Elvis vs. JonS DAR Discussion Thread

[Jonny(FGM)]

Surrender is not a unit-wide thing that happens.

That is fantastic news

[Canada Guy]

When Units throw up their hands and are later rescued, do they retain their weapons or have they been disarmed?

[Rocky Balboa]

Surrender is not a unit-wide thing that happens.

Wow was I way out in left field ... I'm still playing in the CMx1 world

[ChrisND]

Wow was I way out in left field ... I'm still playing in the CMx1 world

It's pretty cool to see your troops storm into a position and gun down most of the defenders, and the remainder decide they've had enough and start throwing their arms up. Even more satisfying than seeing these crosses pop up.

And the responses are very individual - with a single team you might have some continue to fight, some surrender, and some run away.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

You can tack on such a large point penalty for any loss percentage you care to specify that it will make victory unachievable for that side.

do thresholds work like in CSFM, just one value per parameter?

You can set that for 5% losses and, to use the extant example, give the American player 4 hours just to take hill 154. It would probably be more realistic. But you are conflating scenario design with engine flaws, they are not the same thing.

he is or you are?

i'm a bit shocked about the popularity of this solution, because it seems to borderline the "troll science" series of memebase.com. let me change the context:

take an early FPS game. the game and the maps offer almost no ways to utilize the cover. the only way to use cover is to run behind a corner. you always fire from the hip and you can shoot just as accurately when you are running and jumping around. you wade kneedeep in the dead within a couple of minutes. well, make a casualty threshold in the scenario parameters. realistic results!

[JasonC]

I'm glad there are built in victory conditions scenario designers can use to reward attention to losses, but that isn't actually the subject of my comments. Nor is it an adequate response to point out that CM is a game and players don't die when they make dumb decisions. Terrible Swift Sword was a game before it added BCE, and it was still a game after it added BCE. It was also a better game.

The Capt writes in part "always room for better simulation of battlefield friction". Yeah. See, when you more accurately depict the movement of each man and let him die to the trajectory of each bit of fire, but you don't accurately depict his personal loss avoidance or cover seeking; when you more accurately depict the way men in a squad string out as they cross a field but not the way they leave the squad altogether and become an atomized mist of individual soldiers when the sarge takes one to the noggin; when you more accurately depict the way the sniper can see through his scope but isn't seen back, but not the confusion on the receiving end paralyzing movements outside of cover - they all push in one direction. More dead bodies on the field, as men carry out order attempts they never would even receive in reality, and entirely realistically get blown apart for their pains.

You can blame the players. You can call it a game. You can cater to expectations set by arcade game shooters instead of military realities. But no, you can't just choose to play it realistically and get a realistic battle out of it. Tactics that do not work in real life work in the game. Tactics that do work in real life don't work in the game. Exploiting accurately depicted lethality and equally exploting inaccurately depicted coordination and responsiveness and bravery and control, means using game tactics not real ones.

Maybe you like that better - entirely up to you since it is your silicon. You can go to work on a pogo stick if you enjoy it. But don't tell me the former is perfectly engineered realism and thus superior to design for effect systems, or the later is efficient transportation.

Personally, I'd love to see a BCE like system for intervening unit levels, platoon or company or both, and I don't think it would be hard to implement (there is already a rally rate routine because more deeply suppressed squads rally slower; that rate or chance just gets multiplied by straight factor tracking losses and red morale in the formation), nor that hard to tune (start with a weak effect and test it higher gradually). I also think the mandatory cease fire offer system could be implemented by players without any system change, that it would work quite differently from absolute loss tolerance VCs (which are more appropriate for modern armies frankly).

But if I don't get them, it will be precious little skin off my nose. The realism point and design alternatives remain, and are much wider than this particular incarnation of this particular game.

[ChrisND]

do thresholds work like in CSFM, just one value per parameter?

he is or you are?

i'm a bit shocked about the popularity of this solution, because it seems to borderline the "troll science" series of memebase.com. let me change the context:

take an early FPS game. the game and the maps offer almost no ways to utilize the cover. the only way to use cover is to run behind a corner. you always fire from the hip and you can shoot just as accurately when you are running and jumping around. you wade kneedeep in the dead within a couple of minutes. well, make a casualty threshold in the scenario parameters. realistic results!

I'm going to assume that you haven't played CMSF recently. Parameters are only one (very simple) way to do it. You can also assign all of the units to an enemy Target objective and set a point value for it. Destroying all of the units would result in full points being awarded, and a fraction of those units resulting in a fraction of the points, scaling with the level of destruction. So with it set up that way victory becomes harder to achieve the more losses you take, on a sliding scale instead of a binary value.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Some did. I each situation of the DAR that I had men throw their arms up there were others in their unit who retreated rather than surrender. The tank crew had 4 men, of which one surrendered. The squad that ran onto Hill 144 had 9 men and 4 threw their arms up and all ended up being rescued. The squad on the cart path had 6 men and 2 surrendered. Surrender is not a unit-wide thing that happens.

you mean at different periods or at the same time?

seeing the praise this feature is getting, i don't know how realistic separate surrenders are from basic battlefield psychology perspective. my understanding of the subject is that the one that surrenders is the whole group, whatever that means, a team or a platoon or a whatever, or nothing. if nothing, the other guys wait "suppressed" or "routed" for the heroic ones to get shot, then surrender if situation is still the same. unless unit cohesion is atypically low, i think different behaviour would be rare. they are brothers and they stick together no matter what. when they don't and they don't die, they are internally tormented about it for the decades to come.

but it's great that they are at least doing it.

[dan/california]

I'm glad there are built in victory conditions scenario designers can use to reward attention to losses, but that isn't actually the subject of my comments. Nor is it an adequate response to point out that CM is a game and players don't die when they make dumb decisions. Terrible Swift Sword was a game before it added BCE, and it was still a game after it added BCE. It was also a better game.

The Capt writes in part "always room for better simulation of battlefield friction". Yeah. See, when you more accurately depict the movement of each man and let him die to the trajectory of each bit of fire, but you don't accurately depict his personal loss avoidance or cover seeking; when you more accurately depict the way men in a squad string out as they cross a field but not the way they leave the squad altogether and become an atomized mist of individual soldiers when the sarge takes one to the noggin; when you more accurately depict the way the sniper can see through his scope but isn't seen back, but not the confusion on the receiving end paralyzing movements outside of cover - they all push in one direction. More dead bodies on the field, as men carry out order attempts they never would even receive in reality, and entirely realistically get blown apart for their pains.

You can blame the players. You can call it a game. You can cater to expectations set by arcade game shooters instead of military realities. But no, you can't just choose to play it realistically and get a realistic battle out of it. Tactics that do not work in real life work in the game. Tactics that do work in real life don't work in the game. Exploiting accurately depicted lethality and equally exploting inaccurately depicted coordination and responsiveness and bravery and control, means using game tactics not real ones.

Maybe you like that better - entirely up to you since it is your silicon. You can go to work on a pogo stick if you enjoy it. But don't tell me the former is perfectly engineered realism and thus superior to design for effect systems, or the later is efficient transportation.

Personally, I'd love to see a BCE like system for intervening unit levels, platoon or company or both, and I don't think it would be hard to implement (there is already a rally rate routine because more deeply suppressed squads rally slower; that rate or chance just gets multiplied by straight factor tracking losses and red morale in the formation), nor that hard to tune (start with a weak effect and test it higher gradually). I also think the mandatory cease fire offer system could be implemented by players without any system change, that it would work quite differently from absolute loss tolerance VCs (which are more appropriate for modern armies frankly).

But if I don't get them, it will be precious little skin off my nose. The realism point and design alternatives remain, and are much wider than this particular incarnation of this particular game.

Yes, and all you have to do is come up with five to ten man years worth of first class coding effort to give us your take on how it ought to be. Until then you are trying to beat something with nothing.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

I'm going to assume that you haven't played CMSF recently. Parameters are only one (very simple) way to do it. You can also assign all of the units to an enemy Target objective and set a point value for it. Destroying all of the units would result in full points being awarded, and a fraction of those units resulting in a fraction of the points, scaling with the level of destruction. So with it set up that way victory becomes harder to achieve the more losses you take, on a sliding scale instead of a binary value.

i guess you don't get the "troll science" part of it. you have a racing game with different types of cars. a player complains that a Ferrari is not as fast as it should be and thus get's bad finishing times. no problem, just use the race parameter that takes off 5 seconds from Ferrari's finishing time.

the last time i played CMSF was earlier today.

[Moon]

More dead bodies on the field, as men carry out order attempts they never would even receive in reality, and entirely realistically get blown apart for their pains.

It sounds like you are blaming the game for mistakes made by the player?

[GreenAsJade]

No, he was saying that in the game the soldiers get orders based on their behaviour that does not match real behaviour (one example he gave was that their deaths are realistic based on bullet trajectory, but their ducking behaviour is not).

GaJ

[JonS]

they are brothers and they stick together no matter what. when they don't and they don't die, they are internally tormented about it for the decades to come.

Yee gods. Where is this purple prose coming from?

[ChrisND]

i guess you don't get the "troll science" part of it. you have a racing game with different types of cars. a player complains that a Ferrari is not as fast as it should be and thus get's bad finishing times. no problem, just use the race parameter that takes off 5 seconds from Ferrari's finishing time.

the last time i played CMSF was earlier today.

I understand the analogy, I just don't understand exactly what you want.

[user38]

On one of the DAR threads I made some comments about the realism of the battle with respect to the casualties suffered by Elvis. (I recall Elvis replied that, in a real battle, he would probably have been court martialled over the losses.) My perspective was as an ex-army reserve soldier who had taken part in military exercises.

In real life war is not fun because sleeping three hours a night is not fun and digging holes all day is not fun and being rained on is not fun and eating army rations and pooping in a hole is not fun. For us grunts the only fun part was the simulated combat, although I recall being simulated killed several times so I guess in a real war that part would have been not fun as well.

We are all familiar with the Battle of Gettysburg and I think most would agree that a significant factor in the Union victory (possibly the decisive factor) was that most of the Union forces marched like madmen to get to the battlefield on time. Re-fighting Gettysburg is fun, but you couldn’t pay me to play a game that simulated the miseries suffered by those soldiers on the march.

JasonC makes some good points about the realism of the game. But the point of a game is to be a game. It’s supposed to be fun. So simulation games don’t simulate the unfun bits and simulate the “fun” bits so that they actually are fun.

I have often thought about game design and what it is that make confilct simulation games fun. My job is inherently competitive. I work as a litigator for a large government department and sometimes my job is extremely fun. The “fun” comes from defeating a tricky opponent through skillful cross examination and the presentation of evidence to tell a compelling story. But on those occasions I think the emotion I am feeling is not joy but relief. It is akin to the feeling one has after alphabetising a large CD collection. In real life conflicts with uncertain outcomes are stressful and the “fun” that comes on the successful resolution of the conflict results from the absence of that stress. And the intensity of the feeling does not arise merely from besting an opponent, but from the release of tension built up over hours and days and sometimes months of meticulous preparation and planning.

My job has its fun bits, but mostly it’s work, and if I wasn’t paid to do it I’d spend all of my time playing video games. So of course Combat Missions is not a “realistic” wargame, and thank god for that. Because if it was too realistic it would suck, and no one would buy it and no one would play it.

[Chad Harrison]

Just caught up on both AAR's and this thread. Great game to both Jon and Elvis. Good scenario to showcase a bunch of different things that the game has to offer!

Really look forward to what is next to read around here. Someone else mentioned it, but I will echo it:

QB DAR/AAR

Showcasing the purchasing, seeing the map during setting it up, and then playing the scenario out. I certainly understand some of this might be unfinished, but so were the skins for the truck and the PaK38 - and that didnt degrade the excellend AAR's one bit.

Personally I see the whole new QB system as the single most important improvement over CM:SF - except obviously the setting for the game. So much power in this new system, would love to see it taken for a spin!

But regardless of what it is, would be great to have another game going!

Thanks

Chad

[Michael Emrys]

So of course Combat Missions is not a “realistic” wargame, and thank god for that. Because if it was too realistic it would suck, and no one would buy it and no one would play it.

I think it may have been Richard Berg back when he was working for SPI who once said that those who demand absolute realism in wargames should play with the firm understanding that the loser will be shot. Something of the sort was alluded to in this thread IIRC.

Michael

[The_Capt]

The Capt writes in part "always room for better simulation of battlefield friction". Yeah. See, when you more accurately depict the movement of each man and let him die to the trajectory of each bit of fire, but you don't accurately depict his personal loss avoidance or cover seeking; when you more accurately depict the way men in a squad string out as they cross a field but not the way they leave the squad altogether and become an atomized mist of individual soldiers when the sarge takes one to the noggin; when you more accurately depict the way the sniper can see through his scope but isn't seen back, but not the confusion on the receiving end paralyzing movements outside of cover - they all push in one direction. More dead bodies on the field, as men carry out order attempts they never would even receive in reality, and entirely realistically get blown apart for their pains.

You can blame the players. You can call it a game. You can cater to expectations set by arcade game shooters instead of military realities. But no, you can't just choose to play it realistically and get a realistic battle out of it. Tactics that do not work in real life work in the game. Tactics that do work in real life don't work in the game. Exploiting accurately depicted lethality and equally exploting inaccurately depicted coordination and responsiveness and bravery and control, means using game tactics not real ones.

Maybe you like that better - entirely up to you since it is your silicon. You can go to work on a pogo stick if you enjoy it. But don't tell me the former is perfectly engineered realism and thus superior to design for effect systems, or the later is efficient transportation.

But if I don't get them, it will be precious little skin off my nose. The realism point and design alternatives remain, and are much wider than this particular incarnation of this particular game.

Jason, by your definition you want a movie not a game. You want perfectly realistic action reaction to the thousands of individual stresses and strains of the battlefield. Not only is that expectation totally unrealistic in a game but also unrealistic in RL.

"Real world tactics","military realities"? I love it when amateurs throw that one around. Read it in some books and now it is reality. Any cbt vet is going to tell you tactics are general rules that on any given day MAY work. But they are not an iron clad guarantee. They constantly evolve and adapt. Unconventional becomes conventional overnight. Darwin rules out there and no one outcome can be predicted. All anyone can do is run with what doesn't get you and yours killed. Cbt is a non-linear adaptive system. At best you can cling to fundemental rules the system has to live by and play with probabilities.

I think we fundementally disagree on what CM should be. To my mind it isn't a engineered historical reinactment system designed to perfectly reproduce real world results 9 times out of 10. It is a canvas that players can exercise the art of war on. Are the colours all there in perfect order, no. Is the texture of the canvass a perfect copy, no. But for the average guy it is a close as he can get on a computer and they can do what they will with it.

Room for improvement, yes. Bad because it isn't "perfect"...nonsense. Fun..definitely. If you want to stick your purist nose in the air and take your ball home...well that is your loss.

[Vark]

User38, I think you have hit upon the distinction between conscripted troops in WWII and the modern Western armies, as depicted in Shockforce. The WWII variety were, by and large, grudging warriors, who had left behind their normal lives and wanted to survive to return to it. Although they often found that after their unique and often horrific experiences they could never really do so. The Allied Shock Force soldiers are professional warriors and go about the task of killing with a mechanical efficiency, borne from years of training and realistic training. I am not denigrating soldiers with the usual leftist 'robotic killer meme', just pointing out they are bloody good at their job and take pride in good soldiering. They also have a huge range of support staff who help in adjusting soldiers to the realities of combat and if you want to see the disparity of the levels of expertise and proficiency in psychological counselling read "War of nerves"

I do hope the CM2 engine makes this psychological distinction and does not just try to calculate casualties based on some nominal training value and accuracy of the weapons. It's the mind that kills, weapons are only the instruments of that killer instinct, this crucial distinction needs to be reflected in the combat system, and a clear divide between modern soldiering and the reluctant conscripts of WWII simulated.

[Migo441]

The_Capt,

I'm not reading JasonC here the same way you are at all. He wants a "movie" ?

His observations and suggestions here are directed at his ideas of making the game more realistic and more representative of historical results. That's it. Everyone has different ideas about what's "fun" here. For some people, what I'll call "extra realism" may make the experience more rewarding. For other people, "extra realism" may make the experience less fun.

So he suggests some tweaks to the morale model and somehow the discussion jumps to comments that, for an utterly realistic game, the players would have to endure real world miseries like digging trenches and marching in the rain uphill both ways. That's absurd. Just as it would be absurd to assume the crowd resisting one aspect of "extra realism" or another wants power-ups and respawning.

[wadepm]

I must agree with JasonC on this one. I think the 60% casualties for the American side is way too high. Even Pickett's Charge had only about 50% casualties.

However, it is unclear if that is due to the poor generalship on the part of the players (sorry guys!) or some deficiency in the game model. I am sure that if the game model were "perfect" the player could push his guys straight into the maelstrom and get high casualties rates but I would expect that his troops would be cowering blobs of jelly well before he got to 60% casualties.

Setting the scenario victory conditions to reward force conservation does not address this issue. Penalizing a player after the fact is not the same as the game model "punishing" his play during the game.

But, this is still a game. I wouldn't have a problem with this whole thing except that I hold CM to a higher standard. I support including a realism level that would incoprate a "realistic" morale model. We could also include forcing camera level 1 too...

This is just my opinion. I am still buying the game and I am sure I will enjoy the crap out of it.

[Battlefront.com]

One of the interesting things gamers usually ask for is the ability to override an automatic ending. CMx1 had a nice compromise where it told the players "dudes, this battle should be over now. But if you knuckleheads want to slaughter the rest of your guys... be our guests! But the score won't change".

So far CMx2 doesn't quite have this sort of feature because we found people generally wanted to keep the battle going beyond where it should have ended. I think it will reappear sometime soon as we definitely do like the idea of telling players "this is the logical end of the battle", but we might let the scoring continue to keep going.

Steve

[BFCElvis]

I must agree with JasonC on this one. I think the 60% casualties for the American side is way too high. Even Pickett's Charge had only about 50% casualties.

However, it is unclear if that is due to the poor generalship on the part of the players (sorry guys!) or some deficiency in the game model. I am sure that if the game model were "perfect" the player could push his guys straight into the maelstrom and get high casualties rates but I would expect that his troops would be cowering blobs of jelly well before he got to 60% casualties.

No offense taken. 60% is very high. I should be referring to myself as the Butcher of Bois rather than Lt Dyke. Not the norm though.

Setting the scenario victory conditions to reward force conservation does not address this issue. Penalizing a player after the fact is not the same as the game model "punishing" his play during the game.

No, having it in the settings does not just penalize the player after the fact. Assuming it is in the scenario briefing (please take that to heart scenario makers) the player will normally play with that guideline in mind. I keep referencing the NATO German campaign because anyone who has NATO can see what it's like if they haven't already. In that when I had to keep casualties in the 10% or 15% range a large part of my play was being extremely careful with my troops. Often the point of it being the only scenario objective I cared about.

But, this is still a game. I wouldn't have a problem with this whole thing except that I hold CM to a higher standard. I support including a realism level that would incoprate a "realistic" morale model. We could also include forcing camera level 1 too...

I think most people will like the way the morale plays out in CMBN. A large portion of which is how C2 works. It is really the same as in CMSF but because of the better means of communication it was close to invisible for me. Not so with CMBN.

This is just my opinion. I am still buying the game and I am sure I will enjoy the crap out of it.

I believe most people will.

[dan/california]

I think some of us are responding to all of his commentary, instead of the specifics of his last post. There is a very fundamental issue about the game engine design philosophy that has been kicking back and forth.

[7thGalaxy]

Personally I think we ought to just stop feeding the trolls.