Suggestions

[Brit]

How about when setting up repeat orders, there's some way to see what has been done before. I like to have a few planes flying patrols to check for oncoming transports, and when I'm setting up the patrol orders it would be nice to see where other patrols are already going.

Ah, I hadn't thought of that.

Linked rally points: If you set an air rally point from town A to town B, then from B to C, a plane produced in A should fly to C via B without further orders. It's good to produce planes in the rear areas and fly them to the front because they get their quickly, but this can be multiple hops. In theory you could do the same with ship and land rally points, although there would seem to be much less need.

True, true. Right now, the rally points only move the aircraft from their original city to a second city, but that second city might still be a long distance from where you want the aircraft.

[Pocus]

One turn sentry please!

[N3rull]

With the units on the idle list now being sorted by the amount of rounds they've been idle, the one-round sentry is no longer needed so badly. It still wouldn't hurt, though, if tapping the G* key (for example) would take a unit off the list for one turn only.

* - G as in Get out of my sight and report tomorrow!

[Hawk]

still would like the 'show all plots' key.

Yes, this would be a great help when plotting course.

[N3rull]

I would like to point out that strange things happen too often in EOS.

3 tanks getting wiped by one tank one class lower.

A tank and two infantries perish while taking a city that one infantry has 80% chance of conquering.

3 Tactical bombers class 3 are shot down in one turn by a ... transport class 2 (my personal favorite).

Such things should be rare, yet they happen over and over again, every second fight I have (and I do know concepts of defense bonuses and the like). There is no such thing as 'reliable' in this game.

Please, Brit, consider some normalization of how the fights are handled. Or maybe increasing hit points of everything by 100% would help with making the effects more stable. I don't mind some unexpected defeat (or victory) once in a while, but the current status quo makes even overwhelming assaults a risky operation.

[Kelly's Heros]

Yes, I've seen this inconsistent accounting of battles as well. Combat should follow the rule of minimum astonishment. What makes sense will usually happen unless something unusual occurs. There are many cases in history where overwhelming forces were defeated by a smaller contingent, but it had to do with leadership which is not represented in this game. A shrewd leader can change the course of a battle. Since this game assumes that all leaders are equal, I would say the battles should represent respective odds. 3-1 odds means 1 loses, but he might take out 2 units if he gets a lucky roll. One unit shouldn't take out 3 superior units and survive, that is astonishing and breaks the rule. :-)

[N3rull]

As I said, I don't mind if a single weaker unit *sometimes* wins against three better. War is about small things that you can't control as much as it is general leadership and tactics. Such unlikely things should happen, but their occurence should be unlikely as well. My experience as of yet makes my hands shake when sending overwhelming forces against what should be a vastly underpowered enemy defense, because I know I may just as well win without loss as I may lose a half of my force or all of them.

[Dr Matt Lamb]

First thing is that this is a great game with enormous potential. A few questions/observations from playing so far. Sorry if these have been rectified in the new update but I havent had a chance to look at this year:

1. Map labels would definitely add flavour and atmosphere so I am keen on that.

2. Rivers? Why can we not have a river tool in the same way we have a road tool. I realise that at some scales rivers would not be appropriate but on a Europe scale map or tactical map they would be vital. The Ardennes without the Meuse? Germany without the Rhine? The UK without the Thames? Russia without the Volga? Etc. I have played with the map editor (which crashes) by using the finest 'pen' to draw sea areas as rivers but they are too wide. Can we have an even finer pen to draw rivers or a river tool? Also, do roads allow a land unit to travel across a sea area (Copehagen to Malmo?) or a river? Rivers would be good.

3. I ageee about some of the strange combat results. A transport sinking a battleship? Hmm! Doesnt feel right to me. Airpower is also still underpowered in my opinion. You spend ages building up an airwing of tactical bombers and they all get shot down even though there is not flak gun in sight.

4. The diplomacy model has huge potential but the AI simply doesnt use it. I know we are supposed to play on line with other humans but the fact is that a conquer the world map is so time consuming that you are realistically only going to play it against the AI. The AI should be tweeked so it does make alliances, trades, etc and that if you are nice and trustworthy and generous their mood lightens towards you. That brings me to another thing. It is too easy to make war and the make peace when it suits you. You can batter an enemy and then make peace and the start another war when it suits you. There needs to be a concept of 'reputation'. Nobody trusted Germany after 1939 because its actions. I feel that if you are completely aggressive and break peace after peace the AI will adopt a fight to the death approach. I am not sure what is going on under the bonnet (fender? is that what you Yanks call it?) when it comes to AI. Do your actions influence how it acts towards you? Reputation should recover over time if you are nice/generous long enough or join your allies if they are attacked.

5. As the AI rarely uses aircraft I am not sure about this one? Do fighters automatically intercept bombers and other aircraft if they fly within range on a bombing or recon mission? If not, they should.

6. As the demo map is a 'island hopping' type map it is giving me a flavour of naval and, sort of, air warfare in the game. However, I am not sure I can get a feel for how good sustained land warfare is going to be. With the demo map you tend to bombard garrisons into dust and the send the troops in to occupy the shell of an empty city. On a world or European map with lots of land away from the sea land units will come more into their own. What I would like a few for is whether an eastern front type slog is going to happen or whether it will be case of spending ages building up competing land armies which then clash in a quick 'to the death fight' which then leads to a another arms race and then another clash etc. Land warfare should sometimes be inconclusive otherwise land armies will be destroyed too quickly. If you could give us access to the European (or world!!) map we can see! Hint, hint!!

Overall, brilliant game- I am looking forward to the full release and all the variations imaginative people are going to come up with.

[John DiFool the 2nd]

Yes the demo needs to be opened up to some more maps-there's several already sitting in the map folder, but inaccessible (and yes I've tried renaming them to "demo_map", but without success )

[Boris Balaban]

Will air transports be able to transport from city to city A tank or A infantry or A artilary unit? :cool:

If another level could be added to air transports to allow this?:confused:

Anything on allowing planes to fly the full range and crash after that?

Like in the movie In Harms Way, Kirk Douglas flies a bomber on a one way recon flight. :eek:

[Brit]

1. Map labels would definitely add flavour and atmosphere so I am keen on that.

Quite a few people have been suggesting that, so it's only a matter of time until I add them.

2. Rivers? Why can we not have a river tool in the same way we have a road tool. I realise that at some scales rivers would not be appropriate but on a Europe scale map or tactical map they would be vital. The Ardennes without the Meuse? Germany without the Rhine? The UK without the Thames? Russia without the Volga? Etc. I have played with the map editor (which crashes) by using the finest 'pen' to draw sea areas as rivers but they are too wide. Can we have an even finer pen to draw rivers or a river tool? Also, do roads allow a land unit to travel across a sea area (Copehagen to Malmo?) or a river? Rivers would be good.

(nod)

3. I ageee about some of the strange combat results. A transport sinking a battleship? Hmm! Doesnt feel right to me. Airpower is also still underpowered in my opinion. You spend ages building up an airwing of tactical bombers and they all get shot down even though there is not flak gun in sight.

Yeah, some airpower balancing seems to be in order.

4. The diplomacy model has huge potential but the AI simply doesnt use it. I know we are supposed to play on line with other humans but the fact is that a conquer the world map is so time consuming that you are realistically only going to play it against the AI. The AI should be tweeked so it does make alliances, trades, etc and that if you are nice and trustworthy and generous their mood lightens towards you. That brings me to another thing. It is too easy to make war and the make peace when it suits you. You can batter an enemy and then make peace and the start another war when it suits you. There needs to be a concept of 'reputation'. Nobody trusted Germany after 1939 because its actions. I feel that if you are completely aggressive and break peace after peace the AI will adopt a fight to the death approach. I am not sure what is going on under the bonnet (fender? is that what you Yanks call it?) when it comes to AI. Do your actions influence how it acts towards you? Reputation should recover over time if you are nice/generous long enough or join your allies if they are attacked.

Yes, those things should be added. I'm also trying to prevent the human player from getting too much of an advantage by manipulating the AI. For example, I don't want the player to play a game with two AIs and be able to consistently manipulate one AI to fight against the second one.

[Brit]

Will air transports be able to transport from city to city A tank or A infantry or A artilary unit?

Without some additional work on the rules-system, I don't think I can get the transport-aircraft to do this.

Anything on allowing planes to fly the full range and crash after that?

I had originally intended on allowing that, but I might need to add something to the interface so players aren't inadvertently crashing aircraft. (There is the white-circle to warn them right now, but some players really like to push their aircraft to the absolute edge of that white circle, so I need to make sure that calculation is 100% accurate.)

[N3rull]

Without some additional work on the rules-system, I don't think I can get the transport-aircraft to do this.

I think I know what you mean.

The "Dropoff GroundUnits Anywhere" [tick] means that one would also be able to drop tanks and the all other stuff behind enemy lines just like paratroopers, right?

Well, I am personally interested in how one could solve this (you remember my "1001 annoying Ruleset editor questions thread", right?), so please tell me how that might be fixed.

Could you for example give paratroopers (or any unit a person might want to be dropable from a plane) a new tag, say "Airborne" and then create a new "Dropoff Airborne Anywhere" ? Could that be done with the ruleset editor?

I'm sorry for being so... stubborn in my questioning, but I believe it is the Ruleset Editor that will make this game a winner.

Please make sure that you give this tool all the power it can contain. It will pay off, I'm sure!

[N3rull]

I haven't checked that online yet, but I think that

1. Declaring War on player X should give that player at least some warning or maybe even an automatic "unsubmit orders".

I can see with my imagination that delaying the decision of submitting your turn until everybody else have submitted theirs, then quickly clicking "Declare War" issuing a few backstabbing attacks and submitting your turn might be an irritating abuse online.

A few other suggestions regarding missiles:

2 (mechanics bug). Cruise missiles (not Drone missiles!) behave like aircraft

- they refuse to fly beyond the range where they can safely return from and

- they return to base and land safely.

Perfect scouts ;D

3 (ruleset change suggestion). Increase Cruise missile interception range and reduce sight range.

Cruise missiles fly past enemy units even though they see them... and they see a little too much for guided missiles. It doesn't make much sense - when I'm sending a cruise missile on a trip, not against any specific target but generally around the enemy territory, with "Attack All enemy units" field order, then I really want it to attack any unit it passes by.

- reduce their sight range from 60 to ~30-35

- make them intercept any enemy they see within that distance.

4. In general you might want to tweak automatic engagement distances.

Sometimes units walk/sail/fly by enemies without engaging them, just because the distance was a little larger than point-blank.

Just a few minutes ago my Destroyer missed an enemy transport by a centimeter (about one half of it's sight range). Before the turn ended and I could turn the Destroyer around, the enemy transport was already out of its sight range, well on its way to my shores with three happy tanks aboard.

I suggest something like this:

[dumrox]

One you change a unit's field orders (in my case, changed battleship from "default - aggressive" to "attack all enemy units"), there's no way to set it back to "default". That option isn't present in the list of field orders.

[dumrox]

When you mouseover a city on southern edge of the world, the resulting tooltip with city and contained unit info extends below bottom of screen with no way to read the full contents.

[N3rull]

One you change a unit's field orders (in my case, changed battleship from "default - aggressive" to "attack all enemy units"), there's no way to set it back to "default". That option isn't present in the list of field orders.

It is - on the top of it.

When you mouseover a city on southern edge of the world, the resulting tooltip with city and contained unit info extends below bottom of screen with no way to read the full contents.

Slightly annoying, yes. If you zoom out and then zoom in onto that city, there will be enough "gray space" on the screen to contain most of the tooltip.

[N3rull]

I promise I'll not spam so much and will use the in-game bug reporting tool from now on, but right now I don't have the game installed on this PC and I just have to remind of this issue before I forget (again) ;D.

BUG: "View game" won't allow you to change the player you're watching. Whoever you've been playing, you will only be able to spectate your own game - you can't view the game with the God's eye or from any other player's perspective. It's been mentioned before on the forums but it seems to have been forgotten, so I'm giving it a bump.

[Brit]

I think I know what you mean.

The "Dropoff GroundUnits Anywhere" [tick] means that one would also be able to drop tanks and the all other stuff behind enemy lines just like paratroopers, right?

Well, I am personally interested in how one could solve this (you remember my "1001 annoying Ruleset editor questions thread", right?), so please tell me how that might be fixed.

Right, well I think you understand the problem. There is one "Dropoff GroundUnits Anywhere" flag. So, there isn't a way to dropoff tanks only in cities + dropoff paratroopers anywhere.

Could you for example give paratroopers (or any unit a person might want to be dropable from a plane) a new tag, say "Airborne" and then create a new "Dropoff Airborne Anywhere" ? Could that be done with the ruleset editor?

Yes, in order to fix this, I'm thinking that maybe the pickup/dropoff system should be able to individually define the pickup/dropoff attributes for each unit category (rather than the current system that treats all GroundUnits the same).

[Boris Balaban]

How about a radar truck?

[N3rull]

What - you want to make SAM vehicles ABSOLUTELY useless?

[Boris Balaban]

Any thought of starting the rule date to 1800?

sailing ships and cannon and calvery and infantry?

Start at 1800 and work your way to 2000?

[Brit]

Any thought of starting the rule date to 1800?

sailing ships and cannon and calvery and infantry?

Start at 1800 and work your way to 2000?

Yeah, I'd like to mess around with some of these rulesets, making stuff for other time-periods sounds like it might be interesting. (I'm going to keep the Official 1900-2030 ruleset as it is, though.)

[Hawk]

Yes, I think the 1900-2030 set is quite good. However, having the option to create sets (including unit graphics) for different time periods would simply be outstanding!

I know there's no time to add that now, but for future reference, what format would user-created unit icons have to be in?

[Boris Balaban]

Thank you Brit, that can bee added some time down the road. Not for this release yet.