Missing Sounds in Panzer Campaigns

[Philippe]

I've gone through all the Panzer Campaigns mods that I've posted and added back any sound files that looked like they might be missing.

Essentially we're talking about three or sometimes six weather sound files, as well as a few odds and ends. So even mods like Smolensk that I had added a missing sound file to earlier have picked up a few new files.

I've sent an e-mail to my host asking him if my bandwidth footprint is too big. If it is, a lot of what's up there now will have to come down. So don't be surprised if I start taking things back out next week.

And if bankdwidth isn't too much of an issue, I'll try to remember to add snow sound effects to Kharkov and rain to Stalingrad.

[-72-]

In that case all I can say is that the Combat Mission franchise uses a LOT less units than say, a France '40 campaign game scenario to name just one.

But then again, that crowd always has seemed to be in denial that they weren't playing a hex based game too.

They're not playing a hex-based game. Combat Mission is actually a 2D game that uses squares. The 3D visuals are just fluff, only the fluff is so convincing a lot of people actually think it's what's really happening in the game.

I had to reload it, I guess you're right -I must have meant turn based and 3d. :)

[Philippe]

The other thing that should be pointed out about Combat Mission is that it should be compared to Squad Battles and not Panzer Campaigns.

Although Combat Mission works best when you have battalions or less fighting it out, larger scenarios have been created for division-sized engagements. Given that the basic unit in Combat Mission is a squad (that can be broken down) or an individual vehicle, a scenarion with that many units is simply not playable, even if you ignore the fact that the game engine wasn't designed to reflect the higher command and logistics functions (especially the latter). The engine was designed for reinforced company-sized engagements in an area of about one or two kilometers. Given that people seem to prefer getting to use three or four companies plus support units, what a Combat Mission scenario really is is what in Panzer Campaigns is referred to as an assault. It usually takes place in two or three Panzer Campaign hexes, and lasts a fraction of a turn.

Turn-based is only really an issue by comparison with a real time game. The original Combat Mission games were turn-based WEGO (aka simultaneous movement), which, as a system, is far superior to IGOUGO (aka sequential movement) when the scale is right. It's also a lot harder to write rules for and to program. Many of the rules connundrums that people worry about here are meaningless in a WEGO environment, because though the player is only giving an order to his units before the turn starts, and once the turn starts the tactical AI takes over and tries (or doesn't try) to carry them out. This was the system that was used by the old Atomic Games V for Victory series, and could produce some truly delightful moments -- traffic jams at choke points and units under your command that would drop out of sight if they lost touch with your headquarters or simply lost too much cohesion. And dancing in and out of a zone of control to draw opportunity fire was virtually impossible to execute.

[-72-]

The other thing that should be pointed out about Combat Mission is that it should be compared to Squad Battles and not Panzer Campaigns.

Which was exactly my point in explaining that the scale of units in both games is not at all comparable, and that it is not unreasonable to switch the sound off, as the load times extend the turns, especially so in the longer scenarios within the series , and therefore if people want a faster playing turn, eliminating the sound load times is one thing that a lot of players do to eliminate this.

I think the airborne sounds in Normandy are great, however if one plays the game enough one may not want to wait on all of the sounds loading in order to get the turn over and off to (in a lot of cases) their PBEM opponent.


Incidentally 'wego' used to be called plotted movement in the old board game days...

[Philippe]

The other thing that should be pointed out about Combat Mission is that it should be compared to Squad Battles and not Panzer Campaigns.

Which was exactly my point in explaining that the scale of units in both games is not at all comparable, and that it is not unreasonable to switch the sound off, as the load times extend the turns, especially so in the longer scenarios within the series , and therefore if people want a faster playing turn, eliminating the sound load times is one thing that a lot of players do to eliminate this.

I think the airborne sounds in Normandy are great, however if one plays the game enough one may not want to wait on all of the sounds loading in order to get the turn over and off to (in a lot of cases) their PBEM opponent.


Incidentally 'wego' used to be called plotted movement in the old board game days...

Back in the seventies it was called simove (for simultaneous movement), and SPI used to hand out packs of gridded paper with alternating green and white bands for writing in your turns. The first simove game I can think of was one of the experimental rules options to Avalon Hill's 1914. The designer ended up at SPI, and it was used primarily for their tactical games -- essentially Panzer Blitz on realism steroids.