Knokke

I have a fairly old laptop intel 2Ghz dual core, 4Go RAM, Nvidia GeForce 8600M GS 512Mo, and the game is running without performance issues. I have not updated the drivers of the graphic card since ages (version 187.66), so perhaps ToW3 is running better with older versions of the drivers?

Rosseau, All the editors that where previously available in Kursk are also in ToW3 Korea. There is also a new editor for the strategic maps.

Perhaps others too can use this thread to report bugs they've found in ToW3 Korea? Here are the first problems I noticed: -A minor bug (still present since ToW2 Africa): truck doors are often staying open after passengers disembarked. It looks a bit weird to see the trucks driving with opened passenger door. - After finishing my first battle of the campaign, the game returned me to the desktop instead of saving the progress after the distribution of combat experience to my squads. Log.lst indicate an error like that: *** FAILURE *** [sYSTEM] Main loop: null java.lang.OutOfMemoryError -Looking at the log.lst file, it appears there is several errors with a misplaced building of the type KOREA_GARDEN_STRUCTURE_006 on the map KOREA_MAP_03 (!!!!!!!!!!!! initWeaponEmplacement() in Models\Environment\Building\KOREA_GARDEN_STRUCTURE_006\hier.him failed !!!!!!!!!! not found walkable cells). The entrance of said building is probably located just between two pathfinding cells, making the interior of the building inaccessible to the soldiers. -I'm not a big fan of the new moral system though (perhaps I don't understand very well what is happening). It seems that panicking soldiers are throwing their weapons away while trying to run away from the fighting. What is annoying however, is that once they're rallied, their weapons are no longer to be found anywhere. They simply seems to have vanished. -Something that looks like the issue just above: surrendered soldiers seems to get rid of their ammunition, as it can be captured by my troops, but their weapons can't be found either. Also, the soldiers don't really seems "captured", as they're simply left where they surrendered, can't be moved, and looks simply neutral. Other than that, the game runs smoothly. Infantry survival is much better than in the previous titles, thanks to the new fragmentation model and the extra ground cover "layer". This should make happy thoses who where mourning grieviously their decimated pixel soldiers in the previous versions. I would say this looks like the best version till the beginning of the serie. If is difficult to form an opinion just after one battle, but it seems the missions are much more balanced than previously and should not frustrate the players so much. I do miss the "scout" order button a lot though. I wish it could still be there, as it was nice to be able to sneak near the ennemy positions and opening fire only when 50m-100m close

It looks very much like the game needs to be started with administrator rights. Not sure the crash with the tips is related, but the mission not appearing in Battles looks a lot like if the mission you created was not saved, because you started the game without administrator privilege.

Moon, I can confirm that the installation program asked me to reboot exactly like Nevada mentionned previously. I had also the same "Play or Buy" screen after rebooting, and had to enter the license key. However, I had no problem activating the license and playing the game. I simply assumed that as usual, I needed to start ToW3 with administrator rights, I did just that and evrerything worked fine. I'm assuming that the Tow3 installer and/or the game itself needs administrator rights, as it's what I did for both and encountered no problems.

That is a very usefull piece of advice. First, by explaining why units behind bushes/foliage are hard to spot and target, while they've no difficulty doing the same. Things are working in the same way with smoke cover. Units inside the smoke can target/spot units outside the smoke easily if there is no obstruction (provided they're just a few meters from the smoke border) while units located far from the smoke will have no LOS/LOF to targets located in the smoke. Second, by pointing a way to "force" units to fire even when they have no LOS or no LOF on a unit located behind foliage . "Attacking ground" behind the targeted unit while making the line cross the position of the target will make your gunner fire "blind" in the direction of the ennemy. It is best to select the "fire high" option on flat ground, else the shot might hit the tracks of the ennemy tank, intead of the hull or turret.

Most of what I'm reading here seems to me a bit exagerated (probably out of frustration?), and most of your problems seems to be related with not having understood how all the commands and orders are working. I agree that the manual is a bit limited, and does'nt always explain everything perfectly. I'll try to give you some tips that will probably solve most of the trouble you're having: There is no such mechanism in the game. The defend order (the shield icon) is used either to orient an unit in a desired direction (select a soldier-click the shield icon-click on the ground to have the soldier facing this direction), or to orient the turret of a tank (select the main gun of the turret, click on the ground in the direction you want it to face) . You can also use the shield icon to orient the tank hull (with tank weapons deselected, click the shield icon, then the ground in the direction you want the hull to be facing) The shield icon can also be used to have soldiers defending other soldiers or vehicles, or to have vehicles defending soldiers or an other vehicle (select the defender, click the shield icon and then click on the unit you want to defend). Basicelly, this means that the defending unit(s) will follow the unit targeted with the shield icon. Almost every player had this problem untill they understood the use of the "Hold" command (left-clicking the Action Mode button to stop the unit moving on its free will) Units will stop moving toward an ennemy they spotted, will keep their position, and will open fire if a target is in range and if there is a direct line of fire). The problem you have is that the unit you ordered to attack has at some time lost line of sight with the target. The attack order is a bit tricky, so I almost never use it, unless the unit has previously been set in the "hold position" mode. What is happening is that your tank has lost line of sight of it's intended target, and the attack order has been automatically transformed in a "Move" order. Since in move order, the tank will try to move as fast as possible toward the last known position of the ennemy, it is very likely that he will end up right next to it's intended target without having fired (tanks usually can't fire while moving) . Still, the "free move mode" is still usefull, as in this mode, the tank ordered to attack a target will automatically start moving toward the target untill it has clear line of sight, and clear line of fire. When it becomes possible to hit the target, the tank will open fire (usefull to get in a hull down position behind a crest). If at some point, line of fire is lost, the tank will start moving again toward it's target, trying to reaquire line of fire. But the attack order become troublesome as soon as line of sight has been lost with the target, because the attack order will be cancelled, and revert to a move order. Infantry given the attack order will behave in the same way. I almost never use the free move mode, as it can easily become troublesome, units starting to move on their own can find themselves in deep trouble before you know it. Before the battle, I'll choose to have everyone in the "hold position" mode, so that I'm sure they'll stay concealed, and will stay where I want them to be. There is also an other way of using the "attack button": instead of clicking on an unit to target it, you can click on the ground where you want your unit to move. Your unit will start to move toward the spot you targeted, while being more cautious during it's advance than in the "assault" or "move" mode. As soon as a target is spotted, the unit will start moving toward it, untill it has line of LOS and LOF, where it will start firing. If the target spotted is killed, and there is no other target, the unit will resume it's move toward the spot you designated. This order can become a little tricky if there are plenty of targets available in a place different from where you intended your unit to go, as your unit will move toward the targets it spotted, rather than where you intended, unless there is no target in sight. I've never experienced anything like that in Kursk (rather the opposite). Indirect fire by artillery (howitzers, mortars and guns) is rather very effective in destroying hidden gun emplacements, as his the "target ground" order. As soon as you see an icon showing the emplacement of an ennemy hidden gun, you should target the area around it with mortar and/or howitzer HE shells. It is very unlikely that the crew of the gun will survive a few shells falling in their immediate vicinity, even if the gun is emplaced in a gun pit. For this artillery fire to be effective, your guns/mortars should not be too far from their target (mortar fire can be very accurate if fired by experienced troops at close to medium range of the target, but the shells might widely scatter if fired from long range) This is an other "problem" that is often mentionned. But line of sight and line of fire are two different things. Most of the time, you'll have line of sight, but not line of fire. There can be a lot of reason for this. For tanks, the sighting device of the commander is usually located higher than the gun, so it is possible to see the target while not being able to shoot at it. Other times, it might be that depending on the position of the tank, the gun can't be depressed or elevated enough to fire on the target in line of sight. This kind of situation is sometime happening in the case of guns in gunpits, or MG in bunkers. The crew has line of sight, but is not able to fire its weapon on the intended target. Most of the problems associated with line of fire/line of sight can be resolved with the "attack ground" order (I had sometime occurences of machinegunners not firing on a target until I gave the order to "attack ground". "Forcing" fire this way can sometime be dangerous, in the case of guns in gunpits, as they might hit the embankment of the trench rather than the intended target. This seems to be highly exagerated , but it is true that if your troops are inexperienced, they'll fare poorly on the field of battle. Wether troops are experienced veterans or total rookies make a very big difference in their performance. Infantry being the most vulnerable units, during your first battles, you should only concentrate on their survival, using them only when you can't do without them (never using them to attack, and only using them to man captured ennemy trench system, for exemple). If they managed to survive the battle, they'll have acquired more experience, and will fare better and be more usefull in combat in the next battle. Greenhorns are almost useless, and will be killed in droves. Looking at your screenshots, I suspect they're just a demonstration trying to prove your point, as I see no craters around the ennemy guns position. I also hope that your infantry standing in the open in front of the guns is just for the purpose of demonstration too, as such WWI tactic is even probably less effective in TOW2 than in real life, and will have the same effect, having your soldiers being wiped out well before reaching their objectives. A few things working rather well against guns in ToW2: -The most effective way of dealing with them is to fire Howizer or mortar HE rounds near them. Very soon (unless the gun is extremely well protected), some crew members will be injured or killed, reducing the effectiveness of their fire. After a few rounds, there should be none left alive (unless the mission designers have provided for soldiers from other units to automatically replace the fallen crewmen - something I've not seen in Kursk) -Having MG firing at the area near the gun is also effective, as a few crew members might get hit, and the incoming fire hitting near them, if close enough, will reduce the morale of the gun crew It all depends on what you call high scout skill. If he was a scout, then he would probably be very good at scouting (90% scout skill), unless he's a replacement for a squad member killed in an earlier battle. If it is an officer from a "normal" infantry squad, then the scouting skill is probably rather average. Even having a good scout (90 to 100% scouting skill), is not a total assurance that he'll never be spotted. Usually, scout squads with high scouting skills are seldom detected by the ennemy, if keeping prone, without firing, and if told to hold their ground instead of freely moving once they've sighted the ennemy (if left without "hold position" order, they'll probably move from time to time - moving troops have much more chances of being spotted than troops remaining stationnary and hidden in bushes). If your officer was spotted by an 88 from 1km away, it might be that he was moving, and was spotted by the leader of the 88 gun with its binocular (leaders have binoculars, and when not moving, will scan for targets with their binoculars from time to time, giving them a better chance of spotting than the average soldier with naked eyes. Crews of tanks are also good at spotting infantry from long range, thanks to their sighting devices. A sniper with high scouting skill can also be an excellent scout, as he might use his sight to help him find targets. I hope all thoses tips will make your enjoyement of ToW2 worth purchasing it, and the experience less frustrating. Nevertheless, ToW2 missions are usually frustrating, because the missions have been designed to be very challenging, and seldom let you time enough to breathe. The opposition is usually very tough. The learning curve is rather steep for this game, and the manual does not explain everything very clearly, but I'm sure that once you've mastered all the orders, and perfectly understand what they're doing (their names is sometime a bit misleading), most of the trouble and "bugs" you're experiencing will vanish. My explanations about the "Attack" button and the "Action Mode" hold position order should already make things much clearer and make your experience more enjoyable by removing most of the problems you're experiencing.

Mortars and LeIG-18 are really a must for clearing guns emplacements, once your scouts have spotted them (or you can try to plaster gun pits at random, hoping there is really a gun hiding there)

The command squad and leaders are really usefull in my opinion. As long as the leader is alive, all squads in command radius have a bonus to their morale. To make a test and see for yourself, have a few individual soldiers with normal to low morale (not a veteran, nor a scout, as theses can usually operate pretty well on their own), and have theses soldiers crawl and hide near an ennemy tank. After a while, without leaders in the vicinity, they'll start panicking and will get out of the area, even if they've not been detected nor attacked. If these same troopers are inside the zone of influence of a leader, they'll not panic so easily, and will even keep their wits long enough to throw an AT grenade at the tank. Most troops will usually not panic, if there is a leader alive in the vicinity. If the leader is dead, they'll loose the bonus to their morale, but even worse, they'll suffer a penalty on it for a while, making them even more prone to run away. The factors lowering morale: -seing friends been killed -presence of ennemy soldiers in the vicinity (the more ennemies, the more they've a chance to rout) -presence of ennemy armored vehicles in close range -being under fire The more experienced troops will be very hard to frighten, so it really takes a lot to start seing them refusing to obey orders and trying to run away. The less experienced troops are also hard to rout, as long as they have their leaders, and as long as they've friends around them. Russian command squads are also usefull in their own, as they've two sharshooters amongst their members, that once they've survived a few battles can gain enough experience to be very useful sniping at the enemmy leaders and machinegunners.

They does not seems to have more use than any other troops for mine clearing. Anyone with a high scouting skill, and moving at a crawl in a minefield might have a better chance of survival, but high losses are to be expected, so the best thing to do would be to keep out of the mined areas. I remember I've read something about being really able to use engineers in ToW Korea (might have been on 1C russian site) to emplace/defuse mines, although I don't know if this as been implemented or not.

I agree with the fact that it would make the game more interesting if trenches and pillboxes were not known right from the beginning, and if the player had to send scouts to discover their positions. But you can always pretend that theses positions are already known to you because of information optained before the battle started, either by reconnaissance by foot troops or by aerial reconnaissance. Anyway, it is still mandatory to send recon troops even if the ennemy positions are known, as you don't know before hand if the trenches are occupied. There are many fighting positions that are left unoccupied, just like in real life, some of them being decoys, their purpose being to delay, confuse and draw ennemy fire. The player would quickly run out of ammunition if he tried to plaster every single fortified position on the map without knowing if they're occupied or not.

I kind of agree with that. I would prefer the kind of deal peoples get with Flightsimulator, or Railworks - a core game engine with officials and/or unofficial addons to add new content, vehicles, missions, maps...etc

I would like to know what is the limit of different statics objects that ToW2_Kursk would accept at the same time on one map? By different statics objects, I don't mean the total number of objects, with several instances of the same object, but the total number of unique objects. I've a map with 213 unique statics objects on it (849 statics in all, counting the objects instanced several times), and it seems to be the upper limit that the game will accept. I was expecting the limit to be much higher than that. Where does this limit comes from? the number of collisions? I don't believe it comes from the polygons number, as the models are in multi-resolution, nor from the amount of RAM used by the textures (hitting F-12 in the map editor gives me this indication: Mem 90104/6614 Kb). Is this a lot, or does it look normal?

I've never experienced anything like what you're describing.

I've made more progress yet debuging my map. I no longer have any errors related to the infantry hooks and I'm able to open the map in a mission (at least in some missions). I believe I've hit the maximum number of different statics objects allowed in one map in ToW. If I add a new static object (of a new type, not yet used on the map), the map will load without trouble in the Map Editor, but once loaded in a mission, the game will crash at 100% of the loading progress with an error message like that:

it is possible to open all tga files in the game with either the NVidia DDS plug-in or IMF viewer. For the TGA that are in fact *.dds files with a *.tga extension, simply renaming the file and changing the extension is enough. For the files with IMF in the header, you've to use IMFviewer to open them and save them in TGA format, in order to be able to open them in photoshop.

launch the game with administrator rights, and you should be able to save.

I've made some progress in debuging my map: I've deleted all the static objects that I thought might cause the game to crash. Now, instead of crashing to desktop at about 30-40% of the progression bar, it crashes toward the end, at about 90%. I had a look at the log.lst file to see what has changed: Previously, I had about 10 occurences of the "!!!!!!!!!!!! initWeaponEmplacement() failed !!!!!!!!!!" error - Now, I've only two such occurences left (which probably indicate that there are still troublesome buildings), but the log.lst file seems to indicate that the game crashed after having finished loading the buildings, as it started to load the briefing of the mission and finished compiling the triggers, before hitting an other error that seems have something to do with the skycube and weather settings. I really can't understand why I've got any error with the skycubes and weather, as I have not modified any files related to the weather and all the missions I tested are using Kursk default weather settings. Here is the full log.lst file content: I hope you'll be able to help me. I've spend more than one year doing this map, and I would hate to be stuck there, only able to add to the map in the map editor, but not being able to use it with a mission. Again, thanks for any help you can provide, Sneaksie.

Does that mean that for every static object of the gametype GameHouse, it is mandatory to have infantry hooks? if such objects have no infantry hooks, the game engine will still be looking for them, and not finding any, will report an error? If it is the case, it is probably where the problem is to be found, as I have several static objects of type GameHouse without infantry hooks (I simply needed to use collisions of the type x_roof#, but didn't need firing position, so I simply constructed the building without such hooks)

Thank you very much Sneaksie.

Hi Sneaksie, I have a question that I hope you'll be able to answer. I've created a new map from scratch with new static objects. It is working perfectly well in the map editor, and has been working in game as well for some time, but now when I try to use it in a mission in the game, ToW_Kursk return me to the desktop at about 30 or 40% of the loading progression. I got this error message in the file log.lst: Am I correct to assume that I've goofed somewhere with the Shoot_# hooks in one of my buildings of the gametype GameHouse, or could this be related to something else (the building using a wrong StaticTypePreset, for example?) Thanks for any hint you could provide. -Knokke

I believe your issues with attacking trenches may comes from not doing it the "right" way. If you charge with infantry at trenches occupied by an ennemy that has not been suppressed, you'll suffer heavy losses, and very often the attack will fail (all the more if there is no armored vehicles supporting the attackers). If the occupants of the trenches are properly subjected to heavy fire prior and during the attack, they'll have a tendency to keep their heads down, and novice troops may start to panic if they start incurring losses. Once this is happening, your infantry will have a easier time capturing the position. If you've one, or better several tanks accompanying the attackers to the trenches, the defenders will start to panic more easily. Seeing the armor moving toward them will lower their morale. Anyone attempting to shoot at the attackers will expose himself to retaliation from the covering tanks, or machine-guns, artillery and fire teams that you have set up to cover your advancing infantry. Once the losses are mounting amongst the defenders, their morale will drop to the point where capturing the trench becomes easy. If the defending infantry is not suppressed, they'll have the advantage over the attacker once they enter the trench system, as they can lie in ambush, ready to fire. They'll usually spot the incoming ennemy easily as it is moving, while they'll be more difficult to spot as they're usually ambushing without moving. As to the problem with tanks doing suicidal banzai charges, simply order your tanks not to move and hold ground instead. This way, they'll not advance toward the target you had assigned them once it is no longer spotted. If not told to hold ground, the tank will advance toward the point where you gave the attack order, trying to reaquire the target while moving. If the target is not spotted untill then, the tank will stop right in front of the trench, taking the risk of being destroyed or damaged by AT infantry weapons. I almost alway activate the hold ground button for my tanks and infantry, as I usually don't want them to wander around on their own will. Once you've spotted a target, it is better to order your tank to attack ground in the vicinity instead of giving an attack order by clicking directly on the target, if your tank is already close to the trench and you don't want it to come closer. If your tank is still far away and you want it to come closer to the trenches, then just give him an assault order up to the point where you want him to stop, and let him advance. The tank will choose targets on it's own, fire at them, and resume the advance while trying to find an other target.

I've noticed too the weapons as well as the exhaust fumes still showing sometime with units not spotted. There is also an issue that might be related to the same thing with the dead bodies (unspotted guns crew members that get killed by an explosion near them becomes visible when dead, giving away the emplacement of the gun. The same thing is happening with infantry, not just the gun crew)

Yes, I've noticed it several times. This kind of things happen when none of your soldiers are looking directly at the ennemy vehicle (when it's out of their field of vision). First, the vehicle is indicated as "known" but not seen, then after a short while, it disappears if nobody is looking at it and if it makes no noise. And sometime, when your soldier is looking again in the tank direction, he fails to spot it again immediately. Of course, a normal human being would still know that the tank is there, even if not looking directly at it, but the AI memory is a bit like the memory of a fish

I know also many peoples who don't want to buy anything from Steam