Is CMBS a tactical game?

Wildcard said:
yes smaller rounds have a high muzzle velocity but once its left the barrel the rounds are unable to keep that velocity up due to friction with the air, tumbling and there lighter weight. This is why they are unable to fire as far as say a 50cal which is able to keep its velocity over a long range.
Click to expand...
Oh, you were referring to how well the round retains it's velocity.

Well anyway, I think the biggest fault with CMBS is that the stock maps are tiny and shit. So everyone is pretty much bottlenecked in and the longer ranged, more powerful and more accurate weapons just make it worse.
The solution is for the community to build bigger maps.

Wildcard said:
Yes it is. Maybe we should look at starting a post for CMBS tactics advice. Due to it being such a different beast to the ww2 titles.
Click to expand...
I've actually been thinking doing a little series of experiments with BS.
I've already got an idea to test different vehicle's crew and passenger survivability vs different weapons.
If you people got any test ideas feel free to send them my way or run those test yourself if you're up to it.
 
Septic Limb said:
Great idea!
Click to expand...

My perspective is the same as most here. BS is tactical, and different to the WWII titles. The ferocity and speed puts greater emphasis on the initial plan, positioning of forces and speed of reaction. I'm fairly successful in commanding the WWII battlefield, but I'm still looking for reliable tactics for BS.

Vartuoosi said:
Well anyway, I think the biggest fault with CMBS is that the stock maps are tiny and shit. So everyone is pretty much bottlenecked in and the longer ranged, more powerful and more accurate weapons just make it worse. The solution is for the community to build bigger maps.
Click to expand...

I agree with Vart, the stock maps are too small for modern mechanised warfare, some of them are actually duplicates of WWII title maps. Any BS campaign needs big spaces for a force any larger than infantry.
 
DoubleD said:
I agree with Vart, the stock maps are too small for modern mechanised warfare, some of them are actually duplicates of WWII title maps. Any BS campaign needs big spaces for a force any larger than infantry.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't agree as wholesale as you, but yes definitely some maps are not meant for more than infantry bashes in game. I've had interesting battles otherwise; I'm currently doing a PBEM on the CMBS Demo map (where the maximum sightlines are like 1km plus change) and its just large enough to be interesting. Anything smaller is a turn off for combined arms.

I've been getting a lot of practice mapping large, operational style maps lately, and have long felt CMBS needs some much needed community love. The campaigns for CMBS are all excellent and we need more scenarios in the vein of their larger, set-piece missions. We need more maps in the style of Chernovka Hirka and Ukranian Crossroads.
 
Wildcard said:
yes smaller rounds have a high muzzle velocity but once its left the barrel the rounds are unable to keep that velocity up due to friction with the air, tumbling and there lighter weight.
Click to expand...

"Tumbling"? No rifle round that I know of "tumbles" (i.e. goes end over end) unless it strikes a tree branch or something and keeps going.
 
If you would like me to get technical I can do. The Yawing, Precession and Nutation of the round while in flight can be explained as tumbling. The Yaw and Precession do's and will decrease as the distance from the round to the barrel increases.

The reason I said Tumbling was that most people will not now what Precession and Nutation is. ie KISS keep it simple stupid.
 
"Wobble" would be a more accurate, yet still simple, term for what you are describing, rather than "tumbling" which means (to me anyway) the bullet flipping end over end. Anyway, yea, no need to derail the discussion any further.
 
the problem with BS I have is not that its not tactical, because I feel it has a great tactical potential. The problem I have with it is that the engine can't keep up with it. A Line of sight bug in battle for Normandy has a 25% chance of pooping on your day A line of sight bug in BS has a 99% chance of pooping on your week. I hear a lot of people say that BS is unforgiving with mistakes which is true and which is what i like about it, but I hate when you do get shot throw a thick wood or the tank doesn't move its turret where you told it to or a unit fails to spot an enemy unit right in front of it 50m away. it feels hard to be tactical because bugs are irrational and you cant plan for them. i think. i can and may be totally wrong.

On further reflection its not that its even buggy the engine cant support the level of granularity that the deadliness of the modern battlefield requires. For example maybe in WW2 the abstraction of squad formation was enough but with the deadliness of the modern battle field maybe it makes a different if you are in wedge or line. i dont know maybe not. or like in the newest patch in which they added that a unit behind a building should have a point man on the corner to watch the street. granularity matters more in BS then in BN. maybe?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
@casper - I don't think it's really that CMs LOS and spotting system has bugs, it's that it's just plain retarded and poorly designed and implemented. Modern warfare just accentuates how bad it really is. Agreed on your last paragraph about granularity.

I also have to agree with @Vartuoosi regarding small maps. Even the max size of 4km by 4km is too small for a modern warfare combined arms setting. It's like playing in a shoebox. For comparison, below are three maps from recent Steel Beasts scenarios I've played with the group I mp with (which usually consists of a company's worth of units). These map sizes give us, as well as the opfor, room to maneuver, even if we don't utilize the whole map. The red square is the max map size CM can do. Pretty telling.
z1e2UHk.png


9zcMkYF.png


5oCgg9o.png
 
I would adore a much larger map size, especially in the modern era!

I think, given the limitations (turns and size) carried over from the ww2 games, that perhaps it's best to consider CM:BS as a firefight simulator rather than a full tactical sim. I watched your vids Rambler and I'm willing to bet there was a fair amount of maneuver between objectives - valuable time and effort in the planning and execution I am sure - however in the context of the Combat Mission game (at least in the modern incarnation) that's stuff that is abstracted -happened 'off map' (for better or for worse).

I'd certainly agree that those maneuvers (carried out on the scale illustrated above) are a crucial aspect of any tactical planning though, hence why I'd lean towards the 'firefight simulator' line.

Will it get better? Time will tell I guess. Bigger maps would be a great start I think (though optimization might be important if that were to happen), and I think the granularity casper talks about is creeping it's way in (squad dispersion and corner peaking being two examples from v4) so there's hope...
 
all in all Combat mission is like democracy Its the worst form of government except for all the others :) -good old bulldog

P.s biggest beef i have with big maps is when you have the perfect kill you rewind to view it again and again, you nuzzle up behind your tank to watch the beautiful trajectory of the kill shot you zoom in nice and tight, and the F*$# tall grass on the far hill doesnt render! GOD! i have an amazing video card why cant it render grass!!!!!!!!!?:)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I know I know good bless them. its just annoying when your at eye level trying yo get the lay of the land and you dont have all the information until you dolly over and see "oh shit thats a bad hull down spot because of the wheat. wish i saw that before":(
 
casper said:
I know I know good bless them. its just annoying when your at eye level trying yo get the lay of the land and you dont have all the information until you dolly over and see "oh shit thats a bad hull down spot because of the wheat. wish i saw that before":(
Click to expand...

That's what you get for hiring gluten-free tank crews!
 
Actually touched on this years ago in the first (and only :p ) FGM Chat.

Map size is certainly a problem in CMBS but there's also the equipment availability and forces involved in any title that has a big influence I think.

CMBS at the moment just doesn't have the variety built into it to game out a lot of interesting scenarios. ie. I want to play a US Armor battle! I have Abrams MBTs and... Abrams MBT's. Don't get me wrong it's not garbage as a base game and gets this family of games going, but as I say in the video a CMx2 title doesn't really hit it's full potential until the first module is released that fleshes out the forces available and enabling greater variety of compositions of opposing forces involved. I hope the eventual Marines module to CMBS will do this but just having more US and Russian troop/vehicle variants... I'm not so sure.

The modern era you have lots of shiney toys but it's largely a spot first and survive affair in most cases. In WW2 after spotting you have to worry about what have I spotted (who hasn't gotten scared when a Panther is ahead of you), what's my opponent's armor like, what's the caliber of my gun (and it goes on). This mental equation you have to worry about changes with each battle depending on the date, time and location of the fight - not possible in a modern title. If we ever get CMx2 titles going back to early WW2 I think you'll see this magnified ten fold. A CMx2 1941 battle and I spot a Panzer IV coming against my line of 2 Pdr AT Guns. :D

An operational layers would also greatly benefit a modern title dramatically and may help reduce the impact of the map size limitations being an issue.

My 2 cents + sales tax.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom