CM Red Thunder page is up

[ComradeP]

Well, the Wittmann's Demise AAR is somewhat atypical in the sense that both sides have tanks that can destroy the opponent's tanks at longer distances and that the map is fairly open. The "defender doesn't fire first" thing I saw was in other AAR's, for equipment that really needs to get the first shot in in order for the defence to be credible. What use is a tank in an ambush position if it doesn't fire first, even though it's waiting for the enemy to appear and the enemy doesn't know where the defending tank is until he drives into LoS?

The problem with what seems like a high chance of the defending tank not firing first is that, combined with being able to precisely spot where shots come from and using the LoS tool to check out potential killzones with close to 100% accuracy (which Hardenberger does in his AAR's) is that it's just very difficult for the defender to deal with.

Because the attacker has very good information on terrain, which he historically wouldn't have and because he can predict where the most effective defensive positions will be, you can't place your units there as the defender unless you want to give the attacker the initiative. The attacker tends to have more points to spend, which would normally be necessary to deal with good defensive positions, but in this case the best defensive positions are essentially untenable even during setup because the attacker using LoS/field of fire tools can plan to go around them.

That's what ruins the immersion for me, the approach is way too scientific because you have much more information than you would historically have. You'd know where a certain hill or patch of trees is if your map is accurate, but you wouldn't know which portion of that hill or wooded area offers the best killzones or keyhole positions to hide vehicles or weapons in.

[GDS_Starfury]

I disagree.  just about every account Ive read from a tank commanders point of view has them walking the terrain theyre going to be fighting on.  depending on the level of command theyll also have aerial photos or deep field panoramic photos.

[ComradeP]

Neither of those things would allow for anything remotely close to what LoS or field of fire tools allow you to do, they would only give you a rough estimate. That is: for the attacker, which is what I'm talking about. Of course the defender knows the killzones if he's been there.

The Luftwaffe didn't amount to much and the VVS wasn't as good at "hasty" recon missions as the Western Allies.

Besides, even IF the commanders of each individual squad would somehow have had access to recon photo's instead of just the battalion and company commanders (at best), they would be black and white photo's without a precise indication of terrain height and which wouldn't be useful for determining what defensive positions would work in a forest.

It's one of those typical wargame things: weapons are frequently modelled in detail, but logistics, recon and C&C are often significantly simplified. I'm still waiting for a game with truly realistic FoW, logistics and order delays combined with a realistic movement and combat system.

[MengJiao]

Neither of those things would allow for anything remotely close to what LoS or field of fire tools allow you to do, they would only give you a rough estimate. That is: for the attacker, which is what I'm talking about. Of course the defender knows the killzones if he's been there.

The Luftwaffe didn't amount to much and the VVS wasn't as good at "hasty" recon missions as the Western Allies.

Besides, even IF the commanders of each individual squad would somehow have had access to recon photo's instead of just the battalion and company commanders (at best), they would be black and white photo's without a precise indication of terrain height and which wouldn't be useful for determining what defensive positions would work in a forest.

It's one of those typical wargame things: weapons are frequently modelled in detail, but logistics, recon and C&C are often significantly simplified. I'm still waiting for a game with truly realistic FoW, logistics and order delays combined with a realistic movement and combat system.

That would be nice, though on a tactical scale, the player might have to spend hours of confusion and never be quite sure what happened.  I would love a game such as you describe, but on a more operational level.  But that's just me.

Anyway, if you play CMBN or CMFI or (probably) CMRT in real time mode rather than WEGO, I think a lot of those Bill Hardenburgian twitchy things go away.  I've played CMxx in real time for the last seven years or so and RT is a different game in many ways.

[Zonso]

It's one of those typical wargame things: weapons are frequently modelled in detail, but logistics, recon and C&C are often significantly simplified. I'm still waiting for a game with truly realistic FoW, logistics and order delays combined with a realistic movement and combat system.

This plus your earlier comments suggests your *desire* for a wargame is best served by joining up, either that or make your own game to these ivory tower standards. :) Personally, I think it would be a commercial failure and very few would want to play. The real deal is hours of nothing punctuated by moments of terror. To state the obvious, games do well that highlight the moments of terror. Things happen at a faster rate and are considerably bloodier in CM because it is a game, highly realistic but still a game. Your preference again is to dismiss the forest for the odd tree.

I started in this hobby over forty years ago. Like many others the Holy Grail in tactical gaming was Squad Leader. Then came ASL and so did the ultra realism; it seemed for every rule and errata to make the game more realistic, the fun factor quotient was correspondingly reduced. Computers removed the tedium of rules keeping and technology graphically is getting to the point of truly 'what you see is what you get' - great for immersion and fun. That's why the original CM was such a hit and the franchise continues to this day. In the end we are playing games to have fun. If it isn't fun then move on to something that is.

[Rayfer]

I can't think of any other company (Battlefront) or game series (Combat Mission) that creates more passionate posts expressing either extreme praise or a deep disliking, with very little in between.

[Tuna]

Although I like the new features that are being added, I find it disappointing, that no one on the Battlefront forums even asks if they are any changes to their god awful DRM. :(

Well, maybe thats because no one cares ?

Never had any issues with the DRM in 7 years of buying from them, so not sure what you percieve as so god awful.

If it the idea of their DRM you dont like rather than the reality of it - then thats a different question.

You must not upgrade your hardware much. I'll say one thing Battlefront's support team answers tickets quickly, even on the weekend. Not like DCS, another bad DRM shop.

[Michael Dorosh]

Now, that is of course also a sign of great skill, but it just ruins most of the immersion for me and it highlights how much the defender can be screwed due to the advantages given to the attacker in the engine. Considering that, like in the AAR with the Ferdinand/Elefant for CMBI/GL, his opponent is less skilled than him it seems, I'm guessing it will be another clear case of him mopping the floor with the opposition. I'm not really sure why they didn't select an equally skilled veteran to play against him for the AAR's.

I'm not sure there are a lot of skilled players left among the beta testers - bear in mind the "beta test" team also included the "scenario design" team, or at least that was how things were set up when I was involved in the CMSF beta test. Scenario design is very laborious, so the scenario designers - and there are some skilled map makers and scenario designers among the volunteer staff - probably spend a lot of time building maps and now, learning the new trigger system, etc. The lack of time compression and testing tools means that playing time during testing is very often spent in testing AI plans. Not sure how much time is left at actually getting "good" at the game. It was never my own focus, couldn't speak for others. Thought it was more important to find and report bugs, when I wasn't making maps and designing scenarios.

The new game engine seems to have caused a shift in the community away from competitive play in any event. There is probably a number of reasons for this. The game itself is more "realistic" - CMX1 looked like a cartoon, the games were shorter with scenarios averaging 30 turns (minutes) with a 60 turn game being unusually long. Most games now are at least 1.5 hours as far as turn length with a 2 hour quick battle being I believe the standard?

I believe there are a couple of ladders out there, but nothing like we saw in the days of CMX1. Which isn't a bad thing, just highlights the shift in emphasis in the game - which was deliberate. The 1:1 representation, individual weapon ballistics, etc. was intended to make a more realistic game and so I don't think there is any heartbreak among the developers that there may be fewer point-purchase round robin tournaments using their product.

The "scoring" system of the two game engines also makes it harder to track such things. CMX1 "ladder players" (which can certainly be used as a pejorative in certain instances) could take their game scores, which were also given as percentages out of 100, and compare against others. The new, more flexible victory conditions make it more difficult to make direct comparisons, though the same levels of victory still exist - no matter how differently they are calculated in each game.

[ComradeP]

Your preference again is to dismiss the forest for the odd tree.

It's becoming somewhat annoying that you can't accept that I have an opinion that is different from yours, and that you continue to imply that it is somehow all due to my perception of wargames, as if I'm some rookie with strong opinions without having played wargames. You feel the (potential) flaws I see don't exist, or are not all that important. That's fine, but you should accept that I don't rate CMx2 as highly as you and probably never will in its current form. It might all come down to a matter of preference.

Computers removed the tedium of rules keeping and technology graphically is getting to the point of truly 'what you see is what you get' - great for immersion and fun.

Actually, this is one of the points where I feel some wargame designers didn't take advantage of what computers have to offer: instead of using the computer's calculating power for a more realistic and complex combat system, traditional CRT's are still in use as well as boardgame style die roll or percentage based systems. Something like a more detailed logistics system is also perfectly within the capabilities of a computer. However, as wargame development teams tend to be small teams with limited funds, unless the programmer's very skilled and has a lot of spare time/is working full time as a programmer it won't happen.

I can't think of any other company (Battlefront) or game series (Combat Mission) that creates more passionate posts expressing either extreme praise or a deep disliking, with very little in between.

This was also the conclusion of the previous topic, where Zonso also immediately jumped in to defend the game against what he saw were my attacks against it, even though I'm just expressing an opinion.

[Tinkershuffle]

Hardenberger's comments on tactics are interesting and his AAR's are quite good, but he's also the guy who uses combat replay to precisely pinpoint where shots came from and uses recon units without realistic means of communicating with the rest of the on-map force to move his units precisely where he would get the most advantage out of them (which seems to be a standard tactic, which is sort of weird: the players who wanted realism were happy to see Borg spotting go, but now they're using a mechanic that's nearly as ahistorical).

There's probably 17 pages long thread about this statement on BF forums already.

[Skoop]

So CommradeP you put up all these lengthy walls of text replies about a game you don't own and you are studying AARs to see if the game is to your liking.  With all the time you wasted you could have bought the game and played through all the campaigns already.  It's crazy to me, if I was that interested in a game to spend all this time posting or reading AARs I'd have bought it already.

[ComradeP]

You call these wall of text replies? Times have changed I guess.

I'm interested in the AAR's, in how people play the game, because I enjoy reading about the tactics used by other wargamers. I might not be inclined to purchase the game the AAR is for, but that doesn't mean I have no reason to read the AAR's. If they're well-written, they can be both educational and entertaining.

For me, reading a good AAR is like what walking into a store or to a booth at a convention and seeing people play a boardgame is for tabletop wargamers.

[Skoop]

True, but why read other peoples when you could use your own first hand.

[Yskonyn]

True, but why read other peoples when you could use your own first hand.

Because he used the AAR''s to make up his mind without having to spend the cash. That's actually not a weird position now, is it? ;)

[Skoop]

No, I guess it's not weird, but it seems like he's on a quest that keeps taking him back to CM after multiple AARs.  Dude buy the game already, RT seems like as good a starting point as any.