Question re C&C

[LJFHutch]

But the player is (and has to be) every unit on the field, the AI is not smart enough to know when to reverse a sherman away from a tiger, to me that would be far more frustrating than any positive benefit. That tank commander shouldn't have to wait 5 seconds to scream "reverse!", and since the player is the tank commander I don't see why they should either.

You would need to differentiate between decisions made by the unit itself and those given to it by higher levels of command, but even then you are still playing every unit so it is still unnecessary abstraction.

[Erwin]

Steve made a great statement which I think us fans all agree with: "Combat Mission never has, and never will be, about giving the player unrealistic degrees of control over unit behavior."

Even with only one (the initial) waypoint, it was great that Green troops took longer to react than a Vet.

I do agree that the time delays with 10+ waypoints got a bit silly for a game EVEN IF IT WERE REALISTIC. Cas, when all is said and done, CMBN is an entertainment product, not a DoD verified simulation of reality. Cutting down the delays would have solved that imo.

However, am not expecting delays to return any time soon, despite me liking them in concept.

I rather like the suggestion of greying out orders when a unit is out of C2 to simulate that unit wondering what to do. Perhaps fewer orders could be greyed out for more experienced troops to give them a realistic advantage over Green/Conscripts.

To go one step (and complexity) further, perhaos the greyed out orders could return to normal accessibility after a "delay."

[womble]

I rather like the suggestion of greying out orders when a unit is out of C2 to simulate that unit wondering what to do. Perhaps fewer orders could be greyed out for more experienced troops to give them a realistic advantage over Green/Conscripts.

So what determines what's greyed out and isn't greyed out? Why would a team's immediate tactical response options be arbitrarily degraded when they're out of C2? The team NCO has the right and responsibility to use pretty much any of the orders currently available to him to manage his unit. Any differences in quality are already reflected to some extent in the rate at which a unit reverts to 'self preservation' behaviour and stops being under the precise control of the player.

The only restriction I could see on out-of-C2 units might be the distance at which they can act. No movement orders of further than 100m, say, or no new area fire orders more than 200m away, perhaps. This to stop 'gamey' cross-field suppression when the suppressing unit has no idea there's even an enemy over there. Could allow area fire within an Action spot or 2 of "?" icons known to the shooting unit, and of course targetted fire (or area fire nearby if you'd rather) on anything that's actually spotted.

[Erwin]

Currently, every unit acts like an automaton which can instantly react in coordination with every other friendly unit on the entire battlefield.

I have a hard time believing that this is a more realistic depiction of WW2 combat than having units hobbled in some way when out of C2, or having increasingly large reaction delays or some other penalty as they go from Elite down to Conscript.

Yes, there were problems with delays in certain circumstances - esp the road movement issue. But, delays worked well in certain circumstances too - they forced you to treat your Green troops completely differently than your Cracks - give them different missions etc. which greatly helped one ID with one's CM1 units more than with the more "cookie cutter" type CMBN units.

The greater delays in getting Conscript and Green units to do anything had more verisimilitude. So, I think that the baby was thrown out with the bathwater in this instance.

[James Crowley]

Not sure if this has been addressed elsewhere... I couldn't find a mention of it:

I notice that if a unit is out of command, ie it has no visual, voice or radio links available to its next higher echelon, it will still respond to orders. For instance, a squad can be on the opposite side of the map from the platoon leader with no communication links showing, and still respond to an order (as long as its morale state allows it to, anyhow).

I was wondering what the rationale for this is... Is the idea that the squad leader has taken the initiative? Obviously this allows for unrealistic outcomes (the squad leader moves to a location to support a unit he ought to be unaware of, for instance) but that would seem to be an unavoidable side-effect of the fact that the player will always have the "God's-eye" view and know the state of all units he commands. Or alternatively, is there an abstraction that a runner has been sent to the squad? I would tend to think not, given 1:1 representation and the elimination of command delays.

I was musing about this issue... I was imagining a scenario where an out-of-command unit does nothing but follow TacAI behaviour until C&C is re-established by the player. Or maybe at the start of a battle a player could have the option to give general battle orders to units (to take a certain route, or head for a certain objective) as an alternative to having them do nothing when out of command. In that case a unit out of command would behave like an AI controlled unit on the offensive (or do nothing if the player chose to give no general orders at the start of the battle).

A scenario like this would force players to pay a lot more attention to C&C. Would this notion be of any value? I must say the current game makes out-of-command units so brittle in combat that you are already penalized pretty heavily for losing C&C. Would taking it to the next step as I have proposed be feasible? Would it be fun, or annoying?

This is something I suggested way, way back in CMBO days; it went down like a lead balloon then and I suspect it will now.

Steve was dead against it, on the basis that you would have a command level game, and I think many others agreed.

I still harbour hopes that there would at least be an option for this type of behaviour to be incorporated, at least at squad/team level, if not platoon and company.

To my mind, an out of command squad would be unlikely to be interested in very little else other than survival and, to that end, would probably stay put, at where ever the last orders put it and just protect itself. That would be realistic behaviour and would prevent highly unrealistic, gamey use of out of control units as 'intelligence' gatherers for the 'all-seeing' player. I don't think, either, that that would take any huge amount of extra programming, but I wouldn't know.

An interesting spin on that idea would also put the unit out of sight of the player until, and if, it is brought back under command. "I wonder what became of Smiths squad?" "We'll never know, given that you sent him over to the other side of the map to see if anything was coming that way!"