast away, and then just sit there for the rest of the turn.

This is exactly the kind of situation I had in mind. There might be just one enemy soldier left against a full squad of yours. You want to finish that and THEN move on. But now you end up losing much of the turn.

Another very common situation is vehicle waiting for passengers to enter. Passenger arrival might take only 20 seconds. Now the vehicle isn't moving during the remaining 40 seconds.

[Michael Emrys]

WEGO makes this more difficult but in my opinion, the charm in WEGO is pretending youre more a real commander and letting your troops decide. Yes they do some dumb things and are not efficient as you'd like, but they are probably thinking the same thing about you!

Yeah, that was always my take on it too in CMx1. Every time I saw my troopers doing something I didn't want them to do, or failing to do something that I did want them to do, I always thought, "Man, this must be a little what it is like for a real commander!"

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

I'm just curious why they included RT at all

Possibly because a vocal segment of players demanded it for years, and a large part of the wargame market was already devoted to RT. No doubt that was a market BFC was eager to tap into. Apparently that strategy met with some degree of success as at least a certain proportion of new players who came on board specifically for CMSF seem to be quite at home with RT and prefer to play in that mode.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

Another very common situation is vehicle waiting for passengers to enter. Passenger arrival might take only 20 seconds. Now the vehicle isn't moving during the remaining 40 seconds.

The way I dealt with that in CMx1 was to give the vehicle one, two or three pause commands and then a move order. That gave the foot guys enough time to reach it and climb on board, but also allowed the vehicle to begin movement before the end of the turn.

Michael

[DaveDash]

Possibly because a vocal segment of players demanded it for years, and a large part of the wargame market was already devoted to RT. No doubt that was a market BFC was eager to tap into. Apparently that strategy met with some degree of success as at least a certain proportion of new players who came on board specifically for CMSF seem to be quite at home with RT and prefer to play in that mode.

Michael

Well it also means that less work has to be done on AI which is diminishing returns, and is more forgiving in the 1:1 engine. BFC obviously also thought it was the way forward given todays processing power vs the old Combat Mission todays.

TBH I was quite resistant to it in the beginning but I play exclusively RT now (apart from PBEM). I don't mind WEGO but I think in the modern setting 30 seconds may have been better though. 60 seconds is a long time for something to go wrong in CMSF.

[LukeFF]

One feature I'd like to see enabled for WeGo (not sure if it's an issue in RT) is the ability to check LOF for an infantry unit that is inside a vehicle at the beginning of a turn but has been given waypoint orders to move out of the vehicle. As it is now, one cannot check LOF at different waypoints for infantry units if they are embarked inside a vehicle at the beginning of a turn.

[stikkypixie]

I'm just curious why they included RT at all

Two situations that are now avoided:

Tank targets other tank, target tank moves behind cover just at the last moment BUT still gets hit.

Artillery shells keep on falling even after everyone's pausing.

[MikeyD]

Back to waypoint triggers.

Steve's said many times that its high up on his personal wish list. Speaking as someone who occassionally attempts putting AI orders into scenarios, I am a bit frightened by the concept! It does sound great on paper. But after a several "if this, then that" orders branches I'd imagine your orders sets will start resembling programming code! or perhaps an Excel spreadsheet. I don't know how complex they could make the scenario editor before my patience and loyalty starts to give out. You could inadvertantly 'perfect' the game to the point where scenarios become unbuildable.

And yes, I realize I'm in a minority of 1 on this topic.

[DaveDash]

I used to make missions in Operation Flashpoint, and yes, it did end up like coding scripts. In fact, I seem to recall you actually had to write scripts in notepad for all the triggers to work. However, you could do some pretty neat stuff (although the AI always found ways of making itself look stupid). I remember one cool mission I made where you had three planes paradrop a company of rangers behind enemy lines, and then two platoons would move into position and support your assault, then follow you through your strongpoint and defeat the enemy forces in detail. Imagine that in CMSF.

OFP however was more complicated than CMSF in terms of programming AI due to its mega maps and proper Z axis (Helecopters, and so forth).

This feature would dramatically improve the longevity of the game IMO. I still crank out OFP occasionally.

[Jonny(FGM)]

I think mikey and slowmotion are talking about two different things here. I think SM was talking about in game (IE actuall playing a scenario) trigger points and mikey is on about trigger points in the editor. I can see much more use in putting trigger points into the AI plans than in the in game, IE at the moment its not really possible to program in a coherant mobile defence (IE fire when you see the enemy, fall back, wait until you can see the enemy, fire again, fall back etc etc).

Most of what SM was asking for could probably be achieved with a few new unit orders, such as a "wait for passengers" command for vehicles.

[SlowMotion]

Yes, I was asking for trigger commands that would make turn based game play a bit better. Using those I could plan movements for several turns without having to check all units every turn. I think some of these could be simple, yet useful.

Something like this:

Of course the more complex triggers used in scenario editor would be nice also, but I thought I'd ask for the more simple feature first

[eniced73]

One feature I'd like to see enabled for WeGo (not sure if it's an issue in RT) is the ability to check LOF for an infantry unit that is inside a vehicle at the beginning of a turn but has been given waypoint orders to move out of the vehicle. As it is now, one cannot check LOF at different waypoints for infantry units if they are embarked inside a vehicle at the beginning of a turn.

I would like to see the feature of checking LOF from different waypoints an option at different levels of the game. Have this disabled at the highest level. Yeah, your troops will know exactly their LOS from an overlook position without any obstacles but what about troops moving in scattered trees? LOS's will actually not be known until you get there. I personally like being able to line up shots from waypoints but to make the game a better simulation I think this should be an option.