Kurtz

In normal vehicles you definitely can see vehicles spotted by others.

I think you can see all spotted enemies even in a "normal" vehicle. I agree with you, a vehicle with more firepower is probably more important. The ability to drop jammers and turrets are countered somewhat by the accuracy of the bots when the shoot at drop ships (or the inablity of drop ships to do evasive manouvers)

I have used the Mercury Command vehicle quite a lot, but I think it's not effective enough as a 'system component'. Let's look at the benefits: You can: - Fire 'off-board' artillery. - Place turrets and jammers during the game. - Extract turrets and jammers and return them to the pool for redeployment. I think the individual vehicle is fine as it is. The gun, armour and speed are reasonable for a command-type vehicle. But where are the command benefits? Communication between players are not obviously helped, nor is there more information available when a CMD vehicle is used. I'm trying to think of possible improvements to the Command functionality without crippling the team too much if you don't use a CMD track (which would be the easiest route). Right now, I can use a CMD track at start, drop arty and place some turrets. After this I switch to a Hurricane and drive around blowing things up until there is another volley of artillery available, switch back to CMD and so forth.... I can't get away from the feeling that the Command vehicle should be much more important for team work than it currently is. In addition to this, you get somewhat crippled if anyone is voted CMDR. If there is, individual player can't get resupply, they have to request it from the commander. What do you other players think? Is my analysis correct? Do you have any suggestion on how to give a "Command bonus" to the team that uses one, without crippling the other team too much? In contemporary warfare, command vehicles are usally seen as high-priority targets. In DT, I don't feel that you don't lose anything particular if it's destroyed.

My account worked. But I haven't played during this week, only played again yesterday.

Is Iraq still a member of the "Axis of Evil"? Have you heard this joke from GW? What's Kuwait's national anthem? - Onward, Christian Soldiers!

It's kind of ironic that we are funding Iran's nuclear program by buying their oil. And there is the small issue of Iran considering selling their oil for euros, not dollars. Just like Iraq did before the invasion (promptly changed by the occupation government). http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0830/p03s01-wome.html I think it's hard to find anyone willing to take 'evidence' from the US seriously anymore after the attack on Iraq.

Press Return to get the chat prompt. Type /showfps true to enable fps info. Type /showfps false to disable.

Good points, yurch! However, I think this is mostly a scenario problem, not a game problem. Just like the Hurricanes. The ions are very powerful, especially when used in pairs. But remove the long visual distances on the ice map, or the ion AA towers on the raid map and they are much less powerful. Teamwork + favourable terrain + protection from incoming fire are force multipliers that are in the current mix. Remove some or all of them and the situations is different. I bet 3 ATGM vehicles under ion cover would make quite a mess...hmmmmm...gotta try that. Maybe we need smoke from on-board mortars? Drop a couple of smoke rounds on the ion tanks and they have to move out of their comfy fighting position.

I think I have seen "XXX destroyed Kurtz turret with artillery" when 120 mm HE is used, so it seems possible to kill turrets with fragmentation.. I have also seen "XXX destroyed Kurtz turret with 120 mm HE". But I have seen som many kil messages for my precious turrets, so maybe I'm just confused. I have occasionally used 20mm HE in indirect fire (ctrl-M), I wonder what the results were? Might have made the enemy wonder were the fire came from... [ April 23, 2006, 12:45 PM: Message edited by: Kurtz ]

After some more thought onthe subject, I think suicide should be penalized (or the enemy rewarded). After all, it means you are in a position where you most likely is damaged and do not have any option to extract, usually because of enemy AA cover. The enemy should be awarded for both these acheivements. OK, sometimes the damage is your own fault (e.g. reckless driving), but the enemy still has air or ground cover that's stopping you from extracting. (except for those moments when the drop ship just can't reach you because you are at the bottom of a crater or somefink)

I wonder if the Hermes shoots down low-flying Hurricanes?

Sadly, it also makes it difficult to aim with the command vehicle's gun since the 'diamond' covers the aiming point.

#2: http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=54;t=000165

I got a "server not responding" message today and tried to 'disconnect (from the menu that's shown when pressing ESC). The button was visibly depressed but nothing happened. DT was not responding and I closed it from the task bar in Windows. I guess DT tried to contact the server to disconnect properly - something that wasn't possible at the time. I should of course have waited, when I rejoined all my precious turrets were gone.

How effective infantry will be depends a lot on the terrain. Infantry probably wouldn't survive long in the open terrain in the current scenarios. But if the terrain is rougher, or in woods, infantry will be useful.

I must say that two ion Thors working in pair on the same target is Murder! Not much can stand up to multiple ion beams fired by humans.

The "problem" with Hurricanes is with its availabilty, not in the vehicle itself. But I guess that's a decision the scenario maker does? I think a lot of the things we 'complain' about are scenario issues, not game issues - like Hurris and AA turret spamming. In addition to this, both forces have identical equipment. Great for playtest, but doesn't feel very realistic. Again - a scenario issue. (I make the assumption the scenario maker can choose vehicle types and quantity) Lower quantity of vehicles in a scenario could make people more careful - I saw Pilgrim's Tempest on a ballistic trajectory a few minutes ago. Didn't know hovercraft could fly that high! Another thing: I tested the "foliage" option the other day. Looks nice, but (as expected) gives lower frame rate. But I felt it was harder to play because I didn't see the enemy vehicles on the Raid map because they we're hidden by the grass! But they could of course see me clearly out on the barren plains.

Different 'fog of war' settings is perhaps the way to go. In the foggiest setting, you may not even know (immediately) that a team member is killed

Right now, we all can see what weapon killed something, and whu pulled the trigger. "Kurtz killed someone's vehicle with beam weapon". It would be more interesting if we only got to know that someone's vehicle was killed, but not who did it and with which weapon. When you know which weapon was used, you can draw conclusions as to which vehicle was used. A related issue: when using the Hurricane, it usually says "plasma mortar", but not when shooting at turrets, even if I fire directly. It says "artillery" when killing turrets.

I just had to try it on Windows XP. It crashes when I first click on the line, then click the Refresh button.

But I can see the turrets as they are deployed in the deployment phase. "this spot looks safe " [turret appears] "no, it doesn't!"

If I cripple them, they're out of the game longer. The bots have to wait before extracting (do bots extract?) or killing themselves. Humans can kill themselves instantly or wait for extraction. I usually try to kill vehicles, but sometimes crippling them is the only thing you can do. I was thinkg about another feature: "keep off the grass" signs Sometimes I dig trenches to make it harder for the enemy to pass. Of course, my own bots can't resist this and usually tries to go over the obstacle, ridiculing themselves in the process.

Maybe I should try the Apollo. The "light tank" label implies vulnerability, a bit unfair obviously. Still, it feels a bit wrong with the 20 mm penetrating the Thor turret side at such steep angle.

The points is a mystery to me. But I have observed that I get high points when using a Hermes. But that seems to be because of the accurate gun (hits > misses) and high number of kills - without my intervention! I agree that all damage should be counted. If I set a Thor turret on fire, I usually don't bother to kill the vehicle, it's out of action anyway.

This seems to be a scenario option. Look at the Single player tab, there is an option for deployment zone size. Just as in CTF games. The option is there, but we haven't had a chance to use different settings yet.