hoolaman

Exceuting drug users??? That's "bold" is it? Even executing drug dealers in certain countries does nothing to stop people trying it, and that is just where money is the incentive, not an all consuming physical addiction. I think your latter idea is closer to earth. Legalisation and control is simple if our politicians could grow some balls, and takes away the global crime, war and instability by the trade. Mexican Mafia, Afghan warlords, crime at home, all gone. Sure there would be other problems with druggies on the streets crashing cars and going psycho, but the net benefit would be massive.

One time in CMBO I set up a company of paratroops in a pit and dropped their own naval artillery on them just for fun. You know you are bored with a computer game when you turn around and start wasting your own dudes/cities/rollercoasters.

Somehow I suspect it isn't that simple, EoS is a still a work-in progress as far as I can see. But I support anything that allows Brit to work on games full time until he's old and grey. I ended up putting my money where my mouth is for that reason, and its rare that I part with cash for anything other than a bargain-bin big title game that's been out for a year. EoS is probably the most expensive game I've bought in two years,and that may also say something about the price-point. Most impulse buyers won't be so sentimental . Brit, I think Battlefront's storefront has enough visibility to get you your sales, but I think even $35 might be a bit too much. Consider the international buyer, who converts to USD and pays a small conversion fee. EoS cost me over $40 Australian and that's compared to a full price new-release PC game of $90-110 and a bargain bin version of the same at about $20-30. I've impulse buy'ed several games where the demo grabbed me off similar developer owned sites like BFC, but I'd suggest $25-30 US might be a better invitation to join the club. A good demo and a good price point combined with a bare minimum of promotion should get you a bit of momentum. When you consider Steam taking 30% maybe you could just reduce the price by 30%? Thats my EWAG. I'd also suggest you consider my earlier comments about limiting the turns in the demo and opening up the ruleset editor but disabling saves of rulesets, maps, scenarios. There's nothing more teasing than getting into an editor and getting excited about the possibilities therein only to find you can't test what you have created. Maybe you could even create one or two tiny demo scenarios rather than one random map.

Yes I've also reflected on that fine-line. I'd say its almost impossible to get it in the middle. Economics tells us that there is always scarcity of resources. Part of the problem may be that there aren't really any choices to be made on the domestic management side of things. If all your excess resources could be employed somewhere in your empire to some benefit it would be OK, but they just pile up usually. The other problem is that trade does not have any tactical or military considerations. You can buy limitless oil, without a thought about how to get it to your cities. You can export steel to another empire without ever building a ship. Your suggestion to make resources only for new building is a pretty good one. Its a shame that the possibilities of the resource system don't seem to come into play very often. Eg. Oil shortages forcing you to move only x or y unit sounds like an interesting game dynamic, but most often you have lots or none at all. I've even considered making a scenario that has no resources on map, but giving each player a massive stockpile that they have to budget over the whole game that can only be replenished by trading for cash. You'd inevitably run out I suppose. But in conjunction with high HP units that can be repaired by money alone, you could be forced to make some strategic choices about what you build.

I think you should really consider making cities self-sufficient in food and oil only let resource limitations apply to supplying armies. After all rationing and local farming would allow the cities to more or less look after themselves. It could even be a good idea to make cities actually produce food, or at least putting a food resource nearby every city on random maps. As it is it is frequently more worthwhile bypassing neutral cities than capturing them because of the food and oil burden they put on your empire. This is a big "suspension of disbelief" problem with the game IMO. The resource chokepoints should encourage competition and expansion. The cities should become strategically neccesary to capture, and provide a net benefit to your empire.

Is there a way to get cities by default to start with certain improvements? eg. Start with two infantry and one factory I know it can be done by making a scenario, but I'd like the players starting cities to be given a big advantage by giving them a bunch of factories that would have to be built from scratch in newly conquerd cities. If not could tabs in the unit subsets be added "Free Improvements (coastal city)" etc.

I think its about 25. 50 is the range between two units so the circle is half way.

If you aren't loving RT, don't play it! WEGO is still there and as good as ever, aside from a few niggles, everything can be done in WEGO, but WEGO also requires a thorough understanding of how to queue orders. I play WEGO in all but the smallest engagements. RT neccesitates a birds eye view of the field that isn't very satisfying, or you miss a lot of action, spotting contacts etc. You also miss the ability to replay those awesome near-misses and feats of heroism.

I agree that there is no way the game will have a big jump in sales with only incremental updates. One big thing I've mentioned a few times is the lack of OFFICIAL content for the game. That 1940 ruleset played with resources OFF is great fun, why not give us a couple more, or even one official scenario? I see that North Africa map in the videos, but is that even playable? Relying on user content gets you a fractured community who spend more time creating new rulesets than playing together in online games. It also gets you a lot of mediocre or experimental content for your customers. How about a Sci-Fi ruleset or an Ancient Greek Ruleset? It would require the cities to be modded a bit too, and new art of course, but it would be doable. I'd suggest a content pack released as a free update, combined with a better UI to launch scenarios and maps. A release like this might get a bit of press.

Not so much cost cutting (at least not intentionally) but the fact that so many purchases are download only these days. So the hard goods sit gathering dust in a warehouse somewhere. I'm pretty sure they have commited to printed manuals and DVD cases for main game releases but not neccesarily for modules. This was after the stink about the Brit hardgoods being naught but a CD in a plain jewel case. (after the website showed shiny box art)

My biggest tip is to fire up a mission in the editor and experiment with deploying infantry squads in different terrain, rideglines, walls, around and inside houses etc. (if you only have the demo you can do the same in the setup zones). The elevation changes and facing of infantry in each square makes them do very different things and this is a good way to learn how to be confident that your waypoints will send your men where you hoped they would go. Checking LOS by selecting and using TARGET on the terminal waypoint will make sure you are in a useful place. The action spot squares are the basis for the spotting system and the pathing system and sometimes this means there is less resolution placing waypoints and deploying troops compared to CMx1. Buildings too are always one tile, no matter the size. Just be aware of this and don't expect it to be like CMBB where you could place a waypoint with exact precision. Of course the flip side is that the terrain squares and topography in CMSF is a much higher resolution and the squads actually occupy some space instead of existing as a single point. Other than that, the game is clearly the descendant of CMBO. Learning modern weaponry and tactics will take you some time, don't let the game mechanics get in the way of enjoying a really great tactical game. The manual is mediocre at best as a technical document, it omits or only briefly mentions (or at worst is completely wrong) some really critical stuff, so be sure to ask or search on the forums for anything you have trouble with. The strategy and tactics forum has a wealth of info.

I don't think this is unique to the Challenger. Dug in tanks even in the very first mission of the old TF Thunder campaign still produce some weird spotting and targetting issues. You are right that the game picks an aim point for certain targets. Maybe this can be tweaked, but I don't know how many levers there are to pull, if it can be changed according to the target or the shooter or the hull down state? If the Challenger is consistently aiming high on every target, that might be a problem.

I tried to play this scenario but there was way too much going on for my tastes. Dozens of cities to think about and very congested. EoS plays best when there is plenty of room to move between cities and no more than about 10 cities per side. (IMHO) Despite the grand strategic look, it behaves much more like a smaller scale game, like the units are battalions rather than army groups.

I think the CMSF campaign model was a good way to go, and a good base to build on. One big thing it lacks is the ability to save damage to maps. Fighting over the same ground can be done using the current system, the Marines campaign did it in a few missions. But that building you called an airstrike on is suddenly standing again in mission 2. A creative scenario designer could mimic CMx1's operations fighting over identical maps. The big drawback is the map will never be updated with the damage. Another fairly minor thing lacking is the ability to script multiple branches to campaigns. You could create a meta campaign on a par with Close Combat if you for example set exit objectives on all four sides of the map that sent you to new missions north, south, east and west. You could even allow the player to "choose their own adventure" based on the results of the previous mission: ("You have acheived a minor victory, would you like to advance or hold?"). Currently though moving on to other missions or branching campaigns is a binary thing based purely on win/loss of a scenario, which is an imperfect method.

I can't say really whether the site gives a perfect representation and it might be rather extreme. I'm I guess mildly red-green colourblind, I can see the difference between that green and yellow if I concentrate, but often very light greens look like bright yellow to me. I don't have a problem with a bright red, I can see that clearly, but I know people who can't see the difference between red and green traffic lights. In general, Blue and Purple, Dark Red and Green and Light Yellow and Green where the brightness and saturation is similar will be hard to tell apart for most colourblind people. Consider visual cues other than colour to be on the safe side eg. circle, diamond and square as well as red yellow and green.

If you give a bunch of green/irregulars a bunch of crappy RPG-7s like the reality in Iraq, you will get a satisfying volley of totally inaccurate rockets flying by, with the occasional lucky hit. I think the game does ok. Trained regular grenadiers will get hits just like AT4/SMAW on the US side, especially with the RPG-29 which is a very different beast to a rusty RPG-7.

Its easy to miss it given the complete lack of traffic or any new info.

http://www.battlefront.com/community/forumdisplay.php?f=121

Huh? If I understand you, and I'm not sure I do, you purposely created misaligned doors, then went to great lengths to get a situation where one wall was not destroyed, and the worst that happened was the troops went through a slightly offset doorway? Remember the "scenario designer doing something silly" concept?

You could just press tab.

CMAK had Assault, CMSF equivalent - Assault CMAK had Move to Contact - CMSF equivalent - Hunt - (even though the stopping on contact is not the same). CMAK had Run CMSF equivalent is FAST. CMAK had Advance, CMSF is Move or Quick depending on how tired you want to get and how much time you want to spend exposed. There is more micromanagement in CMSF if you want to dash from cover to cover and provide covering fire, you have to do it yourself.

I was referring to infantry, sorry I didn't make that clear. I guess I probably shouldn't have said so many never evers But yes I'm sure rubbled walls, the kind that are created when you blow up a section in the game, don't block vehicles. I'm not sure about the rubble flavour objects, flavour objects can be a block for vehicle pathing so that might be what you saw.

Can I suggest using a different colour scheme, the current one is very colourblind unfriendly. The light green and light yellow diamonds look identical, consider a dark green/light yellow or a even sky-blue/light yellow or something. http://www.vischeck.com/vischeck/vischeckURL.php

The animation for move looks like the guys are just kicking a can down the street, which is misleading I think. MOVE is supposed to be more like the old advance command from CMx1, a combat march which allows good response to incoming fire. I use it a lot because it is never tiring but not in built-up areas or taking fire. I don't think your troops are much more vulnerable compared to QUICK though (aside from the obvious of less time spent exposed), in CMSF if you are not prone or behind some cover you are taking casualties.

No that's the other problem that people bitched about in CMBO: The inability to use a haunted M5 to use zombie mind control to get Tigers to simultaneously blow each other up.