Kelly's Heros
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Posts posted by Kelly's Heros
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Thanks for the new features. Looking forward to more action this weekend.
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First off, the game is great and I played it all day on Sunday. Aside from the Crashes to Desktop (CTD)s that occur on a frequent basis on my Visa SP2 x64 machine, the fact that autosave works great allowed me to play several games to completion. I did lose a few save games with CTDs when I tried to save to my own file name, so there are definitely some save bugs in the game.
CTDs were not consistent and I'll report if I find any specific patterns.
As many others have said, the messages window can become extremely busy with a large number of units. A tree view would be helpful that can be exploded or collapsed. Or maybe if you keep the current perspective and just allow each section to collapse or expand as needed.
I agree that grouping of upgrades and unit needs orders would be nice.
I would actually like to see trade, technology, and zoom as buttons on the screen that are easily accessible.
One other suggestion is that when a unit is selected it can be very hard to find on a busy screen. Some kind of spotlight or a more significant highlight would help to find the unit. I found myself searching and finally would have to draw a movement path to find the unit. Maybe I am just getting old, but that was my experience.
One other issue is the range circles that are drawn as wrap-arounds on the screen. This creates a very strange view perspective that is more confusing than helpful.
A few notes about the units. Planes are pretty expensive with minimal impact and unless they are improved I don't see their value. Cruise missiles are utterly worthless and almost always seem to run out of fuel. I assume these are tuning issues. When my stealth bombers were shot down by battleships, I just figured there is something wrong with the unit balancing. Now an Aegis cruiser maybe, but not battleships and infantry. I would think that strategic bombers will probably only be shot down by fighters and missile defense.
Overall, I enjoyed the game and I'm looking forward to the improvements coming down the road. I like that fact that you are already implementing some of the suggestions and I will keep playing any updates you make to the Beta :-)
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38 and still kicking youngin's behinds at CM.
Bret
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Just tried your scenario and I get through every time if I make the Piat's go to ground (i.e. I make them hide). The HT isn't even phased by the grenades and the pummeling it is getting from the guys right next to the bridge. They are 10m away, which is 30 yards, but I would believe that is close enough to kill an HT.
When the Piat's are awake, they always take out the HT in about 24 seconds. This was very consistent across 8 different re-runs.
Some kills early, but in general it took about 24 seconds for the Piat to kill the HT, never any longer than that.
I'm not sure why the grenades had no effect, but I think the armor rating for HTs is off somewhere or the bug is specific to the HT type. Has anyone tested this problem with trucks? Maybe this is a more general problem?
All I know is that IMHO, there is no way that HT should have survived on the bridge with that kind of attention and the fact that it had to slow down to get past the wrecks. IT was a sitting duck. This truly is a bug or a database corruption problem as far as I am concerned.
By the way, this is still the best damn tactical WWII computer wargame I have ever played.
Bret
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Yes it was the 3d window where the mouse became ineffective and it was locked up during the setup phase and the first turn. For some reason, by turn two it was working ok again. Very bizzare. But once the game started working, it was wonderful.
Great job guys.
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When I push Alt-p the text flashes on the screen and then disappears. It doesn't seem to do anything. Anyone else run into this one.
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When playing a game on two Win 98 machines, the client machine mouse froze for the first two turns. After that, the mouse was fine. Not sure what happened there.
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Anyone have any problems with trying to pause a game in TCP/IP land? The message flashes very quickly on both machines. I think this may be a bug.
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I downloaded all of them. Worked great for me on my DSL line.
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I was watching a program on the Discovery Channel about machine guns and they said that during WWII when American troops heard an MG42 they would automatically go to ground just because of the sound. The fire rate of the weapon was so high that it scared people just to hear it.
Once the Germans learned of this, they would many times just fire the weapon in the direction of advancing troops to slow down an advance.
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The sound when a tank fires and misses is a crackling buzzing sound. Seems strange. Not sure if this is a MOD problem or from the original game.
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One complaint about target stickiness. Let's face it, if a tank commander knew there was a tank behind a building in his LOS, he would never target another entity unless it had a higher fear factor. What I mean by this is that a tank commander is going to keep the tank in his boresight for fear of being destroyed by the enemy tank. The fear of being destroyed when the tank came clear of the obstacle will keep him preoccupied. Only another tank or an infantry with an AT weapon will change his mind.
I think targets should be prioritized based on the fear factor they impose. For example, infantry probably would change targets to another infantry unit because other infantry pose a similar threat as a tank, especially MG fire.
This simple scheme should help targeting issues. Now the real question is can you overide the fear factor. Here I think the AI should evaluate the situation and the strengths of the commander and make an informed decision. If the tank commander agrees with your new target then fine. Otherwise, he stays with the fear factor. Leadership ratings should come into play when this order is challenged.
I believe very few tank commanders would have targeted infantry if they knew a tank was ready to pounce. It just isn't good business.
Unit & resource balancing and the common sense rule
in Empires of Steel
Posted
The common sensibility of unit capabilities and interactions seems to be a growing concern for many. I agree that this game will become frustrating for many if the units don't pass the common sense test. Sure, we can play the game as it stands and adopt the limitations of the current unit capabilities, but I believe the game has too much potential to leave these imbalances.
What specifically can we do to help make the changes to the unit characteristics? Should we be looking at the rules or should we look at the units themselves?
Brit, what can we do to help you sort this out?
I am an old Empire player from the Amiga days and I played that game for way too many hours back then. I always liked the premise of an abstract strategy game that hides some of the details found in more complex wargames. The frustration I had with Empire is that it didn't pass the common sense test on units and in many cases that limited the usefulness of those units to the point where they weren't used in the game.
I would like to see all units have some kind of advantage so that they can be used where needed, just like in our world today. However, I don't want us to complicate the game to the point where it becomes too detailed and loses the "create a quick fun strategy game" for an evening game either.
I believe we can all help Brit find the sweet spot for this game and we can all enjoy the results.
How can we help?