Caseck

Very solid release. Game has a good feel. I haven't found any genuine bugs, but I've only been playing multiplayer servers. Looking forward to 1.0.1 and beyond. Haven't seen ANY marketing, wondering if you're waiting for infantry or what? You gotta' put an O.G.R.E. MkV somewhere in the adverts too...

Repost from beta-multiplayer test forum. Probably need a post-release thread somewheres around here! Please throw this in there when you get the chance. (Or if I'm stuipid and just missed it.) Real issues: Battlesight round (round in a main gun) automatically TURNS INTO the newly selected round when ammo selection is changed. Should have to reload when you do that. Lasers should be measured by WATTAGE, not by Millemeters! (Or Kw or Mw as the case may be!) That's like measuring a gun shell by color. If I have multiple dropships, why can't I make multiple simultaneous drops? You lose all your dropships, game over... Balance:? AI ground turrets are pretty weak. I grouped 5 of them together and they couldn't take out an ATGM vehicle. Maybe TURRETS should have missiles. They're already vulnerable enough to arty! Mines dropped by dropship? Maybe if they walked to their location... Why not dropped from orbit like the smoke/ecm/HE? Seems a bit silly to fly a ship down to drop dumb mines! US Army doesn't even do that with UH-60s anymore! Not when an arty-shell can do the same thing! I'd love to see airbreathing Gunships hovering around, dodging behind terrain somewhere in the future! (Limited fuel supply, light construction... Missiles and cannon! Atmosphere and gravity limited...) But I'm biased. Maybe there should be a differentiation between stuff that can be built on the ground (indigenous airbreathers) and the anti-matter powered orbital equipment... And I miss my GEV with short-range fire and forget missiles! Would love to see a high wattage PULSE LASER TANK. Hover or tracked. Yeah, a lot of recharge time, but I'm not a big beamer fan. Bug-wise, I have encountered NONE so far. I have yet to have a crash, so you have put out one rock solid game. Can't wait to see it grow!

Probably need a post-release thread somewheres around here! Please throw this in there when you get the chance. (Or if I'm stuipid and just missed it.) Real issues: Battlesight round (round in a main gun) automatically TURNS INTO the newly selected round when ammo selection is changed. Should have to reload when you do that. Lasers should be measured by WATTAGE, not by Millemeters! (Or Kw or Mw as the case may be!) That's like measuring a gun shell by color. If I have multiple dropships, why can't I make multiple simultaneous drops? You lose all your dropships, game over... Balance:? AI ground turrets are pretty weak. I grouped 5 of them together and they couldn't take out an ATGM vehicle. Maybe TURRETS should have missiles. They're already vulnerable enough to arty! Mines dropped by dropship? Maybe if they walked to their location... Why not dropped from orbit like the smoke/ecm/HE? Seems a bit silly to fly a ship down to drop dumb mines! US Army doesn't even do that with UH-60s anymore! Not when an arty-shell can do the same thing! I'd love to see airbreathing Gunships hovering around, dodging behind terrain somewhere in the future! (Limited fuel supply, light construction... Missiles and cannon! Atmosphere and gravity limited...) But I'm biased. Maybe there should be a differentiation between stuff that can be built on the ground (indigenous airbreathers) and the anti-matter powered orbital equipment... And I miss my GEV with short-range fire and forget missiles! Would love to see a high wattage PULSE LASER TANK. Hover or tracked. Yeah, a lot of recharge time, but I'm not a big beamer fan. Bug-wise, I have encountered NONE so far. I have yet to have a crash, so you have put out one rock solid game. Can't wait to see it grow!

Yuppers. Good fun!

I luv you guys... You remember all the cool old stuff... *sniff*

Damn, they also did a mini-game after OGRE about power-armor... What was it called...

Kick ass! Do I get my GEV's with SRMs then?

Nukes? (Weren't O.G.R.E.s nuclear armed?) [ June 03, 2006, 07:21 AM: Message edited by: Caseck ]

Using either mass-drivers or liquid propellent plus projectile, or multiple main guns, it should allow the guns a higher rate of fire. This would allow them to be more effective against point defenses. On the point defense side, I would use a VRF Gauss gun instead of a beamer for higher rates of fire. It would allow more rapid engagements of targets. (At the price of having finite ammunition.) LADAR fire control means automatically spotted when PD fires. The lower energy requirements would allow them to be mounted on more vehicles as well. Also, do point defenses have firing arcs? High wattage beam or pulse laser-tanks in the release? Yeah, it's a lot of waiting on batteries/capacitors, but still... Unparralleled range and accurracy! Heavy hitting. Laser artillery using "mirrors?" Chaff rounds to blind point defenses? [i'm talking 120mm rounds] Or multiple warheads on main-gun-rounds? Ladar point defenses and detection thereof? Laser detectors/ranging/diretion? Slew-to-cue (as on M1 Abrams?) turret automatically slews to direction round impacts tank from? [ June 03, 2006, 09:20 PM: Message edited by: Caseck ]

Excellent! Been gone for a bit, and now there's a public demo! I leave for five minutes and things are rolling! 'Grats to the dev team! The game is a lot of fun!

When the time comes for infantry, especially the cheapo "straight-leg" variety... I hope you guys take this in a new direction... Infantry players... Let them be squad or platoon leaders. --Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying take their 40mm RAM grenade launchers away from them. Nor should they lose their heavy VRF RAILGUN teams or their jump capable RANGER recon armor with Chameleon/EW camouflage and Y missile racks... I'm saying, give them AI bots to work with. Do the best you can with it. Allow other players to jump into a squad as a grunt, but also allow guys to command small units of AI soldiers. Let 'em have a few grunts... None of this "Rambo" crap. Let 'em work with and manage a team. When the time comes...

Infantry? Or Mobile Infantry...

Also, I'd have the DROPSHIP pilots working for a different corp or team from the actual ground combatants... Yeah, they would want to service the customers, (ground combatant commander) but not to the extent of putting themselves at too much risk...

While a dropship could be "camouflaged," anything with that high an energy output would be extremely difficult to hide! Now, if you're going to safeguard your investment, you're going to want to put self-defense armament, point defenses, and certainly EW capabilities... BUT it'd be smarter to just bring 'em in a terrain feature away from where they can get shot up. Drop 'n GO!

That's an excellent idea. Depends on technology really, but what you're talking about is almost a level of cybernetic PERFECTION. --Being able to transplant the human brain into a completely mechanical body. That's pretty far out there. That's a perfect example of outside the box thinking! It is certainly in the realm of possibility. And it'd save a helluva lot of space on crew and environmental considerations! And if you were a small 6lb brain, it'd be pretty easy to shoot ya' into orbit for evac! I'd hate to do it, but I like the idea! Cybernetic fusion effectively.

If I were designing a future combat vehicle there is no reason to put the crew/driver in the front. They'll probably be driving and gunning via a virtual interface anyway. I would put them in the very rear of the vehicle, as far away from enemy fire as possible. No reason for them to ride in front, or for the gunner to be located in the turret. In a modern or future turret, a crewman would be a waste of volume you could put more ammo in. Put every other "bullet soaking" component in front of the crew between them and the enemy. (Just like the Merkava does.) And give 'em the best escape route out the back of the chasis.

The funny thing about a thermal sig, is it is very much line-of-sight. Looking forward, yes, maybe there is some spill, but in vehicles without a LOT of heat output, or "being sneaky" you can mask that heat output. Especially if you know where the guy is looking at you from, and have a system (which is suprisingly rudimentary at the moment in real life...) you can block thermal imaging very effectively. It isn't a "Blip-I-see-you" super camera or anything. In many ways it's probably more limited than the visible light spectrum. Not better, just different really...

'Nother idea for propulsion in a vaccum. You could have a supply of liquid hydrogen/helium/methane etc... You apply heat to said liquid, either from antimatter annihilation or conventional battery/electric. You allow said gas to escape into vaccuum via turbine. You can either link said turbine directly to a transmission or to a generator for power. Again, this allows indigenous refuelling where helium/nitrogen/CO2/O2/methane liquid or ice is available. Drawbacks? Thermal signature of escaping heated gas. Unless actual oxidation of the mixture occurs, it's not going to be a bigger signature than naturally occurring geysers and so forth, but it will be noticable. If actual oxidation (combustion) occurs in the turbine, it will be a much larger signature, but then again, it'll produce much more power.

If a HEAT charge isn't a plasma jet... Why then does a HEAT jet look like a straight fork of lightning? It LOOKS like plasma... Lightning is plasma, right? The copper is definitely superheated in the liner... There isn't that much MASS in a HEAT warhead. I mean, they're REALLY LIGHT! I understand a platter charge is kinetic, but that's a whole different animal from a copper lined shaped charge! Am I messed up here? I mean, it's a light jacket of COPPER, how hard can it be to vaporize? Isn't that enough for it to enter a plasma state?

Just a couple comments on vehicle schematics... ICE engines? With ANTIMATTER? Nah, I'd take a bunch of hydrogen and heat it to a plasma state and use it's highly charged properties as an electric motor... Unless I'm going to put in some kind of "refining plant" to seperate out hydrogen and oxygen from local methane ice or whatnot... That might be a good idea for TRUE ICE engines on foreign worlds, but they'd need a refining/fueling vehicle to support them. Is it really worth it to put the antimatter in the fighting vehicles? Or have them serviced by an antimatter powered fueler? For the hover vehicles as drawn, antimatter is the energy source. Use it to heat whatever ice is available planetside for reaction mass. It all gets heated the same way, and vaporizes nicely. Just vent it opposite the way you want to go, or hover... Using ice you can "live off the land." And refuel whatever you have at hand. Why put the crew in front towards the bad guys? I'd move them In BACK of every single component. At least, if I value my crew anyway! PLASMA/FUSION GUNS: Using dozens of lasers pointed inward through a magenetic bottle towards a ball of deuterium, I superheat the deuterium with the lasers, and squeeze it at the same moment with the "magenetic bottle" then I open one end of the magenetic bottle, and let the plasma exit near the speed of light. Focus as necessary with a magenetic "barrel" on the way out. If I let the plasma reach the fusion state, it is even hotter. It'd be like opening a hole for a piece of the sun to squirt out. Scale is the question. How big do you want it? I'd rather have one in orbit, but I'm old fashioned...

An entire gram of antimatter would probably be a sizeable chunk of yield for a factory for a significant amount of time. With current technology, it'd be like 10,000 years of antimatter production. (And would be entirely in anti-electrons, which I believe is the only antimatter particle we can capture to date.)

I see VISUAL spotting as just the last low-tech layer of a system or platform's defense. If he has camo in all other spectrums, it might just come to that. The modern battlefield would certainly seem to support that.

Note that a HEAT type warhead is not considered a KINETIC ENERGY PENETRATOR... Those are apples and oranges, excepting the "Self-Forging Fragment" type of warhead, which is really just a flying "Platter Charge" which detonates at a preset radio/radar/laser fused distance. (Read SADARM [seek and Destroy Anti Armor Munition]or whatever that system evolved to in it's current incarnation. It's fielded under a different name, but I can't recall what it's called.) Ablative armour would probably be the only defense against such weapons. You'd need greatly increased VOLUME of armour to offset the velocity. Bigger bulkier armour, not necessarily heavier. Again, NASA has experimented with such types of armour to defend against micrometeorites, which have similar characteristics to such extreme velocity weapons. Comparing SHRIKE to an ATGM is not a good analogy, since SHRIKE is a mach 2+ missile, and TOW is subsonic. Totally different proportions of fuel and warhead as well. Just don't do it if you're crunching numbers, it'll mess with 'em.

NM, thought you were a different Jack Carr from back in Winona, MN.

Any differences in armaments on the INTERIM vehicle is insignificant. The point is, as far as command and control is concerned, STRIKER is a digital vehicle. Along with LONGBOW, LAND WARRIOR, and whatever the artillery branch is cooking up, these vehicles are all part of a tactical network of systems. They're all intended to be "Digitally Compatible" on the modern battlefield. Remember, STRIKER is only a stopgap. Think of an infantry squad leader being able to point and click a fire-mission in the field, and you can see where Army Transformation is headed. It's all about leveraging firepower down to the guy kicking in the door. So how the heck are you guys going to simulate that anyway? [ October 16, 2005, 09:18 PM: Message edited by: Caseck ]