bartbert

Ok. I'll take a look this evening.

Ok. That will be fixed in the next update. Thanks.

I guess you can buy it as often as you can afford to do so. It gives a 15% chance of starting advantaged per "Level". So if you purchase it 3 times, you would have a 45% chance. However, if your starting elevation was "High" and nobody else picked "High" as their starting altitude, you're out of luck. Also, if multiple pilots have the skill, then the advantage goes to the pilot who spots first.

The number of turns is determined randomly for escort missions. * Light Bombers: 4 to 6 turns * Medium Bombers: 5 to 6 turns * Heavy Bombers: 6 turns

It is described in the manual that comes with the full version of the game. Basically, agile aircraft allow a leader to play any card as if it were a Scissors under the following conditions: * It is currently the leader's turn (ie, he cannot use agility when he is defending). * It is legal to play a Scissors (ie, he is either disadvantaged, or he is responding to a Tight Turn or Scissors card played by a defender).

I don't have the code available to me at the moment, but I think that each time you purchase Eagle Eyes, it gives an increased percentage chance of starting out advantaged. Dan may recall the exact numbers.

That's true, although a heavy bomber flying at Very High altitude can still be a very tough target.

It's true that bombers fire back more in the computer game as compared to the card game. The reason is that in the card game, escorting fighters could respond to attacks on behalf of the bombers. That was kind of tricky to do in the computer game without breaking the normal flow of the program. So, to compensate for this we gave the bombers a little more bite. I guess you might justify this by imagining that some of the firepower is coming from the escorting fighters, but is being represented by the bomber's card play.

I'm not sure I understand what the question is. The auto-update feature requires an internet connection. Are you asking how to manually update a computer by copying files?

It might be possible to allow players to control the bombers, but to be honest, there isn't much to control. But we can put it down on the wish list. As far as picking the starting altitude, it was kind of intentional to take that out of the player's control. There are lots of historical accounts of fighter escorts not coordinating with the bombers they were supposed to be protecting. Likewise, interceptors could be caught by surprise and might still be in the process of gaining altitude when the bombers arrive. We also have plans to add more skills down the road, and one of the skills would be better escort coordination, which would make it more likely that fighter escorts would start at the same or one level above the bombers they are escorts. There could be a similar skill for interceptors called "radar" or something that would make it more likely that the interceptors would start closer to the bomber's altitude.

I think you will like the campaign games. The Battle of Britain will see Spitfire I's and Hurricane I's matched up against Bf-109's, 110's, He-111's and Stukas. Since the match-ups are based on how each player allocates their aircraft to the various regions on the map, you can definitely see some 1 vs. 2 situations.

In general, elements starting at higher altitudes will go first. If two or more elements are at the same altitude, then it is a random pick. In addition, the order of play must alternate between the two opposing sides. So even if one side started all their elements at High, and the other side started all of theirs at Low, the order of play would still alternate between the two sides.

I could definitely see providing an option for local games to play with whatever aircraft you want. It wouldn't mess with any of the online rankings, and would be pretty easy to implement. I'll check with Dan and Martin to see how they feel about it.

I'd have to look at the code again to refresh my memory, but I think shooting down an enemy aircraft improves your chances of receiving an ED to 30%. If you didn't shoot down an enemy aircraft, then I think you have to survive the mission undamaged (or maybe just not have been shot down, I don't recall). In this case, I think it is a 20% chance.

Well, I stuck with the random generator that .NET provides. It automatically seeds the generator based on the machine's tick count, so it should provide a good distribution. I think that the problems had more to do with the fact that the cards in player's hands were not being factored into the reshuffle process, and there seems to have been some threading issues where a card could be drawn and before it was marked as unavailable, another thread might pull the same card. Hopefully the new system will resolve both of these problems without introducing any new ones.

Personal preferences are bound to vary quite a bit. For those that would rather jump right into the action, I think the campaigns have a lot to offer. The Daylight 1944 campaign will have you flying the best aircraft in the game with the opportunity to defend or intercept the big bombers. The campaigns do not have to played all in one sitting. You can play them one mission at a time, and they can be played against the AI or another player. Personally, I prefer the campaigns because I like the strategic context and the linked nature of the missions.

Just a heads up that the server was updated this morning with the revised card deck logic (no download is necessary as this is all server-side stuff). This version should make the card deck behave more like people expect, ie, when the deck is reshuffled, cards that are currently in players hands are taken into account. Please let me know if you experience any problems with the update, or if you think there is anything strange about the way cards are dealt.

I sent you an e-mail with an attachment that might help with the problem of the game getting a DirectX error on startup. Let me know if it helps.

There are certain screen resolutions we have a hard time supporting right now. A lot of laptops these days come with screens that are very "rectangular". That is, they are very wide compared to their height, and that throws the graphics off.

Dan and I were kicking around an idea that might address a couple of issues, and I'd be interested in hearing player's thoughts on it. Suppose that there was a set of icons that appeared near the pilot's name (above or below the black bar that displays altitude). The icons would represent the pilot's skills. If you hovered your mouse over the icon, it would display a "tooltip" name for the skill (e.g., "Sweep Tail", etc.), and maybe if you clicked on the icon it would display a full description of the skill. When a skill is actively being used, such as when a "Draw Extra Card" is used, the icon would flash or something. It seems like this might address a couple of issues we have heard coming from players: 1. It's too hard to find out what skills your opponents (and allies) possess. You can go back to look at the "Preview" window, but that takes you away from the game. 2. It's hard to determine when a skill is being used against you. Of course, there are some potential problems with using icons as well: 1. It can be difficult to get a set of "meaningful" icons. It's hard to convey something as complicated as a skill in a 16x16 pixel area. 2. There could be some screen real estate problems when pilots have a lot of skills. 3. The client doesn't always know WHY something happened. For example, suppose your wingman has the "Leader Advice" skill. At the start of this leader's turn, the server does a check and sees that it needs to deal the leader an extra card. The server draws the card, and sends out a message to the client that tells it to add the card to the leader's hand. The server knows why the card was drawn, but all the client knows is that it was told to add a card. It doesn't know why. Could we add that information? Yes, but it will take a bit more effort to do.

Cool. That's good to know for future reference.

I put an update out for auto-download. After pulling that down, try it again and see if the DirectX problem is any better. If not, send an e-mail to difadmin@battlefront.com and we'll try one other thing to see if it helps.

You might try deleting temporary internet files and cookies to see if that clears the problem. On Internet Explorer, you go to Tools/Internet Options. Then on the "General" tab there are buttons for "Delete Files" and "Delete Cookies".

There are separate connections to the Lobby and to a game in progress. So you could lose your connection to the Lobby and still be able to continue with your game. That's probably what happened in your Dunkirk campaign.

That's good information. A couple of others have reported that bug, but couldn't identify the circumstances that caused it to occur. That gives me something to investigate. Thanks.