Improvements you want to WinSPMBT
 

The game's great, and it's probably the most realisitc war sim out there. Still, being a video game, it falls short on some of the more important parts of war. In the past, it was hard to cram all this stuff into a game, but I think that the Steel Panthers series can, potentially, be a real battlefield simulation.

The equipment and morale stuff in WinSPMBT is good, IMO, but the game dosen't really represent the chaos of war at all. There needs to be something to represent that. How about there's a preference option that turns on or off the "fog of war". When the option's on, you won't be able to see the exact composition of enemy units, but only a rough estimate of their strength if they're well-hidden. For example, it's happened countless times in history that an attacker has come across a few, well-hidden infantry, been ambushed, and overestimated their size. You might be able to get an exact count of bigger weapons, like tanks, but in real life there's no way that you'd be able to spot every single infantryman firing at you like you do in WinSPMBT.

There also needs to be some kind of fatigue thing. Infantryman can dash 100-200 yards without getting too worn out, but in WinSPMBT it limits you to two hexes/turn for infantry movement. They should allow you to move faster than that, but it wears out your troops quicker. Fatigue reduces morale, effectiveness, speed, etc., and should also accrue when a unit has been in combat for too long. It's really a quite important thing, and I don't think it should have been left out.

Has anyone played the old Steel Panthers III? The "orders" function was a good idea. Each unit gets only so many orders per turn, and they regenerate at a random rate each turn. Orders are spent issuing some commands, like moving, but not the more commonsense commands like firing that a unit does on its own initiative. Not only does this orders function represent the different abilities of your unit commanders ( a less competent commander would be able to get less orders and get less things done), but, most importantly, it represents the Soviet-style lack of initiative in some armies (the Russian units tended to get less orders, representing the fact that a commander won't do anything on his own and has to wait for HQ to tell him exactly what to do).

I hope you don't see this as a complaint, because it's a great game. But it's some good food for thought if you ever want to make the game super-realistic. Factoring in psychological factors and the friction of war are hard to to in a game, but that dosen't mean we can't try.

Re: Improvements you want to WinSPMBT
 

Hi,

Usually when a soldier enters a battle-zone he watch his every step.

In WinSPMBT, an infantry unit, when marching in a road, may travel up to 7 hexes (350 meters in one turn (5 minutes). If I am not wrong this is translated to 4,2 Km per hour, which represents a forced march for a fully equipped soldier.
Inside a forest a unit may travel 2 hexes per turn (100 meter per 5 minutes) because of two reasons. First he must bypass the obstacles and secondly he must advance in a very cautious way due to the fact that he doesn't really know if an enemy is hidden behind a tree!

Concerning the fatigue level, I will agree with you that this is something interesting in a battle but you must take into consideration that most of these battles last for 15-20 turns (75-100 minutes).

cheers,
Pyros

Re: Improvements you want to WinSPMBT
 

I guess you're right about the fatigue thing. An infantryman can only dash 100 or so meters so it dosen't really make a difference to the game. Still, the ideas about "fog of war" and putting the orders concept back in place would help a lot.

Re: Improvements you want to WinSPMBT
 

"Usually when a soldier enters a battle-zone he watch his every step."

I think this has been always in the SP engine... In SP1-3 when unit was not spotted it moved at top speed (forced march). After being spotted (# or *?? appeared after the units name) they got careful and the speed was limited and after being fired upon the speed was dropped more.

Of course it was a bit stupid to know when you were spotted when you saw no enemies... That's propably the main reason the * and # marks are removed from SPMBT? But am I correct if I assume, that the mechanism still works in some level in SPMBT?

In SPWAW I think you still know when your units are seen?

Zip

Re: Improvements you want to WinSPMBT
 

What do you think of the other ideas, though? Is there any way to represent the kind of ambigious information a commander always recieves? It might also be interesting if they put a time limit on multiplayer games, to make it more realistic. It'd be interesting.

Re: Improvements you want to WinSPMBT
 

A time limit does NOT make it more realistic. The usual reasoning for it goes something like "a real force commander has a limited amount of time to make decisions so why should a player have all the time he needs?" The answer is very simple, in reality every single commander in the force (so including every specific unit commander) and many of the other individuals in those units will add their 'brainwork' to the decisionmaking process and they'll be doing that all at the same time (i.e. during a turn).
As a player you're in effect playing every unit commander, not just the overall commander. So the available time should be close to the total amount available to all those unit commanders and that would be hours per turn.

Narwan

Re: Improvements you want to WinSPMBT
 

Make it playable online
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Improvements you want to WinSPMBT
 

Narwan, I think it's crazy that you have to direct every single unit's fire. I've seen a lot of real-time command simulations where individual units do most of the menial tasks themselves. Of course, Shrapnel is only a very small company, and I'm told that the WinSPMBT code is based on the old Steel Panthers II engine (AKA thousands of lines of "C language spaghetti code" in the words of Mobhack). So it'd be great if it was playable online, etc., but it would take too much money for Shrapnel. I'm surprised, though, that noones come up with any mods or asked for a development kit for WinSPMBT.

Re: Improvements you want to WinSPMBT
 

It's either you directing all the units or leaving it up to the AI. There's little in between.
Of course you've seen real-time simulations where individual units do most of the menial tasks themselves, it's endemic to real-time for exactly the reasons I outlined. In real-time there is no time to let one single brain (the player) do all the necessary (and realistic) thinking that needs to done (and which in reality would be done by all the individuals involved separately and simultaneously). So in real-time simulations the AI has to kick in and take over a large part of that. With all the (unrealistic) consequences that brings along.
Steel Panthers has gone the other way. It gives a player maximum control by reducing the AI involvement to a minimum. It mimics realism by giving each unit sufficient 'brain'time.

But you shouldn't forget that these simulations are all exactly that: simulations. They model only part of reality and can only model part of it. Simulations always have abstractions that violate reality. Can't be helped. Both the realtime simulations and turn based simulations have their share of unavoidable unrealistic elements. And it's almost impossible to combine the two.

Narwan

Re: Improvements you want to WinSPMBT
 

Still, computer AI has advanced enough for any game to let the smaller units do some thinking for themselves. There's great potential here, but it's too bad that no big company is picking up the idea of a really realistic battlefield simulation. They're the only ones that have the money to try.

But why hasn't anyone talked about my "orders" idea I mentioned in the first post? It's an interesting little concept that needs to be considered.

Re: Improvements you want to WinSPMBT
 

Actually there are some already out there depending on what you consider realistic simulation. Are you talking 3D, top down? Any game that uses hexes or a turn based system can never hope to be "realistic".

The orders you mentioned are specific to SP3. SPMBT and SPMWW2 are based on another game engine altogther (SP2) so some things in one probably cannot be replicated in another with substantial recoding at the very least.

Re: Improvements you want to WinSPMBT
 

Regarding the "orders thing" I agree with Double_Deuce.

Re: Improvements you want to WinSPMBT
 

I guess, but it would be a pretty cool idea. There needs to be some way to represent the abilities of different unit commanders beyond morale and experience, which are kind of a superficial way to represent it. Yeah, it would require a major recoding, and it isn't all that big of a thing to warrant the effort.

Double_duece, you mentioned that there are realistic battlefiedl sims out there. What ones do you know of? I've heard of Battlfield Command (or something like that), it sounds interesting, but I haven't tried it.

Re: Improvements you want to WinSPMBT
 

Check out Point of Attack 2 - looks pretty impressive if it would only work! Hopefully soon ...

But I agree that there are no excellent sims right now that take advantage of computers growing processing power. I'd love to see a computer company put together a game with the detailed OOBs of SPMBT, the ability to give detailed orders (like TacOps or Harpoon) at the single vehicle/fire-team level, but with a graphical interface more like an RTS, with a good zoom and floating camera to observe the action in 3D from 360 degrees.

Maybe someday ...

Re: Improvements you want to WinSPMBT
 

I'm waiting for the day I hear that it is working properly (without all the crashes, etc) and then it'll be on my PC. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

Re: Improvements you want to WinSPMBT
 

When I think of Battlefield Simulations I think of games like TacOps, ATF: Armored Task Force and BCT: Brigade Combat Team Commander (and there are others). I don't really think of FPS games as simulations in the military simulation sense. They are what I would call tactical training simulators or a way to train individual soldiers to enhance their combat proficiencies/senses.

When I think battlefield simulators I think of tools/games to train commanders in an overall combat environment and not micromanage each soldier. I know others would disagree mostly because everyone holds a different view on what is a battlefield simulator supposed to be, do and look like. I guess a question to you is, what would you want out of a battlefield simulation?

Re: Improvements you want to WinSPMBT
 

Well, I heard of ATF and it looks really nice. But it dosen't have what WinSPMBT has, mainly the ability to play almost any battle in recent history and a good representation of morale. FPS aren't really true "simulators" because soldiers (the video game players) are always fearless. For example, if everyone playing Battlefield 1942 fought on the real battlefield like they did in the game, they'd all get medals of honor. There's no way to reflect supression or morale, although they can be very realistic otherwise.

Has anyone played Jane's Fleet Command? Someone needs to build a game like that for land combat, with cool 3D visuals and a huge battlefield.

Re: Improvements you want to WinSPMBT
 

What is needed is a game like Combat Mission but with graphics that aren't from the mid-80s and that doesn't work in turns but rather is real-time with a pause button. Oh, and better objects/maps that include buildings, etc.

I know it can be done. I think the perception is that the market for such games is just too thin.

Re: Improvements you want to WinSPMBT
 

That's right, Pepper. Everyone likes these crazy RTS games like C&C Generals (the old ones were good, the new one sucks). People put a huge ammount of work into FPS and RTS, but they should think of putting just a little into a good combat sim. I'm sure it would pay off for them, because any serious effort by a big company to make a combat sim would dominate the small market.

Re: Improvements you want to WinSPMBT
 

I'd like to see something along the lines of the CM 3D model BUT with WinSPMBT's depth of OOB's. I could even go for the WE-GO type system CM uses.

Re: Improvements you want to WinSPMBT
 

Well, would like to see the worst phenomenon corrected one day http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif,
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...o=&fpart=1

Artur.

Re: Improvements you want to WinSPMBT
 

That definetly would be a big improvement. I don't know C, but I'm sure you or someone you know does. Why don't you ask them to make a mod, and maybe Shrapnel will include it in the next patch?