CC6 = Modern?

[ydejin]

ORIGINAL: Tactics

""The provider of all, and master of none""

Agreed, those aren't so great.

For 1995 Steel Panthers was a terrific game. TOAW is also a very good game.

[Pford]

ORIGINAL: Senior Drill

In CC6, you will see scenarios that are made to have opening barrages, plus other offboard artillery, mortars and airstrikes. Again, the number of each type is set in the scenerio design, with possibly a few varibles thrown at you.

Set by the scenario creator? Why shouldn't the player plot his own opening barrage?

[Randall Grubb]

ORIGINAL: Pford

ORIGINAL: Senior Drill

In CC6, you will see scenarios that are made to have opening barrages, plus other offboard artillery, mortars and airstrikes. Again, the number of each type is set in the scenerio design, with possibly a few varibles thrown at you.

Set by the scenario creator? Why shouldn't the player plot his own opening barrage?

When creating a battle, the maker, or designer can chose to have an opening barrage or not, anywhere he wants on the map, just like it is already in CC3. In CC6, he can also chose to give the player the option of the placement of the barrage, which the player then sets in the deployment phase before the battle begins. A "use it or lose it" option for that battle.

Depending on the battle, the player may also have a number of additional artillery, mortar and close air support attacks. The number of each that will be available and the time they each first become available is set in the scenario, or battle design.

In a theoretical "Battle A", there may be a "designed" opening barrage that effects one or both sides, like what happens in some CC3 and CoI battles. Either side, or both may also have a deployable barrage to target a particular part of the map.

After the battle starts, each side may have a combination of one or more off board artillery missions, battalion mortar missions or close air support missions (air strikes). Either side may also have none. The time when they become available is either set in the scenario (battle) design, or is random.

The Blue side may have the first of his 2, or 6 or 15 airstikes available at the start of the battle. The Red side may not have the first of his 3, or 7 or 9 available airstikes until four minutes into the battle, but has 4 artillery missions available at start, while the Blue side's 2 mortar missions are random and could be available any time from the start of the battle to up to 10 or more minutes into it.

Of course that is not to suggest that every battle will have any of those assets available to one or the other side. What off board assets any player has available for a battle, operation or campaign will be part of the design of those, and may require some allocation choices by the players. The who, what, where and when are made in the editor by the battle designer, the same editor that comes with the game.

The terms "Blue side" and "Red side" are generic forces designations used by many militaries. Their use in this post is an intentional maskirovka.

[Awac835]

I remember playing CC: battle for the bulge, if CC6 dont make it to the modern age maybe CC7 will. Tbh there is way to few wargames set in the modern era, i dont see why developers have such a hate against the present days.

Atleast battlefront will soon release CM:SF and why cant SSG make a game with there DB or BF engine set in the modern age, i mean it would be heaven.

Edit: ups forgot ofc panther games with there great AA engine, it should do for a nice modern setting also.

[Pford]

ORIGINAL: Awac835

I remember playing CC: battle for the bulge, if CC6 dont make it to the modern age maybe CC7 will. Tbh there is way to few wargames set in the modern era, i dont see why developers have such a hate against the present days.

Probably because modern weapons are more varied, complex and lethal? And they require specialised expertise that the developers may not have had time or interest to acquire. Routines and graphics for helicopters would have to be added. Also, the ranges are vastly longer.

Battlefront is making a real time upgrade to their (now) hoary engine based on a hypothetical US/Syrian war. Good luck to them but the challenge lies in making such an asymmetrical conflict interesting.

[ydejin]

ORIGINAL: Pford

Battlefront is making a real time upgrade to their (now) hoary engine based on a hypothetical US/Syrian war. Good luck to them but the challenge lies in making such an asymmetrical conflict interesting.

Slightly off topic, but the main point of the upgrade isn't to make it real-time. It will provide both real-time play and traditional WEGO turn-based play.

More on topic, they said they wanted to start with modern warfare because among other reasons it would be a lot easier to start with an engine capable of handling modern warfare and then retrofitting it to do WW2 than trying to take an engine designed for WW2 and trying to upgrade it to do modern warfare.

[tigercub]

1990 Gulf War

good if you want to [>:]

[Randall Grubb]

Scale is the real thing. Close Combat is just that: The close battle at personal and visual ranges. Some weapons modeled in the Close Combat series can reach out to over 4000 meters and a few even farther than that. On maps that are only 400, 600 or 1000 meters wide or tall.

I say Battle Fronts's design approch as described by ydejin is totally backwards. Any round from a weapon or the effects of a missile or indirect fire impact from a WWI weapon is only different from the same effects of a modern day weapon's round in the range and penetration of RHA steel at set increments of the range.

A M-1903 Springfield rifle has the same penetrations of a M-14 rifle at all ranges. They fire very, very similar rounds. The semi automatic M-14 can put out more rounds per minute than the bolt action M-1903, but that is the only signficant difference.

I can take well establish and verified blast and shrapnel effects of a WWII mortar round and increase those to the very less publicized and documented effects of a modern round. Does Battle Front intend to use unverifiable data to start a modern weapon and expect to be able to "dumb" it down to a previous era's specifications? What are they basing the comparison on? I have government furnished data from the USMC for the weapons data in the military training simulation versions of CC, which does get filtered in to the commercial side. Is Battle Front's basis from Goggled websites?

And then there is game play. "One Shot, One Kill" is all fine and great if I have 200 units and can spawn more, but it really starts to suck if I have only 15 or so to fight the map with. In the military sims, it is a fact of life (and death). Those sims are for learning how not to get killed or get your men killed while performing your mission. A very different type of game play than a commercial game.

And quite a bit more realistic than most gamers would tend to put up with.

[Beeblebrox]

And quite a bit more realistic than most gamers would tend to put up with.

A fact rarely considered.  CCM is an excellent trainer, but a crap single player game unless you just want to fight custom battles all the time.  Joe Public does not get off on 'realism' if it doesn't give them a buzz in game.

[ravinhood]

ORIGINAL: Senior Drill

CC6 is not Red Phoenix.  It will not be Koera circa 2008 and it will not be Korea circa 1950.  What it will be is a CC as never before and a modder's dream come true.

Almost sounds like CC6 is going to be a modern day "Wargamers Construction Set"..am I close am I warm? haha

[squadleader_id]

I hope the AI performance will be 'boosted' also...eventhough CC is an amazing H2H game...a lot of players also enjoy playing solo against the AI. With bigger maps...the AI performance has to be addressed...maybe add a bit of scripted behaviour for realistic AI attack/defence patterns?

[Rabbitman]

I know it's been mentioned that something akin to landing craft will be in this game but would you really need them to play a Pacific theatre themed game??
 
CC1 missed out on the most famous landing of all the war and was still an excellend post D-Day game and I don't see why a potential Pacific themed game couldn't start post landing. Granted that could limit the potential campaign but I'd still be more than happy to purchase it.
 
OR Matrix could just re-release Close Combat 1.[;)]

[ravinhood]

Any links to this CC6 game? I wanna see descriptions and screenshots. I wanna read AI improvements I wanna read new RANDOMIZED maps and point buy system gameplay. Buy your own team from 1000 points to 10000 points, play anywhere during the war at anytime with every possible combat vehicle, weapon and anything inbetween from 1939 to 1945.

[bizon]

Any word on whether the following flaws, with simple fixes are going to be addressed in CC6?

• Trenches that are more harmful than good, because they are spotted before the units are.
• Minefields that both sides know the positions of before the battle starts. It would be nice to place your own mines. It wouldn't make sense to be able to place them just before a battle but perhaps at the beginning of a campaign, before you see where your enemy is going to concentrate his attacks. A system of allocating points to maps in a campaign and then placing them on the individual maps. Above all else, that the enemy wouldn't know where they were until they "discovered" them.
• 15 team cap. It is ridiculous to expect to advance on an area with the same amount of teams as the defender. The military rule of one organizational level higher for an attack (platoon to attack a squad, company to attack a platoon etc.)

There are many others but these would seem like easy fixes that could be implemented in a CC6.

I have been playing CC since CC1 came out.  I have played literally thousands of computer games starting on my TRS-80, C64, Amiga, and Many PC's (my latest is a Core2 Beast).  There is no game that I have played as much as CC, even a fraction as much.  As I tell my CC comrades, it is the worst game of it's type, but it is the only game of it's type.  No game does what CC does (Not even CM) but's it's flaws are very frustrating, and they grow even more so as you can see more and more what the game should be like and how easily some major flaws could be fixed.
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[templeton]

I think WW2 is best choice because of the relative parity both sides had at the tactical level.
 
Regardless whether Gulf War I was legit or not, how many want to play the Iraqi Army...? How much interest can there be when the odds are impossible?
 
Now, although Close Combat has already done a number of WW2 themes - there is always the argument that with a new engine, there may be new life put into a Normandy Game.
 
Look at the board game market - there are many games covering single battles, but each done in a different way - or at a different scale or focus.
 
If CC6 or 7 made you a Battalion commander, and you had your AOR and objectives - and you had to pick which company to use, which to keep in reserve, see which assets you had etc. That would be a totally new way to play the Normandy Campaign - and an interesting one to get down into details such as resting people, seeing who is in hospital... etc etc.
 
Altenativly, it could be at a smaller scale, and you are just a company commander, and in between missions perform some functions of company commander etc etc.
 
That has not been done before, even though Normandy has been done before. Could be interesting as you don't know if you will have armour support or air support in advance... perhaps supplies are delayed, so you have to conduct an attack with limited ammunition.
 
 
I think there are many interesing things that can be done that are new, but in theatres we've already fought in.
 
 
AND, let us imagine that they make Close Combat 6 or 7 possible to play with 4 or 6 people, allowing for teams on each side, suddenly you get the chance to do a Battalion attack with two companies, commanded by 2 players, with the third player taking the HQ and support assets. We've certainly not done that before!!!
 
 
Anyway, I'm just beside myself with joy that the BEST COMPUTER GAME EVER is coming back to a PC near me! (preferably the one on my desk!)

[Rabbitman]

Regardless whether Gulf War I was legit or not, how many want to play the Iraqi Army...? How much interest can there be when the odds are impossible?

With a lot of war games, with one side you are pretty much just holding off the inevitable. CC 1 is a good example, albiet on a lesser scale.

[Engelbrekt]

ORIGINAL: bizon
[*]Minefields that both sides know the positions of before the battle starts. It would be nice to place your own mines. It wouldn't make sense to be able to place them just before a battle but perhaps at the beginning of a campaign, before you see where your enemy is going to concentrate his attacks. A system of allocating points to maps in a campaign and then placing them on the individual maps. Above all else, that the enemy wouldn't know where they were until they "discovered" them.

I would also like very much to see placing of mines as a part of the game. But I think the defender should be able to place mines during the setup wherever he wants on the map and the attacker should not know their position. Mines were and are the poor mans anti-tank weapon and it would be very nice if they could be included in CC6.

[Randall Grubb]

Player enplaceable mines and entrechments already exist in one of Simtek's military simulations, their properties set in the scenerio editor as to whether it is player placeable or map feature and whether one, both, or neither side can see them at game start. Mines also have options for being contact, timer or command detonated.

These may appear in CC6, in one form or another. The only certain thing so far is that only the owning side will be able to see them when those are set to be that way in the Editor. Some will and some won't, depending on what you get. Placeable mines will not always be available, battle or operation depending. It may cost the player to get them, or it may cost the player fatigue factors to place them. Or not. Or something kinda similar.

The one thing that definately will be avoided is to give too much to a player to be able to set up in the pre-battle. After all, do you really want to wait 20 minutes for your opponent to finally finish his minefield and AT gunpits, plus troop deployments before you can begin to play the game? Or to be the player with the mines and firing positions and spend a lot of time picking and choosing those "just right" spots, only to have your opponents disconnect because they got bored waiting for you to finish and start the game? Multiply that by having two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, or even nine others waiting on you.

Some musing: A timer counts down to the detonation of a very large explosive, capable of being disabled by the other side. Have we seen that before? Yep, in a way. Or a mine that I decide the exact moment when it goes off. Have you seen it in CC? I have. [8D]