Combat Mission: Shock Force

[Exel]

So the new Combat Mission, set in a fictional US invasion of Syria in 2008, was released today by Battlefront. What little I've got to play it suggest it is by far the most realistic tank combat game bar Steel Beasts. Fighting my first battle (2 M1A1HC platoons vs numberless hordes of Syrian T-55s and T-72s) I was quite literally stunned by how the battle played out and how the units and their AI performed. Far more real-life like than I could have dared to hope for.

 

The game is still pretty buggy in its 1.01 release version (Euro retails ship out as 1.00 and need patching) but after getting proper (new) drivers and a fix for dual core cpu's it's playable. Definitely worth looking into if realistic tactical level strategy games are of any interest.

[Ssnake]

Downloaded it, but haven't installed yet. Tomorrow.

Edited July 28, 2007 by Ssnake

[Exel]

The US and Canadian retail version have been delayed for 1-2 weeks. Sucks to be them. But maybe some of the most screaming problems in the game will be fixed by then.

[ShotMagnet]

Stuart, if you haven't already see the SB.com thread regarding this topic.

 

Sadly, most illuminating.

 

 

Shot

[Ssnake]

As an Windows XP user with GeForce 7800 GTX and a single core CPU I'm not experiencing crashes or anything, yet I'm not overflowing with enthusiasm, sadly. It was supposed to be my birthday present, now I have to shift my hopes on the Order of the Stick boardgame.

I've tested a tank-heavy scenario but don't feel too comfortable yet with controlling the units, or the camera for that matter. Yes, I get by, but the controls feel sluggish and though things look prettier they're not exactly easier to click it seems. Mybe I'm a conservative old fart, but CMAK felt more comfortable in handling. The engine doesn't seem to handle large maps too well - if that is what's causing the sluggish responsiveness to camera position changes. I don't see me anytime soon playing a real-time battle with CMSF - partly because of the awkward controls, partly because the options for planning are not anymore sophisticated than what we know from previous versions. It was OK then for a strictly turn-based thing, but I don't see this work out well in a real-time situation, especially if in urban combat. MOvement paths look prettier now, but at the expense of control point being much harder to click from a distance. And you can't shift their positions anymore, you have to delete the entire movement path. (Haven't found out how to get ALL moevement paths displayed simultaneously either)

It's harder to coordinate the maneuver of just a single platoon than it ought to be. I mean, if the tanks don't follow my movement orders in a strict manner, why not have the platoon move in formation at the whim of computer controlled crews anyway. If you don't do what I say, at least make it convenient.

 

Low performance is a pity all the more since the maps still are way too small to allow good maneuver with modern tanks for anything beyond two tank platoons, it seems. Combine this with the silly game mechanic to "capture" specific terrain instead of just covering it by fire if needed be it can force you to drive into very unfavorable positions to achieve your mission goals. Also, the small maps make it unavoidable to have reinforcements spawn out of nowhere, potentially very close to your own positions, without any advance warning. If an entire T-72 tank company appears out of nowhere 500m away in your deep right flank and all you got is a single M1 platoon, well, good-bye. That's what standoff range is for. It was OK in a WW2 setting with typical engagement ranges around 500-800m, but now engagement ranges of 3000m aren't uncommon while the engine still seems to be tailored for infantry battalions equipped with SMGs and bolt-action rifles.

 

Things look pretty overall. They seem to have created shadows by extra planes. Unfortunately this results in stripes and zig-zag patterns due to limited Z-buffer resolution. Kinda OK compromise, but I'm not sure if in the light of the overall performance this was necessary and justified. What's way more important though is the low resolution background pixel mess, the apparent absence of a LOS pointer, and the fact that the terrain is prettier, but still not easy enough to read in order to give my vehicles optimal battle positions. I either see my troops overexposed, or in defilade without a clear LOS to engage.

 

 

Finding yourself facing T-55s with Strykers - well, it reinforces the verdict that has been spoken over them here at this Grate Sight, but isn't exactly fun to explore from a tactical point of view - you just lose, not the least because the concept of information superiority for the Stryker BCT isn't adequately modelled. Where are the UAVs to give me ample warning to set up the Javelin ambush. Instead, the vehicles indeed become Sparky's "Wheeled DeathTrap Trucks" - it were funny to watch them open fire with 50 cals and Mk 19s if only it would actually help anything.

 

 

German localization is underwhelming. Doctrinally correct wording? Forget it. They could at least have tried to get that one right instead of literal translations.

So, even if all the technical issues will be solved there's still way to go IMO. I guess it still can be fun if you pick the proper tactical vignettes but it's not the universal tool I had hoped for.

 

Well, time to start reading the manual. Maybe that'll help a bit. By the time I'm done with that there may even be a patch out though it will probably deal with eliminating trouble that I don't have.

 

 

 

Having said all this, it still is a Combat Mission title, don't get me wrong. And finally they made it into modern ages. That alone counts for a lot.

[Ssnake]

More woes. One cannot specify which squad weapon will be employed against a specific target. For example, in the training mission with Javelins against bunkers what's the first thing my squads do? Open fire with rifles at 900m instead of using the missiles. Rifle fire against bunkers at such a range will only make the bunker crew angry and draw unwelcome attention.

 

Apaches and A-10s come back for a second pass on an already burning tank - apparently in a perplexing attempt to kill it even more - and ignore the other tank in pristine condition right next to it. How can such nonsense pass beta stage?

 

 

I don't want to trash the fine folks at Battlefront, but it seems to having been a bit premature to release the title. The urban combat training scenario has five mission bullets, of which only the first one has been translated. No problem for me, and hopefully just an oversight, but needless. Another indicator pointing in the same direction.

[Amedeo Matteucci]

More woes. One cannot specify which squad weapon will be employed against a specific target. For example, in the training mission with Javelins against bunkers what's the first thing my squads do? Open fire with rifles at 900m instead of using the missiles. Rifle fire against bunkers at such a range will only make the bunker crew angry and draw unwelcome attention.

You have to use the ANTITANK TEAM command in the ADMIN menu, that permits to issue orders specifically to the squad's AT assets.

 

Kind regards,

 

Amedeo

[Ssnake]

I'd file that under "workaround". It's kinda OK, but I can't give "hold fire" orders to anyone (including the rest of the squad - "hide" might work as a substitute).

 

In the urban combat test mission it's sad that the buildings still are single rooms per level; internal walls would at least help to limit behind-wall weapon effects.

 

Will in the later, real missions, civilians fill the houses? It seems to me that the employment of cal .50s is a bit liberal in populated areas. And my troops are dorks. In a bold maneuver I send the platoon to the rear of objective buildings since the main street so obviously screams "Ambush!". Dismount, and order to storm the building - and they walk around the house (ignoring the rear entrance) right into the fire of the enemy ambush forces. Right now I feel that I'm a lion leading donkeys when it should be the other way.

[Mobius]

One guy who posted on the Battlefront forum had a brilliant observation. This was when BF moved from more abstract squad level game of CMx1 to an individual man scale of CMSF the AI had to improve by a level of magnitude to run each man. They could get away with not modeling each fold in the earth, each log, building corner or hiding place by abstracting cover in CMx1. But once they get down to where each man is modeled the AI must be up to the task of running the group of individuals realistically. If not then you get donkeys running about.

Of course this was met with an editorial from BF, with much hand waving, saying how everything was much better.

[Amedeo Matteucci]

It's kinda OK, but I can't give "hold fire" orders to anyone

Yes, that's really annoying, not mainly with long range ATGM fire but with LAW attacks in closed terrain. Sometimes you order a 2 men RPG team to fire at an AFV only to see that, while the RPG gunner goes to a spot from which he has LOS to the intended target, the other guy (that, unfortunately has LOS from the start) harmlessy empties a whole 30 round AK magazine on the vehicle thus drawing the fire of all the enemy units in the area on such a carefully selected ambush position...

 

Will in the later, real missions, civilians fill the houses? It seems to me that the employment of cal .50s is a bit liberal in populated areas.

Civilian presence is abstracted though a "density" factor that gives the possibility to indentify "unconventional" enemy forces. I agree that this is, probably, the best compromise, given AI limitations, but, AFAIK there's no tracking of possible "collateral damage" when spraying urban blocks with area fire.

 

Regards,

 

Amedeo

Edited August 1, 2007 by Amedeo Matteucci

[Ssnake]

Civilian presence is abstracted though a "density" factor that gives the possibility to indentify "unconventional" enemy forces. I agree that this is, probably, the best compromise, given AI limitations, but, AFAIK there's no tracking of possible "collateral damage" when spraying urban blocks with area fire.

Now, that's something I don't really understand. I mean, one of the biggest advantages from a design point of view was that all CM titles could afford a pretty strong computer control logic because it wwas turn based and they could devote a LOT more computing power between turns to calculate the next minute of battle. Since they have at least retained the OPTION to continue playing turn based, which I prefer, one would assume that they are taking advantage of it. That there would be LESS of a need to abstract so many things. Like, no interior walls in buildings. Like, adding civilians. Or an infrastructure model of a city, with options to utilize them during military operations.

 

If you don't do much of that stuff in a real-time application - well, I understand too well that there are many technological challenges tied to all this, especially the scarcity of computing power (unless you manage to split the whole code into a multi-threaded application which, so far, wasn't a really good idea in an environment that was dominated by single core CPUs. And even then you can only increase the number of CPU cycles devoted to CCL by a factor of ten, not ten thousand or a million like in a turn based simulation.

[Ssnake]

Patch 1.02 has been released.

[MDFeingold]

I had a rather bad experience the other day. I haven't really dug into CM:SF yet, but I fired up one of the quick battles just to take a quick look. Before doing so, I applied the 1.02 patch.

 

I sent an infantry fireteam over a hill. Some dust trails were spotted a few hundred meters a way, and the fireteam's Stryker (overwatching from the crest) was KO'd. OK, so far. Then a BMP materializes a few meters in front of the fireteam, having moved up from further down the hill. Presumably, LOS was blocked by a small rise just in front of the fireteam, but this would only be true if LOS was measured from surface level, rather than eye level. Clearly, the fireteam would have seen the upper portion of the BMP, but I suppose, given that the game is a 3D realization of a top-down boardgame-style wargame, this is nitpicking a bit.

 

In any event, the BMP proceeds to drive right through the fireteam (and I mean the soldiers ghosted right through the BMP). I don't mind the graphical simplification, but the BMP failed to engage the soldiers and vice versa. The soldiers continued walking a few dozen meters down the hill, when they came upon the remainder of the BMP platoon. They failed to spot the BMPs and plodded onwards, oblivious, while the BMPs mowed them down. Their only reaction was the individial cries and crumpling of soldiers when hit.

 

I can't speak about the remainder of the game, but this display was atrocious.

Edited August 13, 2007 by MDFeingold

[Ssnake]

Yea... several things come together here. Discrepancies between 3D representation and "under the hood" calculations, which are bad enough. Don't mind the simplification with the vehicle-soldier collisions though it seems to be primarily a reaction to the inability to avoid collisions in the first place with appropriate reactions of individual soldiers. Still, kinda acceptable to me as a means to save precious CPU cycles.

 

But the path finding hasn't improved noticeably since the 2001 release of CMBO which is a bit disappointing. Houses are still square blocks (though you can have up to eight stories). Maps do not scale well at all; responsiveness to control input becomes sluggish as soon as maps reache a useful dimension. Stay with WW2 typical engagement ranges and everything's fine - except, that you don't have WW2 equipment but Javelins, M1s, Stryker MGSs. Create maps of 5000x2500m and you find yourself in a world of hurt in several ways.

1. There aren't many pregenerated maps of that size
   
2. Auto-generation of maps is no longer available
   
3. Just creating a blank map of these proportion requires you to click "enlarge" buttons for three minutes straight. And I'm talking clickfests.
   
4. Then you need to assemble the map from fixed 16x16m tiles. Yes, I know, you only need to do this for roads and houses and some of the trees and walls.
   

Still, not exactly the kind of map editor you'd expect to see these days.

 

Forfeiting turn based advantages (like, a much higher amount of CPU cycles available to plot the computer's course of action) in favor of a not so terribly useful real-time mode (and hence just breaking up continuous play into minute chunks with unlimited pause for plotting orders and review the last minute) is something that strikes me as a bit disingenious.

 

All in all I think I'll give it a reast for the moment and check back around Easter next year to download the then latest patches and see if things have significantly improved.

[Ssnake]

It's not as if it were a total write-off. I'd keep an eye on it, and reconsider around Christmas, or maybe late spring '08 in your case.

I'm disappointed, but maybe primarily because CMBO was such a great start of the series with CMAK a worthy culmination, so I had high hopes for CMSF. They probably had good reasons for their design decisions though I don't support them. But it also appears as if many, many areas of the engine haven't abandoned the implicit restrictions that were programmed in at root level when they started on CMBO, and now that much larger maps are required, it shows.

 

For what it attempts to be it isn't bad. At platoon level it's quite OK. It's just that I think that platoon level is a level or two too low for a meaningful strategy game. Not discarding platoon level tactics as irrelevant or anything, but my personal interests go a bit beyond that.

 

 

It's a bit of missed opportunity. Where's the option to import DTEDs and Shape files. Where are the compartmentalized buildings that would allow a really detailed simulation of urban combat, especially since there is an option for partial destruction of buildings and squads and heavy platforms modelled in similar degree of fidelity. But when I can split squads into teams, I also want to place booby traps at door or window entrances, claymores in the garden. I want a model of a stairwell inside buildings, and at least four rooms per building level. It would allow to study the challenges of house-to-house fighting without having to use a first person shooter. A turn-based engine could even calculate physics models offline. There could be a simulation of the power grid, sewage system, mobile phone cells, sigint, watter supply network, autonomous civilian traffic. The needless limitation to a real-time model in a probably fruitless attempt to chase the RTS clickfesters eliminates all this. That's the real disappointment - missed opportunity.

Edited August 14, 2007 by Ssnake

[Mobius]

The designers just don't want to admit that the scale factor played into the problems. They thought more detail was better and they could just scale up from man to man by using sheer computer power.

[Ssnake]

The designers just don't want to admit that the scale factor played into the problems. They thought more detail was better and they could just scale up from man to man by using sheer computer power.

Well, in principle you could... but then don't make it real-time.

[Sardaukar]

Just gave BFC my 2c (not that they'd care, compared to when they were BigTimeSoftware):

 

I gave quite extensive play to my buddy's CMSF last weekend..and I found the state of pathfinding and TacAI appalling.

 

I do thank BigTimeSoftware/Battlefront for producing great games that I have enjoyed years and years. Value for my money has been very good.

 

State of the CMSF seems to be pre-beta to me, compared to other BFC releases. If trying to model individual soldiers, TacAI needs to be multitude better, ditto with pathfinding.

 

And I wonder how the hell they came to conclusion to use UI like this ? Totally remapped hotkeys (great idea...) and there is no real shorcut to get fast commands out until you memorize new hotkeys. Is that to increase the chaos of battle by forcing player to not be able to input orders ?

 

Has the hubris from previous games gotten into BFC ? Because otherwise I cannot understand why things are like this, after years of very good quality.

 

I am *very* dissapointed with this game. maybe it will evolve like CMBO/BB/AK....but my impression is not good at all.

 

Here is a good example, pic from Ambush Tutorial (turn-based, Basic Training):

 

 

 

TacAI run the infantry in left out of the building..don't have any idea why..they were not under any threat..and certainly should not come in front of the building by themselves to be shot at by enemy in front. When I discovered that, I gave them and covering Strykers orders to move as indicated by blue arrows. After a while..red arrows was what happened. Strykers on road went to left and one buried it's front into building. Other is going back and forth scrubbing lamp post..despite the fact that it was other side of the road when I issued the orders.

 

Infantry in front of building (for some TacAi reason...), starting position in blue circle (where they were supposed to stay put..inside concrete building), were halfway thru blue arrow and on right side of the road, when coming under fire from front thru road. Did they go behind building in right to be in cover and continue as ordered...no..they did 120 degrees left and run across the street, their back towards enemy...hideously exposed to enemy fire for something like 30+ meters in open compared to just moving ahead and being in cover, way under 10 m.

 

Front Stryker in right of the pic is also scrubbing lamp post..despite not given any orders after having it on *left* side of the road. TacAI in it's wisdom, seemed to move it in front of other Stryker (who had sudden movement path thru stone wall to right, without my input...but managed to spot that and cancelled) to get stuck with lamp post on *right* side of the street... With gunner going thru endles cycle of spotting-elevating-aiming without doing anything..since they are rubbing the lamp post...

 

Great game....

Edited August 28, 2007 by Sardaukar

[Manic Moran]

Due to the inability of a workmate to get it the thing to work on his machine, he's given me a copy. I'm playing on it now.

 

There seems to be very little chance to spot RPG/ATGMs before they fire, fair enough, but damn to they hit often. Haven't formed a conclusion on things yet, still too soon.

 

NTM

[Sardaukar]

Due to the inability of a workmate to get it the thing to work on his machine, he's given me a copy. I'm playing on it now.

 

There seems to be very little chance to spot RPG/ATGMs before they fire, fair enough, but damn to they hit often. Haven't formed a conclusion on things yet, still too soon.

 

NTM

 

Lack of decent TacAI makes AFVs to do some very stupid facing decisions. Patch 1.03 did improve it somewhat..but they still have long way ahead. I don't think this will ever replace CMBB/AK in my computer.

 

It has good potential to become very good modern warfare game...but some design decisions just do not make any sense to me. And it has way too many problems to be truly playable now (in sense of "out of box CMBO/CMBB/CMAK"-comparison).

 

Also got it from buddy who had big technical problems with it...and was not very impressed either...went back to CMBB/AK.

Edited September 1, 2007 by Sardaukar

[Paul G.]

So any word on Combat Mission: Brigade Command or whatever it's called?

[Sardaukar]

No idea about that. Combat Mission:Shock Force I think is more like Combat Mission: Sucks Force... I really really hope they'd get it better, just for Battlefront's sake.

 

But I definitely feel like my Force is drained after every game...

[Gregory]

Why was this topic locked briefly this afternoon?

[Manic Moran]

Why was this topic locked briefly this afternoon?

 

Probably my fault.

 

NTM

[Ssnake]

Apparently Patch 1.04 has been released which supposedly fixes many performance / frame rate related issues, and then some:

 

http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/ultimat...c;f=52;t=003103