Borg Spotting vs Borg ID'ing

[ZPB II]

What makes it gamey? If we're playing a battle with regular or veteran troops we assume they have seen combat and know the way it plays out. Every move made in the battlefield in which you convey orders to others expose you to danger. Simply pointing your hand in a direction while running with your squad will draw fire to you. Uniforms, caps, radios even more so. AFAIK HQ tanks in WW2 had large aerials that scream.

Iron difficulty means your troops don't see contacts that other units see. I seriously don't see the problem here. You are the commander, your men report to you that they have located an enemy command element in this forest grid here. You tell them to direct fire there...

I have to clarify again that when I got out of the army, I had perfect eyesight. Hopefully I still do a couple of years later. The average battle range is not that long...

Come to think of it, this might be a problem that abstraction has brought to some. Mixing RL and the game. In real-life, a command squad does not just lie down in the mud and act as extra riflemen. They actually do command the men on the battlefield.

It is odd that targeting HQs is called gamey when in real life, NCO casualties were and are pretty grim.

[Lethaface]

Well it's not BORG ID'ing actually. More like Instant ID'ing. At times it's frustrating, but as a veteran of CMSF I can tell you that the times I have ID'ed a spotter/sniper etc during a PBEM game are very low. This is because normally they would not even appear as ? marks, because they are simply hiding on some hill or rooftop in a covered position while calling down fires on me.

I guess the same will be true for CM:BN.

Probably the 'worst' bit of instant ID'ing is that you directly know when you have hit the Platoon HQ tank. I would gladly see this patched but I haven't really banged my head against the wall because of this 'flaw'.

[panzermartin]

About spotters...If you place them hidden or cover arced in a patch of woods or grass nobody will notice them. If you get your spotter killed from enemy IDing, you must be doing something wrong and this applies to CMSF with the high tech optics and sensors. I expect CM:BN to be even more stealthy.

HMGs and snipers is a different issue though. I would prefer a mid soulution between CMx1 obscure "sound contact?" and the quick IDing in CMSF. MG42s in CMx1 were a great area denial weapon because it took some time to locate them, even more time to ID them and quite a lot of effort to neutralize them. I hope the lack of accurate long range weapons might help a bit here compared to CMSF..

[ChrisND]

It sounds like they've coded themselves into a corner.

No, they have a finite amount of time and can't do everything to please everyone within what time is available.

[ZPB II]

I don't think HMG42s will be hard to locate and identify. Let's see, clearly identifiable sound, typical HMG behaviour regarding bursts and rate of sustained fire, smoke, tracers...There's a reason why a lot of machine gunners got killed...

Then just lob onboard mortars on them as per real life.

You don't even have to hear the MG42, you can feel the RPM in your chest.

[Steiner14]

AFAIK HQ tanks in WW2 had large aerials that scream.

Yes, they were even marked with a big white "HQ"!

Do you really think it is that hard to put the same antennas on all tanks?

[ZPB II]

And? We are talking averages...

[panzermartin]

Yes, quite true..but can you tell a scoped HMG from a squad LMG at 500-600m? You will, in CMX2 quite easily, because it will have a big MG icon over it screaming, here I am, bring on the mortars now!

[Petrus58]

Yes, quite true..but can you tell a scoped HMG from a squad LMG at 500-600m? You will, in CMX2 quite easily, because it will have a big MG icon over it screaming, here I am, bring on the mortars now!

True, but you as the player don't have to take advantage of things like this - just exercise restraint!

[Lanzfeld]

True, but you as the player don't have to take advantage of things like this - just exercise restraint!

I can excercise restraint but I doubt my opponents will.

[Petrus58]

I can excercise restraint but I doubt my opponents will.

Fair point - I was thinking of single player.

[skelley]

Ali-Baba

"About spotters...If you place them hidden or cover arced in a patch of woods or grass nobody will notice them. If you get your spotter killed from enemy IDing, you must be doing something wrong and this applies to CMSF with the high tech optics and sensors. I expect CM:BN to be even more stealthy."

Sometimes terrain doesn't allow for keeping your spotter in a concealed position from the beginning. Sometimes you have to move them into position and that may mean crossing small areas of open terrain. If I have to dart across a road to get to a better position I shouldnt expect to be IDed so quick or thoroughly. Damn near tells ya everything including that spotters favorite color.

Zebulon Pleasure Beast II

"It is odd that targeting HQs is called gamey when in real life, NCO casualties were and are pretty grim."

Targeting HQs or spotters isn't gamey. IDing them so easily is a spoiler. In CMX1 it was always a game changer when your spotter got IDed. In CMSF playing against AI, I intentionally don't target spotters, but if playing human...I will do everything I can to kill them!

Look at the AAR.... Elvis was able to see that the soldier on the hill was a sniper instead of an outpost or just a guy taking a piss when he heard the rumble of tanks way to easy. The guy is laying in the grass not dancing on a rooftop holding up his sniper rifle. Its IDing, not spotting or targeting at issue

[Michael Emrys]

I can excercise restraint but I doubt my opponents will.

Which is why years ago I chose to play only solitaire. It's not that I believe that live opponents are inherently dishonorable cheats, but that they are human and make mistakes. And for some reason, their mistakes usually seem to leave them in a better position than otherwise.

Michael

[skelley]

You can use restraint in targeting but it will change your behavior. I only play solitaire as well but for different reasons.....no WEGO with playback and I hate PBEM (takes too long).

[panzermartin]

Yes, there is no restraint in H2H..Some games in CMx1 against my buddies had turned into life or death clashes with every inch and bullet counting. We even executed prisoners with indirect fire heheh. (j/k ) That intensity was the beauty of the game though and I hardly complaint when my opponent tried to sneak AT teams from the map edges for instance. I just had to find a way to counter this and all was fine..

[sfhand]

I'm really trying to understand the uproar... I only play iron mode, so I can't speak to other modes, but I know if I spot an HQ unit I will shoot at it just as I would if I spotted any other unit (unless I'm setting an ambush). In order for me to have anyone but the spotting unit engage the target they have to spot it. Usually this means they have to move to a location to enable spotting it. Moving units are easier to spot than stationary ones. For me, moving a bunch of units to "gang up" on an HQ unit is both unnecessary and foolish.

That said, would I value a spotting system in which there was a time of uncertainty about the spotted unit? Sure. There would need to be answers to questions about which threshholds, e.g, time and/or distance combined with spotting unit equipment, would have to be exceeded in order for more complete IDing to occur, which I'm sure would open up future rounds of debates and criticism.

But to call the spotting mechanics of CMx2 Borg IDing and present it as being just as problematic as Borg Spotting is way over the top, IMHO.

[edit: one last point, I play wego which means that the tacai does most of the targetting for me, I get input once a minute and can fine tune targets but usually once a unit, e.g. the HQ in question, takes fire it moves into cover and frequently spotting is lost and other targets are aquired, i.e., the firing unit switches to other targets it can spot.]

[skelley]

I only play Iron mode and wego as well, but if you see a spotter run into a building or a small patch of woods on a hill you can call in arty on them or area target with armor or onboard mortars. In CMX1 if you saw a soldier do the same thing would you call in arty? It could be a sniper or an LMG and you just wasted half your shells killing a non game changing unit. I also miss the days of facing a german Tank IDed as an Assault Gun, Me confronting it with a couple Shermans only to find out too late that it was actually a Hetzer. Now, I will know it is a hetzer and will avoid direct confrontations like the Plague.

I don't see this as destroying the game but it does take a lot of the fun and stress out of the game.

[skelley]

Another thing.... Say you see a sniper team move into a small wooded area and you target it with a Sherman. Once you see that you have killed 2 guys you can stop targeting it. In CMX1 it could have been an entire squad but you would never know so you may keep pounding away at it for another turn wasting HE on a couple of dead guys.

[panzermartin]

Yes, Skelley has a valid point. ( I was demolished by him quite a lot of times on that TH ladder - he knows what he is doing )

CMx1 simply was more fun in the ID department. I know we will get this back sometime down the road though, its quite a significant ingredient of the CM magic.

[skelley]

Thx Ali. I miss that TH Ladder. Say what you will about the gamey tactics and cherry picking we used but it was a blast. I miss the 105 VT rain of death:)

I'm sure it will be back in too and I'm sure I'll enjoy the game till then, just not as much.

[Lethaface]

Skelley, I think there will be loads of other features not present in CMx1 that will make you enjoy perhaps even more

Personally, I tried CMx1 a couple of years ago but didn't like it (ugly, turn based, etc). Now I have become to like CMx2's graphics and even play it turnbased sometimes.

This InstantID struck me a couple of times, for example when I killed the Company HQ tank. But in the hundreds of games I played, only a few were the ID'ing felt unnatural. When you have spotted an ATGM, does it really matter if you know that it is a AT-4 or AT-7? Because in both cases it's gonna receive the most heaviest ammo in my bin.

AT-14's are easy to recognize without ID'ing, because of your smoldering tanks.

It could be that some people feel that they principally can't play CM:BN because of this issue. That's more of an obsession issue than an issue with the game imo. Anyway, hold your horses and wait for the demo I guess.

[skelley]

I love CMX2s Graphics and the 1 to 1. Some things I think should have been abstracted a bit more. I don't really need an actual bullet to be traced and have to hit an actual pixeltoop as long as the outcome feels right. But I will be buying CMBN on first day available! I still play CMX1 though. Hopefully CMBN will allow me to put away CMX1 for good.

[Steiner14]

I only play Iron mode and wego as well,

One quick question:

Is there a game-mode in CMSF called iron-mode or do you mean Franco's "Iron Man rules"?

[stikkypixie]

I love CMX2s Graphics and the 1 to 1. Some things I think should have been abstracted a bit more. I don't really need an actual bullet to be traced and have to hit an actual pixeltoop as long as the outcome feels right. But I will be buying CMBN on first day available! I still play CMX1 though. Hopefully CMBN will allow me to put away CMX1 for good.

It has its advantages. For example when using automatic weapons like SMGs, you'll get more natural effects because of the bullet spread no matter the distance to the target. If you abstract that, you would have to guess what the effect of the weapon will be as a function of the distance.

[Lethaface]

There is an in-game mode 'Iron'.