Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy Video AAR

[Battlefront.com]

Love the mortars finally re-aiming and raining down on the Yank squads behind the hedgerows as the breach team of Germans moved down the centre in the second battle. The close up of the mortar team firing was nice.

60mm Mortars *suck* when on the receiving end. In CMx1 they were not particularly effective, IIRC, but in CM:BN I've been hit by them (badly) and yet didn't manage to locate where they were because my only unit in LOS was laid waste.

Steve

[ClarkWGriswold]

It's great to hear that the "little" stuff is more effective now. In CMx1 I generally don't even bother with anything less than 80mm, since it takes nearly a direct hit to cause any casualties (though you can sometimes at least pin infantry).

I get the feeling that indirect fire is going to be a lot more key to winning in CMBN than it is in CMBO/CMBB.

[Zatoichi]

I play about 90% of my CMSF games in WeGo, but I do enjoy trying some smaller battles in RT. I've never found them to be 'clickfests' - in fact, I probably click the screen more in WeGo when trying to get that perfect hull down position, checking LOS etc.

However, I do prefer the more measured pace of WeGo in large battles, and being able to rewind and see exactly how badly wrong it was to send my poor pixeltruppen into that supposedly empty compound is 'a good thing'. But if I'd sent them in while playing the battle in RT, I'd have been able to react and pull them them out rather than sit and watch them get mangled for 60 seconds. If I'd been watching that patch of the battlefield at the right time of course.

I'll just chip in this little tidbit that was introduced a while back in CMSF on the RT vs. WeGo thing for the benefit of those who skipped CMSF for whatever reason - obviously the campaigns that ship with CMBN will be playable in either RT or WeGo from the off, but also you'll be able to choose between each battle in the campaign whether you want to play it as RT or WeGo.

That's the good thing about all of this - YOU get to choose how you want to play. It's a personal opinion which way is 'better', what matters is which you 'prefer'.

Just to finish off this ramble and bring it vaguely back to these VAARs, I have to commend tyrespawn for his skills at being able to play RT with forces larger than I personally find 'manageable' (2nd battle especially) and win with apparently acceptable losses. In addition to this he kept up a highly entertaining and informative commentary the whole way through. No mean feat.

Looking forward to the next one!

[Fetchez la Vache]

Stuff published on this internet-thing I've got seems to be unanimous in the opinion that Panzerfausts shouldn't be fired indoors. Fairy snuff, I can see why although in practice if I had a ruddy great tank bearing down on me I reckon I'd find a way to shoot my PF out of a window. :-)

However they were still used a lot in urban combat, so I think they should still be modeled in-game as being able to be fired from inside buildings when:

1) First floor only (firer pops outside to take quick pot-shot, then pops back in)

2) If building is destroyed (no walls to bounce back back-blast)

I know this won't be modeled and no great drama really, I'm just thinking out aloud. Probably easier to just to split the squad and station one half with PF's outside...

[silverstars]

Stuff published on this internet-thing I've got seems to be unanimous in the opinion that Panzerfausts shouldn't be fired indoors. Fairy snuff, I can see why although in practice if I had a ruddy great tank bearing down on me I reckon I'd find a way to shoot my PF out of a window. :-)

However they were still used a lot in urban combat, so I think they should still be modeled in-game as being able to be fired from inside buildings when:

1) First floor only (firer pops outside to take quick pot-shot, then pops back in)

2) If building is destroyed (no walls to bounce back back-blast)

I know this won't be modeled and no great drama really, I'm just thinking out aloud. Probably easier to just to split the squad and station one half with PF's outside...

Actually, all you will need to do is hit the Tank Hunter button, which splits off a two-man anti-tank section from the squad. Or at least that was what was available in CMSF.

[aka_tom_w]

Good Work Sonar!

No mystery here, it all looks fine:

Ok, here is the definitive answer on the grenade vs tank situation. No.1 tank, panzerfaust, No.2 Panzerfaust and No.3 handgrenade. From 3:05 to5:45 you see the platoon being placed, pause when they are highlighted and you can see the inventory for each squad. The squad at the treeline, which kills No.2 has a panzerfaust. 26:20 to 26:40, panzerschreck has a go, listen to the sound of it's discharge and impact.

26:42 team behind building fire a rifle grenade then a panzerfaust in quick sucession [watch their inventory as they fire, and watch the grenade and faust dissapear as there used]. Once again, listen to the sounds of these different types of weapon, in particular the faust.

27:56 the sqaud in the treeline let fly with their panzerfaust,See it is no longer in their inventoryand kills No.2. See the smoke from it's discharge,hear impact sound.

37:60 to 38:40 we see a miss from the last faust but no one else has a go with handgrenades, till the squad in the treeline whom the tank is literally sitting on top of, throw one.

By chance I paused at 38:40 and in the frame you see the stickgrenade, on it's way, in mid air where it explodes... above the rear engine cowling, listen to the difference between this explosion and the one that gets No.2.

I am completely satisfied with these results and my initial response was instigated by the misleading video commentary.

Now what was that someone said about chinstraps....cheers

[Thomm]

It's certainly a step up from CMx1, but I think there's still something severely lacking in the graphics department. It just looks like it was made by amateurs.

You have to distinguish a little bit here:

The models are incredible. They could easily be used for any FPS. This applies to the 3D meshes as well as the textures.

The rendering of trees and Bocage are close to perfect (for what can be expected). I made 2 x 2 km test maps full of trees with little loss of frame rate or visual quality.

The terrain looks good enough at lower view levels. Did you ever wonder why every(?) official screenshot has been taken at eye level?

At higher view levels apparently compromises have to be made with regard to terrain rendering. There is no use denying this.

One thing though, that I notice all the time is: Once the bullets start flying I do not worry any more about these shortcomings.

I also think that the priorities of the base game were more in the gameplay department, such as Quick Battle force selection and related aspects. Perhaps later modules will free more programming time for the rendering engine.

Best regards,

Thomm

[bodkin]

obviously the campaigns that ship with CMBN will be playable in either RT or WeGo from the off, but also you'll be able to choose between each battle in the campaign whether you want to play it as RT or WeGo.

I found that the later releases of the official CMSF campaigns/battles in the British and NATO modules were more designed and catered to RT players, the ability to instanly change a units behaviour was critical in alot of missions due to strict casualty limits. Maybe this advantage of playing RT and having alot more control was more beneficial in the modern setting but it left me having to save and reload alot more than I'd like as a WEGO player.

Hopefully the difference in play styles dosen't have such a noticeable influence in the WW2 setting.

[zuf]

The new video is up!

[Bridger15]

Give us a few tens of millions of development dollars, a mandate to make a completely crappy simulation, and limit it to about company size... I am sure we could do a lot better.

I'm actually a big fan of CoH. It's not trying to be a simulation, so I'm not sure it's fair to judge it as one.

What do you do for work? I bet if I saw your job performance I could probably rate you "incompetent amateur" if I compared whatever you do out of context. So unless you're a Wolfgang Puck or Bill Gates of whatever you do, you should be EXTREMELY cautious about throwing stones.

Wow, didn't expect such a vitriolic response. I wasn't trying to say you guys are amateurs; just that it looks that way. I allowed for the fact that graphics quality might have suffered from higher CPU usage on the simulation side; not necessarily from poor developers.

The truth is that we probably have more professional experience making wargames than the CoH team has making RTS games. What we don't have is tens of millions of Dollars and the freedom to make a game that is all fluff and no substance.

I'm very surprised and disappointed to read this. I thought there would be a little more professional understanding of game development from the battlefront team. So much contempt for such a clearly fantastic game? Of course you can say you don't like CoH or the genre it stands for, because you prefer more simulative games (I can enjoy both, for example), but to say it has no substance proves that either a) You have not actually played it or You have some misguided prejudice for any non-simulation game having to do with history. Either way it's disconcerting. I had more respect for you as developers until now.

And I wish all our customers had a flipp'n clue what they were talking about before they criticize. So let's just call it even.

Steve

I know exactly what I'm talking about. There's an example of a game with 5 year old technology that looks amazing on 5 year old PCs. Then you have this game which looks like it was designed 10 years ago. Certainly production money/scale has a lot to do with it. I'm not trying to say it's something that's in your control (I'm not a programmer), it's just disappointing, as was your response.

I'll still enjoy the game I'm sure. I did enjoy CMBO and CMBB back in the day, but realistic mechanics aren't always enough. I have to be in the right mood to forgo graphical immersion and play something entirely based on mechanics. I guess I was just hoping for both. I like being sucked into the moment and imagining I'm there, watching a scene unfold and trying to direct troops on the battlefield. I'll withhold further judgement till i get the game however. Here's hoping it's awesome enough to suspend my disbelief

[Vencini]

Ohhhhh thanks! another one! Game looks great!

[Fetchez la Vache]

@Silverstars

I knew I should have played CMSF more! I can see that CMBN is going to be a painful (re) learning experience. :-)

[Zatoichi]

I found that the later releases of the official CMSF campaigns/battles in the British and NATO modules were more designed and catered to RT players, the ability to instantly change a units behaviour was critical in a lot of missions due to strict casualty limits.

Well, that's not been my experience to be honest - I've actually only ever played the campaigns in WeGo, and have managed to do OK most of the time as long as I didn't rush the battles. But then again, there is a chance* that I've had to do some reloading every once in a while when caught out. But that's always been the case with the way I play.

I do believe that by the time that NATO came out, the campaign designers were better at making the battles 'tougher' because of the benefit of years of extra experience and familiarity with the editor. Some of the maps and the AI plans were superb and seriously challenging, but I don't believe this was specifically because I was playing WeGo not RT - if I'd been playing RT I would certainly have lost every battle as I'd never have kept the casualties down when attempting a 2-pronged assault.

Just my 2p though, for what it's worth.

*quite a high chance as it turns out.

[A Canadian Cat]

Hi my name is Chris "tyrspawn" Krause - i'm a Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy beta tester. I've been given the great opportunity to make a video AAR for the community.

It is available for viewing here:

<snip>

First of all excellent video - I really enjoyed watching it. I have a question - what software did you use to capture the video?

I am trying to capture CMBB and CMAK videos right now and so far have had no luck. It could be that because these are older games there are issues. But I would like to try out the sw that you are using just be be sure.

Thanks,

Ian

[ZPB II]

Haven't watched the entire video, but I assume people won't be asking whether the computer opponent can use artillery in a meaningful way this time...That was brutal to watch...

[DaveyJJ]

First of all excellent video - I really enjoyed watching it. I have a question - what software did you use to capture the video?

I am trying to capture CMBB and CMAK videos right now and so far have had no luck. It could be that because these are older games there are issues. But I would like to try out the sw that you are using just be be sure.

Thanks,

Ian

Thought he mentioned using FRAPS in another thread.

[Bridger15]

You can get a good idea of how accurate a simulation a game is going to be just by looking at the ratio of programmers to artists and the development time allowed. Compare the major titles to CM. That should be an eye opener.

I doubt anyone at Relic was under the false assumption that they were designing a simulation. They were making a game based on a historical war, not a simulation based on that war. Those two design goals are completely different.

You could level the same criticism at chess, or fooseball, but that doesn't make them "lesser" games because they are not designed as simulations. They just fall into a different category.

That being said, CM is a game too, it simply has simulation leanings. Unless you think the Germans and the Soviets got together before every battle and agreed to a specific point value of units?

[Bridger15]

to the OP: If you want to avoid the black bars on the right/left side of the youtube video, render your output at 1728x1080. I had the same problem with my CoH videos for a while, but this fixed it.

[DeutschRitter]

I'm actually a big fan of CoH. It's not trying to be a simulation, so I'm not sure it's fair to judge it as one.

Wow, didn't expect such a vitriolic response. I wasn't trying to say you guys are amateurs; just that it looks that way. I allowed for the fact that graphics quality might have suffered from higher CPU usage on the simulation side; not necessarily from poor developers.

I'm very surprised and disappointed to read this. I thought there would be a little more professional understanding of game development from the battlefront team. So much contempt for such a clearly fantastic game? Of course you can say you don't like CoH or the genre it stands for, because you prefer more simulative games (I can enjoy both, for example), but to say it has no substance proves that either a) You have not actually played it or You have some misguided prejudice for any non-simulation game having to do with history. Either way it's disconcerting. I had more respect for you as developers until now.

I know exactly what I'm talking about. There's an example of a game with 5 year old technology that looks amazing on 5 year old PCs. Then you have this game which looks like it was designed 10 years ago. Certainly production money/scale has a lot to do with it. I'm not trying to say it's something that's in your control (I'm not a programmer), it's just disappointing, as was your response.

I'll still enjoy the game I'm sure. I did enjoy CMBO and CMBB back in the day, but realistic mechanics aren't always enough. I have to be in the right mood to forgo graphical immersion and play something entirely based on mechanics. I guess I was just hoping for both. I like being sucked into the moment and imagining I'm there, watching a scene unfold and trying to direct troops on the battlefield. I'll withhold further judgement till i get the game however. Here's hoping it's awesome enough to suspend my disbelief

Hey Bridger,

nice to see you here on the cm:bn forum. I was always a big fan of tales of heroes and i am still playing coh every day since the beta was released and i would say that coh is one of the best game I have ever played. Its so intense and immersive. AND i am a real wargamer, playing all the independent wargames out there. i am also playing a lot of hex-based-board games like coh (conflict of heroes , tides of iron, etc... i am enjoying both (the really good game mechanical in coh, which has a very very very nice slip and slope mechanic and the tactical aspect (I read your article bridger about the game mechanic of coh and i loved it, because it has impressed all my feelings about the game) and cm and sm:sf because of its simulation aspect. i always wish there could be a wargame with the mechanics of cm:bn with the graphics of coh (coh maps 10 times wider open with the houses and plain landscapes that would be awesome)

So why do we have to deceide between an fantastic tactical more action based wargame like coh (its like an fantastic boardgame which also never can catch all the historical facts in a game) and a fantastic more simulated wargame like cm:bn. As bridger said i enjoy both and i am not limited or ideological confused...

looking forward for cm:bn and the new patch for coh ! and i am also looking forward for maybe coh2

greetings from germany...

[Fredrik Wallin]

Great video.

If a new video is posted, please try to include:

1) Closeup of specific units so that they can be followed for more than 5 seconds.

2) Features like artillery bursts, buildings collapsing, firing MG's etc...

3) While doing item 2, keep the camera still to prevent car sickness for the viewer.

4) This is a "promotional" video so "I go - you go" might be a good idea in order to allow the buyers of the game to be able to see the same turn from different angles and therby getting a better view and feel for the game. (I know you <dont play "I go - you go">). This is for the community that have or will buy the game so maybe upload it like we want as a "give the customer what he wants" kind of thing?

5) Show new and old terrain features a bit closer, such as haystacks, boccage, ditches, trenches, wire and what not...

6) AND MOST IMPORTANT: Opponent wanted for PBEM, US east coast time 10 turns/day or more. :)

This posted video with two battle was fantastic, yet very frustrating as I want the game NOW!

Best regards and keep up the good work,

General Failure

[Fredrik Wallin]

typo in original text

[robroy]

At last some video....

Looks good couldnt stop watching had to find out the end better than some hollywood action movies....

More please.....

[para]

looks like tyrspawn got annoyed with the negative waves and has decided not to post any more vids :-(

[Guest]

I'm very surprised and disappointed to read this. I thought there would be a little more professional understanding of game development from the battlefront team. So much contempt for such a clearly fantastic game? Of course you can say you don't like CoH or the genre it stands for, because you prefer more simulative games (I can enjoy both, for example), but to say it has no substance proves that either a) You have not actually played it or You have some misguided prejudice for any non-simulation game having to do with history. Either way it's disconcerting. I had more respect for you as developers until now.

I *have* played Company of Heroes pretty extensively (mostly MP and skirmish, I found the campaign missions grinding) and compared to Combat Mission I would agree that it has little substance. That's not even a knock against RTSes - I love Relic's own Dawn of War series (including, notably, the CoH-flavored DoW2).

Simply put, as a game about World War II I think it's a joke. Tiny maps, Calliope rushes, "research" that unlocks the ability to drop troops anywhere you want on said tiny map (and I *liked* the Airborne path!). It's an eye-candy vector with World War II graphics pasted on top, produced by a massive team and budget that Combat Mission could never hope to have. It's a really awful comparison to make. Frankly, to me it read as either a) cruel or ignorant. I chose to respond to the latter. If I was responding to the former I might have taken the same tack as Steve.

It's like comparing Antony Beevor's Stalingrad with a Sgt. Rock comic. Ugh. I'm glad that you pre-ordered, because I think you're going to enjoy the game (get down low with the troops to see some real awesomeness that the Youtube video doesn't show) but man, Company of Heroes? The only comparison that would have been worse would be... yeesh, Call of Duty.

[BloodyBucket]

looks like tyrspawn got annoyed with the negative waves and has decided not to post any more vids :-(

The new one is up now.