Anybody (still) playing Airborne Assault / Command Ops / Highway to the Reich?

Redwolf

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It's an ex-BFC game so I can as well ask here :)

Just looking for something to play while I wait for more CMx2 fixes. I just remembered that Panther Games' Airborne Assault / Command Ops / Highway to the Reich wasn't all that bad so I checked the status. I also want a Market Garden game so that fits.

It looks like they made a completely overhauled engine for their Bulge game ("Battles from the Bulge"). You can have it for the Arnheim game, but then you have to buy the Bulge ($60) and the Arnheim "patch" ($25). You then get the original Arnheim game for free. But hey I already bought that one twice (BFC edition and later Matrix edition).

Anybody played the new code?
 

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It's an ex-BFC game so I can as well ask here :)

Just looking for something to play while I wait for more CMx2 fixes. I just remembered that Panther Games' Airborne Assault / Command Ops / Highway to the Reich wasn't all that bad so I checked the status. I also want a Market Garden game so that fits.

It looks like they made a completely overhauled engine for their Bulge game ("Battles from the Bulge"). You can have it for the Arnheim game, but then you have to buy the Bulge ($60) and the Arnheim "patch" ($25). You then get the original Arnheim game for free. But hey I already bought that one twice (BFC edition and later Matrix edition).

Anybody played the new code?
I played COTA and Bulge up to the third patch. There are some huge problems in that game engine with formations slowing down and locking up. They never seemed to be able to fix it, and the response on the official forums to my concerns was very Battlefrontish. Which was very disappointing to me, because I paid nearly $100 for the game when it was released and they promised a bug-free game. The game as it is makes it very tedious to play, because if you want to avoid these slowdowns/lockups, you need to order each and every battalion and company around yourself, which gets very tedious. Anything above batallion-level works very poorly, for other reasons also.

I guess there was a good reason why they put the price down to $60.
 

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Totally off topic but I recently bought the whole ARMA2 series for £25 off steam. The graphics are great and you get a whole lot of content for the money. I've actually enjoyed it and its been better than I thought it would be while not being a game like CM I have enjoyed it immensely, so much so that I haven't touched cm for the last month or so. I think it will keep my interest until a new CMBN content comes out.
 

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I'm playing the Arma3 Alpha right now. Don't think I've ever had so much fun with a 'shooter' before. I have 3 invites if anybody wants.

[video=youtube;zUPHT-GOrPM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUPHT-GOrPM[/video]
 

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I'm playing the Arma3 Alpha right now. Don't think I've ever had so much fun with a 'shooter' before. I have 3 invites if anybody wants.

[video=youtube;zUPHT-GOrPM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUPHT-GOrPM[/video]

I've been curious about it and would love to take it for a spin.
 

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I actually bought ARMA in the steam sale, too, when a friend pointed me to it. Didn't play it yet.

I think I'll fire up my old HTTR, that is if I can find whatever medium it came on and my license key. Sounds like going with the old code might not be that much of a disadvantage. If I like it I can always buy the new stuff.

I'm not opposed to throwing some money a small wargame developer's way, it just shouldn't be too exotic price-wise. I posted on the Matrix forums what it looks like to me. For me, being a dual or triple owner of the original market garden games, it is a $85 code patch and scenario pack.
 

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I'd like to play HTTR multiplayer. Gonna install it. Please give me an email: goomohn (in at) live (dot) com
 

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... I have 3 invites if anybody wants.
Thank you. You're a gentlemen. I haven't had a chance to play it much (the first three times I booted it up it crashed to desktop, but last night I got it to run). Most of my rehab time is on my back and I found shooters are harder when laying on my back than CM, or even Skyrim, but I'm going to make an effort to get into it tonight.

Thanks again.
 
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I played COTA and Bulge up to the third patch. There are some huge problems in that game engine with formations slowing down and locking up. They never seemed to be able to fix it, and the response on the official forums to my concerns was very Battlefrontish. Which was very disappointing to me, because I paid nearly $100 for the game when it was released and they promised a bug-free game. The game as it is makes it very tedious to play, because if you want to avoid these slowdowns/lockups, you need to order each and every battalion and company around yourself, which gets very tedious. Anything above batallion-level works very poorly, for other reasons also.

I guess there was a good reason why they put the price down to $60.
You should perhaps check again, Fleischer. Dave spent most of 2012 overhauling the formation code, and fixing most of the problems with that, along with a host of other problems, at many levels. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

I also remember your forum presence there: people jumped a bit on top of you, but I also remember Dave coming to take those guys off you, putting some order and promising you to look into the problem. Knowing him, I'm most positive he did and that your feedback - and that of others over the time, convinced him of the need to engage in a thorough revision of the code. Here are some links, which will perhaps refresh your memory

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2933031&mpage=3&key=&#2981217

there I'm answering to you, if I sounded a bit harsh, my bad. Spaniards aren't known for being as soft spoken and polite as people from other cultural stocks.

I can find some more threads where I don't think you're getting a very "battlefrontish" treatment. This one, later in the same thread

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2933031&mpage=3&key=&#2982891

Another couple of interactions there

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2985677&mpage=1&key=&#2987790

and

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2990596&mpage=1&key=&#2990596

It never fails to surprise me how unreliable/selective memory can be.

Your "tediousness" assessment makes me wonder about the following: if CmdOps is tedious because you just need to issue quite general orders to companies and battalions (and now higher commands do really work as designed, adjusting your expectations on the responsiveness of the command network as you go up), I wonder what a CMx2 battle featuring Battalion forces can be, or what's like an HPS Panzer Campaign scenario featuring a Corps in each side.

As a little disclaimer: I've been a beta tester for Panther for some time now, and from the beginning of this year I'm helping Dave with the development (and I'm doing it for free, by the way).
 

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You should perhaps check again, Fleischer. Dave spent most of 2012 overhauling the formation code, and fixing most of the problems with that, along with a host of other problems, at many levels. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

I also remember your forum presence there: people jumped a bit on top of you, but I also remember Dave coming to take those guys off you, putting some order and promising you to look into the problem. Knowing him, I'm most positive he did and that your feedback - and that of others over the time, convinced him of the need to engage in a thorough revision of the code. Here are some links, which will perhaps refresh your memory

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm...&key=&#2981217

there I'm answering to you, if I sounded a bit harsh, my bad. Spaniards aren't known for being as soft spoken and polite as people from other cultural stocks.

I can find some more threads where I don't think you're getting a very "battlefrontish" treatment. This one, later in the same thread

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm...&key=&#2982891

Another couple of interactions there

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm...&key=&#2987790

and

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm...&key=&#2990596

It never fails to surprise me how unreliable/selective memory can be.
If you want to engage in a discussion about what happened on some other forum several years ago, then sorry, I'm not gonna do that. I'm not even clicking on those links.

I had two usernames on that forum, since I have the bad habit of forgetting/not writing down my usernames/passwords. And I can't remember anyone being rude to me there; what I meant with "Battlefrontish" was what happens when you spend a great deal of time documenting or reproducing a bug, and the response you get is the fanbois jumping in trying to explain it away with anything they can think of. From what I remember, Arjuna did fix that particular lockup, but it was far from the only one. In fact, I did try the game again not long ago, and the first thing that happened was a formation lockup in the Höfen scenario.

If Dave spent most of 2012 overhauling the game, then I wonder how they could market it as a "Ferrari" that was "virtually bug-free"(paraphrasing). That was the gist of the words used to explain the extraordinary high price. And if I recall correctly, Dave has had this as a part-time project besides his 'regular' job, since COTA, hasn't he?

Your "tediousness" assessment makes me wonder about the following: if CmdOps is tedious because you just need to issue quite general orders to companies and battalions (and now higher commands do really work as designed, adjusting your expectations on the responsiveness of the command network as you go up), I wonder what a CMx2 battle featuring Battalion forces can be, or what's like an HPS Panzer Campaign scenario featuring a Corps in each side.
I find that equally tedious, if not more tedious. At least you don't need to babysit units as much in BftB as you need in CMx2. IMO, I think the main error made with the Command Ops series was that they made it bigger instead of focusing on making the details, which are the game's strongest side, right. With several divisions on the map at the same time, most people simply won't have the time to explore and take into account all the details which are modeled in the game. And you really don't have to either, because it usually boils down to artillery and who has the greatest sum of 'combat power' counters. All the details are drowned/irrelevant in the simulation of 'the bigger picture'.
 

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Spaniards aren't known for being as soft spoken and polite as people from other cultural stocks.
Did the Australians say something to you about it?
 
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If you want to engage in a discussion about what happened on some other forum several years ago, then sorry, I'm not gonna do that. I'm not even clicking on those links.
Fair enough.

Fleischer said:
what I meant with "Battlefrontish" was what happens when you spend a great deal of time documenting or reproducing a bug, and the response you get is the fanbois jumping in trying to explain it away with anything they can think of. From what I remember, Arjuna did fix that particular lockup, but it was far from the only one. In fact, I did try the game again not long ago, and the first thing that happened was a formation lockup in the Höfen scenario.
Well, in my opinion the problem was that the AI routines handling the maneuvering and behavior of logistics echelon normally attached at the Regiment / Division level and portrayed in the game weren't certainly very robust when it came to handle situations where they could be inside the fire envelope of enemy units weapons. In that case, what happened is the whole of the regiment was waiting for the logistics echelon to deploy, but the logistics echelon had chosen as a location for deployment, one which was being ruled out by the code assessing self-preservation. There was a dead lock, which in reality would be solved by appealing to common sense and staying in place. Dave had to code that "common sense" which was missing.

What the "fanbois" were trying to explain to you was that one could "help" the AI to navigate around that by being "more specific in your orders". That is, rather than just giving an attack order to the Regiment like that, you could be more precise and detach the Regiment logistics base, deploying it in a safe location out of sight. Which is indeed some micro-management, but one which I - personally - find not to be a deal breaker.

On the other hand, I agree with the need to add in the engine facilities to report similar situations to the player, so he can take action accordingly. Or in other words, to make more visible (but not too much, to avoid overwhelming him) the planning procedures going under the hood.

Fleischer said:
If Dave spent most of 2012 overhauling the game, then I wonder how they could market it as a "Ferrari" that was "virtually bug-free"(paraphrasing). That was the gist of the words used to explain the extraordinary high price. And if I recall correctly, Dave has had this as a part-time project besides his 'regular' job, since COTA, hasn't he?
As he has stated publicly elsewhere, Command Ops has been his sole occupation since early 2012. And to be honest, yet with all due respect, to buy statements such "virtually bug-free" at face value is a bit naive. You can have software which is bug free on the set of test cases you're using to leverage its stability and soundness. That doesn't rule out that there's a number of situations which nobody has come across or tested in a thorough way.

Fleischer said:
I find that equally tedious, if not more tedious. At least you don't need to babysit units as much in BftB as you need in CMx2. IMO, I think the main error made with the Command Ops series was that they made it bigger instead of focusing on making the details, which are the game's strongest side, right. With several divisions on the map at the same time, most people simply won't have the time to explore and take into account all the details which are modeled in the game.
What you call an "error" for others is the way to go, indeed. Bil Hardenberger has been working for some time on a set of scenarios done on the Command Ops engine, covering battles at the - tactical level - for the 1940 France campaign. One can make scenarios at the tactical level, he just needs to do the research and work with the available tools. Something which I find surprising is that people miss the point that taking the engine to the limit is an incentive for further development, as that highlights problems and shortcomings in the engine. So if those scenarios you feel too big for your taste, they're there because there was people with the stamina, time and interest to develop them. If there's an scarcity of smaller scenarios, that's because there's less people interested in doing the work for those.

Regarding your assessment about "most people" not having the time to go into depth and try to understand what's going on. Well, at least you have the choice to do so if you want to, which is quite different of what I reckon is the norm at computer-based war gaming at the operational or the tactical level. Most systems are very opaque, or rely on - also opaque, although for different reasons - CRT or To-Hit tables.

Fleischer said:
And you really don't have to either, because it usually boils down to artillery and who has the greatest sum of 'combat power' counters.
That statement gives me a hint of the reasons for your frustrations with Command Ops, and I find it to be wildly inaccurate. In this engine you'll find an actually realistic portrayal of what's called force-to-space ratio. You can't have three divisions massed to attack along a 10 kilometers front without the whole thing becoming quickly chaos. Artillery is fricking lethal, you know, because it is. If you bunch up your forces trying to push too much across too little space you'll be ending with heaps of corpses and units which have lost their cohesion and ability to function as an organized military force as command and control collapses.

Indeed, at the operational level, artillery and concentration of force are important. But these are mediated by force-to-space ratios.

Fleischer said:
All the details are drowned/irrelevant in the simulation of 'the bigger picture'.
Seeing that you're so fond of ARMA, I sort of understand some of your insatisfaction. For me ARMA campaigns - for all the realism depicting the world and physics - devolve into a ridiculous war movie as soon as one realizes that the role and contribution of single - no matter how skilled - individuals might well be just a small footnote in a quite complex affair, involving divisions, whole carrier battlegroups and significant numbers of aviation squadrons, all of them acting in concert to bring down a conventional opposing military force. And the - huge amount of - "realistic" scenarios/missions done for ARMA strike me as incredibly tedious. I can't find any fun to spend half an hour sitting on my hands in a lush 3d environment waiting for something to happen and then see how my avatar gets its virtual throat slashed by a fragment of a virtual mortar shell going off some meters away. I can't find any interesting to play a game where I'm driving a Humvee for quite a while - and hey, it's not easy to drive those things without getting them into a ditch - to just drive over an IED and have my avatar legs blown off because some retarded-level AI NPC hadn't been able to do its job.

Yeah, that's war indeed. But boy, how fun is that?

The point is that the bigger picture is a direct consequence of all the details. What Command Ops achieves in a startlingly way, for a very broad number of situations, is to portray those situations with a high degree of plausibility. If one wants to dig into the details, he's allowed to do so. If one wants to focus on the 'bigger picture', he can do that. But if one wants to 'snatch the body' of one of the thousands of simulated soldiers, to smell the cordite and see his mates blown up in a variety of gory ways, well, he isn't allowed to do that.
 
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Geordie

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Bletchley, love the quotes about ARMA and getting blown up etc..... This is exactly why I do love ARMA. I've literally spent hours infiltrating enemy lines or driving from a to b, setting up ambushes and waiting an hour to spring them. Commanding my squad, taking out enemy Generals as a sniper and so on. The list of things you can do is endless and the modding community is fantastic, there's hundreds of mods and stuff out there. It's a pity CM couldn't be even half way as community friendly as ARMA.

Each to his own though and as its a hobby you need to be playing what you like.
 

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Bletchley_Geek:

No, that was not went on in that thread at all. And what you're trying now is exactly what I call 'Battlefrontish': You're trying to make your game into something über realistic while reducing the competition to "CRT or To-Hit tables". You even try to use the false implication where someone supposedly can't understand or appreciate this über realism because he likes less realistic games.

I don't buy any of that, and I wonder if you've paid any attention to what's going on in the game you're playing when you claim it has realistic force-to-space ratio. Certainly, that is a big problem in this game, and among the things that make the manual control of artillery so deadly and unrealistic.

As to the naive part: Sure, but I'm usually willing to give small-time developers the benefit of the doubt and don't mind occasionally giving them money for a game I turned out to not like. I do, however, value honesty, and when they lie, I'm not going to throw money in that direction again.
 
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Bletchley_Geek:
No, that was not went on in that thread at all. And what you're trying now is exactly what I call 'Battlefrontish': You're trying to make your game into something über realistic while reducing the competition to "CRT or To-Hit tables". You even try to use the false implication where someone supposedly can't understand or appreciate this über realism because he likes less realistic games.
It was about how to deal with limitations in the AI programming, which imply you need to give it more precise (as in detailed) commands. That was at least the bit in which I took part, trying to help you.

fleischer said:
I don't buy any of that, and I wonder if you've paid any attention to what's going on in the game you're playing when you claim it has realistic force-to-space ratio. Certainly, that is a big problem in this game, and among the things that make the manual control of artillery so deadly and unrealistic.
What is unrealistic regarding artillery is leaving the player to form 'grand batteries' in truly Napoleonic fashion waving through the C2 system without penalties. The interesting part is that this feature is there because: 1) the AI hasn't been programmed with the ability to formulate coherent fire plans (yet) and 2) people who want 'control' are very vocal about being able to have that kind of control of artillery. Many of the complaints regarding artillery in CMx2 are related to the - explosive - combination of unrealistic control capabilities & accurate modeling of firepower and effects. Self-restraint in a competitive environment - against human or machine opponents - is also a scarce currency.

You claim it's a problem in the game, and I think it's actually a problem that it isn't explained anywhere clearly how one can use (or how one needs to throw away) the experience gathered by playing other hex-and-counter like systems. Many of the problems I have seen people having with Command Ops are related to project into the game expectations which are valid for systems where one doesn't have to deal with 1) command and control delays, 2) realistic interaction of unit footprints and cover & concealment, 3) space & time constraints.

To be honest, when I started playing RDOA it took me quite some time to adapt, having played to death games like Steel Panthers, TOAW or SSG's TAO. The game made a quite loud 'click' for me when I got my hands on HTTR.

fleischer said:
As to the naive part: Sure, but I'm usually willing to give small-time developers the benefit of the doubt and don't mind occasionally giving them money for a game I turned out to not like. I do, however, value honesty, and when they lie, I'm not going to throw money in that direction again.
Yeah, I also value honesty in people, Fleischer...
 
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And linking up with Geordie's remarks about "mod friendliness". I do agree with Geordie's assessment regarding CMx2 customization capabilities, they're indeed less than what was available in CMx1. Here BFC did a ruthless calculation - and perhaps short-sighted - on the return they'd get from investing a significant effort in making the data more open. Command Ops used to be like that as well: up until COTA, you could only make maps and scenarios, not being able to access the data to model opposing forces. That changed with BFTB.

Putting forward an argument against extensive, highly functional, modding capabilities, or rather, user content development, on the grounds of fearing the community to deprive the developers from releasing content, which is the most direct way of funding further development, is self-harming in the long run. I do think that has hurted quite a bit CMx2.

While you can see very high-quality work by the community, truly good stuff is very rare. Why? Because of the amount of work it's required to research stuff accurately and then representing it faithfully. There I see a 80-20 rule of sorts: 80% of user-developed content is either purely derivative (i.e. tweaking "official" content) or just so fanciful it feels bland. That was true in CMx1, and is also true of ARMA. Nobody in his senses can say that the 10% of truly amazing work hurts the company. On the contrary.

First, that 20% will be driving further innovation and bug fixing by the devs. Those are the guys who are "pushing the envelope". Second, that 20% is a creche where it's likely to find the "next generation" of "official" content developers. Looking at CMx1, back in the CMBO days, it was Charles & Steve doing everything, from the programming to the 3D modeling and the texturing. You guys are very old timers, and I think you'll agree that most of the "original" modders eventually became part of the BFC team.

What BFC chose to do was to coopt this 20% (or at least, some of its most notable members, leaving others out for reasons I can't fathom) and then put "fences" around content development, to keep absolute control on what one can't and can do with the content development tools in place.

I don't think BFC strategy it's a very good strategy, for a variety of reasons, I think that user-content development should be left a free reign, making available incentives for the 20% to cooperate with the devs. So far, this kind of informal cooperative has gone in many different ways, some positive, and other not so positive. In my opinion, a testament to how good for business is this are the terms of the Steam Workshop, which basically says "whatever the mod you do, if we find it good enough, then we reserve the right to commercialize ourselves and give you some royalty". That's indeed a first step to get the community to become stakeholders in the financial success of the devs.

On the other hand, I find it to be not very fair with those "cooperative" members, since the terms are very cooperative-like, without saying it with all the words and having the ominous double reading of "hey, if we like what you do but we don't like you, we'll selling that and you won't see a $". That's - honestly - a bit unsettling.

Yet I also think this is mostly because in a truly cooperative environment, there should be quite democratic systems in place so that members of the cooperative - players - do need to have a say on certain matters of common interest. This might sound as anathem for some people out there, but a good example of what I'm saying was the move by CCP - the devs of Eve-Online - to establish the community-elected "Council of Stellar Management".

Besides the ruthlessness and unforgiveness of the environment, what makes Eve-Online stands apart from similar MMORPGs is that the players - the community - has extensive "world-building" capabilities. Both at a "physical" level - by creating stations, etc. - but also at a more interesting "meta" level by creating "markets" for the stuff they create in the game world. I think it was unavoidable for CCP - and they need to be commended for that foresight, even if it came after a huge backlash - that the community had to become a formal stakeholder into the development process, more so when in-game data - items, etc. - can be transformed into money.

Many in these forums and out of them have been wondered about the future of computer wargaming. The "cooperative" way seems to me much more promising than the models I see around.

Sorry for the rant, but Geordie's made me think of this.
 

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I don't think BFC strategy it's a very good strategy, for a variety of reasons, I think that user-content development should be left a free reign, making available incentives for the 20% to cooperate with the devs.
They are also oblivious of technologies that can help. XML is a highly developed set of tools that maximize reuse of already existing (and free) tools to validate user input to the max. Still, most wargame developers have no clue and still treat loading user-supplied files like they are excel tables that can't even enforce data type.

Yet I also think this is mostly because in a truly cooperative environment, there should be quite democratic systems in place so that members of the cooperative - players - do need to have a say on certain matters of common interest. This might sound as anathem for some people out there, but a good example of what I'm saying was the move by CCP - the devs of Eve-Online - to establish the community-elected "Council of Stellar Management".

Besides the ruthlessness and unforgiveness of the environment, what makes Eve-Online stands apart from similar MMORPGs is that the players - the community - has extensive "world-building" capabilities. Both at a "physical" level - by creating stations, etc. - but also at a more interesting "meta" level by creating "markets" for the stuff they create in the game world. I think it was unavoidable for CCP - and they need to be commended for that foresight, even if it came after a huge backlash - that the community had to become a formal stakeholder into the development process, more so when in-game data - items, etc. - can be transformed into money.

Many in these forums and out of them have been wondered about the future of computer wargaming. The "cooperative" way seems to me much more promising than the models I see around.

Sorry for the rant, but Geordie's made me think of this.
Well, I often posted my theories about how the wargaming market would develop if a true open source game (in the narrow sense of the word, not just no cost and can see source code) came along.
 

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You're talking out of your ass, and no, it's not my expectations or lack of experience that is the problem either.

I've played the Airborne Assault/Command Ops series more than most, and I know how it's supposed to work. It was not a problem for me to adapt from hex based games. In fact, hex-based games are so different from BftB that I don't understand how anyone can make that comparison. Battlefront also uses that comparison a lot. It should not be necessary to adapt from one set of gamey tactics to another set of gamey tactics when the game is supposed to be so realistic. And that's what you're really saying here, I think. Most of the time, I try to think like a real world commander. And most of the time it works, but sometimes the simulation completely breaks down. Those parts should then be mended, not blamed on the customer doing this or that wrong.

I think maybe the main problem with BftB and most wargames today, is that the devs don't really play their own games, or play them in a very narrowminded way. Thus they overlook fundamental flaws and blame the customers for not playing their game the way they intended. Thus you have the kind of argument you are pulling off in this thread, where I have to do this and that because "Dave didn't code that part yet" etc. Nobody wants to play games like that. Gamers of every kind want freedom. They want to be able to play out every stupid and uncommon tactic they can think of, not just follow the designer's intention.

(Reply to #17)
 
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