Weapon and ammo scrounging.

[Oddball_E8]

1. How friendly TacAI should react to the sounds of enemy weapons in the hands of friendly troops.

2. The AI surrounding Buddy Aid would have to be opened up and modified to allow Buddy Aid to enemy troops, since that is how troops in CM pick up weapons. Of course, it would have to do all the above checks first before it starts, or else troops randomly doing Buddy Aid on enemy troops opens up a whole host of different issues.

3. The AI would have to be programmed to do the above checks.

4. The AI then has to be programmed to stop using the enemy weapons when appropriate.

5. UI changes would have to be made for ammo, since they would be picking up foreign ammo.

6. Then ALL of this has to debugged/tested.

I'd have stopped at number 1 personally. It's not worth the effort for a solution in search of a problem.

1: they shouldnt... or should we also factor in the random chance of blue on blue fire just because it did happen? because the game currently does not.

2: doesnt sound THAT difficult

3: again, same as above (and actually id say it was part of 2 and not a separate point)

4: still part of point 2

5: not really necessary since the ui ammo part is text (as i remember anyway) and even if it is an icon, that icon is already present since you can play both sides in this game.

6: as would EVERY other little change to anything in the game so dont add that as a point for not making a change, since we wouldnt have any changes in the game then.

but nice try stretching it out over 6 points, personally id go for 10 points while were at it, but i guess im just an overachiever

[Oddball_E8]

I'll bet I could find pictures of German/Allied troops in or standing near captured enemy fighters. Shall we also assume that they had flown them in combat often as well?

its a well known fact that germans used captured enemy weapons on a systematic basis so (unfortunately) that video is a completely moote point.

as is your answer to it :/

[akd]

1: they shouldnt... or should we also factor in the random chance of blue on blue fire just because it did happen? because the game currently does not.

Yes it does (well, not purely random).

[Oddball_E8]

Yes it does (well, not purely random).

are you telling me that the TacAI randomly starts shooting at friendlies?

[womble]

Yes it does (well, not purely random).

It doesn't model small arms blue-on-blue casualties, only fifty-cal and larger, which covers all HE. There's an exception for the unit's own grenades. It does model suppression from friendly small arms.

It won't allow you or the AI to target your own units (only the area near them).

[Bastables]

If you're implying I find it imperative that BFC code picking up enemy weapons then, sorry, I'm not.

I'm simply stating that it was not in any stretch a historical.

You mean the PPSh-41? The weapon that the Germans provided printed manuals to the troops for instruction. The weapon that was issues re-chambered for 9mm or with German 7,63mm mauser? Not exactly scrounged off the battlefield in the heat of the moment. Several of the pictures are posing with weapon and others look to be firing range tests.

There are pictures of me wielding SS-1, it does not mean NZ army infantry use Indonesian manufactured assault rifles.

[Oddball_E8]

It doesn't model small arms blue-on-blue casualties, only fifty-cal and larger, which covers all HE. There's an exception for the unit's own grenades. It does model suppression from friendly small arms.

It won't allow you or the AI to target your own units (only the area near them).

then why would you "have" to implement blue on blue fire from temporary use of enemy weapons?

if one isnt implemented then the other shouldnt.

and for the record, you can get blue on blue fire only if you use fiftycal shooting past your own troops, they dont sporadically open fire on their own troops witch is what "needed" to be implemented for this to work according to the post by normal dude.

[sburke]

Its happened to me twice already... but i guess im just playing outside the scope of this game then.

(and no, they werent individuals, but they were small groups of soldiers in enemy terretory with no friendlies around and no ammo left)

how do you know it will cause problems? dont assume things that you dont know. And the problem does exist.

Like i said, ive had it happen to me twice already, once on the band of borthers mission, and once in a quick battle where the enemy attacked on a flank i wasnt expecting them to attack so the small force i had there quickly ran out of ammo with dead germans nearby. They could have easily picked up those guns to defend themselves from the enemy, but instead they just sat there and died...

Assume for a moment that it was easy to add to code and BFC released it in the next patch. In your next PBEM game your American force opponent scrounged every single German MG that he could and soon you were facing Ami platoons with Garands backed up by German MGs. How quickly do you think you would be asking they "fix sumfink" as it was an unfair and ahistorical practice? Instead of it being a solution to a rare need it suddenly became common practice all the time.

[Jarink]

Its happened to me twice already... but i guess im just playing outside the scope of this game then.

(and no, they werent individuals, but they were small groups of soldiers in enemy terretory with no friendlies around and no ammo left)

If you have a squad with one or two guys in it walking around with no friendlies within several hundred meters (or more) of you, then I guess I'm not sure which game you're playing. Sorry, but I feel that in real-life circumstances such as those, that squad would likely have started to bug out for friendly lines before they ran out of ammo.

[gunnergoz]

I've admittedly not played the game to death yet, but I have yet to see any of my troops run out of ammunition. Unless it is a campaign like Devils Descent modeling a specific historical situation, I can't see the relevance of allowing Allied troops to use captured weapons. US units simply did not run out of ammunition unless they abandoned their supply trains. If you are playing games where your troops routinely run out of ammunition, you are not playing the same sort of CM:N game I am familiar with.

As for the red herring argument that Germans used captured weapons, it is true only insofar as they had a centralized plan to collect enemy weapons, refurbish them, then issue them to troops trained in their use, who collectively all used the same captured weapons. The German army no more encouraged local scrounging and immediate use of battlefield collected weapons than did the Allies, for many of the same reasons.

Yes there are cases of improvised use of collected heavy weapons such as mortars, artillery and the like, but those were specific unit-authorized initiatives and quite rare.

If we ask BFC to model each and every example of exceptional behavior, we will soon find they have no time to correctly model the routine behavior.

[Oddball_E8]

Assume for a moment that it was easy to add to code and BFC released it in the next patch. In your next PBEM game your American force opponent scrounged every single German MG that he could and soon you were facing Ami platoons with Garands backed up by German MGs. How quickly do you think you would be asking they "fix sumfink" as it was an unfair and ahistorical practice? Instead of it being a solution to a rare need it suddenly became common practice all the time.

wouldnt really happen if they modeled it like i said... and they would of course only pick up whatever was infront of them and not scrounge for "the good stuff" in any way... its for pure self preservation.

everybody keeps using the "but then everyone would run with MG42s" card, but that ignores the fact that i keep saying it should only be used in dire cirkumstances..

so please stop using that as an argument.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Then stop using the argument that it is easy to program at the same time.

To attach conditions on scrounging enemy weaponry would make it a pretty complicated thing to implement.

And considering that it is a feature that only becomes useful in circumstances so very much further from the norm then scrounging enemy weapons, I hope that BFC wastes not a single minute on it.

[womble]

then why would you "have" to implement blue on blue fire from temporary use of enemy weapons?

if one isnt implemented then the other shouldnt.

That, I'm afraid, is a case of your desires blinding you to the necessity.

The reason accidental blue-on-blue fire isn't modelled is because of the imprecision inherent in the game's environment. It would be onerous for the player if they had to worry more than they do about covering fire causing casualties.

If you model the realistic, but highly unusual edge case of troopers rarely being able to acquire enemy weapons in desperate circumstances, you have to include the downsides, which would be deliberate (though misguided) fire from friendly troops on the sound contact of enemy weapons being fired.

...and for the record, you can get blue on blue fire only if you use fiftycal shooting past your own troops, they dont sporadically open fire on their own troops witch is what "needed" to be implemented for this to work according to the post by normal dude.

You are missing the point, and it's perfectly clear. Just because you think something is so doesn't make it true.

[sburke]

wouldnt really happen if they modeled it like i said... and they would of course only pick up whatever was infront of them and not scrounge for "the good stuff" in any way... its for pure self preservation.

everybody keeps using the "but then everyone would run with MG42s" card, but that ignores the fact that i keep saying it should only be used in dire cirkumstances..

so please stop using that as an argument.

Don't take this the wrong way, I really am not trying to be a sarcastic pain in the a**, but are you expecting everyone will self implement rules of behavior based on how you feel it should be treated once you have a feature you desire included? To ask for a feature that it would seem most of us have rarely if ever run into and not have an answer to an obvious failing of said feature because you say it should only be used in dire circumstances doesn't quite answer the failing of the feature for me.

We all have items I am sure we would like to have included or not included based on many things. What we have to ask though before throwing it out there is, would it really work, what are the downsides, what would it take to ameliorate those downsides, just exactly how much coding for these events do we expect of Charles and company and most importantly - what are we willing to give up to have said feature? (okay Charles, maybe the most important question was how much coding would it take, but you can work 24x365 right? We'll give you 24 hours to sleep on leap years. Your welcome.)

[BloodyBucket]

I've had teams run out of ammo, and yes it would be nice to have them re-arm with enemy weapons in a desperate situation.

Is it worth coding? I dunno. I'd be happy with the abstraction of teams that are out of all ammo being able to slowly gain a small amount for non crew served weapons and a few grenades from enemy casualties. Once they acquired that small amount they'd be unable to get more until they were completely out again. No blue on blue sounds like enemy weapons coding needed.

You can't model everything, of course, and I'd rather have hand to hand combat modelled and solve the "useless" team thing that way, but I imagine that would be a bear to make it look anything but silly.

[Oddball_E8]

Don't take this the wrong way, I really am not trying to be a sarcastic pain in the a**, but are you expecting everyone will self implement rules of behavior based on how you feel it should be treated once you have a feature you desire included? To ask for a feature that it would seem most of us have rarely if ever run into and not have an answer to an obvious failing of said feature because you say it should only be used in dire circumstances doesn't quite answer the failing of the feature for me.

We all have items I am sure we would like to have included or not included based on many things. What we have to ask though before throwing it out there is, would it really work, what are the downsides, what would it take to ameliorate those downsides, just exactly how much coding for these events do we expect of Charles and company and most importantly - what are we willing to give up to have said feature? (okay Charles, maybe the most important question was how much coding would it take, but you can work 24x365 right? We'll give you 24 hours to sleep on leap years. Your welcome.)

there would be no self implemented rules of behaviour since you simply COULDNT get your troops to pick up enemy weapons unless you went to extraordinary (and difficult) lenghts to do so (ie. getting a lone squad into a position where they were far far away from friendlies, ontop of a dead enemy squad (presumably with an MG42 available) and fired away all your ammo and THEN somehow managed to get the enemy to start firing upon you without you dying in the process, and even then you would have to hope they actually picked up the MG and not a mauser). You make it sound as if i want them to simply include scrounging for enemy weapons and leave us to police when and how its done. But im actually asking for coded limits to when it can happen. And you would know that if you actually read the post instead of rushing down to the reply box to answer with a sarcastic reply.

and to answer your second section:

would it really work; Most likely yes, since scrounging works currently

what are the downsides; Lets see, currently none that i can see (and the "they'll all use MG42s" argument doesnt work, i just told you why above), unless you actually count not having forced blue on blue possibility because of the use of enemy weapons as a downside.

what would it take to ameliorate those downsides; well, if you absolutely count not having blue on blue because of it as a downside, then implementing a possible blue on blue coding then. (witch really isnt needed, since the only time the scrounging of enemy weapons would happen in the game is when no friendlies are around, and besides, the TacAI doesnt automatically fire on soundcontacts as it is, only AFTER a confirmed sighting.)

just exactly how much coding for these events do we expect of Charles and company; Not that much to be honest. Scrounging is already implemented, witch would be the bulk of the coding, this just expands on that coding to expand on the possible targets (ie, from friendly guns to enemy guns) and implement a couple of conditions for it to activate. BUT of course none of us know how much coding would actually be needed, only charles and company knows that.

and most importantly - what are we willing to give up to have said feature;

Do we have to give up anything? are we giving up something each time we add something to the game? Does including french tanks mean we get no british expansion? does including a panzer 3 into the game mean we have to lose something else? This reasoning is flawed in my opinion since you dont have to remove something from the "to do" list just because you added a new thing. The question is more "when", and of course this wouldnt exactly be priority one.

[Oddball_E8]

Then stop using the argument that it is easy to program at the same time.

To attach conditions on scrounging enemy weaponry would make it a pretty complicated thing to implement.

And considering that it is a feature that only becomes useful in circumstances so very much further from the norm then scrounging enemy weapons, I hope that BFC wastes not a single minute on it.

i didnt know you knew how dificult it would be to code... are you a programmer? and do you know the coding for CM:BN?

[Oddball_E8]

That, I'm afraid, is a case of your desires blinding you to the necessity.

The reason accidental blue-on-blue fire isn't modelled is because of the imprecision inherent in the game's environment. It would be onerous for the player if they had to worry more than they do about covering fire causing casualties.

If you model the realistic, but highly unusual edge case of troopers rarely being able to acquire enemy weapons in desperate circumstances, you have to include the downsides, which would be deliberate (though misguided) fire from friendly troops on the sound contact of enemy weapons being fired.

You are missing the point, and it's perfectly clear. Just because you think something is so doesn't make it true.

and you seem to be missing the fact that we currently dont have a TacAI that fires on soundcontacts. It only fires on confirmed enemies, and then continues firing for some time after loss of sight to said enemy.

It NEVER fires on sound contacts.

[Oddball_E8]

I've had teams run out of ammo, and yes it would be nice to have them re-arm with enemy weapons in a desperate situation.

Is it worth coding? I dunno. I'd be happy with the abstraction of teams that are out of all ammo being able to slowly gain a small amount for non crew served weapons and a few grenades from enemy casualties. Once they acquired that small amount they'd be unable to get more until they were completely out again. No blue on blue sounds like enemy weapons coding needed.

You can't model everything, of course, and I'd rather have hand to hand combat modelled and solve the "useless" team thing that way, but I imagine that would be a bear to make it look anything but silly.

actually, id be perfectly satisfied with your solution too (and the hand to hand combat thing as well, but yeah, that would be even harder to implement)

[akd]

Steve has addressed this so many times.

Sorry, just catching up on this thread.

Generally speaking we have to be very careful about dedicating time to "outlier" possibilities. There are a million things that probably happened here and there over the course of such a huge campaign as that of the Western Front (Eastern Front goes well beyond huge . My best example of this is one I've been using since the CMBO days... what I call the MG42 Bovine Meat Sponge situation. In brief...

A platoon of US infantry was pinned down by a single MG42. Everytime they tried to flank it the thing blazed away on them. Well, some enterprising soldier found a barn with a bunch of cows in it. They herded them into the kill zone and ran behind them to get into a dead zone which, in turn, let them flank the MG position. The MG42 killed the cows, the American infantry men killed the MG42 crew.

Points to consider:

1. This is a historically documented event which is entirely plausible.

2. It had a tactically significant impact on that battle.

3. It would probably be practical to do it within the space of a typical CM battle.

4. There is no code for cows, nor any code for using them as a wall of hamburger helper

The question is, should we support such a thing because it happened? I think 99.9999% of you guys would say "no". Intuitively we all know that this maybe happened one or two times out of a couple million or so tactical engagements at this level. Any time spent supporting such a massive outlier would be a gross misallocation of development resources. Right? Right.

However, it goes a step further. When we provide support for a particular tactic, even if unintentionally, it will get used if a player perceives it to be beneficial (perception is more important than actual results in our experience). The use of that tactic can then be far, far out of proportion to how it was used in real life. This then leads to a fundamental problem with supporting outlier type situations:

The outlier situation is supported to make the game more realistic, but if it is used unrealistically often then that lowers the overall realism of the tactical environment.

Or put another way, if the Bovine Meat Sponge thing worked, then every time cows were found in a scenario the player would likely try to find a way of using them ("friendly cows") or killing them to denny the other player use of them ("enemy cows"). This in turn leads at least a portion of the battle to be twisted into focusing on something which is completely wrong to focus on from a historical perspective.

ASL veterans often begrudgingly admit that there were a some detailed features in ASL that were abused. The one most often cited is the ability to set fires to things. This was not a common tactic in WW2, to say the least, but according to the ASL players themselves it was common to see in ASL games. Some players probably adopted it as a signature tactic, which likely earned them the nickname "firebug" The use of such tactic is "gamey" and therefore, no matter how realistically portrayed, something which lowers the overall level of realism.

Did non-heavy weapons crews man friendly heavy weapons in real life when the situation was just right for it? Sure. Did this happen often? No, definitely not. Same thing with manning enemy weapons. It certainly happened that small arms were used when the situation was desperate enough to justify the risk, but those instances were few and far in between. Use of larger captured weapons usually did not happen on the fly, but rather after said weapons were retrieved, serviced, deliberately crewed, trained on (even if hastily), and then sent back to the front with clear knowledge of that fact given to the surrounding friendly units (Germans using T-34s in combat, for example) in order to minimize the risk of friendly fire.

As with any rule there are exceptions. The German's love of the PPSh, for example, is one of the rare examples of a systemic use of captured enemy weapons. And since it was relatively common we supported it in CMBB. But it wasn't done on the fly and so CMBB didn't support that. It also wasn't something that could have unbalanced the game since, effectively, it's just a MP40 with more ammo (not that we simulated that in CMx1, but it is simulated in CMx2).

The conclusion we always come to when discussing these things is that the improvised use of enemy weaponry within the context of a CM sized battle is uncommon enough that supporting it would lower overall realism of the environment, not increase it. The ability for friendly units to man weapons they are not trained on is also uncommon enough that we shouldn't do it.

The one exception to that would be something like a MG. Soldiers would know how to fire it and keep it fed with ammo even if not explicitly trained to do so. If a friendly MG crew was taken out of action without damaging the weapon, and the conditions warranted sectioning off some men to crew it, it probably would be recrewed even if temporarily (i.e. until it jammed or the ammo ran out). Unfortunately, this poses some pretty significant coding and UI issues that would have to be coded around. Therefore, we're not planning on supporting this type of weapons swapping for CMx2 as we didn't for CMx1. However, this is something that is on that line between outlier/uncommon and outlier/common, so there is actually a case to be made for including it. We're simply saying we don't think it's crossed the line into being worth dedicating the resources to making it happen.

Hope that adds some perspective

Steve

[ChrisND]

Whew. Just got back here and this thread blew past me. But with the AKD's posting of Steve's take on the topic, there's really nothing left to say.

[BloodyBucket]

Well, now I want scrounging steaks from bullet sponged cows that give my pixeltruppen a morale and health bonus, but I guess we have to have flame in the game first....

[ChrisND]

Well, now I want scrounging steaks from bullet sponged cows that give my pixeltruppen a morale and health bonus, but I guess we have to have flame in the game first....

Just drape the steaks over the MG barrels.

[BloodyBucket]

Gamey tactics, just as BFC said. I can see why they are so reluctant to add enemy weapons scrounging, the steaks are too high...

[Andrew H.]

This shouldn't be in the game because: (1) it happened very rarely; (2) there is a very real possibility of blue-on-blue fire; and, most importantly, (3) if it were in the game, it would happen *all the time*.

It looks like E8's already had two situations in which it would come into play...and if you know the possibility is there, it will happen much more frequently.

What *should* happen is for players to realize that their SMGs (especially) will blow through ammo if not watched, and for players to use CAs to impose fire discipline, and/or to pull the troops back if they run out of ammo. (And resupply from live friendly units works extremely well IMO). This is what *should* happen, and what almost always did happen.