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Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy Video AAR


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I hear what you say about the possibility of knocking out tanks with grenades but in real life you just don't come across many instances of this happening

You don't come across many instances of it happening in the game either. But if your squad is hiding in the woods with no Fausts and no Shrecks and no rifle grenades and a buttoned Sherman just happens to stop in the road a couple feet from you what are you supposed to do? Surrender? I can well imagine the complaints "It stopped just five feet away yet my men refused to throw their grenades at it!"

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No WeGo!? Blasphemy!!!

In all seriousness, WeGo is what attracted me to CMx1 in the first place. No more taking turns and no more realtime clickfest.

Me too. But i somehow can enjoy realtime if the scenario is troop-wise small enough. I play it without pause, because every time i start to use it, i end up pausing like every 10 seconds (as the guy in this AAR vids :D )

Still my dream is realtime with forced pause every minute. ...best of both worlds.

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You don't come across many instances of it happening in the game either. But if your squad is hiding in the woods with no Fausts and no Shrecks and no rifle grenades and a buttoned Sherman just happens to stop in the road a couple feet from you what are you supposed to do? Surrender? I can well imagine the complaints "It stopped just five feet away yet my men refused to throw their grenades at it!"

It's not that but the perceived lethality of the grenades. You wonder why they ever bothered with tank mines and RPG (not the bazooka like things) when the good old frag could achieve these kinds of results. The tank was not just immobilized (yellow base) but killed! Any way, in game it's probably just a fringe occurences any way, but you can't deny there is not something peculiar about that.

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Observations of the first video from a CM:SF vet:

I heard many of the same vehicle, american voice sounds, and wounded soldier sounds that are present in CM:SF, in the video.

AI vehicles still bunch up at one action spot, just as they do in CM:SF, creating a bit of a cluster phuck. The way to avoid this is for the scenario designer to give individual AI plans to each vehicle. However, if you have a lot of vehicles you can't do this due to the limitation in the Editor of 8 AI plans. Has the number of AI plans been changed in CM:BN?

Bailed tank crews do not seem to seek sensible cover, just as they don't in CM:SF. I saw one american crew in the first video run across a field toward woods and enemy troops, when they could have gone the other direction into a hedgerow.

Saw some funky infantry movement that is also present in CM:SF, where a lead soldier will double back to the action spot, turning his back to the enemy before proceeding forward again with the rest of the squad.

The landscape, soldiers, and vehicles are beautifully modeled, although only got glimpses of this due to the real-time click fest well above the action.

Thanks for the video. I am looking forward to playing the game in WeGo.

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No WeGo!? Blasphemy!!!

In all seriousness, WeGo is what attracted me to CMx1 in the first place. No more taking turns and no more realtime clickfest.

Hear, hear!

The last RTS game this old man could handle was Rise of Nations and only because it limited the number of things you could build per city ... stuff like Starcraft II is a sickening blur of WTF-RTS for me. Never managed to play any RTS like those well. But to each his own ... one man's fish is another man's poisson after all.

WeGo all the way, baby. That's the beauty of CMBN ... play whatever one turns your handle.

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All in all I am very pleased.

The AI arty may need some work. There seemed to be a complete lack of it in scenario number one, maybe by design. There were some mortar barrages in the second scenario but poorly placed by the AI. Maybe this is the best it can be within the limitations of the AI, I don't know.

Pete

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People were saying the artillery barrages looked so impressive in the live previews that were held around the globe -- but in the video, they just looked like little brown dust blobs. Maybe it was that they were only mortar rounds, or maybe it was the zoomed-out high level camera view. But it made me wonder what those US battleship shells look like when they hit?

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Personally, I thought the mortars looked very impressive in the video, even from the high vantage point. I couldn't get enough of seeing the shells fall and hearing the "thump!" as they impacted. And watching buildings fall and stone walls crumble was very dramatic. It puts a whole new dimension on artillery compared to CMx1.

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Kwazy dog, I don't think think your last post is relevant, it's not whether the tank is completely Ko'd its the fact that something that rarely happened in real life, happend twice in the same scenario that sets my alarm bells ringing.

The germans awarded the tank destruction badge in recocnition of the fact that it is a feat that is well out of the ordinary and takes a lot of luck and a brave man to accomplish. Out of all the photos of the wermacht you see, you only rarely see this decoration on the sleeve of a soldier and that is awarded for the singlehanded destruction of a tank by satchel charge, grenade bundle and panzerfaust or any hand held explosive. I stick by my original statement a single grenade taking out a tank, is pure John wayne stuff, twice in the same scenario is worrying, cheers.

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U.S. T34 Calliope versus German 30cm Nebelwerfer 42 artillery rocket duels may be fun but they make for lousy scenario gameplay. :)

Perhaps 'demonstration battles' could be concocted and posted on Repostory to demonstrate what thirty 105mm guns can do against a hillside, or what a heavy cruiser shell can do to a concrete MG bunker, or 155mm Long Toms do to a city center. There's 'stuff' we'd all love to see recreated for 'demonstration purposes' that if they were inserted into a tactical game scenario would scuttle gmeplay in the first five minutes. You know, there's this constant push-pull between the "make the scenario absolutely balanced" crowd and the "Show me everything you got" crowd. I've got to admit I lean towards the "show me everything you've got' end of the play spectrum.

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I'm not a programmer, and I have no idea if all of the physics calculations involved in creating historical outcomes has a major effect, but I can't help be disappointed by the graphical quality. I just have to wonder: if Company of Heroes came out 5 years ago, why can't CMBfN look even half as good as that? 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.

I'm not saying I could do better, and I'll probably enjoy the game regardless, but always in the back of my mind I'll be thinking "damn, I wish this was on the CoH graphics engine..."

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What's most gratifying to me is seeing the scenarios play out like little stories. That's what made CMBO such an addicting game.

I think the nit-picking about grenades and bailed crews, besides being what gamers do by nature, is result of the great storytelling ability of the game. The downside to the huge leaps the graphics have made since CMBO may be a foray into the "uncanny valley". CMBO was kind of a cartoon of those tactical board games I loved come to life. Little things could be fudged and it wasn't so jarring.

This looks to be so close to an actual film that any little deviations from what each gamer perceives as realistic is going to be pounced on, because when things get that close to looking real that's what the mind does.

What a great time to be a gamer!

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The AI arty may need some work. There seemed to be a complete lack of it in scenario number one, maybe by design. There were some mortar barrages in the second scenario but poorly placed by the AI. Maybe this is the best it can be within the limitations of the AI, I don't know.

The AI does a great job of plastering my troops on the attack or in defense. Just like in the real world, though, someone needs to spot and direct the fire. If you kill, suppress, or just plain avoid LOS from the people that can call fire down on you, they'll have a hard time hitting you effectively.

People were saying the artillery barrages looked so impressive in the live previews that were held around the globe -- but in the video, they just looked like little brown dust blobs. Maybe it was that they were only mortar rounds, or maybe it was the zoomed-out high level camera view. But it made me wonder what those US battleship shells look like when they hit?

Explosions and artillery barrages look very impressive. US battleship shells look like a shell the size of a car just hit whatever it hit. Frankly, mortar rounds from high up aren't going to look like much, though. Get down on the ground next to them, feel the ground shake, and you'll get a better appreciation for them.

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I'll probably regret bringing this up, but it popped into my head and thought it was worth throwing out there.

Re: the "Cadillac tanks". Since CMBN calculates hits using the angle of the armor at time of impact, I wonder if a tank rocking back on its suspension will actually affect penetration values? I doubt it would be a significant effect either way, but I could definitely see the extra few degrees of angle making a slight difference in effective armor thickness and deflection (possibly making upper hull and turret hits less effective and lower hull hits more effective, if the round happens to hit while the tank is rocking back on its suspension).

Not trying to open a can of worms here. It's just something I was pondering.

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