ClaytoniousRex

Now that they've arrived, we will be releasing an actual addendum to the manual. For now, here are some quick notes on infantry. This first release includes 3 types of light infantry: rifle squads, HMG squads, and ion squads. We plan for medium and heavy infantry squad types to be added in later releases. Every squad consists of at least 4 riflemen and up to one specialist. You can use the "set formation" key (CTRL-N by default) to put your squad into different formations. You can also use this key to give your squad "Hold Fire" and "Hold Position" orders. Hold fire prevents your squad members from firing until you cancel the order but you can still fire manually if you choose. It's useful both for executing ambushes and for conserving ammo. Hold position orders your squad members to stay exactly where they are. This means they stop trying to hold formation with you or do any other kind of movement. This is useful in 2 common cases. The first is when you want to scout ahead and only poke ONE head up to find the enemy. You can order your squad to hold position and take your single marine over that ominous ridge line for a peek without the rest of the squad following. The second is for optimal deployment. For example, if you've arranged your squad in a good fighting position in a line at the lip of a ridge and it's time to hunker down and fight, you can issue the hold position command so that you're free to turn and shoot without having your squad's entire formation turn with you. While formations, hold fire, and hold position are all accessible via the CTRL-N squad window, they all also have hotkeys which are customizeable on the controls tab. Effectively running a squad requires fluent use of these commands. Use the "transfer leadership" key (CTRL-L by default) to move squad leadership between squad members. You might be tempted to often or always transfer leadership to the heavy weapon specialist in your squad. This is not a good plan but I guess you will eventually conclude that for yourself anyway. Light infantry are suited in powered armor which does a good job of protecting them from HE fragments but is not so good at protecting from DIRECT hits. Most projectiles will kill them in one shot if they hit. Press the "special action" key ('B' key by default) to order your squad to go prone. While prone, your troops will turn more slowly and can't move but they have a GREATLY reduced chance of being hit by HE fragments, present a smaller target for anyone shooting at you, fire their weapons with increased accuracy, and are harder for the enemy to see (more on that below). Press the key again to stand back up. Infantry fire most accurately while prone, less accurately while standing, and worst of all while moving. Heavy weapons can't fire at all while moving. So to bring maximum fire onto the enemy, find a good spot and deploy in a prone position there. Light infantry are equipped with jump jets for added mobility. Hold down the brakes ('X' key by default) to fire the jets. A bar in the lower right shows your current jet capacity. There are lot of nuances to using the jets creatively. Infantry normally do not show up on the enemy's sensor network (no red pipper above them and invisible on tac and mini-maps). However, while firing jump jets infantry DO register on sensors. Therefore, as long as you refrain from firing the jump jets you're very hard to spot but not very mobile. So be a sneaky bastard. Fire your jets to hussle from one good spot to another and then leave them off. It often pays to jump into the general area where you want to deploy but then hump it the remaining distance so your FINAL position was never registered by the other team's sensors. Infantry are hard to see. Even aside from sensor effects described above, infantry literally don't show up on enemy players' screens until they get within a certain range. This range is increased if an enemy player zooms in on the area where your infantry are and it is also controlled by the following factors: 1. Every terrain type has its own "concealment factor". Generally any terrain with foliage will offer better concealment for your squad. So if you move into foliage the enemy will get closer before spotting you. The thickness and height of the foliage or other environmental factor determines how much of a bonus the terrain type gives you. 2. Infantry which are prone can't be seen from as great a distance. 3. Infantry which jump can be seen from a greater distance so, once again, using your jets makes you more exposed. 4. Infantry which are shooting are visible at the usual maximum range like any unit would be due to the muzzle flashes (at least the muzzle flashes themselves are visible). These are very hard to see if at a great distance but can really be a killer with beam weapons, of course. Every squad consists of at least 4 riflemen. Riflemen are armed with a 10mm assault rifle with an integrated AT grenade launcher. They have 3 massive AT grenades in that thing. The AI for your squad members will automatically use these AT grenades if you manage to get your guys close enough to an enemy AFV. You can of course use them manually, too. Their effective range is VERY low so you basically have to do a close assault for these things to work. The ideal way, of course, is to be laying prone in the foliage where an enemy AFV is likely to pass by...

...is now available via Update. You should be prompted to update automatically the next time you run DropTeam. Important: If you have customized controls then you need to go BACK to the default keyboard or default joystick controls and recustomize your control set. If you don't do this then many new commands in this release won't work for you. Changes in 1.1.0: </font> Infantry</font>New textures from Marco Bergman and Gordon Molek</font>All unit types now support multiple weapons; many vehicles now have coaxial machine guns; use the new "Cycle Weapon" command to toggle between weapons</font>Greatly improved stability for Viper while carrying cargo (can now carry hover chassis, for example)</font>Fixed HE blast fragmentation to be properly blocked by intervening objects (such as buildings)</font>Fixed behavior of point defense systems; prior to this release they were incorrectly able to target an unlimited number of incoming objects; rolling them back is now much more feasible as it should have always been</font>Chat history (use up and down arrow keys while in chat) and chat word wrapping for long messages</font>Galaxy resupply now automatically services multiple units within its vicinity in the order of those which need the most ammo</font>Switching ammo types now causes a reload to occur so you won't be able to fire immediatey after switching ammo types</font>Using the mouse wheel to zoom in or out on tac display now zooms to or from the point where the mouse cursor is</font>Normalized volume for voice chat so it's easier to hear incoming voice transmissions</font>On Macintosh, user preferences and support files are now stored in ~/Library/Application Support instead of in the home directory</font>Fixed ugly foliage rendering on Macintosh</font>Fixed reversed vehicle track animation graphics on network client</font>Feedback to user with guns that auto select their ammo types (such as low and high velocity mortar rounds)</font>

\data\sound\Music If you're on a Mac then look here to see where the "data" folder is.

The more damaged it is the longer it takes to return to the inventory.

Jalinth's steps have probably already given you what you need, but just in case: The rate of fire is controlled with the ReloadTime tag under the Gun. The ammo capacity is under the AmmoType tags under the Gun.

Did you receive the email sent on July 18 at 10:50am MST? If not then let me know. The other account is called Alfa_142 instead of Alfa-142, so make sure you're using the right username. Send me an email either way so we can make sure it's working for you ASAP.

OK, Neutrino. The change will take effect on the next account server restart - I'll email you when it's ready.

I think it would be cool for the defender to be limited almost entirely to infantry with precious few support vehicles. At any rate, would you like an example of how to set the defender's and attacker's inventories in the scenario?

The buddy server was acting wonky last night. Release 1.1.0 fixes your client hanging and acting strange when the buddy server is down.

Konstantine, do you have entries in the Buddy List?

Also please include your product key, Ham.

Can you please email me the file called DropTeam.log from the \bin subdirectory of your DropTeam installation? Thanks!

You should be careful that you don't accidentally end up with a first class, commercial-grade height editor that you could eventually sell for profit, Dark.

Dark_au has created another interesting scenario called "A Tough Nut". It's an objective scenario with the objective placed on a hill with several sheer faces - a "tough nut" for the attacker to crack. You can download it here. [ July 18, 2006, 10:04 PM: Message edited by: ClaytoniousRex ]

On this first release infantry don't have any of these more advanced features such as demolition, engineering, mine placement, etc. We want to get the basic functionality out there and in your hands then start to progressively add these more advanced features at a steady pace over time. This will lead to better stability and better overall balance than trying to spooge it all out at once would. But please do keep the ideas coming because after this initial release, adding additional features is far easier and will happen much more quickly than this 1.1.0 release did!

In the upcoming 1.1.0 release, microphone chat volume is finally normalized so it should be *much* easier to hear most players than it used to be in general. However, attenuating "other sounds" during chat is still a good idea so we'll add a slider for that after 1.1.0.

Those horns are only a .cob file away, my friend...

What operating system are you on, Ham?

Just because Lt. Colonel West said we had to:

adzling is working on a new set of buildings for DropTeam called Modular Environment Units. They're drop-deployable "quick and easy" habitats that can be stacked and joined in modular pieces. The above image also shows... I'm sure he would welcome comments and praise!

OK, Poesel, this option is now available again in the upcoming 1.1.0 release. You will need to add: </font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">-usedetailtextures false</pre>

That's a pretty crummy work-around. Can you please email me your DropTeam.log from the \bin subdirectory? Thanks!

Yes, Hub. It actually works already but there's no animation for it yet (they just magically disappear into the IFV and then "puff" appear again when dropped off) so that's turned off for now until we get some decent animation done for it.

I guess you're asking about the Facing tag, right? That one is not rotation but is also a 3D vector. It is a vector that points in the direction that the front of the object should be facing. The world x,y axes are aligned with east and north respectively. So, for example, if you wanted a building or to be facing northeast then you could use a Facing tag like this: 1,1,0 To make the building face due south you would use: 0,-1,0 Yes, there can be any number of tree types.

Did you get this scrambled display from the very first time you ran the game, or did it start happening only after changing screen resolution or other options? Are you switching out to another window while the game is starting (like a ZoneAlarm or other firewall popup?)