Drusus

Giving the scenario maker the _option_ to "disable" some areas of the map is _just_ an option. _If_ it could be easily added to the game, it could be used by the scenario maker to "soften" the map edges. And there would be other uses for this as well. All the default scenarios could be built without this. But now I know what is the optimal solution: when more than two players multiplayer is added, use AI players on the both sides of the player. Now, that would be something...

Would it be possible to add to the scenarios areas where units aren't allowed to go? This could be used for the map edge problem if the scenario designer so chooses, or it could be used for other stuff. Like there is a hospital somewhere on the map or just orders from higher levels of command.

IMHO it is not wise to pay a lot of money just in case you might want to upgrade at some distant point in time. Luckily SLI capability shouldn't cost that much. Other advises: Buy a lot of RAM. The parts that are mechanical in some way should be of good quality. So, invest in good quality power unit and fans. In the hard disk section it is really hard to tell which one is the best. A long warranty is always a good sign. Even more important are the devices with which you interact with the computer: display, mouse and keyboard. I made the mistake that I invested in raw power rather than good quality. The MHz is only one part of the RAM equation. The system goes like this: the MHz tells how many times (cycles) per second the memory is read. Then there are timing settings which tell how many cycles you have to wait for certain things to happen. For example, if you send a command "read location ABCD" when the memory receives the command, it has to wait 3 cycles before it actually performs the command. How different MHz and timing settings affect your system performance is hard to predict. But, buy better than the worst.

I got this crazy idea about changing the "resource" of the game. It could be interesting to make equipment cheap, but crews expensive. Would go something like this: You have a few categories of different crews, the more advanced the vehicle they can use, the scarcer they are. So, the groups could be: AA crew: Could use Hermes and Bacchus. Leader crew: Could use Mercury. Mortar crew: Could use the different mortars. Hovercraft crew: guess... Kinetic weapon crew: Could use the over 20mm caliber vehicles. Recon vehicle crew: Could use the 20mm vehicles. And then ATGM and dropship crews. Maybe I am missing some... The idea is that when your vehicle gets destroyed, the crew would escape the vehicle and then you'd need to drop another vehicle for them or extract them. Basically priority one would be surviving at all. Dropping just a vehicle would be fast, dropping a vehicle with crew would be slow. That is, the dropship should stay about 10 seconds on the ground level, making it an _easy_ kill if in direct view of the enemy. Dropping without the crew could be as it is now. Additionally Thors could requires 4 or 5 crew members, while Apollo takes 3 or 4 and 76mm Paladin takes only 2. Benefits of this system: - Would force players to stop soloing. If you are alone and get killed, the crew is very likely to get killed also. - Would make long range combat less risky but also less effective. While you might be able to kill the vehicle, getting the crew would be hard. - Short range combat would be risky but if you win, then you would be able to kill the crews also. On the other hand getting killed would mean a high chance of losing the crew also. - A whole new use for artillery. It could be that artillery could be even less effective against vehicles, but great for killing the crews of. Again, you need cooperation. - Would make the combat a bit less fluid. If you don't have crew available on the ground, you would be forced to drop a vehicle with crew inside. This you can't do into direct enemy view. I think this would be good for the game. - You don't have anymore 10 Thors and 20 Apollos in your inventory. If you want to use Thors, then getting the crew killed would reduce your ability to use the general class of vehicles. - Would incorporate infantry fighting much tighter into the game. Then the why not section: - Would require a lot of coding work. - Would change the whole core of the tactical idea of the game. This means a lot of planning and balancing work. - No guarantee of the system actually working as wanted. - It could get boring to cycle the killed -> escape -> drop cycle. - Add your own here... There could be some more ideas based on this: The defenders have a bunker where there is some crew "stored". You could drop just vehicles into the objective and there would be crew on the ground already. Then if your enemy gets infantry inside that building => a lot of crews killed. To make this thread OT in the first post, there is something strange going out with the wheeled vehicles. If I am not wrong the concept which isn't working as wanted is the static VS kinetic friction. To me it seems that Paladins are _always_ sliding, it is just the amount of sliding which is changed when on different ground. It should be so that there is no sliding at all, unless you push the vehicle too far and then you enter the sliding stage. However, maybe this impression is just because of laggy over Atlantic connection. Having said all this, the game has definitely gotten a lot better. PS. Great timing with that updated demo. When I got out of my last exam and visited battlefront.com there it was. Lucky for me that you didn't release it a week earlier...

Just out of interest, is the T-72's bad accuracy because of quality of the crew or is it about quality of the vehicle. And I don't want an answer like "in some situations A, in others B". I want a number, preferably in RHA.

(LOL) How am I supposed to interpret that one? Seems that it contradicts itself.

I don't think pulling out is a particularly good choice. We know what happened in Afghanistan. At the moment the situation is so bad that it might still be the best choice. Putting the responsibility to Sunnis might be correct. But reasoning that they should stop is like claiming that the Vietcong should just have stopped fighting. Yes, it would have stopped the bloodshed. I think the crucial thing to understand is that they are fighting because they can't accept where Iraq is heading right now. They aren't fighting because they want bloodshed. If the US don't want a bloodshed, why not raise Sunnis to power? That would stop the fighting, right? Like said, that just wont happen. Also, Sunnis accepting their fate just wont happen. Probably no big difference here on opinions, except that IMHO discussing about this is kind like discussing about if cancer should just vanish from the world. Letting Shias kill thousands of Sunnis would only make things worse. First, fighting to the last man can really happen. Second, it would cause much more tension in the already chaotic area. Third, it is not guaranteed that the Shias could actually control the areas. Fourth, US armed police forces killing Sunnis just to show what can happen is a war crime, you know people get hanged for that kind of behaviour. Though as the Sunnis are clearly terrorists that might not count... Then there are the diplomatic consequences. And to me it seems USA has already burned their karma. As said earlier, there are no good choices. A lot of people are now paying for stupid decisions made about Iraq. You broke it, you own it.

That review is a big win for DT. The score given isn't that great, but what he says about the game is really, relly positive. From Pelit: While I am sure most of you understand the main points from that directly, I will translate it just for fun... "I have to tell everybody about the joy of Dropteam. I owe that to the game. In my stupidity I despised it in the beginning, but slowly I began to understand the many fine aspects of the game. And despise turned into admiration." The review is done after 1.1 but before the drop ship update. The point of the review is that the game is very promising one. So it is not all positive about the current version. Also, the reviewer is a legendary one, I haven't read the magazine in years, but I know _that_ guy. Not bad at all... PS. The translation is propably inaccurate. PPS. The reason why you can order beer in Finland is because it is expected that you mumble something incomprehensible when ordering beer...

The real problem is that in small scenarios luck is a big factor. If you have one 60% to 40% engagement with tanks, you are going to win only 60% of the time. Do the same with ten tanks against ten tanks, and you are much more likely to win. Ofcourse the great thing about CMx1 is that if you do things correctly, you are able to pick your fights and thus winning in even small scenarios isn't too random. Having said that, I don't like the idea of increasing random events if the player has no control over them. That is, if you are going to get bogged even if you drive on the road, then it sucks. If you are getting bogged because you drive like crazy on muddy ground, then no problem. I happen to be a bit competitive when playing, so losing just because a bad roll when trying to drive to the combat along the best possible route isn't too fun. Losing because you took the chance to go / had to go to a 50% - 50% fight and having a bad roll is a different thing. So, I am claiming that there is a difference between bogging down and getting a bad roll in a firefight. Most important thing is that if I lose in a firefight even if I had 60-40 chance, I feel that I should have been more careful. If I lose a tank because of bogging down I think that I am going to lose the fight because of bad luck. I understand that simulation is a different thing than competitive playing. A realism setting would be the perfect solution from the customer point of view.

Removing an IED? I know at least a certain Russian tactic to this that can be easily simulated...

This sounds like we have a new game here... I have a few things in mind... First, how does the drop pods work, I have a small worry about dropping mines on top of enemy vehicles (this was sometimes a good tactic with the old dropships, too). So, is there something to prevent this? If not, my suggestion would be to give vehicles 500m AAMG, effective only against pods. Second, have you considered conquerable reinforcement zones? These would be tactically _really_ important. And could be fun generally. From these you could only deploy when no enemy unit is in there (how else conquer?) and maybe conquered with the usual engineering vehicle (maybe in shorter time, though) or just staying there long enough. Third, what about damaged dropships? Firing 20mm AP to dropships is waste of ammo if this is not in. My suggestion is that a damaged dropship is out for some minutes, depending on damage received. Or if this is not in, then make some weak spots to exploit with 20mm. Fourth, what about evacuation? At the moment, if I am using a low value vehicle like Paladin 76mm, then I usually won't evacuate it but just kill it. This saves at least 10 seconds of time, which can be important if there is a fight for the objective going on. Of course with the new dropships this isn't as important as now, because you can't drop directly into combat. Suggestion: Make it take some time to kill yourself, or then make it possible to deploy at the same moment the vehicle is picked up.

First, I must say that I might be a little bit drunken (finnish style...) But, why not make it so that the towers have a smaller chance of shooting down the small caliber rounds. This way it would be possible to roll the defence, jet it wouldn't ruin fighting against units around the tower. Maybe I am not seeing the real problem, but to me this sounds the perfect solution.

My best dropship kill is 7000+ meters. Much luck needed ofcourse. IMHO it would be great to make the dropships a bit harder to hit, but a lot more expensive as in limited amount of them, better jet something like starting with 10 dropships and then one per minute or something. Maybe also making it so that you need something to secure a landing zone, if the landingzone isn't known to be clear, then no drop. Would make recon a bigger part of the game. Also really hard to implement. Anyways to my liking the battlezone is a bit too fluid, situations change so fast that it is hard to use good tactics. And this is made worse by the fact that dropping cheap equipment just to try if there is a gap doesn't cost you (almost) anything. In the pre-beta days this game was supposed to be about manouver warfare. But why bother as you can "teleport" anywhere you like... One another thing is that re-deploying is so fast. It is not enough that you can kill more than you die (for example, 76mm at long range), the really important thing is to have a good rate of killing, as after you kill something, it takes just seconds and there is another platform defending the objective. Ok, you might shoot down the dropship, but if there is fighting going on, this isn't easy to do and also the enemy can just drop again. About the long range accuracy. I don't know how it is now, but the variation in shot pattern should begin increasing dramatically after some distance. I don't know how it is now, but I suspect it is just variation in the shell angle, ie. linear with distance. Meaning 500m -> 0.5m off, 1000m -> 1m and 2000m -> 2m. Making it 500m -> 0.1m, 1000m -> 1m, 2000m -> 5m and 3000m -> 10m could be more fun. Also, seems like I am having a bit more time in the autumn, this means that I will buy the game in the near future... You have been warned. :mad:

Learning about the history of Guatemala for example, it is interesting to see who was supporting the power tool users. Google for Guatemala death squads. And yes, I think that from Libanonian POW with their background, religion and so on Israel can be seen (and is seen) as the bad one and Hizbollah as the good one. The term terrorist state is used a lot. And every current opponent of the west is now some sort of terrorist state (from west POW): North Korea, Iran, Iraq ofcourse was and so on. So my point again: who is terrorists and who not has more to do with the observer than the actions/organization observed.

First, this is not my opinion about Israel. Doesn't Israel drop large bombs in civilian buildings? Didn't they arrest a lot of Hamas ministers? Haven't Israel been long engaged in retaliation attacks? So couldn't Israel be considered using terror by the same definition? Interestingly enough Hizbollah seems to have better civilians vs. soldiers record than Israel. Ofcourse Hizbollah's record would be worse if they had the means... Israel has been bombing civilian infrastructure. One can claim that anything in Libanon is supporting Hizbollah. For example, couldn't any single farmer be killed because he is supporting Hizbollah by producing food to them. And wouldn't it be considered a terrorist attack if Hizbollah was able to destroy some TV-antennas in Israel? Ok, maybe the thing that defines Israel as non-terrorists is that they aren't _trying_ to attack non-combatants. Their number one strategy isn't causing fear. But in my opinion Hizbollahs number one goal isn't causing fear either. Maybe it would be better to say that they aren't using fear as means to get their goal, unless their goal is trying to do a suicide. They know that by firing rockets to Israel, Israel is forced to fight back. And their short time goal seems to be just to be able to make a stand against IDF. To show that they can hurt Israel. This way they can get much more support. Not to say that this is any less evil from Israeli POW. Just not terrorism. My point isn't if Israel is using terror or not. My point is that in my opinion who is labeled as terrorist is more about who is against west and who isn't than who is using terroristic means and who not. A bit like democracy/communism in 80's South America. Just trying to bring up a different point of view... PS. I find kind of a fun parallel between a certain if they run, if they stand joke and the Israeli warning about bombing South Lebanon cities. And bombing road traffic.

How about a different key for selecting how much force you want to use and then using the 'w' for accelerating with that force. Press '1' -> you get 25% of max force when you press 'w' and so on...

Wouldn't any technologically competent army be able to track down the constant radio traffic going on. Ofcourse actually reading the messages isn't possible because of encryption, but tracking down the location should be. Sending messages once in 10 seconds by every soldier sounds like the enemy is going to have good situational awarness as well...

I haven't played the game since public test days. Not enough time and I haven't jet figured out how to handle the payment... The real problem with the ATGMs is (was) bots and close range. The ice map's base is the perfect example of this. Their reaction time is (suprisingly) inhuman as is their accuracy. BTW I think the bots have a bit too good reaction time and awarness in confusing situations overall. This and the fast rotating turrets negates some of the advantages of sneaking in to the flank, especially when you do it alone.

Well, I think the best way would be to have reinforcement points, preferrably in the edges of the map. And then have conquerable zones which wouldn't need to be in the same spot as the reinforcement spot is. That is you could have tactically very important hilltops and by conquering them you can control where your enemy can deploy his troops. Realistic and fun. And should be easy to program into the engine.

I really think that somebody should do a WWII mod of Drop Team. I don't have the skill (or the time) to do such a big job. But I would imagine using CMAK vehicle data as the source for information it should be relatively straightforward to do such a mod. 3D modelling would ofcourse be the biggest job. Some help would be needed from the dev team to get features needed for such a job (getting reinforcement points instead of drop ships for unit deployment, getting rid of auto-range and so on). If somebody is going to try to do such a mod, I am definitely willing to help. Ok, it might not be entirely accurate, but I think there would be a lot of people interested playing with Shermans, Panthers and Tigers instead of Thors and Apollos. Even if there wouldn't be machineguns and things like that.

Hmmh, now there is a idea I like. Painting targets for the use of other weapon platforms. A forward observer vehicle. Should be able to guide mortar shells (which should land in, say 200m of the target to get a hit) and ATGM missiles. Takes control of the missile if the missile comes 200m or closer to the target. I don't know if this is hard enough to implement, though. The programmers definitely need more things to do.

Some time ago I remember this forum was very active. And Steve posted here almost every day. IIRC he even said that now is your time to comment our plans. The thing is, they are propably busy implementing all the core systems. If I am not wrong, there will still be another round of asking the community about the small details. The decision that they are not posting screenshots from the game twice a month or telling us how the coding is progressing isn't about treating us as little more than a nuisance. There propably just isn't good screenshot that would look like the released game. Either block tanks and not-implemented-jet mortar rounds and so on. Or 3D studio and make great looking screenshots. Unfortunately not from the game, though. About the features. The list of features would, if I am not wrong, look very much like it did 3 months ago. I agree that it would be nice to have a status update. But maybe there just isn't too much to tell us at the moment. And they might just want to concentrate on one thing. Making the game. I don't agree that Battlefront is doing a bad job about the fan base overall. CMSF forum is a bit dead at the moment, though there are some who haven't abadoned it. But look, there is free public test for Dropteam. With a dev team that does listen to players. And free release of the 1848 game. Les Grognards is looking very promising and there is lots of dev team input on that forum. I am sure that when CMSF gets to the beta test stage (or even alpha stage) there will be much more posts from BFC and the forum will be with lots of informative and interesting posts. And I am sure we will see the "my M1A2 got knocked out, this is unpossible" posts. And last thing. The best forums aren't the ones with lots of activity and lots of posts. I don't want to see the first post spamming here. I choose quality over quantity.

Unplug the cable after joining your server. This has worked for me. If you start unplugged, I don't think the game will work. Ofcourse this can be done with firewall, too. If you are trying to run a dedicated server, that is you try to join the game from a different computer, I think you could block traffic to the server except for the "registering" of the server. And ofcourse unblock your client machine...

This is a multiplayer public test, not intented for single play. If you want to do testing so that nobody else can join use your network plug.

There are two things here. Number one: I happen to think that the hills are the key in the Raid map. If the attacker can control them (or atleast deny the use of the hills) the attacker is in a strong position. This is just the way the scenario works. If you let the defender sit on that hill with Shrike/Ion thor/whatever losing is expected. The other thing is that the ions are really, really powerful at long ranges compared to the other platforms. And when sitting at the cover of the towers, the ATGMs and mortars can't hurt you, so you are in pretty good situation. My suggestion: make the burst something like 3-5 seconds long. If you can keep the aim at the target for the whole duration, you get the same damage or more than now. But if your aim goes off for 0.5 seconds, you lose _more_ than just the 0.5 seconds worth. Something like you heat the armor, but if your aim goes off, it has time to cool of. Also hitting different parts of the tank (side, front, turret) means the target will cool off. This way the Ion beam is much harder to _use_ at extreme ranges, jet as effective as ever at shorter ranges. Also, it is effective at longer range against stationary targets, or if you happen to be very good at using it. Keeping your aim at a moving target for 3 seconds at 5000m isn't too easy. Also, the target has a way to defend himself. Maybe there should be base damage plus increasing additional damage when hitting continuously. This way a hurricane that is rotating wouldn't be invulnerable. This heating thing is just to clarify what I mean, so don't bring out your physics books to show me that in 0.5 seconds the armor doesn't cool of...