Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: FlyForLenin
Having a multiplayer version, with say, 12 people on each team, with 1 person as the "leader", and the other eleven controlling theaters/fronts/divisions/whatever, could be pretty interesting. Definitely not possible with current technology, but it could be interesting in the future, for those willing to do it.

It's possible if you can get people all in the same room and divvy up responsibilities. It's actually a very fun thing to do if you have a bunch of geeky people who want to get together and play through a scenario as a team, negotiate a course of action among themselves input it, and execute it. It's also a fairly realistic representation of how things work.

I would imagine the folks lucky enough to have access to the Pro version might just conduct some of their exercises in this manner.

Kevin

FYI, if guys have not seen these:
https://usnwc.edu/Research-and-Wargaming/Wargaming
http://www.professionalwargaming.co.uk/ ... ndbook.pdf

ORIGINAL: SeaQueen

It's also a fairly realistic representation of how things work

Only if you turn the lights off and communicate exclusively using heavily abbreviated IRC messages.

All sarcasm aside, I think the struggle would be how to effectively divide the effort among a team once you'd determined a COA/ATO. Would you break it down like unit-level MPCs, or by more functional/geographic AOR?

While I am fascinated by BIG scenarios, I prefer to play small to mid-sized once.

Make it more complex, fine. But please stay reasonable with the unit count.

How many can a player really handle effectively? Even if you leave things to the AI and Missions.

Just my 2 cents.

Cheers
Terry

ORIGINAL: ExNusquam

ORIGINAL: SeaQueen

It's also a fairly realistic representation of how things work

Only if you turn the lights off and communicate exclusively using heavily abbreviated IRC messages.

All sarcasm aside, I think the struggle would be how to effectively divide the effort among a team once you'd determined a COA/ATO. Would you break it down like unit-level MPCs, or by more functional/geographic AOR?

In my opinion, it depends on the size of the scenario. Another option would be having one guy in command of air forces, one guy in command of naval forces, one guy in command of air defence forces, etc.

If you do that, and say, in a future version of CMANO, have each "force" be its own side, the players would have to transmit information between eachother (for example, the air defence guy directing a fighter to a target via radar), only they would have to do it by some sort of fixed messaging system with a realistically modelled delay, as you suggested. This would partially omit the somewhat unrealistic instantaneous communication there is currently, and making for interesting teamwork requirements. It also makes friendly fire a real possibility/problem. It could also be possible for the enemy team to "intercept" communications, and so, say, if the naval commander is telling the guy in charge of aerial ASW where his SSN last was at X time (in order to avoid friendly fire), the enemy ASW guy could receive the "intercepted" message, and get a better idea of where the SSN is.

You would have to find some really dedicated people to do that though.

ORIGINAL: terry1040
Make it more complex, fine. But please stay reasonable with the unit count.

How many can a player really handle effectively? Even if you leave things to the AI and Missions.

I think the issue is less the number of units and geographic distribution of them so much as the scope of the scenario goals. Once a scenario becomes very large in terms of time frame, geographic distribution and number of units, the problem is less managing the units and more the amount of time it takes to effectively plan at the level of detail that Command simulates. Furthermore an actual commander in charge of a force that large wouldn't be concerned with the kinds of things that Command deal with. They'd be coordinating the efforts of subordinate commanders by identifying broad classes of targets and the rough time lines on which they should be struck, coordinating with allies to blend complimentary capabilities and coordinating with diplomats, politicians, and other government officials to shape the battlefield by non-violent means. Their subordinate commanders would then follow up and do the kinds of planning that Command simulates well (sensor-to-shooter kill chain stuff). If the scenario becomes too huge, realistically the job of the commander in charge of those forces is less about managing the kill chain and more about defining what success means, and the kinds of things around which a scenario would be designed.

Oh, I forgot to ask. When we are talking about thousands of units are we including all the ground facilities at say the airfields? I would imagine so. And what is meant by AU count?

Thanks,
Kevin

ORIGINAL: kevinkin

Oh, I forgot to ask. When we are talking about thousands of units are we including all the ground facilities at say the airfields? I would imagine so. And what is meant by AU count?

Thanks,
Kevin

We are including them, in fact, considering there can be hundreds of units within one airfield, and multiple airfields (especially in larger scenarios), airfield units probably make up the majority of the scenario's units.

AU means active unit count.

PS sorry for repetitive use of "unit" and "airfield".

Airfields are usually the ‘killer’ for AU count. You can actually cut down a lot on AU by substituting multi-component airfields for single unit airfields. While single unit airfields aren’t destructible you can script in a change from single unit to mult-component and tie it to either a special action or regular triggered event (I wrote a quick tutorial on this in the Lua Legion subforum; it’s not nearly as complex as you might think). This keeps the AU count down as much as possible while also having the benefits of a multi-component airfield on demand.

I have used single unit airfields and then placed some facilities for player to strike. Conversely, if you want to keep the runways/taxi ways, then place a multi-component A/F and then delete most of the facilities except leaving the facilities housing the needed aircraft and some strategic targets - a little tedious but doable. Separately, I wish the OOB listing could filter out all those facilities and then start in "collapsed" view. The listing would be a bit more usable. Can you imagine the listings in the types of scenarios that are the topic of this thread?

Kevin

This - https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... d_SAM.scen

ural - 04.06.2018
China OOB 2018 - Whole PLAN and PLAAF in 2018 - Sources: Wikipedia and Military Balance - Fictional deployment: Ural - You can use it for free with small credits to me - Warning! HUGE scenario with thousands of units! Use it in parts on weak PCs. Have fun! Oh, yeah... South Korea, Japan and some other countries are included too, for educational proposes.
China_Deployed_Bases_Mod_SAM.scen
5.51 MB

Literally THOUSANDS of units. [:)]

But this is OOB only. My small hobby. [:D]

p.s.
Red Dragon Descends, 2017 with 3.5 mb scen file? Pfff... Mine is bigger. [8D]

So this is what Xi plays in CMANO -- he command his entire armed forces, just like IRL. Too bad I need a Threadripper CPU for this.

Also, is there any Discord server with CMANO players?

https://discord.gg/NeJHvre

Lol. My OOB scen file size even bigger than "Desert Storm 1991 - Beta ground". 5.5 Mb vs 5.05 Mb. Hoorah! [&o][8D]

Technically i am author of largest CMANO scenario now! [8D]

I can not open in the newst CMO Version "Database does not exists" ->It is only for CMANO?

Can you update it to 2020/2022 units?
That would be great

ORIGINAL: spec111

Lol. My OOB scen file size even bigger than "Desert Storm 1991 - Beta ground". 5.5 Mb vs 5.05 Mb. Hoorah! [&o][8D]

Technically i am author of largest CMANO scenario now! [8D]

There Is Surely Nothing Quite So Useless as Doing with Great Efficiency What Should Not Be Done At All
Peter Drucker

-C

So what does CMO rely on the most, RAM, CPU, or GPU, to process the numerous calculations in large scale scenarios?

CPU I imagine. I did a test several years ago and posted it comparing several CPU and GPU combinations. GPU impact was almost negligible. CPU speed made a big difference. RAM over 8Gb had little impact, but RAM speed and SSD did have some impact.

You almost answered the question yourself...calculations. That is almost defining CPU-focused operations. While some apps can use GPUs for some calculations, CMO isn't one of them.

If it is the CPU, my next question would be how much of a difference in performance would we see with an Intel i9 10900k or Ryzen 9 5950X gaming CPU compared to a workstation PC CPU like a Ryzen Threadripper.

I wonder what specs users of the PE version of CMANO run and how large their scenarios are.