Calling Poor Old Spike- POSITIONING

[pillar]

Could you please do one of your extremely thorough and screenshot accompanied special articles on unit facing commands and how they affect where the troops will end up in a grid? Especially near buildings.

It's really needed, and to my knowledge nobody has bothered yet.

 

[Dutch Grenadier]

I played a QB against Spike last week and he said he was fet up of wargames at the moment. Have not seen him since.

 

[pillar]

Everyone needs a break now and then, for sure. Maybe if you talk to him let him know.

 

[Bidermann]

He told he had enough of CMBN for now

 

[PoorOldSpike]

POSITIONING TESTS

I order them to run on "Quick" to behind that low bocage..

They arrive and auto-line up along it. (the sighting line is just to check they have LOS through it).
Inf will always line up like that after arriving behind hedges/bocage.walls/houses..

But often when they arrive behind something they might still be facing in the direction of travel, so give them a Face order like this to make them look square through the bocage. (Units spot enemies quicker in the direction they're facing)

and next move phase they'll turn to face like this. (loose guys such as the crawler often occur in CMBN, sometimes it takes 2 or more turns for them to decide to get into formation)

Alternatively you can tag a Face order on to the end of the move order like this; first place the waypoint then rightclick an empty map area to free up the cursor, then leftclick on the white ball and issue the face order.

 

[PoorOldSpike]

Now lets run them behind a wall-

And bingo, they neatly line up along it when they get there..

And you can issue a Face order....

to make them face square across it..

 

[PoorOldSpike]

Running them behind a house. (note unlike CM1, waypoints in CMBN often jump to the nearest tile which might not be exactly where you want it and there's nothing we can do about it)

They arrive and auto-line up along the wall, although one guy went too far and is exposed because the waypoint jumped too far, it wouldn't pin to halfway along the wall,,

Let's run them into that house, there are more windows upstairs than down, so we'll send them to Level 2. The waypoint jumps to the house centre, that's good enough..

They arrive and cluster in 3 groups around the 3 windows. LOS is good so I don't think there's any need to issue a Face order to fine-tune things..

What happens if we run them into empty ground?

they arrive and adopt a basically line abreast formation in the direction of travel-

SUMMARY- Like I said, precise waypoint placement is not possible in CMBN and is like trying to play a guitar with gloves on which many players might find frustrating.
All we can do is place a waypoint as near to the desired spot as possible and hope the squad will arrive neatly.
I still prefer the good old precise CM1 system myself, but have been seduced by CMBN's fabulous graphics like everybody else for now..

 

[pillar]

Thanks Spike, thorough and informative as usual.

I really want to know what face orders to give around building edges. I think a lot changes when you're near a building in terms of what the men will do.

For example, how do you setup an LMG to cover the corner

* = building
. = LOF
^ = prone LMG, just the front half of the man at the corner.

.****
.****
^***

 

[PoorOldSpike]

MORE POSITIONING TESTS

Let's begin with a 2-man MG42 LMG team...

and let's suppose enemy infantry will be coming down the red arrow. Select the LMG team and click a network of waypoints around the area, it's a neat trick to show where the waypoint tile nodes are. I've blue-circled one that looks promising..

Click the 'clear waypoints' button to get rid of the network, and send the team to the promising node..

but it's no good, the team prefers to huddle behind the house and have no LOS round the side of it. (this happens a lot in CMBN if a units AI thinks it'll be safer behind cover)

 

[PoorOldSpike]

Okay let's pull them back to the next node and tag on a facing order..

Hmm that's better, they've now got good LOS down the side of the house but they're looking a bit exposed..

So I order them to hop right a bit to the next node, and this looks good, the house protects them to their front and they've still got decent LOS round the side..

 

[PoorOldSpike]

Now let's see how a 9-man squad does-

Hopeless! they prefer to huddle behind the wall, and their LOS can't see round the house at all-

So I pull them back to the next node..

Okay,after re-facing that seems to looks alright..

But as we sweep the LOS line around, we see the squad has only got 'partial' LOS straight down the side, which means only part of the squad can see there.
Partial lines occur frequently in CMBN, it's realistic and we have to decide whether to accept it or try another node-

 

[PoorOldSpike]

Let's try a schreck team-

Hopeless! Like the LMG and the Infantry squad, they prefer to huddle safely behind the house, so I issue this order to pull them back to the next node..

and they can now see round the corner.

Summary- As I said earlier, trying to fine-position units in CMBN is like trying to play a guitar with gloves on, it just can't be done and feels clumsy and awkward.
The best we can do is to move units to what we hope will be a good node for them, and that it won't turn out to be a bad position.
If it turns out bad, all we can do is hope the enemy gives us time try another node..

 

[pillar]

For each node around the building, how do face orders affect where they go?

 

[PoorOldSpike]

NEW POSITIONING TESTS
I tried these various combinations of facings and nodes etc but the results were always the same, we can't place units in the exact positions we want because the CMBN system is too sloppy and awkward, made worse if a house is nearby because it confuses the unit AI.
All we can do is place a waypoint and a facing, and hope that it works.

 

[pillar]

All we can do is place a waypoint and a facing, and hope that it works.

Do you think there is consistency though? If you repeat the order/turn over and over with a given waypoint and face order (at a building even), don't they always assume the same position each time?

Unless they are disrupted by fire or something, I expect they do, and would be really surprised to learn otherwise.

Given that, we can manipulate the system to get the results we want. They might not line up with the face order in the way that we expect them to, but if we know what they will do we can adjust our expectations and get whatever results we want.

I have a tip of my own to share:

Lots of people complain about not having a LOS tool. You do. Place a waypoint on any spot and you can draw a fire line from the waypoint node/sphere and check the LOS that way.

This has other utility too. Say you have a team of infantry hiding behind a wall. You want them to get up and fire at some spot beyond the wall, but you can't get the LOS for the fire order because they can't see through the wall. Even if you unhide them (toggle the hide key) you still can't get LOS. But if you give them a movement order into their own tile, you can place the fire order on the waypoint and get LOS as if you weren't obstructed by the wall.

 

[PoorOldSpike]

Still no joy mate, they arrive at waypoints in open ground in fairly loose formation as in these tests. And note they don't form up around the waypoint itself but are slightly to one side which illustrates again how the CMBN system is nowhere near as clinically-precise as dear old Cm1.
Left- setting the waypoint.
Centre- they arrive near it.
Right- I ran it again and they arrive in roughly the same formation, there's some slight consistency but nothing to write home about.
(But if there was a wall or building nearby they'd form up along it in a neat line as previous tests in this sensational thread have shown)

Below- For really precise squad formation management, Armed Assault II is the way to go, here are a couple of screenshots from it, note you select what formation you want from the list of 9 on the left of the screen.
(At the moment AA2 is primarily a Modern era game, but once they get the WW2 addon debugged and working properly I predict it'll blow CMBN out of the water)

 

[eniced73]

Can ARMA 2 play like CM? I thought it was a FPS.

 

[PoorOldSpike]

Can ARMA 2 play like CM? I thought it was a FPS.

It's a tremendously flexible system, you can play it as a shooter if you like with just one man (you) alone against the bad guys, or you can command a platoon or more all the way up to 'High Command' mode (below) which plays pretty much like Cm1/Cmbn-

Hey you can download Arma2 FREE here to see if your PC can handle it, the free version is lite on the graphics-
http://www.thefewgoodmen.com/thefgmforum/showthread.php?9933-Arma-2-Free-released


Also check out the FGM Arma2 section here-
http://www.thefewgoodmen.com/thefgmforum/forumdisplay.php?196-Armed-Assault-Series


Which includes this thread about the Invasion 44 addon-
http://www.thefewgoodmen.com/thefgmforum/showthread.php?8016-Invasion-44-v-2.5

Incidentally you can also get inside tanks/aircraft in Arma2 and play as driver/ pilot/ gunner/commander if you like.
Overall I'm tempted to say Arma2 is BETTER than Cmbn. Maybe they've brought out the Free version to let people see how good it is so they'll rush out and buy the full game.
And an Arma 3 is on the way too..

 

[eniced73]

It's a tremendously flexible system, you can play it as a shooter if you like with just one man (you) alone against the bad guys, or you can command a platoon or more all the way up to 'High Command' mode (below) which plays pretty much like Cm1/Cmbn

No shat!! I did not know that. I thought it strickly FPS like Battlefield or Ghost Recon. Thanks for the links. I will definitely check this out.

 

[eniced73]

Downloading now. Free! Cant beat that.