hoolaman

Believe all you want, but it doesn't make it true We yanked the idea of a LOS tool 2+ years ago because it was redundant with the Target Command. Which, BTW, blows the biggest hole in your theory because anything we might have been trying to hide by getting rid of the LOS tool (again, that's not true) would be clearly shown with any of the Target Commands because it shows the same information. Hence why we got rid of it. Steve </font>

I am not trying to justify anything. The argument has been thrown around that the TacAI is fundamentally broken. I disagree with that. The TacAI is a work in progress, and the game system is surely capable of better. I totally agree that it should have been finished before release, like a great many other things. You are correct, and I actually said " "early" " with the ironic quotation marks. The game is in stores, but it is still in development. Go figure.

I can't hear this anymore. 4 years of development! With CMx1 they had TacAI wise already everything that was needed. </font>

At this "early" stage in the games development, I still don't think anybody knows exactly what are bugs and what are fundamental design flaws. Yes Steve has stated that there are some issues that probably won't be fully eliminated, but that these are subject to improvements and tweaks as time goes on. One thing that some people don't seem to grasp is that the TacAI requires a lot of programming time and testing. It is not fundamentally broken, nor is it limited by the RT engine. It is just not sophisticated at the moment because not enough time has been spent on teaching it "real" behaviour. So the fundamentals are there, but the subtle details are not. Probably by the end of the year the game will be as fixed as it's gonna get, with a mature community of maps and missions and modders, and then we can judge how flawed the game is. Maybe at that stage BFC could rename it "CMSF gold special edition" and have a relaunch to signify the game actually being done how they like it, and maybe get it re-reviewed by a few places. Either way there will be people who won't come back to the game which is a shame.

I believe that the line of sight tool was removed because the line of sight of units in the game is so flawed. Imagine if we could trace a LOS line to a tank and find a "no LOS' tag still on it, as the line snaps to the 8x8 hex grid. The target line is not the same thing at all because spotting is so different from LOF. Even so it would be a great thing to have back so we could learn the limitations of the spotting system.

I am more of the opinion that if a couple of weeks worth of work by people before release had put a swag of maps into the QB folder then nobody* would be complaining. I mean really, it is doesn't need programming skills. Having the qb just dump you out simply because there are no maps for the terrain type is just slack. Even one map in each category? *except everyone who would.

Yeah, a heavily armoured android leg is much more durable than the real thing.

And the L movement causes serious game issues. As your vehicles twist and turn in every direction except straight to your waypoint, they present their flanks to the enemy and get killed.

So yeah, what is the status of the demo at present? Is there still a 1.03 planned or are you now holding out for 1.04?

I had red side misidentification type friendly small arms fire which caused casualties. Maybe they need to be shooting at you on purpose.

Actually Steve said they were working on LOF problems. Nobody knows if finely resolved LOS will ever be possible in this game.

I replied to your original question the way I did because IMO there was a good reason why a different path might have been used. If you doubt it, put a couple of MGs to some edge of that field, then let the infantry walk to center of the field and then open fire with MGs. I haven't tested this myself, but my guess is that quite a few soldiers on that field will be casualties.</font>

Minor correction, the MGS is 105mm isn't it?

And yeah so anyway, great review Jim! It looks like you have presented the facts as they stand now and taken into account BFC's position on supporting the game.

That's not true... we doesn't have WeGO in CMSF at all. Only a vanilla version of realtime-auto pause. To get WeGO, you need good TacAI that makes your troops act more realistically when they spot some targets or become under fire. This game is fully realtime oriented... don't even speak of WeGO, if you want to sound like a serious reviewer, WeGO it's only the name of the menu that they placed in their realtime with auto-pause option... all the maths of the TacAI are done in real time... without any stop for 100% dedicated CPU calculations. </font>

Who are these users that expect an AI to find the "best" path for their troops?? Based on the pathing complaints I have seen, you would have to be mad to rely on the AI, and I don't think many CM players are looking for that to happen. As Steiner states in his previous post you plot out where you want your dudes to go and they should go there, plain and simple. Only if they come under fire should TacAi pathing kick in.

Correct, and more importantly in a modern era game is the fact that vehicles can have powerful sensor packages mounted on roofs or even on extendable periscope thingies. So turret-down positions to spot are critical. If you can't edge a recon vehicle up to a ridge and spot with its sensors than this game is not capable of a fundamental tactical option in modern warfare. Even infantry should be able to stick their heads over the ridge line to spot without being as clearly visible from the enemies side. But again, I would like the official word on how it really works.

There is also the exhaust plume from vehicles which will not go away on "wet". I still think there should be a real fix such as unspottable tanks not producing SFX, rather than a workaround.

I'm sure the confusion is my fault. This is a difficult thing to explain, especially for someone who has been using it for years and not using CMx1. It is also difficult because I didn't code the thing and some of the very fine points aren't known to me unless I check with Charles first. Since he's busy I'm going to try and wing an answer to your question. As I understand it LOS is drawn from the location of the unit spotting to the Action Spot of the unit that it is trying to target. So if the Bradley is mostly behind a building it doesn't get to spot something that is around the corner. However, LOF is exact so the enemy can "see" that portion of the Bradley that is poking out and take a shot at it even though the Bradley doesn't have LOS. ... Truppenfuhrung Yup, there is something to be fixed there for sure. There was something about this earlier in this thread or elsewhere. While a LITTLE bit of this is expected when there is a slight ridge in the middle of an Action Spot (say 2 guys shooting through the terrain and 7 not), the screenshot you have up is clearly not such an event. Charles is looking into such things now. ...</font>

I bumped this because this issue is particularly annoying me. The tanks in the game quite literally have an arrow (of dust) pointing to them whether they are spotted or rendered or not. I can understand the limitations on actually spotting a cloud of dust in the game engine, but as a slight improvement could we maybe have vehicles that are not spotted at all by any of your units not create dust/exhaust effects or indeed rendered sound effects at all?

I think it would have been a pretty basic thing to ensure at least one type of each map was included in the game.

You do know the game has been patched to 1.03, do you not? Why not try that.

I just hope we get to see them, although that will presumably depend on sales of the first. I'm as keen to see WW2 as the next guy, but it would be a shame not to see the full potential of CM2 for modern settings realised before its back to Shermans and Tigers. </font>

If this all worked like it was originally described, I don't suppose there would be an issue. Steve originally stated that the action points (which I assume to be 8x8m tiles), were only used for calculating LOS. This was meant to be an abstraction that wouldn't be too noticable but would result in occasional odd results. As it stands the shooting through walls seems to be an unintentional result of this system. LOF, movement and I suppose nearly everything else was supposed to have been resolved much more finely presumably down to less than 1x1m for individual bullets. What we seem to see ATM is the spotting tiles used for movement (one right two forward), area fire (snap to grid), and producing odd results with squads repositioning themselves in the centre of a square.

I would suggest for wheeled vehicles at least this should be impossible.