Cm:a aar

Redwolf

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I miss the real AARs of old times. Just the RoW AARs had a lot more info.

I also fail to see how there is much more going on in this battle than firing at enemies popping up and driving in motorized infantry losing a couple of vehicles.

Compare to trying to bring up a Sherman company facing a mixed vegetation field that you suspect (not know) has foxholes (subject to fog of war foxholes) filled with Pak40s, and a Jagdpanzer behind each ridge. Except when you are playing the defender and the bastard scenario designer gave you 50mm PaKs and some halftracks.
 

Michael Dorosh

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[hirr]Leto;1301845 said:
146 afghannitties dead and 5 Soviets dead.
The AAR I just read says "14 men killed and 27 wounded" for the Soviet side.

I think that the reality is that all the "modern" games are essentially solo play. I suppose further that in order to sell, you have to have soft-soap scenarios to appeal to that kind of gamer. As that goes, this scenario doesn't look so bad - a commando raid is supposed to be one sided. I don't think CM was ever supposed to be about light infantry and commando operations, of course, and it seems a bizarre choice from that perspective. On the positive side, it highlights the creativity of the scenario designers.

But it doesn't say anything about the ability to PBEM, get a balanced game for head-to-head play, or even talk much about the suitability for "light infantry" operations, which I still think the basic game engine probably doesn't do well. The AAR is couched in vague enough terms that it masks the game engine's shortcomings where that is concerned. From that perspective, it's well-written and presented, i.e. as a piece of historical-dramatic-fiction.

I just don't know what it's trying to sell. Certainly not the notion that CM:SF/CM:A depicts room to room house clearing with any kind of excitement.
 

Michael Dorosh

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And here is the discussion on the BFC forum with regards to the latter in my last post:

Gpig: What is your technique for room to room fighting in CM:A? (Or CMSF in general?)

NormalDude: Put multiple squads on every floor of the building, stacking side by side across the building. Use the vehicles outside to area fire on the building two building tiles ahead of my troops, and shift their fires as needed. Then HUNT the troops all at once, one building tile at a time, pausing 1-2 turns at every building tile. Basically, I take my time and use lots of area fire.

Realistic? Or workaround?
 

dalem

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When I first read the description of the AAR my first thought was "Special Ops? Assassination? What's next, gassing a theater full of hostages?"

We're a long way from the threads that shied away from showing even pixel bodies to mark KIAs.

-dale
 

vulture

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And here is the discussion on the BFC forum with regards to the latter in my last post:

Gpig: What is your technique for room to room fighting in CM:A? (Or CMSF in general?)

NormalDude: Put multiple squads on every floor of the building, stacking side by side across the building. Use the vehicles outside to area fire on the building two building tiles ahead of my troops, and shift their fires as needed. Then HUNT the troops all at once, one building tile at a time, pausing 1-2 turns at every building tile. Basically, I take my time and use lots of area fire.

Realistic? Or workaround?
While I can't claim to know much about real world house to house fighting, I'm pretty sure that in CM:SF house to house you are very much in the realm of playing the game system and mechanics, not realism. Which is augumented by the fact that the scenario designers have learned the game mechanics too, and use that knowledge to make strongpoints tougher based on those mechanics. So the gaminess runs both ways. The player uses various SOPs that work in game for house clearing that probably have nothing to do with reality, and the scenario designers (particularly with the Brit scenarios) have learned to use combinations of walls and buildings for which there is essentially no way of ordering a sane attack within the confines of CMSF (but which would be possible to deal with in reality by the expedient of lobbing grenades over walls, or fight around corners in a non-suicidal way).
 

Michael Dorosh

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While I can't claim to know much about real world house to house fighting, I'm pretty sure that in CM:SF house to house you are very much in the realm of playing the game system and mechanics, not realism. Which is augumented by the fact that the scenario designers have learned the game mechanics too, and use that knowledge to make strongpoints tougher based on those mechanics. So the gaminess runs both ways. The player uses various SOPs that work in game for house clearing that probably have nothing to do with reality, and the scenario designers (particularly with the Brit scenarios) have learned to use combinations of walls and buildings for which there is essentially no way of ordering a sane attack within the confines of CMSF (but which would be possible to deal with in reality by the expedient of lobbing grenades over walls, or fight around corners in a non-suicidal way).
Great post.

Certainly not my idea of fun, given the high level of abstraction. I won't say I don't see the appeal for others - I play an MMO right now that involves riding a horse around the countryside, harvesting vegetables, and deeds that include killing 300 animals at a time for their pelts - so grinding out pointless tasks is very much "in the eye of the beholder" as far as fun goes. But you certainly have to have a whole lot of imagination to sit at a monitor, line up your soldiers at one end of a palace (look at the screenshots for the scenario we're discussing here), issue a bunch of "hunt" commands, and basically watch them sweep through empty building floors while the animations do their goofy abstract thing in those gutted building interiors (i.e. soldiers kneeling across from each other, no hand-to-hand, etc.). You pretty much have to write your own story. Which some people are capable of doing - Normal Dude is obviously a pretty creative guy so that's no problem for him. This is the same reason I never enjoyed too many of the "Stalingrad factory" scenarios in CM:BB - just too little detail modelled to make it interesting in there and to many blanks I had to fill in myself. You can only replay the scenes from Cross of Iron and the Stalingrad movie in your head so many times...
 

[hirr]Leto

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The AAR I just read says "14 men killed and 27 wounded" for the Soviet side.

I think that the reality is that all the "modern" games are essentially solo play. I suppose further that in order to sell, you have to have soft-soap scenarios to appeal to that kind of gamer. As that goes, this scenario doesn't look so bad - a commando raid is supposed to be one sided. I don't think CM was ever supposed to be about light infantry and commando operations, of course, and it seems a bizarre choice from that perspective. On the positive side, it highlights the creativity of the scenario designers.

But it doesn't say anything about the ability to PBEM, get a balanced game for head-to-head play, or even talk much about the suitability for "light infantry" operations, which I still think the basic game engine probably doesn't do well. The AAR is couched in vague enough terms that it masks the game engine's shortcomings where that is concerned. From that perspective, it's well-written and presented, i.e. as a piece of historical-dramatic-fiction.

I just don't know what it's trying to sell. Certainly not the notion that CM:SF/CM:A depicts room to room house clearing with any kind of excitement.
I stand corrected. Not too much changes from my initial analysis though. I am sure that there are quite a few people that may like the soap opera single player game, but that is not what interests me. I may poo poo the game from time to time, but I am sure for those who do play it and like it, that it is only a matter of taste.
 

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I didn't have time to comment earlier and now most of what I wanted to say has already been said.

What I find most disconcerting is that these "comp-stomps" seems to be what they are going for these days and that without any type of AI, just fill a house/countryside with green-regular REDs and take a smaller and higher experienced Blue force and whop 'em. Where is the challenge in that? And they still can't find someone willing to play RED for a multiplayer AAR/DAR, despite that with the much touted RealTime option it could probably be done in 1.5-2 hours.

And the 1-1 visual representation really breaks down in buildings, the last two screenshots just looks stupid.
 

jwb3

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I won't say I don't see the appeal for others - I play an MMO right now that involves riding a horse around the countryside, harvesting vegetables, and deeds that include killing 300 animals at a time for their pelts - so grinding out pointless tasks is very much "in the eye of the beholder" as far as fun goes.
Harvesting veggies? What MMO is this? You still doing LotR, or something else?


John
 

jwb3

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Does anyone see any evidence that all these Russians have more than one face between them? At a glance, they all looked like the same guy. Even in CMBO there were several facial animations between the three guys per squad...


John
 
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