Is the direct control unrealistic?

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thewood1
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RE: Is the direct control unrealistic?

Post by thewood1 »

There isn't that much processing overhead. And, frankly, the AI is about average as a player, if set up right. You can test that by running a scenario with all missions and then running it manually. Almost no difference. I know super-smart people and super-stupid people. People tend to complain about the AI, but ignore stupid stuff real people do. I always challenge people complaining about an AI to play a scenario through once blind and compare your performance with the AI. You'll probably do better, but like you do after you have played the game for three years. The AI is one thing...consistent.

But as you say, out-of-comms sounds fun until you dig into details about how you bring units and their spotting routines on and off the grid. If you have 15 units with jammed comms that keep suddenly coming on and off the grid, how do you merge all perspectives into one over time so that a player can interpret it without a staff. What do you do with sightings over time that multiple units had that are jammed at different times coming on and off the grid. What happens to uncertainty zones. What happens to friendly units that drop? 30 minutes later, are they suddenly hostile? Do you fire on them? How do you keep track of them?

Think of how complex the system is for managing contacts. Now layer on that units that used to be in comms or are dropping in and out. You have to merge all of that information into a cohesive view that the player can use. The amount of effort that the devs have to put into that...I would wish we could see how many people actually use it more than once.

ColonelMolerat
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RE: Is the direct control unrealistic?

Post by ColonelMolerat »

What 'house rules' do you all currently use to mimic this (excluding things that require editing the missions/LUA, etc - as simple as possible)? A couple of examples I saw from MrOrange above:

- Setting missions and not interfering with them (and only launching planes with missions assigned)

- Only giving subs orders every 4 hours.

- No pausing (you sadist!!)

I imagine most people like to have complete control most of the time - the lack of comms issues isn't game breaking, it's just a nice extra we don't have.
We know this but don't do it because a majority of players like driving subs...

See? We can deal with 'house rules' governing it..........
Speaking of. We're going to introduce a feature soon that will allow out of comms subs. We've been working heavily on comms related stuff. Stay tuned! I'm pretty sure this will do what you need.

Interesting!! I take that back!

I think subs are the highest priority in communications improvements - they seem to be the unit most noticeably affected by 'god-mode-communications'. It's true a plane wouldn't have command barking every order in the pilot's ear, but the planes in CMANO don't seem to need as much micromanagement (not CMANO's 'fault', just how subs and planes differ).

I don't think the game's lacking at all as it is - but improvements just add more of interest and make those features more accessible. CMANO excels in making you think about new problems you'd never considered before. Every addition strikes a balance between the work required and the interest generated. A great scenario could be built out of managing the food supply on a single carrier - but it wouldn't add enough to make a worthwhile addition to the game, and many people would rather not have to bother.*

Any future developments in communications (in my opinion), would be a nice addition, but aren't currently gamebreaking. As hinted at by Sunburn, a lot of us already get baffled by units ignoring us because of some doctrinal setting we missed!

Of course, I say all this until I'm blown away by a new feature I never knew I wanted...

*Feature request: Pot Noodle Supply listed alongside weapons stocks on carriers.
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Dysta
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RE: Is the direct control unrealistic?

Post by Dysta »

And now you are talking about food, damn I am hungry -NOT!

Let the nano-management sleep until more updates evaluate the possibilities.
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SeaQueen
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RE: Is the direct control unrealistic?

Post by SeaQueen »

It depends. In a scenario involving a small number of units, direct control is probably pretty realistic.

As the scenario gets larger, direct control becomes less realistic in some cases. It also depends on how you think of things.

There's a ton of other "unrealistic" things which occur in Command even if you rely entirely on the mission planner and the AI because in real life things which would be handled by an entire staff of people are left to one person. The functions of dozens, possibly hundreds of people are consolidated into one person. The person who decides where the aircraft carrier is going to set up station, isn't the same person who does the strike planning. They aren't the same person who manages the transiting of submarines, and they aren't the same person who manages the ground battle. Those people spend a lot of time talking to each other, though. Sometimes it's more, sometimes less, depending on what's going on.

In Command, it's never really reasonable to think of yourself as filling a single person's role in a command structure unless a scenario is specifically scoped to reflect that position. It's better to think of one's self wearing many different hats. In some cases you might be performing the role of someone quite high up in the chain of command, fulfilling some joint role (e.g. someone on the Air Component Commander's staff). In other cases you might be filling in for someone relatively low on the totem pole, fulfilling a role that a captain or one of his crew members might perform (e.g. Commander Air Group staff member or squadron commander, maybe even individual pilots). Sometimes you're performing the role that an Air Battle Manager performs by directing the air battle. Other times you're the Naval Component Commander, moving ships and submarines around the map. Are the results of this necessarily unrealistic? It's safe to say that all of these different staffs of people constantly exchange information, while there are certainly delays, quantifying these delays is often difficult. At best they'd be represented by some sort of random variable. Many of these delays might not really matter because they're captured by other things in the game (aircraft turn around time, for example). The game displays areas of uncertainty, so it captures the age of a contact quite well. Much more important is the "flatness" of the chain of command, and the broad scope of one's decision making.

If you want to limit the scope of your decision making, you can do that by making a bunch of AI controlled allied sides representing other organizational units beyond your command. A good example of that might be controlling just one tank company team in a larger battalion or brigade sized operation. You could make the other units in the battalion allied units and part of your job is just to keep up with their advance. Another good example might be make you control just one SSN while allied MPA search adjacent areas.

The thing is, in real life, on a local scale, coordinating units would be able to talk to one another. Would they have perfect information? Probably not, but it's not clear how imperfect it would be either. While much has been made of submarines inability to communicate, we also live in an era of underwater telephones, data links, floating antennas, radio masts, signals, burst transmissions and other technologies. Local, short range communication between coordinating units is probably quite good. In that sense, being "god" will probably produce more realistic outcomes in many ways than a strictly limited scope case, because in spite of the problems of communication, the two units would still be able to react to one another's efforts.

In large scale scenario, involving multiple carrier strike groups, submarines, land based aircraft and what not, you run into other problems. ISR systems like satellites or aircraft like the SR-71 or U-2 might provide information about enemy forces far outside the strike range of the forces under your command. That's okay, though, because for a realistically scoped scenario involving such forces, one ought to have to maneuver their forces into range to strike those targets. Along the way the contacts will age, or be updated and refined. One might assume that in spite of the delays between the national level assets which would be informing your decisions while wearing your "Joint Force Commander's hat" and the more tactical level commanders while wearing your "Carrier Strike Group Commander's hat," sometime during the hours or days which pass as the strike forces get into range, the proper information will be transmitted and received by the appropriate forces so that you can switch hats and act accordingly.

All in all, I don't feel bad about the lack of communication delays. For closely coordinating units most capable of acting on information those sorts of delays are likely short and information, while certainly flawed, probably isn't too terrible. For information passed down from satellites, U-2s, SR-71s or what not, in any realistic scenario, by the time forces were in the area to act on that information it's been aged and refined accordingly. While Command's representation of communications isn't "exactly right," by assuming it away it avoids the problem of being, "exactly wrong" and produces a good enough solution that is probably more realistic overall than attempting to obsessively account for every detail of communication and miscommunication.
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hellfish6
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RE: Is the direct control unrealistic?

Post by hellfish6 »

Total control is, of course, unrealistic if you see yourself as the individual human being in the role of force commander.

However, if you see yourself as "the force" itself - meaning your brain is the collective institutional knowledge and experience of the US Navy, (or TG 55.1.2, or the Chinese South Sea Command or whatever side and force composition you're playing), then it's not unrealistic. Or at least less unrealistic.

If you're the individual who is flag officer in command of a force, you're obviously not going to be giving altitude and heading commands to an F-18 500 miles away in a dogfight. But as a representational distributed force in a simulation, YOUR version of the United States Navy would be telling that F-18 pilot what to be doing because that's how YOUR USN taught him to do it. My version of the USN, which only exists when I play the exact same scenario MY way, might have that pilot doing different things. Or not in that situation in the first place.

It's all about perspective. Plus, if we're playing a side as an entire collective force, we can't blame a shoddy AI or the simulated seaman recruit asleep at the fire control console when things go wrong. Far less frustrating in the end, IMHO, than trying to be an individual.

To paraphrase Walt Whitman, when you play this game, you are large. You contain multitudes.
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KungPao
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RE: Is the direct control unrealistic?

Post by KungPao »

one of the solution to your question is to add a "WE-GO" turn based system. But, it needs a lot of work on AI part.
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thewood1
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RE: Is the direct control unrealistic?

Post by thewood1 »

You can already use we-go by pausing every 30 seconds. What would be needed for the AI? You already a fairly complex mission planning process and scripting capabilities. A scenario designer would build it in to pause every 30 seconds of game time or real time.

But today, you can run 30 seconds. Stop, issue orders, run 30 seconds, etc. What would be different than that? You could even look at replays of the last 30 seconds if you wanted.
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SeaQueen
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RE: Is the direct control unrealistic?

Post by SeaQueen »

We-go, turn based playing isn't really necessary. Pausing as necessary to adjust and make changes is actually more realistic than keeping the clock running in my opinion.

The reason is that, as we've discussed, you're not really assuming the role of a single military officer. You're in fact assuming the role of many different officers in many different situations, each of whom has a staff at his disposal to assist him in the planning and execution of his orders. Additionally, many of these officers have responsibilities that have nothing at all to do with the war fight.

I once had the opportunity to follow a warship's captain around on a frigate. In the course of the day, he spent a surprisingly small fraction of his time on the bridge and even less in the CIC room. Sometimes he was in his cabin, working on paperwork. Sometimes he was down in engineering, checking up on maintenance issues. Sometimes he was overseeing an exercise where they were teaching the sailors to shoot the 25mm cannon. Sometimes he was presiding over disciplinary hearings because some stupid seaman decided it was a good idea to smoke pot on the pier. Sometimes he was checking out the status of a helicopter that had broken down. In short he was all over the place, dealing with things that are beyond the scope of Command as a game. Some of those things had little or no impact on the war fight but were important responsibilities none the less. Nobody is happy if sailors don't get paid because of a paperwork issue, for example.

In Command, it's important to pause the game periodically and take some time to plan and do some things because in real life the person making the decision you're about to make would most likely not have been focusing exclusively on that one thing. Instead, they'd very likely have a staff of people working beneath them to evaluate alternatives and present them with at least some alternatives for his evaluation if not a complete plan for the officer to approve and implement. It's another example of how in Command you don't represent a single person, but rather a whole group of people.

ORIGINAL: thewood1

You can already use we-go by pausing every 30 seconds. What would be needed for the AI? You already a fairly complex mission planning process and scripting capabilities. A scenario designer would build it in to pause every 30 seconds of game time or real time.

But today, you can run 30 seconds. Stop, issue orders, run 30 seconds, etc. What would be different than that? You could even look at replays of the last 30 seconds if you wanted.
ColonelMolerat
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RE: Is the direct control unrealistic?

Post by ColonelMolerat »

SeaQueen & Hellfish - you've both hit the nail on the head there, I think!
MrOrange
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RE: Is the direct control unrealistic?

Post by MrOrange »

Interesting comments.

Maybe my autoritaristic, self-centering, dictatorial attitude, never allowed me to considerate the fact that in this game I can be considered a group of persons working as a team.

That's the closest thing to "it could be that I'm not 100% right" that you'll ever get out of me. [:D]
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Dysta
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RE: Is the direct control unrealistic?

Post by Dysta »

ORIGINAL: MrOrange

Interesting comments.

Maybe my autoritaristic, self-centering, dictatorial attitude, never allowed me to considerate the fact that in this game I can be considered a group of persons working as a team.

That's the closest thing to "it could be that I'm not 100% right" that you'll ever get out of me. [:D]
Good point, people are easily stuck in a mindset that only the player can command everything in real-time strategy game. It is particularly true for almost every RTS games, especially MOBA.

Military commanding however, is not a single person's effort. To manage everything perfectly, a strict doctrine and well-gathered intelligences are the key to provide solutions to units in different situations.

As previous comments said controlling technique, crew conditioning (food and health), morale and such, those are general managements for officers (in between cogs and brains), and commander should take the least concern of them, otherwise they're just distractions.

It's correct that general managements are also does matters to the entire unit/group, and eventually your whole strategy; but like I said before, it's way too complicated and repeating to care. A good-conditioned units should never have basic problems, both in peacetime and wartime.
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hellfish6
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RE: Is the direct control unrealistic?

Post by hellfish6 »

When (I hope) CMANO gets multiplayer, maybe they'll have the kind of setup that will allow multiple players per side, so theoretically everyone could have their own ship/platform/unit. This'll at least make it less unrealistic, especially if you have some sort of communications scheme that doesn't give people a perfect common operational picture, and you've got a delay or relying on an individual's reports of what he is doing and seeing.

In the recent attacks against the USS Mason in the Bab al Mandeb, for example, I wonder if any other ships nearby knew what was happening until it was already over. In CMANO, they would because you are playing the commander of the entire force in the BAM - in a disaggregated scenario where you don't have that common operational picture, maybe the others won't know until seconds or minutes later.
thewood1
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RE: Is the direct control unrealistic?

Post by thewood1 »

I would suspect that there is someone in the CiC whose sole function is immediately notifying other USN ships about the situation. Probably in some great detail. In a modern setting for the USN, the data is transmitted in almost real-time.
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SeaQueen
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RE: Is the direct control unrealistic?

Post by SeaQueen »

Actually, with datalinks and what not, other nearby ships most likely had a pretty good idea of what was going on. While there's been a lot said about fog-of-war and uncertainty, militaries around the world are investing in technologies intended to create a fairly accurate operational picture. While it's not perfect, it's not that bad either. That's the whole point of Link-11 and Link-16 tactical data links.

To hear you all talk, you'd think that every military officer was basically half blind, dumb and deaf, issuing commands in language barely understood by his subordinates from a sealed box while trying to make sense of the world through grainy photographs and second hand accounts. It's just not so.

Warfare has come a long way from passing flag signals and wireless telegraphy.

ORIGINAL: hellfish6

When (I hope) CMANO gets multiplayer, maybe they'll have the kind of setup that will allow multiple players per side, so theoretically everyone could have their own ship/platform/unit. This'll at least make it less unrealistic, especially if you have some sort of communications scheme that doesn't give people a perfect common operational picture, and you've got a delay or relying on an individual's reports of what he is doing and seeing.

In the recent attacks against the USS Mason in the Bab al Mandeb, for example, I wonder if any other ships nearby knew what was happening until it was already over. In CMANO, they would because you are playing the commander of the entire force in the BAM - in a disaggregated scenario where you don't have that common operational picture, maybe the others won't know until seconds or minutes later.
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SeaQueen
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RE: Is the direct control unrealistic?

Post by SeaQueen »

Actually, it's probably passed automatically.

ORIGINAL: thewood1

I would suspect that there is someone in the CiC whose sole function is immediately notifying other USN ships about the situation. Probably in some great detail. In a modern setting for the USN, the data is transmitted in almost real-time.
thewood1
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RE: Is the direct control unrealistic?

Post by thewood1 »

I know its automated...hence near-real-time. But also keep in mind only a few navies have that capability.
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SeaQueen
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RE: Is the direct control unrealistic?

Post by SeaQueen »

Any NATO nation would, the Aussies, the Kiwis, the Taiwanese (they buy old US ships), the French, the South Koreans (also buy old US ships), the Japanese, probably most Gulf States have some kind a datalink capability on their missile boats. That's a lot more than just a few. I'd say that the capability is fairly common these days.

I think there's a tendency to underestimate the capabilities of nations outside the United States which is often counter productive. My observation is that unless you're dealing with impoverished countries, the biggest difference usually isn't the technologies, but rather the levels of training. Many nations have large numbers of draftees which serve their minimum requirement and then get out, taking their training with them. Other countries don't get to spend as much time at sea as they'd probably like to because they're budget constrained. The equipment is there, though and someone probably knows how to use it.

ORIGINAL: thewood1

I know its automated...hence near-real-time. But also keep in mind only a few navies have that capability.
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RE: Is the direct control unrealistic?

Post by thewood1 »

I think there is a tendency to overestimate the spread of technology beyond a handful of countries and a handful of ships.
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SeaQueen
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RE: Is the direct control unrealistic?

Post by SeaQueen »

Well... to take an example from the news. Somehow, a coastal defense cruise missile operator was able to get sufficiently accurate information that they could target an AEGIS destroyer and/or and old amphib it was escorting. Things that were high technology in 1980-something aren't rocket science today. Whether they got the information using a tactical data link, a satellite phone, a text message, an e-mail or something else is almost immaterial.

ORIGINAL: thewood1

I think there is a tendency to overestimate the spread of technology beyond a handful of countries and a handful of ships.
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RE: Is the direct control unrealistic?

Post by thewood1 »

I am not comparing a radar passing information onto a ground missile system and you know that. I am talking about real-time data management systems on naval vessels. In fact if you go back and look at my post, I stated specifically that information was being passed in near-real-time on the US ships.

Do you really think the US data management systems are equivalent to a guy potentially on a phone calling in coordinates. If so, there is no point even continuing the discussion...you win.
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