CRourke

Ya, I'm seeing weak AI on the QB maps.. Not sure if its related to the templates for the map, or the general ability of the AI. I would imagine increased terrain complexity has made AI programming a lot harder.

More quick battle strangeness. Small Attack, Armored Syrians attacking U.S., hills, June, dawn, clear, fair fit armor republican guard vs good fit Stryker. When you hit 'OK', it goes right back to the main menu. Change terrain to 'rough' and it runs just fine. Also, one of the small hill maps, I believe from 'Meeting at High Altitude', the QB deployment areas are messed up, opfor has deploy zone on top of U.S.

More quick battle strangeness. Small Attack, Armored Syrians attacking U.S., hills, June, dawn, clear, fair fit armor republican guard vs good fit Stryker. When you hit 'OK', it goes right back to the main menu. Change terrain to 'rough' and it runs just fine. Also, one of the small hill maps, I believe from 'Meeting at High Altitude', the QB deployment areas are messed up, opfor has deploy zone on top of U.S.

Ya, fun little map. I considered putting more of my inf on the flanks behind the right and left peaks, but covering the saddle, instead of rushing the compound, but the engineers seem to lack SAW/M240 support. I could of used the Stryker MG's for long range fires, but I was expecting a pretty good push from BMP's down the center, and didn't want to expose them to it... would be interesting to know how things would have turned out if I'd faced the full enemy force.

I'm pretty impressed so far. Just finished my first quick battle. Limited ability to pick forces is a little annoying, but I also enjoy getting surprised with force structures I might not have chosen on purpose. Played a Meeting Engagement on hills map. Obj is a house inside a walled compound, placed on a saddle in the middle of the map. Force is a medium eng coy backed up with the ATGM section. Enemy is mechanized regulars. First hiccup. Enemy evidentally air dropped 2 plts of bmp-1 into my assembly area. Thank god for the TOW armed strykers. Enemy force wiped out, with just some light wounds to the guys riding the strykers. (This shared deployment area is an annoying bug, but easily fixable I hope). Plan: 1st plt will rapidly advance to back side of walled compound, dismounts will seize compound before enemy can close. 2nd plt will advance to a reverse slow position on my left, which gives them LOS to 2nd entrance to compound, to prevent enemy approach/reinforcement. 3rd plt held in reserve. ATGM section pushes to broad right side of saddle, where there fires can engage any armor cresting the saddle. Having already destroyed the two bmp plts, I'm expecting very little resistance at this point. Execution: Everything goes well in this first phase. Compound is taken. I see occasion dust clouds on the enemies side of the saddle, so I guess he must have some remaining forces that deployed in a 2nd area. 10 or so minutes in, I order a pair of strykers from 2nd plt to hunt forward, pushing near the center of the saddle. As they reach the military crest, there is a huge burst of fire.. in seconds, both strykers are smoking. I send in the reserve plt, this time playing it caution, having them dismount their infantry just behind the military crest. Dismounts immediately come under very heavy fire. I order 1st plt to leave the compound and join the reserve 3rd plt on the crest. 2nd plt is also order to advance, taking the left side of the crest. Meanwhile the TOW strykers have pushed forward, high and on the extreme right... I'm hoping distance will protect them from the RPG's that I assumed took out the first two strykers. Dismounts take casualties as the enemy engages with AR's, MG's, and RPG's. Luckily (unwisely), the enemy infantry is concentrated quite tightly, and my cresting units have a pretty good crossfire. Even better, ATGM section on the right fires a single TOW that explodes right in the center of the syrian mob. After that, our forces have clear fire superiority. The only significant resistance comes from a clever Syrian innovation, the dreaded Twin BMP. Made from stacked BMP-1's, it offers, Twice the Armor, Twice the Fire Power, 1/200 of the Believability. It also offers a nasty suprise to my ATGM Stryker who was climbing further up the peak on the right side of the saddle. But eventually it falls to superior U.S. firepower... possibly from a twin-TOW. Result: Total Victory. Opinion: Very Fun. This is a winner, but there are certainly some glitches left. Aside from the deployment issues, I've noticed the camera key controls have some strange lag.. first the camera moves slow, then it seems to get damped and continue on far after you release the key. But scrolling via mouse works ok. No pathfinding issues so far, but it was a pretty sparse map. I do keep hitting 'M', which orders my costly high tech strykers to advance on the enemy in reverse, but thats pretty much my fault. Thinking back to CMBO, I think it was more ready to go out of the box, but I don't see any show stoppers, just stuff that needs to get patched. I'm sure we'll see the usual whine-fest from people, but meanwhile the rest of us will be too busy playing the game to respond.

Ahh, found the link to the download in the hotmail thread, now downloading! Best of luck getting yours going securityguard.

Is this officially the first dissatisfied customer posting? Can I get a ruling from the judges?

So after doing the refresh monkey dance for several hours, I realized that I got a little paranoid. I DID Pre-Order, right? I panicked check of old emails, and NO confirmation letter. So I checked my CC records. Sure enough, a charge posted on June 9th. And then I remembered that I copied and saved the e-license key. Still have that. Ok, so it wasn't a dream, I did order. But... its nearing H+1 now, and I haven't seen an email and d/l link. So I'm starting to think I've slipped through the cracks somehow. I know the Battlefront staff will be have more pressing issues to deal with today, but if there is anyone else out there missing confirmation letters and the all important d/l link, know that you aren't alone.

Battlefront, I demand you refund me for my wasted time. It's simply inexcusable that I have to wait for up to half a day longe.. oh nevermind, I'm too excited to really pull off sarcasm. But everyone should try and relax, and take solace in the fact that if the 1.01 patch has made its way out the door, release time should be drawing near. Well, this has been too much typing already. Must go refresh some more.

I liked OTR ok, but I think FC2 was better. As I remember, Atomic, like BT, started out making a computer version of squad leader, but instead went over to real time. I spent my fair share of time playing that demo scenario for CC1. Not a bad game, especially early in the series, but no CMBO. Anyone else play TotP or PitS back in the old days? I also remember that on the old BT forum, you logged in with a member number.. I think it was 7 digits or so.. I had mine memorized.

"urine soaked puddles of piss"? Are there any puddles of piss that aren't urine soaked?

I remember when those guys at Bigtime Software announced that they working on 'Computer Squad Leader'. Ok, back to lurking.

I was thinking of that too.. like laser guided hellfires, you could launch one from behind cover, wait a few seconds for it to go down range, then unmask and guide it in. Less time exposed to return fire that way.

I have a ton of ideas, but I'll try and keep it short and sweet. I sympathize with others who have to put multiple rounds into rear armor to get a kill. I think the best solution is server adjustable lethality. Let the user decide if he wants to play in the unforgiving world of one shot, one kill. Would it be possible to not visually model grass in the gunner view? While I think it looks great, I can't help but be frustrated by getting shot by bots and players (who have vegetation off) as I creep over a hill. Finally, it would be nice if a ctrl-click didn't register as a drop request. After I choose my vehicle, I'd like to use ctrl-click to move around the map, before left-clicking and choosing the exact location. I know there are work arounds, but I think this would be more intuitive. Anyway, great work guys. Everything about dropteam looks very promising, but possibly the most important thing I see is a dev team that solicits and considers user feedback. Chris

I'd agree with a min range. And I agree that the ATGM is a bit too agile. I'd guess that the sharp angles it turns is partly a result of netcode. You can only send velocity updates so often, so fast moving objects end up with very jerky paths. I could be wrong about that though. Bnej, thats interesting about the the trouble spotting ATGM's. I'd always assumed there was obvious dust/smoke from the launch booster. None the less, I still think that its fair that an self guided missile trips a warning for its target. Actually, that would be kind of a neat choice of fire modes. Either self guided, as currently modelled, only with a missile launch alarm for the target, or mode b, where you must keep the sight on target (relax the envelope a little) for the duration of flight, but the target gets no warning. Chris

Sure, an optically guided missile gives no lock on warning, but a modern day tank crew probably has an edge in spotting and responding to missile launches. In addition, the manual describes missile lockon as being a very active process with sensors overcoming countermeasures. Sounds plausible then that the target might have some warning. But again, its all science fiction, so we can justify what we want if it makes for good game play and interesting tactics. I think the warning of an incoming missile would make things a bit more exciting than finding out how you died from the text msg after your tank exploded.

I like the smoke trails, and I think the magical 'world of the future' can probably be used to justify them, as well as some of the extreme turning behavior, though I think coming back and hitting the back side of the target might be a little much. I haven't tried to guide them much without a lock, but one time that I did, I ended up with a missile that went maybe 1000m out, and then just turned circles and loops. It continued flying well past the time it took to reload the launcher. Seems like a bug, but I haven't tried to reproduce it once. I understand that the missile are fire and forget once you've achieved a lock, but I was wondering if that just means I can stop holding my reticle on the target, or if I can actually break LOS. Finally, it seems like the prey should get some sort of warning when someone locks on. I imagine with the network model it would be difficult to do for just lock on attempts, but an actual launch should trigger an alarm. Chris

On PC version, there is a well camoflaged X in a box, upper right corner.. not terribly intuitive though, even for PC users.

A correction.. I realized I didn't have full graphics on previous. Now they, especially for a tank game, quite gorgeous. Wonderful rolling terrain, beautiful vehicles. Own vehicle shadow is a little bizarre, I expect its abstracted due to high vehicle polygon count. Base/Structure textures still look so-so, possibly because they have busy textures layed on rather simple shapes to keep polygon count down. Three further suggestions to help the noobs: 1) changing keys is confusing. Include and default to a MyKeys profile along with DefaultKeys that will be editable from the get go. 2) Quitting isn't intuitive.. that little x in the upper left is hard to locate. 3) The capability of dropships is very neat. The tactical implications are staggering. The potential to confuse and disorient a new player trying to come to grips with basic armor tactics is unavoidable. This is compounded by having defense objectives centered in the map. Perhaps putting the objectives (and their air defense umbrella) on a map edge would help simplify introductory scenarios (or, alternately, extending the umbrella so an entire side of the map is covered). Which reminds me, explaining dropships and air defense also needs to go in the quick guide. My first three lives were spent hurtling to earth on fire. BTW, the ATGM smoke trails are fantastic. Back to war. Chris

Is over penetration of soft skinned vehicles with AP rounds modelled? I've been switching to HEAT for engaging palidins just assuming that it I should. Also, where should I employ HE?

Marco, its just the occasional odd looking texture. Honestly its the sort of thing I noticed most when I first trying to figure out the game... once game play gets going, its less of a factor. Mostly I'd say the graphics are in the realm of what you'd expect from a game from a small dev team thats being developed for 3 platforms. Functional, but not draw dropping. Perhaps I'm not taking into account the extra processor load view distance adds. In any case, I'd choose the fuctionality of an extended view distance over eye candy any day. Claytonius, I'll try and reproduce it.. located in virginia, seeing pings of 100-200, one system wired, 2nd was wireless, just making min sys specs. The improved feedback would be great. And the neat thing about choosing a sci-fi setting is the lack of grognards to grumble about realism. "Obviously in the future all tanks will be equipped with a balistic analysis sensors that can, in a low EW environment, provide instant feedback". Which reminds me of another question. Is the reduced ambient/tank sound in the behind camera view intentional? It seems a little disconcerting. BTW, I absolutely love all the thought that has gone into the weapons. Ion Beams that ablate rather than penetrate is a perfect example. It makes the weapon tactically interesting, and provides backstory to make it believeable. This sort of creation of consistant and well thought out rules for the nature of the world is what will attract grogs and demi-grogs (those who aren't quite AS fanatic). Well, enough jawing, time to play. Chris

First off, so far I'm very impressed. The graphics have some rough spots, the physics are occasionally bizarre, lag/stutters are common, but the most important ingredient is present. The game is fun. It's like a tank sim distilled to the basic essence. Bare bones tactics of move and fire. First question: Is this a bandwidth hog? I ask because I noticed the occasional lags got dramatically worse when I added a 2nd machine/player on the same DSL connection. There was occasional bizarre lockups were the tank appears to sink turret deep in the ground, but the most common by far was the dreaded spins. All of the sudden, frame rate drop and your tanks starts to turn merry circles, dancing its way across the field of battle. Very frustrating. Second Q: Well, this is more of a comment then a question. There is a dire need for some play details in the quickstart guide. The .pdf is just too much information for the average player, but the basic mechanics/interface of the game are too complex to pick up by doing. Two paragraphs explaining W,A,S,D,E,G,=,- and the mouse, and a paragraph explaining flanking shots ought to do it. Yes, I realize many can easily figure this sort of stuff out on their own, but I'm sure the dev's would like this beta to win over as many customers as possible, as well as test the product out. In that same vein, I'd love to see immediate text feedback on rounds fired. No, its not realistic. And no, its not something I'd generally choose to play with. But it keeps new people from getting discouraged when they put 20 rounds down range and get no result. I introduced a friend to dropteam today.. aside from the lag issues, he was immediately frustrated by no knowing if his rounds were even hitting. I hope none of this comes across as criticism. I really am excited about the DT, both in its current beta form, and in its potential. Chris

A larger command radius wouldn't be a bad approximation. It would also simulate the defender's C3 advantage of having scouted the terrain beforehand, and the leader having a very good idea where all his units are. For example, if a squad reported spotting a sherman coming through "that break in the hedge, 200m in front of our position", he would probably be familiar with the exact location, and where his units where relative to it. On the other hand, an attacking getting reports of "an AT gun, 300m ahead in the thick woods", wouldn't have the same level of awareness of exactly where this AT gun was relative to his forces. Artillery cutting commo wire? Sounds realistic but an incredible pain to model... If you open up that pandora's box, you also have to deal with deciding just where the wire would be laid.. can it be fixed? who would do the fixing? No, I would prefer if this sort of thing is just kept as an abstraction. Chris

Hmm, I wonder if a shell would really pull a vaccuum.... I imagine if the shell is still supersonic when it enter the compartment, the shock wave off the nose would cause all sorts of unpleasantness for the crew, but I think it would mostly just create a hot blast wave of air that would slosh around the turret for a bit. Anyone out there know who knows more aerodynamics than I wanna take a stab at this? Chris

The TOW gives the bradley some nice AT firepower, however the M2 is best off bugging out after a shot or two.. its one thing to execute a quick ambush, its an entirely differant matter to go toe to toe with a t-80. As for the M3, the firepower of the chaingun and the TOW come in handy.. not so much for the recon work itself, but for the important task of blinding [destroying] enemy recon assets. Or thats my understanding. Chris