Mark K Nelson

Well that's over the top and not terribly constructive. The IMG reviewer (and I read it and the comments when the review first went up) seems most upset that it isn't his father's Battletech came - as though giant bipedal fighting robots are in the least a realistic and plausable future fighting vehicle. Not to say that they don't have their place and cool factor... they just don't make a lot of tactical sense. "Lets all try a hull down in our Madcat... Oh my god a steep slope - turn away!" Heh - the one fellow that commented that he wasn't getting feedback on his shots made me laugh. OK - you're shooting at a tank from 5km away - do you expect somebody to pop out and go "Argh! You got me!" for every minor hit? Talk to a modern tanker and see what ranges he would expect to engage at. Perhaps the problem is that Dropteam seems to be more of a simulation rather than a FPS game. Some folks just don't get "it." Then again he is dead on that: 1) the music is rather repetitive (and I've got a fast enough computer to get though it relatively quickly.) DT really needs it's own volume control too. 2) Most of the original maps do tend to look alike. I'm glad people like Hub, Dark_au and etc. have managed to introduce some variety. I love "Hide and Seek" and "Rumble in the Jungle" and most of the other newer maps. 3) The bot AIs are really lame. They are fantastic shots (which I love) but they can't drive and don't seem to learn where the danger is. I could make suggestions but not right now. 4) Makes me wish I hadn't sworn off on-line gaming. Thanks! Mark

Yep - I meant "I was looking at the alpha screenshots to find the one he pulled the pic from." All the alpha screenshot Thors look to be at a different angle. It's clearly the same model and texture.

Heh - I just tried to find the screenshot that Thor pic was *stolen* from but couldn't find an identical image. Sheesh.... and people think Hollywood isn't original.

Hmmm... If you could blow up an ion tower with it...

True - and I'm sure that's what happened to the single turret - lord knows I've done that myself, and perhaps the unknown tracked vehicle dropped onto the roof of the building. The multi-turret dogpiles were in flat open terrain. For some reason the lead bot decided to place them all in the same spot?

Bot Bombs... during set-up. During the set-up phase me and bots against bots there seems to be a lot of occasions when turrets (and one unidentified tracked vehicle) seem to be getting killed as they are placed. On "Hide & Seek" I had what appeared to be a pile of 3 buring turrets, 2 on another occasion. A single burning turret once. The single buring turret may have tipped off the bank to the north of the objective but the turret piles were in the open ground to the south. In "Unexpected Reserves" a tracked vehicle of some sort fell out of the sky on fire and vanished when it hit the ground. Right next to the tall structure. I don't recall seeing this in earlier versions.

Apparantly the real Nebelwerfer had a top velocity of around 340m/s or thereabouts. 500 seems suitably futuristic (and would help boost the range to about the limits of visibility.) "Given the same circumstances..." Yes. Except in a vacume. There only gravity and velocity would have effect. As for all the rockets coming out of the same place. Why not model it along the lines of a WWII Mk.51 automatic rocket launcher shown here. You've probably seen them or similar launchers in WWII invasion footage. They had a stack of rockets that dropped down into a launch position at the bottom of the launcher. No reason to think that the DropTeams couldn't push the rockets up from below or in from the side.

OK... I was wrongish about the bots not recognizing the "Drop Here" symbols. (At lest on the Mac) they just aren't very accurate. Playing on "Hide and Seek" (love it when it degenerates to infantry in the tall grass) the bots were consistently dropping a few hundred meters outside the "Drop Here" region. And they never once dropped in or near the "Do Not Drop" zone. theIRONGIANT - that peripheral vision 'bug' shows up in a lot of games. I suspect it's because the visual range area is a square rather than a circle.

Er... yeah... you're correct. That's what he meant by "Dumbfire". oops.

Many missles have boost/sustain motors although the sustain is often not very long - neither is the missle flight! The M-47 (FGM-77) Dragon use(d) short duration steering motors firing at an angle to the rear. I wish I could find video - maybe somebody else here will have better luck. Here's some pics: Dragon Data The steering/boost motors fire as the missle spins to steer but also give the missle a vertical bump. It kind of hops through the air to its target. That sort of steering would probably work in a vacume. (Vacuum to you southerners. Heh.)

I don't think they do... follow the diagrams. At least they didn't seem to be following what I *think* were the drop/no drop zones. Squiggly circle with arrow or "no" symbols inside. Also the Thor smoke (on the Mac at least and the 120mm gun version) is the second ammo on the 20mm. I didn't check to see if there was a keyboard shortcut option (the Delete key didn't do it by default.) It looks like Clay forgot to mention that the only way to issue orders is the right-click pop-up menu.

Hello! I regularly find it difficult to remember what the terrain looks like in any given scenario (and that's with the *small* number we have now. heh.) Before things get out of hand it would be nice if the description text/screenshot of a given scenario were shown in the "Standalone" dialog as well as during the loading phase. I tried 4 maps last night before I found the one I was looking for... Thanks! Mark

I've had two capture the flag games where I seem to run out of dropships very early and for no obvious reason. Both were on the House to House map (not sure if that's relevant though.) Myself and 2 bots vs. 3 bots. Tonight's score when I ran out Blood: 6, Water: 5. I had not seen any notice of drop ships being killed until I was shot down. Both times this is what I did: Set both of my bots to 'defend the flag'. Ordered Collins to 'extract' so he wouldn't be in a Shrike. Set up some defences. Dropped a Cutter to cut a wall. Dropped a Mercury to drop some more distant defences as the setup phase expired and to launch an artillery strike. Exracted the Mercury. Dropped a Cutter near the city to convert some ion towers but my Dropship was shot down late in the landing phase. Tried to drop again. No more drop ships? WTBHDTM!?!?! Thanks! Mark

I just noticed a Dropship "bug". I was playing CTF on "Rumble in the Jungle" and saw 2 Dropships get deadlocked in the landing phase. 1) Blood Dropship. Came down just west of the Blood base moved to the east (kicking up trees) while I fired upon it. It then got deadlocked moving east and west... (parallel to the edge) east and west... over and over until I shot it down. 2) My own Dropship. Dropping east of the Water base (almost to the corner.) Came down towards the trees. Lifted up in reverse... forward down to the trees.... rinse... repeat... no way out! It almost looked like "lets land... Ahhhh! (Homer scream) Trees! Backwards and up! Ahhh! Edge of the world! Forward and down! Ahhh! Trees! Backwards and up!" You get the idea. I'm not sure if it's relevant but the frame-rate (usually fine) was very low - at the edge of playability.