Post #10--same link as above:
Since I cannot edit my 1st post, herewithsome more details on CM:Normandy...
Area Fire to be revisited?
When trying to solve a problem, one should start by identifying exactly what the problem is. Since the problem of Area Fire has come up since the CMBO Beta Demo, I feel experienced enough to address this topic head on.
Area Fire is the ability for a unit to use its weapons on a location instead of a unit. This allows "recon by fire", peppering a place where a previous identified unit has gone to unknown status, to hit near a known target that can't quite be shot at directly, or to ensure that suppressive fire is placed on a known or suspected location while doing something else.
The realism problem comes from WHY a unit is being ordered to use Area Fire (note the "why" part is CRITICAL to this discussion). There are three possible WHYs:
1. The unit, through its own senses, suspects or knows about an enemy position but, for whatever reason, can't use direct fire on it at that particular moment that the player has to assign a Target Command. Maybe it was visible the second before, perhaps it is just a spot that looks too obvious for the enemy to occupy. The reason is irrelevant.
2. The unit places fire on a location as directed by another unit even though it has no first hand knowledge, or even suspicion, that firing at that location is the right thing to do. The more sophisticated the ability to communicate, the more versatile the weapons are, the greater opportunity for this type of thing to occur. The most common example is indirect fire, since the artillery units obviously are doing Area Fire on something it can't see or couldn't possible have sensed on its own.
3. The unit places fire on a location that it doesn't know about and wouldn't know/suspect to shoot at if it were not for the intervention of the God like player. In this case fire is being unrealistically manipulated to yield the best possible result regardless of the realistic chance of such fire happening in real life.
The only one of these three that anybody should have a problem with is #3, correct? I hope so And how common are #1 and #2, from a realistic standpoint, within the course of a battle? I hope you also agree VERY common.
Now, the trick of a "solution" is finding something that works to curb #3 and NOT interfere with #1 or #2. The other trick is to make the penalty, which affects only #3 and not #1 or #2, be plausible in terms of realism. In other words, a "solution" that penalizes all three types of Area Fire, or penalizes #3 in such a way that is not at all realistic, then it's not a "solution" worth pursuing. Especially since any solution, no matter how simplistic, involves bumping some other feature off the development consequences that also have to suck up development time to fix.
What are the possible solutions that fit what I've said above? Well, if we had a solution it would already be in the game, so obviously we don't have one And in nearly 11 years of talking about this issue nobody else has come up with one either. Is it possible to come up with something that would work? I don't think so.
What I do know is that slapping an arbitrary time delay on Area Fire is absolutely not a good thing. There's zero realism behind that idea, so it is inherently gamey. A gamey solution to a gamey problem generally just creates more gamey issues. And it certainly screws with types #1 and #2 which penalties are decidedly harmful to in terms of both realism and gameplay. So absolutely, without any doubt in my mind at all, time delays for the use of Area Fire are not up for consideration.
Time delays for moving, like CMx1, are an entirely different matter. In that case time delays simulate the problems with internal coordination of movement, which is an established issue which soldiers train very hard to overcome. Time delays are not necessarily easy to assess fairly based on conditions (we had complaints/problems with CMx1's implementation, to say the least!), but they are at least pass the test in terms of being inherently appropriate. And yet we purposefully decided to try CM without them since even our modest implementation was quite problematic from a realism standpoint.
Wider area covered also fails to pass the test. What this does is water down the suppressive effect #1 and #2 should be getting for no legitimate reason. It also means unrealistic wasteful ammo expenditure for all three situations. I say all three because what we're trying to do here is PREVENT #3 from happening at all, so allowing it to expend even one bullet is unrealistic. So penalizing #1 and #2 with reduced suppression and higher ammo useage so the player can STILL get an unrealistic (though slightly reduced) results from #3 doesn't get us further along.
Don't get me wrong, it's an interesting topic and I for one would love to find a magical solution to this issue. I just think it's about as likely to happen as me winning Mega Bucks (I don't play, so that gives you an idea of the odds I'm giving this). The only thing we can do is mitigate the problem through other game features, such as Realtive Spotting and the eventual CoPlay. The problem will still be there, just like it is now, but it will be more difficult to leverage it to an unrealistic advantage.
Artillery
We're not planning any significant changes to the Artillery UI (and I must stress the UI, not the artillery system or it's features!!) for the near term. While c3k's suggestions aren't necessarily bad, they aren't at all easy to implement. Our time would be far better spent on other things which arguably are more important.
Still, I would like to see some sort of "Repeat Mission" feature. As has been pointed out here and before, it shouldn't cost much time to fire the same mission again. Arguably even if the battery has subsequently fired at another target inbetween (i.e. the FDC still has the info from the last time).
And Apocal is very much correct when he says: -
I just imagine I'm the CO, turning to my FISTer/FO/FSO, etc. saying, "this is what I want, make it happen."
This gets into the "many hats" problem that CM inherently has. In real life the amount of control is defined by the guy calling in the strike. If it is a Rifle Squad SGT he gets almost no control, if he is the FIST he gets a TON of control. But the FDC, which is operating under SOPs assigned by the Battalion and/or Brigade CO, has the final say on what happens. One Major I spoke with joked about when he was a Captain in Afghanistan... no matter how many times he requested WP as the spotting round he never got one.
When I was designing the Artillery and Air Support mechanics I had to decide what level of control the player should have. Players want basically all the control possible, and with some justification since they are also in theory wearing all the hats. So instead of having a convoluted system where the amount of control varied depending on who you selected to fire, you basically get pretty much full control all the time no matter who you select. Since the whole game is unrealistically within the player's control, it's not inconsistent to give the player this sort of control for Artillery/Air.
But we didn't want to take it TOO FAR in the direction of FDC Simulator. So we approximated the FDC in that we prepackaged some of the results and do not let players get too specific.
First picture of the game CM:Normandy?
Bridges
Yeah, bridges over water are a must. Being able to destroy them is also a must, even though there are probably few examples of even contested bridges being blown up during active CM scale combat. The exceptional and/or important ones, however, get a lot of attention in the history books. The majority of demolished bridges were done prior to engagement with enemy forces because it simply was a surer bet. Little thought was put towards doing it under enemy fire so as to give wargamers cool, dramatic material for scenarios for hundreds of years to come .
Air and artillery against bridges were generally ineffective in demolishing a bridge. Sometimes they weakened them enough that they would collapse under their own weight later on, or were at least rendered temporarily unusable due to either damage or risk from the actual attacks at the time they happened.
Direct fire, by tanks and SP artillery, could easily take out small bridges if given the opportunity. But for big ones... fuhgeddaboutit Engineers, with enough explosives an time to set them correctly, were the primary way of bringing a bridge down in WW2.