Drusus

Could it be some mod not working correctly with 1.11?

I am actually pretty sure that the owners of the Paradox version and Marines will get BF patch. We use the elicense now anyways... Check out this thread: [thread=83914]How does Marines and Paradox Retail version integrate?[/thread]. Sorry if the overconfident answer without any referrals yesterday caused confusion. You aren't at your best when you wake up in the middle of the night and can't sleep anymore...

I must point out that the response is in no way official. I just think I might maybe have read it somewhere... But this being the internet, that makes a true statement

It is BF patch for Marines owners. I wonder if there is improved target acquisition time in case the target ducks and then tries to shoot again. Just a feeling that this has been a bit wrong in past. The time to spot, aim and shoot at the reappeared target seemed a bit too long. I assume a sane soldier would keep his weapon and eyes pointed at the last known position of the enemy if nothing else was going on.

Once you figure out that you have almost endless amount of firepower in the AAVs the milk run mission is rather easy. Scout with hummers or M1s to see where the enemy has AT assets. Then blast those positions with AAVs using area fire. You can shoot crazy amounts of those 40mm shells and be nowhere near out of ammo. Advance cautiously and pound every enemy infantry position to oblivion with AAVs. You might want to have a squad or two advancing in front of the AAVs, and of course have the Javelins in over watch. When advancing the AAVs it might be a good idea to set the area target to suspected / spotted enemy positions. Do it by advancing the way point inch-by-inch and every time checking if you have line of fire to the wanted area fire target. Do not advance too far, or you will be facing all of the defenders at the same time. This is something you want to avoid. I have learned the hard way that infantry without over watch and preferably suppressing fire to suspected enemy positions will not get anywhere. In this particular scenario you don't actually need to use infantry that much, as you have ridiculous amounts of 40mm shells to use.

My friend is a sailor, and according to him oil tankers are extremely hard to capture. The reason is that the crewmen can shoot high pressurized 95 celcius water back at the pirates. A glorified riot-control water cannon, that is. Now, if you thought you were going to die, this would make an excellent self-defense weapon. But in this situation I don't think the crewmen felt too unsafe. Somebody is going to buy that ship back. Not buying the crewmen back at the same time would seem a bit bad...

All of the computers memory is virtual memory, also the RAM part of it. The concept virtual memory is an operating system thing. The program thinks that is has access to large continuous parts of memory. In the background the OS remaps the addresses to non-continuous areas of memory, but the program doesn't know anything about this. So, the program just accesses memory, which happens to be virtual memory. If it tries to use too much memory, the OS will page out some of the program's used memory to hard dist. If the program tries to access that memory, then it must be first read from hard dist to memory. Reading an address from HD takes about million clock cycles, while normal memory takes about 100 clock cycles. I don't think the problem is swapping out _main memory_. Then there would be continuous HD activity, but I don't see any. I do think that it is a trashing issue, but the memory being constantly moved back and forth is actually graphics card memory. This is just a feeling, I don't have anything to back this claim...

For me the problem went completely away after switching off antialiasing and reducing the resolution. I don't know which one it was that did the trick... Ofcourse, I am using 5900 series graphics card so my problem might be completely different.

The only problem I can see with the two titles for late war western front is what modules to make for the second title. For first title this is easy. Make first US vs Wehrmacht, then put in SS and brits. That is already 2 modules after the title. Then add in some more exotic forces (airborne etc.). Now the second title I can understand, too. For the new features a new game. No problem there. But what modules to make for that game? SS and brits again? I would not pay 25$x2 to buy the same units again. Maybe there are enough interesting units in the late war period to make six different interesting modules with enough new units for every module to warrant the 25$ x 6. Any ideas what the four modules after SS & brits could be?

I have just 1GB of main memory and 128MB memory in graphics card (AMD64 3200+ and NVidia 5900 or somesuch). When I set the resolution to 1024x768 and turn antialiasing of I can play Pooh with no performance problems. To me that says that the problem is in the graphics, not in LOS checking or pathfinding. The error I got was that I ran out of graphics card memory, not main memory. Maybe a different problem?

In that scenario I got a total crash, then in another try I got a message that my graphics card has ran out of memory (and a CTD). With 1024x768 (was 1280x1024) resolution I finally was able to complete that mission. Maybe you have the same problem?

The situation that I have a clear front line and I know that everything behind the front line is safe is common. In this situation I don't really need to care where my teams are and I could for example pull one platoon from the front line to reserve. A squad split to 3 teams and mixed with another squad's teams in a small area is common. In this situation regroup could be used to join the squad even if I don't know the exact positions of the teams. BTW the second problem is really annoying if you happen to have for example two 3rd squads from two different platoons mixed up...

Use only in safe situations. Come to think of it, this could be used to move platoon at a time in safe situations. So this is a kind of a formation command. I know formations are something that BFC will not implement due to the endless amount of special case coding. But this can also seen as just a group movement command. We don't actually care in what formation the units will end up or having any formation while moving. Just that teams of the same squad will go to the same action spot and that platoon's squads end up close to the HQ. No need for special case coding. Just issue a move command near the destination for each team (putting teams of a squad in the same AS) and that is all.

I have made an attack and all my squads are split up and mixed with each other. There is a company of Marines in this situation. That is 3x3x3 = 27 teams + at least 10 teams of support/HQ units. Now I want to continue my attack with all squads rejoined and each platoon again together. It is easy, although very laborious, to move every team one at a time to regroup the squads / platoons. It would be convenient if this process could be automated. For this I propose the regroup command. Its only purpose would be to bring squads together (if given to any team of the squad) or squads together if given to platoon HQ. One could go to higher levels but that is probably unnecessary. The command should of course be given into a safe spot. By giving just 3 commands one could rejoin all the platoons of the company and be ready to continue the attack. Or move one platoon to reserve or whatever. It might be that I am just an unorganized and lazy player, but for me this is an important issue in larger attacks. I know this probably falls into the "much work, little gain" category, but there is always the possibility that this is actually easy to implement...

Could it be possible to area fire to larger area than one action spot? Just ctrl-click the spots you want to fire to and then the unit would split/cycle it's fire between the spots. Having a 13 men squad fire at single 8x8 area is quite limiting. Splitting is not always an option, for example if you have single building you want to be in (they will rejoin). By the same command, you could fire to all the floors of a building, not just one as now. As discussed in other threads, a delay (at least as an option) would be good. Immediate area fire is so cyborg...

Isn't it a logical thing to use "target" in this situation from user perspective? Or what if you have two tanks and you want for some reason to select which one to attack... This "hold" idea has come up before, see this thread. I hope Battlefront is still considering implementing something to solve this problem.

Is there a way to preorder just the download? The mail delivery costs 20$ which almost doubles the price. How much will the price be if I order CMSF:Marines after release as download?

The problem with squads that can't be splitted is that this forces the whole squad in one action spot. That is, one well placed HE shell will likely kill most of them, or that they will all be suppressed when fired upon with small arms. For example in the Finnish army it is SOP to have spacing of 5 meters between each men when moving, and in fighting it is about 10 meters and then a pair of men. (The Finnish system is all about "fighter pairs".) That means that there should not be more than 2 men per action spot, when CMSF would put all of them in one spot! If there can't be a TacAI solution to this (and I find it hard to see how there could be an effective TacAI solution) then it would seem best to have teams even for Syrians. A possible solution would be something like this. If you issue a move order to your squad, then you could either move the whole squad as it is now, or alternatively do a alt-click (or something) with the following effect: The first click would place move order for team 1. Then the following 2 clicks would tell where you want the teams 2 and 3 to go, with the restriction that the locations must be 50m of team 1. The idea is that you don't actually split up the squad, but you still do tell the teams where you want them. This way it is easy to restrict the misuse of squad splitting but on the other hand you can do something to the one action spot per squad restriction. Or how hard would it be to have teams being over 50m of team 1 lose a lot of morale and maybe lose C&C. This would also restrict the misuse of squad splitting to minimal while still allowing some spacing between men. There are of course more reasons to have some sort of squad splitting. For example when you are trying to kill an enemy tank, you have to order the whole squad in LOS (and LOF, of course) of the enemy tank to use the RPG of the squad. The end result is more often than not that you will lose the whole squad when the enemy spots the fired RPG, with the whole squad being within 5m of the firer... Is this the SOP in Syrian army?

For me the problem is that troops in buildings are able to shoot back pretty effectively (and continuously) even when under heavy fire. The problem isn't cover in general. I think the problematic combo is fanatic troops in buildings. They are hard to suppress and even when they are shooting at you, you can't effectively shoot at them. I repeat the main point here: if they are shooting at you, then it would seem logical that you can shoot at them. If the defenders would like to take full cover of the building, then their ROF should be slowed down considerably. The reason for the drop is that the troops inside the building need to reposition themselves (this could be abstracted) and take only a couple of shots from one spot. If they shoot continuously from the same place, I would think experienced US troops should be able to locate & destroy the shooter quite quickly. (Given that there are some US troops that aren't severely suppressed, of course).

For me the problem is that troops in buildings are able to shoot back pretty effectively (and continuously) even when under heavy fire. The problem isn't cover in general. I think the problematic combo is fanatic troops in buildings. They are hard to suppress and even when they are shooting at you, you can't effectively shoot at them. I repeat the main point here: if they are shooting at you, then it would seem logical that you can shoot at them. If the defenders would like to take full cover of the building, then their ROF should be slowed down considerably. The reason for the drop is that the troops inside the building need to reposition themselves (this could be abstracted) and take only a couple of shots from one spot. If they shoot continuously from the same place, I would think experienced US troops should be able to locate & destroy the shooter quite quickly. (Given that there are some US troops that aren't severely suppressed, of course).

For me the problem is that troops in buildings are able to shoot back pretty effectively (and continuously) even when under heavy fire. The problem isn't cover in general. I think the problematic combo is fanatic troops in buildings. They are hard to suppress and even when they are shooting at you, you can't effectively shoot at them. I repeat the main point here: if they are shooting at you, then it would seem logical that you can shoot at them. If the defenders would like to take full cover of the building, then their ROF should be slowed down considerably. The reason for the drop is that the troops inside the building need to reposition themselves (this could be abstracted) and take only a couple of shots from one spot. If they shoot continuously from the same place, I would think experienced US troops should be able to locate & destroy the shooter quite quickly. (Given that there are some US troops that aren't severely suppressed, of course).

I think one reason could be "silhouetting" (I don't know what is the proper word in English). When you are inside a building which doesn't have lights on, it is hard to see where you are. When you are on the rooftop, it is much easier to see where you are and for that reason it is easier to hit you.

Interestingly I get the floating cursor problem sometimes when playing online. Probably not related, though. I am using NVidia graphics, and normally everything works just right.

I confirm the wall bug, too. There are numerous problems with online playing at the moment. The problems are almost always for the client. Most of the things happen when the setup is over. Things include not seeing you reinforcements, not being able to give commands to units, RPG/AT4 ammo markers not updating correctly, serious lag for the client and so on.. As these aren't probably separate bugs I don't think there is much point listing them all. Still, online playing is fun, and if you get past the start of the game, things usually work just fine.

Nice advice about the area fire. But I think that it is very, very gamey. How does the unit know to magically area fire the BMP to oblivion when he doesn't know it is there? If forcing info up/down the chain is unrealistic and would undermine the whole system, then how doesn't area fire do that, too? Using area fire it is too easy to exploit the god knowledge you have (as the player). Or how realistic it is that you can immediately bring down 40mm fire from a Stryker to any location where you (as the player) see muzzle flashes. This severely contradicts the slow relaying of information. My suggestion is to have a pause (even a small one) before the area fire command is passed to the firing unit. It is the situation where the assault is halted because of one or some enemy vehicles in key locations that I have a problem with. As you can't force the relay of information, there isn't much to do but wait if the information might get passed to the right units. The supporting unit is usually a MGS, and passing info to them is very slow... I don't know how things work in real life, but in these situations I think information passing could, and should be a bit faster than it is in the game. On the other hand, information passing of units that the spotter doesn't see important to _his_ survival should be slow. For the TacAI to decide which ones are important and which ones aren't isn't probably easy, though... One problem here is that scenarios are usually made with unrealistically tight time constraints, which means that you can't just wait until the information is passed to the supporting unit. I also agree that forcing the relay of information isn't probably the best solution. One suggestion would be that if the supporting unit is close by to the spotting unit then information passing could be a bit faster? Not unrealistic, not exploitable and gives _something_ you can do in locked down situations. Maybe information about enemy vehicles should be passed a bit faster to your own vehicles than it is done now? Especially when the spotting unit doesn't do anything and isn't under fire. When you get the partial information system worked out, that should help, too. At the moment the question mark is usually too little information, but full ID is too much. If there was a middle stage of "it is vehicle/tank/infantry" in between it would be a huge improvement.