Taras

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that the Apollo's turret isn't too small for the 120mm nor is the Thor's turret too large for just the 120mm, and there are in fact parallels with existing platforms. (moreso in the FCS and Commando w/120 than the AGS which only uses an autoloader and a shrunk conventional turret, but you get the idea) Because tank destroyers are pretty fragile things in general, the philosophy is that they're supposed to shoot and scoot from one hull down position to another, so remote turrets with autoloaders make a lot of sense for them to minimize exposed frontal area. In the same vein, the Apollo also looks like a tank destroyer with remote turret+autoloader, where the crew would sit down in the main hull. At least, that's what I always assumed. The actual hit locations assigned by the devs may disagree with that (I haven't looked at it recently) but that may be more of a case of the artist drawing "what looks good" with the devs assigning "what feels right" without being aware of some of these trends in modern tank destroyer design that cause them to look the way they do. The important thing is to not get carried away about what sort of coaxial/secondary weapon makes sense while recognizing that the Thor needs to be more than a roadblock (and IMO, the best way to achieve that purpose is to tweak up the 120 it already carries to be more effective)

" I am hard pressed to find an existing tank that looks anything like the Apollo..." There are a couple out there. M8 AGS: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m8-ags.htm One of the Commando variants: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/lavgen3-001.jpg Last but not least, the FCS tank design at this point is virtually an Apollo clone: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/fcs.htm

On what vehicle? I checked out the tracks on an Apollo KC-H, and they looked right to me. In a moving turn, the driver applies the brake to the inside track etc... Now having the road wheels not turn as they roll over the tracks, that kind of bugs me

Blah, firing a cannon underwater is so wrong on so many levels. The ballistics would be completely borked. The barrel would look like a used party favor. Just shreds my suspension of disbelief. It would make a little more sense if you could fire a micro-torpedo through the barrel the way a T-80 tank can fire ATGMs. Not that I'd ask the devs to make such a thing, but if I were king, I'd disable all cannons and mortars any time they were below the waterline and have a delay after resurfacing before they could fire again.

I may not be remembering this quite right, but isn't that the mission where you need to capture the enemy facilities? Remember, you need to use an engineering unit to capture them.

No, it's not possible. The team members haven't mentioned any plans to add such a feature that I've heard.

Playing the ice fortress map scenario in the campaign, I noticed two problematic things about bots. While doing a hull down fight against Thors, I noticed that bots would turn their turrets away from me *every* time they lost contact, even though there were no other targets. Much more problematic than that though, is that when I'd poke up to take a shot, some of them would fire on me instantly, even if that meant impossibly firing out of the sides or back of their own turrets. I don't have a problem with the instant retaliation in this case. I'd expect that since I was using the same hull-down position repeatedly, but the turret facing should be consistent with it.

My kingdom for a GEV tank with a 120

Yep, makes no sense. If you have a built-in power source that powerful, why rely on chemical energy to turn the wheels? I like to imagine that "antimatter" is a mispelling of "battery pack"

You definitely do *not* want high definition rendering on an older computer. You might be able to get away with shaders and VBO, you might not. Experiment with those two. BTW, just in case you have it on, foliage is totally out of the question. Antialiasing is on by default, I'd reccomend turning it off. I think (but I'm not sure) that the "steering" slider adjusts how close or far does the system substitute less detailed models to improve speed.

If nothing else, you can unlicense the game to free up a license before you reformat, then relicense it afterwards. From what I gather, it appears that the crucial bit is that don't forget to unlicense before you reformat.

Agreed - it's very strange to be in a silent fight, then glance up to your status and suddenly notice you have damage. Even though the hulls of these things aren't pressurized, impacts should still resonate through the structure (and thus be audible). In general, the silence and ambient music do an excellent job of conveying the feel of being in a vaccuum. Execution needs some polishing, but the concept is great.

As Dan said, wallet speaks louder than words. Having said that, a few thoughts: - I'm not very comfortable with the elicense system. From what I'm reading, it sounds like if I have a hard drive die where the game is installed, I'll lose one of my two installs, so either I'd lose LAN play, or I'd need to send an email asking for a relicense (which, reading between the lines, the FAQ implies that such relicensing would be granted only in extreme circumstances). My other downloaded games, rFactor and LiveForSpeed - appear to be much more forgiving in their licensing systems in this regard, and indeed I did need to use that recently. It sounds to me like it wouldn't take much to get locked out of my own game - that would be very upsetting, to put it mildly. In the public test demo (just finishing the download/install of the full version): - I have to say the 120mm seems cartoonishly underpowered. I've had a point-blank duel with an Apollo's AP ammo vs a Paladin. I hit the Paladin three times, once directly into the underside when it was up on two wheels General-Lee style, and still got raked to death by that 20mm. The idea that everything should be pretty survivable to make combat a bit more of a duel than an ambush is an interesting concept, but it's *not* a concept that easily balances with a non-hitpoints damage system. That said, I *love* the fact that you're using a damage system that appears to be similar in concept to World War 2 Online. Funny weapons balance aside, the damage system was a big selling point for me. Please don't dumb down GEV piloting. It's very good as is. Something about yawing the GEVs seems a bit "indexed" though, as if it's rotating through discrete angles. I'm not sure what's the problem is, perhaps more angular momentum would help. Edit: Yes, that's it - angular velocity drops to 0 too suddenly when you release the turn button on a GEV, kind of makes it feel like a tracked vehicle that way. It should carry the momentum a bit more, perhaps in relation to its mass. Really need more GEV tanks and IFV's - the gap between the Tempest and Hurricane is an empty chasm. Ion towers seem to be ridiculously hard to kill and provide silly-effective defense. I've never been able to knock one out yet. Now that I have the full version, I'll look in the manual for some better hints. Finally (for now), I love that you guys are pointedly avoiding the "rock, paper, scissors" approach. While strengths and weaknesses are important and realistic, some games have put so much energy into following an evenly balanced R-P-S approach that we might as well be driving rocks, papers, and scissors across the battlefield. Talk about bland - glad you're not doing it. [ June 05, 2006, 08:07 AM: Message edited by: Taras ]