[Not gonna waste my money!!!]

you could at least say something productive in your whining instead of just being a baby about it

[Totally in love with the scenario editor!]

Once you mess around with the editor some, you can totally see why randomly generated maps were axed - no way any random map could look as good as what you could make.

Editor is insanely powerful. It was easy to make some vague scenery in CMX1, but now you're really put to the test. Can't wait to see what people come up with.

[Attacking AI's eventual loss of interest in the objective]

The new AI plans for scenario editing are pretty awesome when they work. It allows the AI to move as a group, cautiously, and engage as they are engaged. A far cry from CMX1's suicidal and relentless stream of AI jihads. It can actually be a challenge now.

However, a lot of people have been stating that the AI is passive. I don't think they're passive, so to speak, but they refuse to move after a certain point.

The first scenario on the list (name escapes me, two stryker companies and redfor gets IED's) is a good example of this. The first half of the battle the AI will move up pretty cautiously. Honestly I don't think a normal human could do any better, other than maybe area firing on suspected positions. But after about 3/4th's battle, when the AI gets a chance to make a run for the objective, he just halts. He creeps a stryker or two up near the end, but the mission ends as a major for me.

The current mission I'm doing now is the same way. 65 turns, big city scenario, I forget the name but it has a lot of armor in it. At first they move up pretty damn good - keep with their platoon, move up inch by inch and eliminate threats as they approach them. I even tried sneaking a tank around to flank them but they had pretty fair coverage.

I have 40 turns left and they won't budge. They've stayed in the same position for the past 10 turns or so, when, with what they have, they could pretty much destroy me (their initial arty strike nailed the objective and took many combatant lives). It's just odd.

What causes this exactly? Is it something we should look out for when planning with the AI in scenario editor?

[AI: self preservation missing]

Originally posted by thewood:

Has anyone seen a unit go to ground due to MG fire. Naybe I haven't played enough to see it.

Do you mean go prone? They'll do that - infact, they have a very nice cowering animation when they're supremely pinned down.

[AI: self preservation missing]

yeah the AI essentially has no breaking morale. they can panic but they never really do anything hasty

[Huge increase in FPS]

Radeon X800 here, the ngo drivers for that seem to give a pretty decent performance boost. Will keep an eye out for any instability, though.

[What was the reasoning about TCP/IP being real time only?]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Quick responses...

Gibsonm makes VERY good points. We would lose the replay feature if we just "WeGo'd" the RT play by simply enforcing pauses and disallowing moves. It might, however, be the best short term solution. It could also work out to be a 3rd way of playing via TCP/IP. Meaning, we might have RT, RT/WeGo, and WeGo. We'll see what we can do.

Any form of pause & play would help tremendously, as right now tcp/ip is pretty much impossible to handle. I'm glad you guys are considering it.

[A prime example of why gamers are whiners]

You appealed to the whiners yet somehow left the real fans in the dark (tcp/ip play). So I'd say it's about even. Justified whining.

[Units attempting to shoot through concrete walls with small arms]

They'll also try to shoot through multiple buildings even if they do not have a LOS. It's probably a bug, hopefully fixable, but I'm not sure how it got past beta testing because its prominent in almost every battle I've had so far.

[The reviewers were right, aka, this game is broken.]

Originally posted by JaguarUSF:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by securityguard:

There is an attacking AI?

I played the first scenario (which I did and I can't remember the name of it ) as Red (who defends...and has some nice IEDs at their disposal) and I saw the Blue forces moving quite nicely.

The included scenarios, in my opinion, just scratch the surface of what is possible with the scenario editor. I expect some awesome community-made content shortly. </font>

[The reviewers were right, aka, this game is broken.]

There is an attacking AI? I did a couple of scenarios where you could defend but nothing ever happened. I also did that meeting engagement at dusk with the two smaller forces and I ended up killing the Syrians at their spawn.

[What was the reasoning about TCP/IP being real time only?]

Originally posted by InvaderCanuck:

My problem with RT is that you don't have the control in larger battles.

Take for example the official campaign. Which mission is it, 2? Where you are given a Styker Company + MGS support and you are to assault an air field.

You have 3 targets, one platoon for each.

I defy anyone to claim they can play such a scenario in multi player and not lose complete control of what is going on in short order.

You can only issue orders one unit at a time. By the time you get to the last squad or stryker, the first units may have already accomplished their objective, or they might have failed miserably.

Simultaneously you have an objective a kilometer away that you need to take, so you move to that platoon, and while you are issuing orders you have no idea if your first platoon needs support.

The gameplay of this game is slow and deliberate, you HAVE to be there paying attention or you will have no idea what is going on.

This is an understatement. You honestly cannot play this game with more than a platoon of infantry in real-time because the tacAI constantly makes adjustments every moment. Most real time games don't even have a tacAI model, and the ones that do (such as close combat series) the amount of rethinking initial orders isn't nearly as drastic.

In single player you can at least counter this by pausing the game, taking a breather and jumping in when ready. You cannot do this in multiplayer. As far as I'm concerned, this game has no internet play because it is, frankly, completely unplayable.

[What was the reasoning about TCP/IP being real time only?]

Actually, no that still doesn't make sense. Couldn't it just transfer that minute while its happening?

[What was the reasoning about TCP/IP being real time only?]

Ok, that makes some sense, but could you add a pause every 60 seconds in real time TCP/IP? No playback, but jeez louise

[What was the reasoning about TCP/IP being real time only?]

Originally posted by Elvis:

This is fairly easy to answer also (if Steve doesn't beat me to it again). In real time the information is constantly being sent back and forth between the players. Much smaller packets of information so it looks seemless. In WEGO you are sending a full minutes worth of information with each turn and then you are back to the larger file sizes being tranferred.

A 60 second turn in CMX2 over PBEM averages 8mb-11mb. That is barely skirting it for my 40kb/s upload over transfer. Yet, TCP/IP was completely flawless for me. If it can transfer 60 seconds of real time to both computers in perfect synchronization, I don't get why 60 seconds of real time computed in bits would be any worse.

[What was the reasoning about TCP/IP being real time only?]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by securityguard:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Elvis:

WEGO TCP is pretty much a PBEM/file swapping setup. How do you think WEGO TCP would go over with the crowd if each turn took 15 minutes to transfer as ParaBellum points out the email would take? Probably not very well.

I hope that explains the dilema and the reason. Your topic title for this is : "What was the reasoning about TCP/IP being real time only?" Assuming that was not a rhetorical question I hope I have given you the reasoning.

That cannot be true at all. How on EARTH do we play real time, without desync, PERFECT synchronization with no lag (tested it - 5 games, no lag, perfect games) yet we cannot do a turn based mode? Hell, it's barely turn based in CMX2: You do a real time mode first, THEN it allows you to playback the footage. You know, I would be happy with a mode in TCP/IP that was real time but paused every 60 seconds. I don't understand this at all, but there is something definitely wrong with the technical side of things if a turn based turn is 11mb yet we can play real time consistently. </font>

[What was the reasoning about TCP/IP being real time only?]

Originally posted by Elvis:

WEGO TCP is pretty much a PBEM/file swapping setup. How do you think WEGO TCP would go over with the crowd if each turn took 15 minutes to transfer as ParaBellum points out the email would take? Probably not very well.

I hope that explains the dilema and the reason. Your topic title for this is : "What was the reasoning about TCP/IP being real time only?" Assuming that was not a rhetorical question I hope I have given you the reasoning.

That cannot be true at all. How on EARTH do we play real time, without desync, PERFECT synchronization with no lag (tested it - 5 games, no lag, perfect games) yet we cannot do a turn based mode? Hell, it's barely turn based in CMX2: You do a real time mode first, THEN it allows you to playback the footage. You know, I would be happy with a mode in TCP/IP that was real time but paused every 60 seconds. I don't understand this at all, but there is something definitely wrong with the technical side of things if a turn based turn is 11mb yet we can play real time consistently.

[What was the reasoning about TCP/IP being real time only?]

Originally posted by Bahger:

I feel for you. 14MB is a helluva size for a PBEM swapfile and, personally, I don't want to play MP in this like it's Company of Heroes. FWIW, I bet PBEM works great, it's one of the glories of CM1. But if you do not have a broadband connection you're doomed.

14mb is huge for even a broadband connection. Depending on your upload, thats almost 1 minute per turn

[What was the reasoning about TCP/IP being real time only?]

Originally posted by AdamL:

Huh? Yeah that's an odd omission.

Um... it's pretty hard to keep track of everything in real time mode I'm finding already. Also, you can't go back and see the cool moments you miss

The AI orders are in there and they follow them. You can't tag them with conditional orders but can go right into the game and give them their first set of orders anyhow.

I will admit, in WE-GO mode the AI is much easier to handle. It begins falling apart rapidly in real-time, however, because one lone stryker goes tac-ai crazy and you're focusing on other elements. I think it's one reason why I feel so grumpy about TCP/IP only being real-time. Actually, I don't feel grumpy, just ripped off.

[What was the reasoning about TCP/IP being real time only?]

Originally posted by Vikkelä:

Stop complaining and learn to play. Seriously.

what, in my post, defines my ability to play the game

dont be daft

[What was the reasoning about TCP/IP being real time only?]

What technical constraints were there that required this horrible ordeal?

What was the reasoning that real time mode would be playable in multiplayer, when you cannot pause or do anything remotely constructive beyond a platoon of units?

Why, if we cannot have full replays, are we forced to use 14mb PBEM files to play turn-based?

Why is the AI so horribly bad that, even when facing each other from roof-top to roof-top, they have no LOS and twitch around like crazy?

My thread on targetting AI that got ignored:

http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=52;t=001801

Why are the TO&E so god damn amazingly strict in scenario editing that deleting each unit you don't want is a hassle and a half?

Why are quick battle TO&E's so amazingly boring, with virtually little or no variation (even when choosing Combatants, which should have stuff like small IED's on defense but never do)?

Why can't we choose QB maps? What's the point of even making a QB map if you cannot choose it?

Why package a game with a very small amount of scenario and hardly any QB maps, when we cannot generate maps anymore?

What did the beta testers say about AI pathing?

Why did I buy this game.

[ July 27, 2007, 04:31 PM: Message edited by: securityguard ]

[Some CMx1 things I miss]

No turn base mode in TCP/IP

What was the reasoning behind this?

[Some of the most crippling targetting bugs I've seen in a strategy game]

Telling a Bradley to area fire at a building that he does have line of sight to should not be this difficult. Give him a target line, smack the go button, and watch him look left, then look right, look left, look right. Move him up slightly next turn and he fires - at a completely different building, yet somehow deflecting his shots at the building I told him to fire at in the first place. To top it all off he somehow goes back into the left/right limbo all over again after a burst of fire. It doesn't help that area fire seems to select a very specific area that you target, unlike CM where you could pin point the exact location you wanted.

Infantry doesn't fair well either. They will fire at targets they shouldn't have LOS to, but instead will fire directly at what's blocking their LOS. I've had combatants fire at a wall for an entire turn - there wasn't even anything remotely visible at the time. I suppose they were attempting to area fire at a last known location, but failing absolutely miserably.

It's simply unplayable. I'm sure it will be tweaked with patches, but good gracious.

[Missing Confirmation Email]

At least you have your license. Apparently mine was never recieved - I thought they would give you the order # and license with the confirmation download.

[Official update]

You know, I don't really care when it comes out, but it is a little odd that Paradox has 1.01 full for download already. What is the hold up on the American side of things, exactly?