Mud

On a related... tangent... of idle thought, ...would it be possible to go the other direction, and voluntarily run through action (in RT) at slower-than-realtime? This might be useful in particularly complicated situations, so the user isn't quite as hampered by reaction time, without the stutter of rapid pause/scroll/unpause cycles. Might also be more pleasant than full pausing in MP, as long as it's done in intervals of some length, perhaps limiting the total amount of slow-time per game. I'd prefer to let the MPers judge whether or not it'd be useful for MP, 'tho.

Interesting. Are Strykers any more likely to use their machine guns without explicit targeting orders? At least in 1.03, they seem a bit slow to do so, even if they have plenty of ammo, no other orders (targeting or otherwise), and spotting on a fleshy-but-dangerous target (like an RPG team with their 500mm Circle o' Death).

It would be fairly bizarre to be able to 'see' cover arcs from opposing units -- facing, yes, but cover arcs?

An M-388 Davy Crockett might be perversely amusing, but probably not more than once.

Note that just because the command exists for both the vehicle and the passengers does not mean that it covers the crew -- just like Disembark, it could mean the difference between unbuttoning for all passengers (selected by vehicle), or individual teams (selected by team).

MGS? It'll only fire one HE shot per target-area order. Cancel + retarget. Reason -- low ammo count, so you may not want the TacAI firing and reloading for 60s.

Oh, yup. 12x air assets (if memory serves) will tend to do that...

Underneath the building? Playing around with all the air support in the 'Warlords in a Barrel' user-gen scenario, using 'heavy' fire missions, I've seen quite a few leveled buildings surrounded by crater... but with the building wreckage at its original level (as if on a dirt pedestal, basically). Never saw building wreckage pushed downwards -into- a crater.

Hmm. Is spotting doctrine -- well, who's allowed to call in support fire -- dictated by unit type, or by the side nominally in control of the joint force?

Another thread has some graphic examples of odd movement and spotting problems involving infantry. There's the case of a completely stationary soldier perhaps 1-2m behind an enemy ATGM team, aware of an enemy presence (question mark contact) there, who hasn't actually spotted them. There's also a report of a Syrian soldier who Hunt'd past 2 Bradleys 8-10' away from him without noticing. Seems there might be some remaining weirdness here...

I don't see any shadows, so maybe it's just a really dark room, or they've all learned how to cloud mens' minds.

Even with Hunt... there's a problem if the TacAI won't recognize a vastly superior force/position and have the Hunt(ers) shift into a position that'd increase cover/concealment, or even completely block LOS. Ex. if your dismounts are Hunting through an intersection, and newly-revealed enemy seems to be an HMG team on the 6th floor of a building 300m away, stopping and returning fire might be less reasonable than diving for cover. Even more so if it's a T-72 that comes recklessly barreling down a parallel street with its turret pointed appropriately, or if it's the building you're Hunting towards turns out to be an enemy strongpoint.

If memory serves, the game manual strongly encourages selecting a FIST or JTAC (for art/air respectively) in an FSV for best accuracy and speed. OTOH... didn't one of the YTC training scenario briefings say to select the FSV itself, and not the FO? Might be remembering it wrong. If your FIST or JTAC is carrying LLDR gear, and there's a location with very good LOS to areas that you really want to smash, from a reasonably safe distance... well, no LOS == no impact right now. 'tho the mission isn't canceled if you lose LOS to the target area. One related bit that probably should be tested is whether multiple simultaneous targets impacts accuracy or speed. It would seem reasonable that they would -- at least, if they're not hitting essentially the same target.

If somebody else has LOS to the target unit, not such a big deal -- target choice is retained, at least for a while, because the alternative is a target order getting canceled and the unit possibly doing something stupid every time a targeted unit drops out of sight. If it's violating FOW because there's also nobody else that can see it, and you're therefore getting information that couldn't otherwise be obtained -- then it'd seem there's a problem.

If we're talking about playing more cautiously... what would be a reasonable amount of time to clear an airfield the size of Ash Shammas on, say, Elite/1.03, w/o being gamey and taking advantage of knowledge from previous attempts?

In the past. It's included with the demo.

Oh, that explains it. Heh. Does seem to be impossible for Red to get -any- points, at least if the three designated targets are killed -- not hard given the firepower. I don't recall any objectives even listed as failed, so perhaps it's impossible for Red to get points... No need for Blue to even attempt to escape. Only possible hitch is if one of the technicals spots the HQ closest to the road -- possible, rare, but possible. If we wanted to pressure Blue more... - give Red points for spotting Blue forces - give Red points for actually killing any Blue - give Blue more points for controlling the exit spot - give Red a starting bonus, to pressure Blue to actually complete the mission and bug out - perhaps Blue should have a JTAC, somebody with LLDR, or both

Unlimited time would eliminate what would often be a fairly important constraint on the attacker -- particularly on Blue Force, which often gets the ammunition to be painfully methodical if it only had the time. Check the machine-gun ammon on the Strykers, for instance. I wouldn't mind scenario authors having the option to set different time limits based on FOW/difficulty, 'tho; as they affect pacing, a scenario that's meant to have very little spare time with reasonable careful play in Veteran may require reckless abandon in Elite.

It would probably be easier to have a simple event log -- ex. '{time}: X killed by {rpg?} from {Y, maybe unknown} at {Z}' with some clickable items to take you to the location of the target, or the location of the shooter if known. '{time}: {x} made first contact, spotting enemy at {y}' or so forth Buffer last N 'important' events, probably simpler than trying to rewind the math or buffer the last x-seconds worth of state, and might be enough to preserve the essential information. I'd also consider reinforcements message-log-worthy, as right now they don't arrive with orders and they're fairly easy to miss if things happen to be busy.

Do you have the Javelin CLU as well? If you have the CLU, at least one Javelin missile, are dismounted, aren't too close and aren't too far (neither of which is a problem in the training mission setup), you should be able to give a normal target order and they'll get to it. Mind you, in-game if there's enough of a target you might not even need to give the target order.

Hm. If I were a dev, I would have been severely tempted to embed an Easter Egg in the starmap at some point.

Interesting. Entertaining. One fairly likely to elicit a "Noooooooooo!" scream. Noted that briefing seems to caution against collateral damage, but there doesn't seem to be any 'preserve building' points...

Show All Waypoints defaults to Alt-P; only visible when a unit (any unit) is selected. Results in the interesting case where you may not have awareness of the locations of other units, but you have full awareness of their move orders. Edit -- might be any friendly unit; I didn't check with hostiles. I haven't edited my keymap at all.