I wonder

[Wodin]

Here goes...I'm quite suprised actually....a certain turn based infantry game (which I enjoy) has a military contract....now I've had some experience with this game in a theatre similar to CMSF and I have to say it (in my opinion) was way out of kilt and CMSF is a far superior simulation...so it strikes me as arse about tit that that series has military backing and CMx2 doesn't.

Surely some PR by Battlefront with CMSF and the military is needed...as I'm sure that the game in it's present condition would be of use to the military...maybe you need to try and sell the idea to the military of other nations...the nato module and British module open it up to NATO military forces not just the USA.

[Mord]

Textures do not count as mods. Saying they are is nothing short of a kick in the balls.

Sure they do. Anything a third party does that changes the game, is a mod. Hence re-texturing a bmp is a modification from it's original state...Hope that didn't hurt your cluster.

Mord.

[Dietrich]

[aside] I think he meant "mod" as in "module", the implication being that modules are little more than collections of new textures. [/aside]

[Mord]

Ahh, then that's wrong too.

Mord.

[Erwin]

It's smart not to go after DoD contracts imo.

1) The military have no idea of what being in a business means, and so will ask/insist on innumerable "improvements/enhancements" to meet the latest "Warfighting 2021 Standard blah blah blah" that some committee just thought up. I swear, these people are like women who get excited over every silly fashion thing they read in this month's magazine, only to be superceded by what is in next month's mag.

2) If a small game company is even remotely successful in producing a cheap product that is actually useful as a trainer, they will incur the considerable wrath of all the huge defense companies who will not rest until BFC is crushed and buried (or bought out) and its products trashed - to be replaced by the obscenely expensive products that keep the defense industry getting gazillions of bucks from the taxpayers.

[purpheart23]

There's about 100 things I'd like to see included in CMX2 before Co-play. Doesn't interest me in the least...

Mord.

Good for you. There are people who are interested though.

Guess we'll just have to sit back and hope for a DoD or MoD or other such agency to take interest. In the mean time roll on with the Canadians.

[Battlefront.com]

Here goes...I'm quite suprised actually....a certain turn based infantry game (which I enjoy) has a military contract....now I've had some experience with this game in a theatre similar to CMSF and I have to say it (in my opinion) was way out of kilt and CMSF is a far superior simulation...so it strikes me as arse about tit that that series has military backing and CMx2 doesn't.

That's what many within the military sim and training community have been saying since CMBO came out. The militaries we have dealt with are focused on the polar extremes of individual sims that hone personal skills and massive formational sims (Brigade and higher) that emphasize logistics and strategic level results. Soldiers, on the other hand, understand that there is a desperate need for something that emphasizes coordination of assets within the scope of an immediate battle scenario.

Trainers and commanders who are responsible for training combat leaders at Company level and below are painfully aware there isn't anything for them to use. So they look to the private sector to see what could be used for such purposes. Obviously there is nothing in the private sector that does everything they need (or at least perceive) it to do. Which means they have two choices:

1. Contract with an established defense contractor to produce what they want.

2. Contract with a commercial developer who can modify their product to yield the full feature set.

Neither one of these is likely to happen. So they get stuck with what they have now... paper and PowerPoint.

It's smart not to go after DoD contracts imo.

1) The military have no idea of what being in a business means, and so will ask/insist on innumerable "improvements/enhancements" to meet the latest "Warfighting 2021 Standard blah blah blah" that some committee just thought up. I swear, these people are like women who get excited over every silly fashion thing they read in this month's magazine, only to be superceded by what is in next month's mag.

Well said The other problem is the lack of imagination and/or a true commitment to COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) products. Instead of getting something CHEAP (i.e. not tens or hundreds of millions of Dollars) that does 80% of what they need, they go with nothing. Instead of spending a relatively modest sum of money to get them the other 20%, or at least the most important portion of it, they go with nothing.

What are the features CM lacks, according to trainers?

1. Player has to wear too many hats. They want CoAI, which is different than CoPlay.

2. Inability to network multiple players, each wearing their own hats. That's CoPlay.

3. Detailed treatment of CASEVAC (casualties).

4. Military "forms" duplicated virtually.

5. More detailed UI depending on what the focus of the trainer is. For example, training for artillery support would require a much more detailed interaction with artillery assets.

6. Depending on the proposed use, various trainer tools like umpire mode, full battle recordings, interactive AAR, etc.

7. Ability to use military digital map data.

8. Ability to interface with other sims (this has only come up once or twice).

Those are the big things that usually come up.

2) If a small game company is even remotely successful in producing a cheap product that is actually useful as a trainer, they will incur the considerable wrath of all the huge defense companies who will not rest until BFC is crushed and buried (or bought out) and its products trashed - to be replaced by the obscenely expensive products that keep the defense industry getting gazillions of bucks from the taxpayers.

Yup. Sadly, the people who contact us (civilians and officers) understand this all too well. In fact, the only big military contract we had (almost) to date was for a modified version of CMBO using "discretionary funds" from three different departments. This would have allowed them to stay off the Beltway Bandit radar and yet not break any DoD contractor rules. As everybody I've talked to says, if it gets on the big contractor radar they will get involved and say things should go out to bid. We'll lose because we aren't insiders, despite the fact we'd bid probably 10 times lower. Worse, those who contact us have no illusion about ever getting a useful product from the winning bidder. Instead boatloads of taxpayer money would be spent on a project that goes years over schedule and then fails to deliver as much as we already have in CM.

It's maddening :mad:

So unless lightning strikes (which is how our supporters within the DoD sim community put it) we are unlikely to land a contract unless CM is pretty much what they want right out of the box. Which it likely never will be, therefore we're not likely to see CM used within the military more than the occasional ways it is used now.

Steve

[dan/california]

Wouldn't getting co-play done for the commercial market raise the odds of getting paid to fill in the rest ? It really would make the benefits of the system much more obvious to people with a limited view of what it offers.

CMX2's ability to point out idiocies that are obvious in hindsight is sort of amazing, and you don't have to write letters to the parents of pixeltruppen. They are the perfect military lab rats, not so much as the PETA idiots to deal with.

[Battlefront.com]

We are reasonably sure that if we built it we could sell it to a military client in some capacity. If a desired military feature overlaps with a desired commercial feature, then there's a possibility of us adding it. But that feature's requirements have to be inline with the estimated commercial demand and willingness to pay for it. Payment, BTW, can be trading off one set of desired features for another since we can only do so much at one time. Meaning, sure... we could do CoPlay. Sure, there would be some commercial pay off for it. No question about it. But is there enough demand for CoPlay that the majority of our customer base would reward us as much or more than if we put in 50 small to medium features instead? This is the sort of thing we have to ask ourselves, for both our sake and the customers'.

CoPlay is something that some portion of our customer base would love to death. But without CoAI (the AI being able to intelligently manage friendly forces in conjunction with your own) it would be a minority feature for sure. With CoAI I'd hazard a guess that the majority of our customers would likely love playing that way. But CoAI is a huge amount of work all on its own. Even with two programmers, we'd basically need to drop everything for the better part of a year JUST for these two features.

Fortunately for everybody, from the start we knew we had little chance of getting a military contract so we've been focused on the features our average customers want. I doubt we'd still be in business if we had intended CM:SF for a military audience.

Steve