Tarquelne

More air for thundering from on high, which you seem to have mistaken for plebeian "yelling". I'd be perfectly happy with infantry behaving abstractly in houses and funny-looking mortars. Or waiting. I'm also OK with the game lacking those features on initial release. If after trying the demo they seem essential, I'll wait. The choices seem to be we wait without a release... or we wait with one. Without a release and 1C/BFC doesn't get an infusion of cash to help justify further work and we don't get anything now, and only as much as we would have gotten anyway later. A release with "missing features" doesn't guarantee everything we want will eventually be put in. But I bet it improves the odds. Those who don't want to play the odds can wait. Those who do... or don't care about certain features, will get the game. They may decide that the game needs to be held awhile, that the public will be highly dissatisfied if certain features are missing. But, for $$ reasons, I'd guess the problems will have to be more severe than infantry in buildings and on-map mortars. Especially if they feel confident those can be added later and that play testing shows the missing features don't mess up the game too much. Maybe we should have a thread where people list of things - missing features or existing ones - that make them leery about the game... If I weren't so lazy I'd start one now. Right now various threads have such thoughts scattered through them, along with a lot of argument. I find myself defending the game more often than not, because I think critics often overestimate the importance of spotted flaws. But I do think most of the criticisms are very good - just sometimes overstated: I'm most worried about pure infantry fights and weapon ranges. I'm in "wait and see" mode with regard to on-map mortars and troops in buildings. [ August 07, 2006, 04:54 AM: Message edited by: Tarquelne ]

Who cares about the numbers? Bow before my search-fu!

Who said that? What Moon said is that they now test with longer range than before. </font>

Well, not if all the air-strikes get them. What was the word again on a scenario editor? If the game handles pure infantry battles OK and we have an editor coming down the line in the future I think grogs will be OK: They can play the tank-fest campaign once, for fun, and then move on to playing more realistic user made scenarios. (Assuming some other factor doesn't bite us in the ass... and assuming the tank fest battles aren't too much fun to give up.) I'd like to see an AAR for an infantry-only battle.

YOU DOUBT ME! FOOLISH MORTAL! :mad: :mad: :mad: Megakill, in the AAR thread: They may have been "in for years", but there was a change and they're now out for months. Unless Megakill is lying, insane, or (worst yet) wrong. Not impossible, but sometimes problems crop up and you have do redo something. I have no reason to doubt the explanation given. I also seem to remember the explanation given for no-troops-in-buildings being interface related. You point to the AI for both mortars and buildings. How come? I haven't been following the game, so I assume you've read something I haven't...

It was mentioned somewhere that the animation code was changed at some point, and that mortar teams require a lot of animation. In picture #1 the guy is "lounging". You can't see the guy in pic#2 - He may not actually be German. Pic#3: The man is not only kneeling, he's obviously Austrian. As is I suspect the man in pic#2. As you well know, Austrians exist solely to give Germans a bad rep.

If you read the FAQ you'll see that the Mortar teams are all in the buildings. Where they can't fire, and block the entrance of anyone else. This is a known bug, and the devs. are trying to fix it.

You sound defensive. That's what the game's really like, isn't it? Send more furs, less vodka.

In theory, yes. Does that really happen in TOW? TOW's AI might be built to reflect it... but otherwise, hmm... the interface degrades if you've got troops with less training/lower morale? Or there's always more such troops and thus less time for you to spend with each... or is it only a similar net effect? One of my favorite features in CM is the command delays. Not the mechanic, per se, but that the game tries to represent C&C problems. TOW's RT nature might, in itself, go a long way toward reproducing RL C&C problems... or maybe not. A wizz-bang interface, for example, will greatly magnify the player's ability to control. I think the devil is in the pudding, here. The proof is in the details. So far as realism goes I see RT as a step forward. At least in principle. It'll depend on how everything in the game is actually implemented.

Yea! Send more furs and vodka! I'm curious about what seems different with the new test ranges, and how different.

Where are the messages where OM discusses his anal retentive tendencies? Anyway, will you really have all the control you need? It depends on how good the AI is, how many units we have to handle, and how fast the pace of the game is. I'm guessing the pause function won't be necessary at all but will often be welcome, for both gameplay and realism reasons. (Though I think it'll lean toward gameplay.) Only those who've played the game can know for sure. Given past games I find the desire for a powerful pause function perfectly reasonable... though statements that the game absolutely requires it are, IMO, also premature. That upcoming AAR will probably have a lot of info.

I thought it is a tactical game. </font>

OTOH, pausing and saving does make plying your opponent with sodas until they either leave the table (and thus allow you to rampage) or piss their pants kinda pointless. There's cons as well as pros.

People always want technical fixes when interpersonal communications skills should suffice. Rather than relying on the crutch of a pause key, you could: Use vicious and violent rants to sever all relationships with your family. Whine pathetically if problems cause a delay at your end. You should be passive aggressively brow-beating your opponents anyway. Send "OMG! shes got a knife" to your opponents if you need a break. If they continue see above. Sound out opponents and only play people who can beaten and humiliated quickly. Just a few suggestions. PAUSE would come in handy, but I hardly see how it can accurately be called "essential."

I'd love to have all the features available for SP play available in multiplayer... especially if coop ever comes along. I play in a LAN group, and we often lament the inability to save or pause real-time games. It's not the Wild Wild West of the internet, so abuse isn't a concern. And since it's generally the same people playing a game over multiple sessions would be easy enough... if the software supported it. Some games do allow it. At least IIRC. Paradox games? And I believe Dawn of War allows anyone to pause. I don't remember ever trying, though. (Orks are made for fightin', you know.) Hmm... Total Annihilation - which IMO was great when drastically modded - allowed saving via a cranky third-party utility.

Young players who don't pay attention to the "grogy" details join up and get pummeled in games by the old hands? Good thinking!

It's a matter of degree. With lots of units needing lots of guidance you've got a classic clickfest. When you've got lots of time - either because of few units, slow player, or turn-based play, then you can have a strategy game. Those are the two extremes. Unless TOW has too many units, or things move along too quickly, it can still be a strategy game. But it'll be one that rewards - or maybe requires - quick thinking, not just deep thinking. If time is so limited or control so complex that manual dexterity becomes important we're back to clickfest. Realism could be a strong reason to have limited control. Some games alow total or mico-management, and that can be good and fun. But C&C/FOW considerations mean a lack of control in a wargame can be a feature rather than a flaw. That's not a reason NOT to have pause, but it's a reason not to make pausing a higher priority. Personally, I'd like to see all sorts of pause options. But they're not going to make the difference between TOW being a strategy game or not. (Ok, well, unless the action is so frantic/AI so bad you do need to pause for decent control.)

Yep. But, realistically, didn't it sometimes get used for things it wasn't designed for? Esp. toward the end? If they compensate for everything... then they've simply shifted the scale and everything is hunky dory. Any incomplete compensation will put some realism back in - what you mention above being the biggy - but would remove some, too. In principle I'd be fine with either way, or with the sharp limit in possible scenarios. The game's not going to be a perfect simulator no matter what. Since the game is in development hopefully the devs. will be able to look at the concerns raised here and still have time to make any adjustments they feel are warranted, or at least future proof the game to make adding some features later easier. If we're really lucky the screenshots are misleading and there isn't any mess at all.

I think there's some confusion about exactly what "mess" they might be in. If they fiddle with the values ("compress" ranges) then the mess is unrealistic play. If they present scenarios with Stugs etc. trying to fight in close combat then the mess is unrealistic scenarios... assuming they don't present the scenarios as times when the enemy succeeded in getting in close. I assume it did happen. It happened in CM... One way it's strange modeling of what the tanks actually were like, the other way is a strange modeling of the way they were used. One is much stranger than the other, though. Messing with the values governing how tanks performed means you'll always have unrealistic play/results. The other means you can only realistically play games in which the long-ranged German gear was forced to fight up close. And away from concentrations of buildings, quite possibly. That keeps the game from being a general simulator/game like CMx1, where whole theaters were covered. But then TOW is explicitly more limited, with 50 some maps and a specific campaign. So no steppe tank duels or hedge-row sniping. No urban combat. As long as the devs. acknowledge the game's current limitations the range issue shouldn't be a show stopper. [ July 31, 2006, 08:57 AM: Message edited by: Tarquelne ]

It'd have to be qualified realism. Like, "But not with buildings." It'll be interesting to see how large a role buildings play on the included maps. The first iteration of CM had some pretty serious gaps too. Nothing that required such circumvention, but I've played plenty of CM games that didn't involve buildings. I think it's WAY too early to judge that. Given past RTS games the burden of proof may be on BFC, but so far I think all we know is that the game won't be as detailed as CM in many ways. But I think there's still a long way to go before TOW is demonstrated to be a "clickfest." I think the most important factors to watch are the AI, the # of units, the game's pace and to a lesser extent damage/weapon modeling. I think those are what have to go wrong to make the game a clickfest. [ July 29, 2006, 10:54 AM: Message edited by: Tarquelne ]

I feel a song coming on!

He said it was "unbelievable". Moon, je accuse! I charge you with Common Hyperbole! Edit: Not trying to mock MD. But Moon is now my sworn enemy, and will be for the next 20 min.

Ok. Thanks! Hmm... I don't support cruelty to animals, but OTOH I do support cruelty to humans. So pester BFC into getting the payment stuff set up - the vodka plan sounds good to me.

Thinking about TOW as "the IL-2 of wargames" I keep finding myself assuming there'll be coop multiplayer. So: Coop? Yes/no/maybe? PS: I also have this sudden urge to send BFC money. I'm ready to pre-order now.

Does that include OS/2?