Battlefront - How far is this bridge?

[undercovergeek]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCaiYzIFmVs

[JudgeDredd]

I'm going with "too far"!  8)

I'm very bemused with myself and this engine. I love the engine. I love the graphics. I love the mechanics. I love the sounds. I love the gameplay and indeed one of the very few games I enjoy real time...and yet I seldom fire it up!

It does run pretty crappy on my system - especially the newer models...but I don't think that's it. I think it's because it shows how utterly awful I am at playing it! What makes it worse (that feeling of being crap!) is the tutorial videos on Youtube...which are excellent and yet use tactics which seem to be missing from my head when I play the damn game!

But - as with ALL the expansions for this engine, I will get this new one...even though I'll likely fire it up and close it down within 10 minutes and sit and longingly look at the icon wondering if I will ever be worthy!

[Staggerwing]

Cool! A must have for me as well. I watch the movie almost yearly on DVD.

ComradeP lives in Arnhem. It'l be interesting to hear his take on the setting and it's 'verisimilitude'.

When will it be out and does it require the commonwealth add on or is there a bundle?

[Jarhead0331]

I'm very bemused with myself and this engine. I love the engine. I love the graphics. I love the mechanics. I love the sounds. I love the gameplay and indeed one of the very few games I enjoy real time...and yet I seldom fire it up!

Very interesting observation...I'm exactly the same way.  For some reason, I love every aspect of the game individually, but the sum of the parts just don't add up for me.

[JudgeDredd]

Yeah - I really just do not get it!  ??? confused.com!

[ComradeP]

I have often wondered if the battle for Arnhem could be played out in a tactical level wargame with on-map units represented by a couple of companies or a battalion or so. I have my doubts, particularly for CMx2 BN/FI/GL's representation of tactical combat/what the system allows you to do.

The engine isn't geared towards fighting entrenched foes or urban combat. If you look at AAR's over at the Battlefront forum, many are meeting engagements, where the Germans have a good chance of winning because they face few of their historical handicaps.

In a more operational or strategic level game, the performance of poor quality units is often mostly worse because of their numerical combat value. Take SSG's Battlefront Market Garden scenario. A number of SS units near Arnhem are poor quality, with low attack and defence ratings, but they're difficult to dislodge when dug-in. That's close to their historical performance: they suffered (very) high losses when attacking, but could still hold in defence because 1st Para did not have many heavy weapons to use against them.

In a tactical game, those units might have poor morale, or be more shaky, so they might run from the battlefield more easily. On the other hand, as there will generally be more Germans than Brits, maybe they will find it easy to stop the Para's as the Germans do have a significant number of heavy weapons, including AA guns from Deelen airfield north of Arnhem which provided the Germans with crucial firepower. I'm not sure what FlaK equipment is currently in CMx2 aside from the FlaK 36's.

It would also be difficult to represent the slowness of the historical siege of Frost's men. Combat tends to be a far more rapid affair in a game like CMx2 than it was in real life, because the player always knows precisely what his units are doing and knows where enemy units are provided at least one of his units can spot it. In one of the AAR's, one player figured out where enemy AT gun positions were by replaying the turn recording and checking where a shell came from. That sort of min/maxing is one of the reasons why it is very difficult to represent a miniaturized Stalingrad in the Arnhem bridge area or, later on in the battle, in Oosterbeek.

I'm afraid the player will also be handicapped by the historical timing of the events to hide some of the limits of the system. Sticking to historical outcomes at earlier points in a battle is needed for historical scenarios, obviously, but there are cases where it can feel fairly arbitrary.

I'm primarily afraid of the following:

-The German counterattack against the dropzones will always be assumed to have failed, as the Germans will flee when the second lift arrives and their spearheading battalion becomes encircled, just like in real life. There might be a scenario where you might actually be able to take the dropzone, and I'm not sure if the engine is even capable of modelling brigade-sized para/glider drops, but for a large part of the campaign, the forces in the west/Von Tettau's forces will presumably be historically ineffective until late in the battle.

-A crucial one: Graebner's Aufklaerungs unit will always make its suicidal attempt at retaking the bridge by surprise. As their availability would mean the player can just use vehicle-mounted heavy weapons from both the bridge, from the southern bank of the Rhine (aside from those of the surviving vehicles which reorganized on the southern bank and inflicted serious losses on 1st Para when it tried to move towards the bridge). The player would then have both Graebner's unit, and the tanks and StuGs he gets as reinforcements later on and judging by the AAR's, that's more than enough to blow any defenders out of a house they're occupying or at the very least cause them to cower.

-Similarly, the historical infantry AT ambushes that slowed the advance to Eindhoven won't be modelled. The player could just spray the position of likely enemy positions with MG or HE fire from his forward tanks/armoured cars. The attacks might be modelled, but in that case they might be more like what the Panzerschrecks seem to do in the bocage, where they can simply fire through a hedge without being spotted.

I'm also really wondering how the engine will model most of 1st Para+Polish forces+some British reinforcements in an area of 1x1.5 kilometer or so, even less later on. Similarly, 2nd Para battalion was holding on to a handful of houses with most of a battalion. Such situations could be very difficult to model without casualties skyrocketing/it being too easy for the attacker to destroy the defender in a methodical manner.

A similar problem could apply to the final defence of the southern part of the road bridge in Nijmegen.

CMx2 offers you everything you need to launch a perfectly coordinated attack against essentially static defenders (such as 1st Para in Arnhem and Oosterbeek, and the German defenders of Nijmegen).

I hope I'll be pleasantly surprised, but it will certainly be a challenge. Based on what CM:BN/FI/GL seem to play like, I'm sceptical whether they'll get it "right."

[Sir Slash]

I saw that yesterday. For me it's like BF saying "I can make you buy this anytime I want, Bitch".

[Con]

What is saving me at the moment is that I am almost exclusively playing CMBN as multiplayer.  So I have not bought any of the Gustav line modules (not much interest in those for multiplayer).

Market Garden could be a very different story though!

Con

[Tuna]

What is saving me at the moment is that I am almost exclusively playing CMBN as multiplayer.  So I have not bought any of the Gustav line modules (not much interest in those for multiplayer).

Market Garden could be a very different story though!

Con

Sorry I didn't return a turn last night.. very long day at work with only 4 hours of sleep... turn should be coming back tonight!

[ericw43]

Thanks ComradeP for the information. It was very informative. I live in Gettysburg, PA and took a similar approach when playing "Scourge of War Gettysburg". When I first played it I spent two hours just going around the map looking at the sights. It was interesting and funny to zoom into ground level and travel along Route 30 (Chambersburg Pike). Norbsoft did a nice job capturing the battlefield aesthetics but for some reason when I play the game I am terrible at it. The nomenclature of the battlefield is done fairly well but the original engine for the game is a bit older. I would like to see Norbsoft improve upon it. After playing other Norbsoft Civil War titles, the terrain such as trees, rock formations, roads, and more all look the same regardless of being in Gettysburg or Sharpsburg. MD  :D. I also think the sky looks very bland/dull and the weather is non-existent. This is just my opinion and I still think Norbsoft are making exceptional Civil War titles/simulation.

I will purchase Market Garden when it is released. Like many of you have stated, I too love this game's engine. The sounds, maps, units, vehicles, etc all add up to giving the player an immersive experience. But...like many of you have stated I am terrible at it. So I stopped playing it for a few weeks. Then I started to play it again but this time I started to play in 60 second pulses. More like a turn based gaming environment and I did a thousand times better. Perhaps I just ...suck hahaha ...at real time gaming environments. I remember in the 80s playing all the turn based titles from companies like SSI, SSG....and then SSI released a game named "Battalion Commander". I am getting older but I believe it may have been the first real-time battle simulation I played. And yes, I was terrible at it. Perhaps real time and I are not meant for one another :)

I am currently playing a lot of WW2 Africa and Italian campaign games (HPS Salerno 43, SSG Battles In Italy, Tunisia). I still have to try Battlefronts versions so with Market Garden being released in the near future, I am going to purchase Gustav line and Fortress Italy. 
Have fun and be well!
Eric

[SgtRock]

I'm very bemused with myself and this engine. I love the engine. I love the graphics. I love the mechanics. I love the sounds. I love the gameplay and indeed one of the very few games I enjoy real time...and yet I seldom fire it up!

Very interesting observation...I'm exactly the same way.  For some reason, I love every aspect of the game individually, but the sum of the parts just don't add up for me.

It feels like you just manage pieces in a CM campaign and games with better campaign make you feel like your managing a real combat group. I think part of the issue is Battlefronts lack of tying the pieces together with their campaign system, you really don't care if the 1st platoon of A company lives or dies in any give battle. In a campaign system, like CC games you do care because the have to manage your forces in between the battles. The CM games need a better campaign system with new a between battle layer where you decide which forces to commit, rebuild, rest, etc. and yes naming each man would be the first step and tracking what each they did in each battle would go a long way to make the campaigns better.

[GJK]

Interesting stuff.  As some of you may know, I was very heavy into CMx1 (owner of www.the-proving-grounds.com and www.the-scenario-depot.com) but never really got into the new engine.  I don't know why- perhaps it's the learning curve or perhaps I'm just faithful to the original.  The better eye-candy is not a big issue for me.  I do like how off-map arty works in the new engine but I digress...

ComradeP, you bring up some interesting points and you obviously are very knowledgeable about the Market Garden operation.  You mention the difficulties that CM would have recreating this operation with the level of detail and information (or lack there-of) that a commander on the ground would (or wouldn't) have.  I'm curious though, is there any game (PC or board game) that could recreate the FOW aside from a refereed mini's game (perhaps)?  I just don't you'll be able to do it with what we have to work with in this day and age.  I may be wrong.

You know, with CMx1, you make a map that looks like the Arnhem area at that type, look up the OOB's and add the troops and equipment and boom, you have have Market Garden.  In fact, I'm guessing that there's a number of scenarios for it on the Scenario Depot now.  Maybe that's what really has kept me from going to CMx2; it's all "nickel and dimed" in separate modules now.  I totally get that from a business model point of view but it sure was nice having an entire theater in one game.  I do think that I really need to review my relationship with CMx2 one of these days however.  I know that it's a beauty of a game within.

[ComradeP]

You mention the difficulties that CM would have recreating this operation with the level of detail and information (or lack there-of) that a commander on the ground would (or wouldn't) have.  I'm curious though, is there any game (PC or board game) that could recreate the FOW aside from a refereed mini's game (perhaps)? 

I don't think so, but that's my main problem with more tactically orientated games from pre-modern eras: the commander has way too much control. Something like an orders delay, or a courier system like some games use, could already help substantially. Based on the AAR's, even though there is no Borg spotting, units in CMx2 don't need radios to be able to coordinate attacks at all.

On a more operational scale, a unit will usually take an X amount of losses (expressed in men, steps or strength points usually) when attacked/attacking and the defender might withdraw or hold. Such a battle is often assumed to take most of a day or an entire day. In a tactical game, such a battle might be over in half an hour or so. I expect experienced CMx2 to completely destroy Frost's Para's in less than an hour of game time, if they get what the Germans had historically, and even less if Graebner's men are available. The Germans would start right next to Frost's men in any scenario after day 2 or so, the time for moving into position would as such be short.

Modelling the fighting the Americans did near Grave and Groesbeek would be far easier than the fighting in Arnhem. Aside from small unit tactics having less effect than in real life, I'd also expect XXX Corps to be able to fight a fairly historical battle using CMx2's system, just not 1st Para as soon as it moves away from its landing zones.

[Sir Slash]

Might we actually see some German air support in this module?

[RooksBailey]

I saw that yesterday. For me it's like BF saying "I can make you buy this anytime I want, Bitch".

Now that I can re-download my copy of CMBN because Battlefront removed the fees  ::), I've been playing the heck out of CMBN again.   ;D  With that in mind, I am thrilled that it will be getting another module, especially seeing how it will be Market Garden.  I wasn't interested in the Italian theater at all, so I passed on the last two games. 

I am curious about one thing: if we buy the Market Garden module, will that upgrade CMBN to v2.0?  I'm one of those who have resisted paying for that patch.