yllamana

I wanted to comment on the writing. The plot, as far as I've gone so far in the single player (only the plot in the story - not commenting on the backstory), isn't too deep, but the writing is really good and a definite breath of fresh air when many developers these days seem to think that a pulse is sufficient qualification for writing story material. (in Briefing - Forsaken: "scienfitic" and "abandonded" - oops) I'm having trouble with getting the bots to do what I want them to. Also, it's really lacking polish - the scoreboard looks the same as in multiplayer, and after each map it just throws you back to the main menu screen. Still, the difficulty (with the default of oh-my-goodness-it's-so-easy-I-can't-believe-you're-playing-it) seems adjustable enough that everyone should be able to play through and enjoy it, adjusting it if needed for clanmate stupidity and your own skill level. Performance is fine for me so far, maybe a touch slower than multiplayer. No guarantee it'll be fine in later missions though.

Hmm. 3 meb2-ge4-1-4.gw.optusnet.com.au (210.49.58.3) 26.026 ms 8.787 ms 9.836 ms 4 sun5-ge4-15.gw.optusnet.com.au (211.31.129.37) 15.926 ms 10.495 ms 29.037 ms 5 sun1-ge0-1.gw.optusnet.com.au (211.31.129.46) 29.018 ms 10.902 ms 10.345 ms 6 ros1-pos13.gw.optusnet.com.au (211.31.129.86) 33.183 ms 30.629 ms 25.691 ms 7 203.208.148.225 (203.208.148.225) 186.622 ms 178.628 ms 251.904 ms 8 203.208.172.189 (203.208.172.189) 179.336 ms 178.937 ms 180.187 ms 9 bpr1-ge-1-3-0.paloaltopaix.savvis.net (206.24.241.13) 180.614 ms bpr1-ge-4-3-0.paloaltopaix.savvis.net (206.24.241.93) 179.102 ms bpr1-ge-1-3-0.paloaltopaix.savvis.net (206.24.241.13) 180.877 ms 10 dcr1-so-1-0-0.sanfranciscosfo.savvis.net (204.70.194.74) 181.273 ms dcr1-so-3-3-0.sanfranciscosfo.savvis.net (206.24.211.73) 182.851 ms 181.252 ms 11 dcr2.lay-so-5-0-0.losangeles.savvis.net (204.70.194.46) 192.067 ms 193.742 ms 204.055 ms 12 dcr1-so-2-0-0.dallas.savvis.net (204.70.192.85) 226.936 ms 224.167 ms * 13 dcr1.ald-so-7-0-0.atlanta.savvis.net (204.70.194.58) 245.712 ms 245.371 ms 242.572 ms 14 bcs1-so-2-0-0.washington.savvis.net (204.70.192.54) 265.394 ms 263.955 ms 262.914 ms 15 bcs2-so-7-0-0.washington.savvis.net (204.70.192.34) 256.945 ms 258.404 ms 258.613 ms 16 bcs2-so-2-0-0.newyork.savvis.net (204.70.192.2) 279.140 ms 263.590 ms 265.187 ms 17 dcr4-so-1-1-0.newyork.savvis.net (204.70.192.213) 266.853 ms dcr3-so-0-1-0.newyork.savvis.net (204.70.192.201) 268.030 ms dcr4-so-1-1-0.newyork.savvis.net (204.70.192.213) 268.763 ms 18 kar2-ge-1-0-0.newyork.savvis.net (204.70.193.109) 265.888 ms kar2-ge-0-0-0.newyork.savvis.net (204.70.193.97) 266.023 ms kar2-ge-1-0-0.newyork.savvis.net (204.70.193.109) 272.529 ms 19 usbstn2-01-bsn.cntx04.savvis.net (64.243.31.214) 267.075 ms 266.500 ms 268.909 ms 20 s218372-2.savvis-internet.usbstn2-bsn.savvis.net (64.243.31.234) 270.109 ms 269.719 ms 270.838 ms 21 * * * I'm not really sure what it's doing. My first try last night canceled with "POSIX error, connection reset by peer" at around 500MB. At the moment it's saying 12:43 remaining, and I just slept while it downloaded, so it's been going for a while. It does seem a bit concerning, though. I just tried downloading something from another site and it was happily going over 60k/sec, which isn't blazing fast but is a lot faster than 9.1k/sec (actually I think it might have stopped entirely again and just isn't telling me about it this time). I do understand that this isn't necessarily a problem on my end *or* the download server, but possibly somewhere in between, but that knowledge isn't getting it downloaded faster. UPDATE: third time lucky, the download chugged across the finish line a short time ago and appears to be fine. [ June 07, 2006, 10:35 PM: Message edited by: yllamana ]

What's with the download speed? I've been downloading for four hours and it lists nine remaining, with the speed steadily dropping. It's still going, but incredibly slowly. My net seems to be working fine otherwise (Melbourne, Australia).

I noticed it in the mortars in particular. Maybe how long it stays on the screen should be a configurable option, since I'm sure everyone is going to have a different idea of how long it should be there for. I'm sure that in a mortar-heavy battle that information could be crucial.

I think the reason that things are as they are is, if these weapons could easily get first shot kills (as you seem to want) then the game would be dominated by Thors and Apollo tank destroyers sitting in spots where they could see for miles and snipe everyone. I also don't get how "only" damaging components at 2+km makes the guns ineffective? It's not like having damaged components is no big deal, plus it means the next shots can do even more damage and cripple or destroy the components. Not to mention I've seen first-shot kills of the Apollo at over 3km with 120mm AP (ice map). Basically I don't see a problem with how it is now. I think it's balanced on a very fine point at the moment, and even a slight movement either way could throw off the balance entirely. Honestly I think the idea that a penetration that only damages components instead of killing them all outright is "useless" is quite silly.

So last night we were playing around with the Viper. Pretty interesting craft, and it turns out that with a Hurricane attached it makes for an effective aerial bombardment platform: Is this intentional? It's very hilarious, either way. Maybe you want to disable the weapons systems of vehicles attached to the Viper. The bots, the ATGM vehicles in particular, are capable of shooting down the Viper while attached to it (the ATGM's initial vertical trajectory makes it ideal for shooting down your own dropship). So, thoughts on the Viper. First, it really needs chaff/flares. Up in the sky it attracts every single ATGM on the entire map. They have some difficulty hitting it, but with the magic insta-turn missiles they can get there eventually. Second, the flight system is really interesting. However, I think it's buggy. Very frequently the Viper will not attempt to turn towards the mouse pointer, making it very difficult to steer. Also, I think the main difficulty in flying the Viper is how slowly it does turn. It feels very cumbersome even when not loaded, not at all like a futuristic craft. I like the flight system very much, but it needs to turn towards the mouse quicker. The other problem seems to be the reward ratio of it. Realistically, what can you do with the Viper? I suppose you could drop a Hermes in an area with strong AA cover and no other defenders, but you could just deploy outside the area an drive it in, or kill the turrets with an ion vehicle. You can pick up the flag carrier and fly away - I did a daring high-speed grab of a Shrike with the flag (he subsequently shot me down with the ATGM launcher, leading to his grisly demise) and that has some reward, or you could just support him with a real unit instead. You could relocate a unit across the battlefield, but he could just do that on his own by extracting and redeploying, which would not require a player to be in the Viper and would likely be quicker. Also, the way the Viper deploys - it appears high in the air, then descends agonisingly slowly while being blasted to pieces by long-range bot fire. It's reasonably rare to deploy a Viper anywhere near an enemy bot (I'm talking further away than you can effectively drop a normal unit, here) without sustaining damage. I think it should just give the pilot immediate control so that it isn't so vulnerable. On top of that, is it necessary for the Viper to be so limited in quantity? You seem to get about 6 of them per map. I don't see any harm in doubling or even tripling the number of Vipers available (heck they seem to have enough of them to waste on drop and extract missions). I say this because they seem like a very fun addition to the game, but they're limited in so many ways that it seems like they might as well not be there at all. There's still a bug in the game where the Viper starts behaving erratically while holding a hover vehicle (we obviously were using the Hurricane) except when you're pressing the stabilise/brake key. We had effects ranging from a slight wobbling to full-blown out of control spinning (think 5+ revolutions per second). The Viper also has, I think, too strong a tendency to go head over heels when it touches the ground, even at low speeds. Maybe that's just me but it seems to flip very, very easily. Anyway, I thought it'd be good to have a discussion of this very fun but ultimately apparently nearly useless vehicle.

Perhaps we can imagine that this conflict is likely a part of a broader ground war being waged between the Liveships. While there might be 6 Hurricanes active and available in the area, perhaps only one is immediately available for deployment (the others being either in transit or deployed and operational in other zones). The way availability is modeled now, all six Hurricanes are available to us immediately. It's a very simple system. What if it was more complex, and only one or two were available immediately, with others possibly becoming available during the course of the engagement? That would throttle their use somewhat without restrictions like "you get one Hurricane and that's it!" It seems like a fair middle ground to me. With the teamwork issue, I have to agree. People should have options to form things like task forces and organise that way (sounds like a good way to order bots too). Teamwork is just a bit clunky at the moment, and I think it has to be absolutely not clunky in the least if you want anyone other than the most hardcore players to take it more than quarter-seriously. Even in scenarios that nearly mandate it, people aren't going to struggle through a system they find awkward. They'll just quit and go do something else, sooner or later. All scenarios like that will do is separate the ones willing to put up with the system from those who aren't - who can normally just truck around the place doing their own thing if they want to otherwise.

In a sort of similar vein, a friend running Win98 with a Geforce card was experiencing a really bad-sounding crash (he thought it had a blue screen of death and then broke his whole system or something). I believe this resulted in him deleting the game, but I tried to troubleshoot it and it turned out his drivers were out of date. Updating them fixed the problem and he redownloaded and is playing now. Would it be at all possible to make Drop Team quit more gracefully with an appropriate error message when it encounters obsolete drivers like that? Maybe it's already meant to, I'm not sure, but if so it failed catastrophically in that case.

For prettiness: </font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">r b a m f or % 1250 300 0.58 0.82 56.3 69.0 23 1000 300 0.76 0.75 81.5 108 36 750 300 0.70 0.77 148 192 64 500 300 0.35 0.89 224 252 84 200 300 0.67 0.79 227 287 96 100 300 0.67 0.79 233 295 98 </pre>

You seem to be able to kill all the buildings except possibly the big concrete ones in Raid objective mode and the fort walls. It's very easy to accidentally level the base in Ice Field if you're mortar-happy like me. For reference, we killed an ion tower with 8 x 120mm HE and 100 x 20mm HE together. Only problem is HE has a very high trajectory, so you can't effectively hit the tower unless you're very close already (and if you're so close and have enough time to unload that much HE then you should probably be taking the thing over anyway). More experimentation is needed, both to check how effectively the ion tower can be attacked without controlling its base and whether the huge concrete things can be blown up. Edit: we also tried attacking an ion tower from range using a combination of 20mm and direct fire plasma bombs (Hurricane). We managed to land several hits, but it took a very long time - so long that we didn't manage to kill it before the map ended. Could be more effective with more 20mms but that might be more trouble than it's worth.

I think you're right, Drusus, about the server types, but I think there really should be in-game support. The whole kills/deaths thing encourages people to try and get a high kill score and a low deaths score even at the expense of their team. I think there should be an option on the server to disable kill/death score displays. Then we can have the best of both worlds as long as we have enough players in the final release to support the choice. While people will to a certain extent gravitate to different servers that have regulars that like teamplay/don't care about teamplay, being able to turn off the individual scores both discourages the lone wolf types and discourages the latent tendency in all of us to sometimes go for the individual "win" instead of the team's win. The complaints in this thread about the scorekeeping I agree with 100% as well, and think also that turret deaths shouldn't count as a player death. Probably dropship deaths shouldn't either if the player wasn't in the dropship at the time.

I would like to be able to issue multiple orders to a vehicle in a queue. At the simplest level, this would just be things like setting multiple attack waypoints to get units to attack through a specific route. At a more complex level, it could be something like getting Magellan to drop a Cutter, capture a facility, then drop a tank destroyer near the facility and defend it from a hull-down position. The "capture" order is especially problematic because the bots suicide when they complete it (I assume they're meaning to extract but getting caught by the extraction bug) but if they have a drop order to drop the Cutter they'll just go straight back and drop another one and start defending in it. Bots also desperately need to start disregarding their drop point, if not the drop type, if they're getting shot down by AA weaponry while trying to deploy there. For example, if someone drives a Hermes into the drop zone the bots will just keep mindlessly deploying into their dooms at the hands of its AA turret. Same goes for emplaced AA batteries. Hull Down I assume operates like it did in Combat Mission, where the vehicle moves from the first point towards the second point until it has a hull-down view of that second one. Also, slightly related but I don't think the view should snap back to your tank when you issue a drop order from the command track.

Nasty bug here. My system suddenly lags for a moment. I look at the map time, thinking it must have just ended, and it reads somewhere below -70,000 minutes. Then the time goes back to being correct again, but all vehicle chassis (it seemed, I could only see my own and a nearby tank's) are invisible and I have about 2 FPS. I waited out the three minutes remaining on the map. At the score screen the framerate had gone back to normal and after the next map loaded everything was fine again.

That's a good point. My brain wasn't counting the fort wall as a building. Maybe the fort thing could be fixed somewhat.

I'm sure I'll run into your turret craziness sometime and see if it makes me reevaluate the turrets. I definitely agree with this line though. I'd love to see it changed so that the view didn't snap back when you place a turret (it's only a Tab away if I decide I want that view).

It would be extremely cool if you could actually have two (or more) players inside the one vehicle. Seems a bit late in development to ask for such a thing, but it would rock. Take it from me when I say you simply have not found the right weapon to destroy them. The first discussion that Netherby and I have in the attacking objective game is whether or not to level the enemy base. [ March 22, 2006, 07:55 PM: Message edited by: yllamana ]

I swear I saw a buggy fall *through* the world on that map and kill himself. It was a bot, I think, and he drove into a little dip in the ground, then his IFF triangle just kept going down and down until the message that he killed himself appeared. Maybe I was mistaken and something else happened, but it was really bizarre.

Drop Team seems to handle latency superbly, HUGE kudos for that. Maybe you could mention it in the manual somewhere, about whether or not you need to lead shots for latency or if you can just fire at what you see on your screen. That was one of my big questions coming into the game. Also, please please please could we have a ping display on the player list? Or at least show my own ping somewhere. Thanks.

I haven't noticed this to be effective against the MC-H. Generally the Hermes either misses or you just end up with an air blast that's still lethal since the plasma shells are so powerful. Steve, just in brief: I agree entirely that it's a matter of opinion. I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. Just giving mine. We've been experimenting with things like mortar counter-fire using the command car to spot (seems fairly effective) and defensive mortars (seem very effective, frequently disabling vehicles or just destroying them outright). Still not sure that this isn't frustrating for the people involved, but okay.

The schematic definitely makes ALL the difference as far as firing goes. Seriously, playing with that thing in mind compared to without is like night and day. That schematic desperately needs integrating with the game in some way. The whole thing makes sense with it. Perhaps showing the internals on the gunnery display would be too much, but you desperately, desperately need to impress upon new players the importance of the schematic! The gunnery makes perfect sense with it. Edit: what I'm saying is, this understanding is what you really need to give people. It's why you guys (the developers) haven't seen the "need" for better hit feedback before now - because once you figure it out, you know what's going on with all your shots and you can evaluate their effects easily by the vehicle's behavior after you hit it. If you can give people this info, you won't need to give them better hit feedback. Conversely, if you give better hit feedback its main use is going to be letting people figure out this info for themselves. [ March 22, 2006, 03:49 AM: Message edited by: yllamana ]

In case it wasn't clear, the above posts were about the ctrl-M targeting.

I haven't heard any complaints about the 20mm. I spent a while earlier examining the vehicle schematics, and today my cutter drops in and kills no less than three Thor KCs with its stupid 20mm cannon. The complaint seems to be that the 76mm combines the rate of fire of the 120mm with the penetrating power of the 20mm. But anyway, that's not the main thrust of the thread, which is issues that are so frustrating that they hurt the game a lot. Anyway, something of importance. Today I went and reviewed all the vehicle schematics on the site and got a feel for the vehicle structures. Now all of a sudden my Cutter is killing Thors. I think the problem is mostly that people don't know where to aim on the vehicles to inflict damage. I suggest an in-game card system showing armour, weapon penetration and also the schematics like on the website. That would instantly resolve a lot of the problems with damage, I think. Seems to me people are hitting the tanks but missing critical systems and not knowing why.

Sometimes when you send a chat message, it doesn't appear to anyone. This may also be happening with normal messages, since sometimes things will die and no message will appear. Also, when someone sends a longish chat message, it will go off the edge of the screen without wrapping, making the last part of it unreadable. That was at the default resolution, 800x600 or whatever it is.

I've noticed that it's easy to get this to happen by dropping on the hill in the southeast of the Raid map in a mortar (the hill with the ion tower on it) and firing over towards the southwest flag area. When you target the western half of the area, it starts firing HE-L and missing completely, even though the ammo display will have HE-H selected. Really interesting idea that maybe it has something to do with the terrain clipping range. As it stands I'm just treating the bug as a maximum range and trying not to exceed it.