yllamana

I think the best way to sum it up is this: mortars can turn you into smoldering ruins even if you are careful. When a mortar kills you, generally you aren't left with a feeling that you were somehow outplayed, just that you died for no good reason (bad luck). Of course, dying because you sat in one spot like a lemon for the huge period it takes mortar shells to arrive is another thing, but those cases are the minority. If you keep moving a LOT, yes. But realistically you don't have unlimited movement around the battlefield, and firing slightly randomly in an area with several enemy units in it (e.g. objective/flag area) is likely to at least cause severe damage to them and at best score a kill, or even multiple kills (not to mention killing turrets to boot). Also, if I got blindsided by someone using a different type of weapon (ignoring for now the somewhat common ATGM balance complaints) then that was my tactical mistake and I can take steps to prevent it in future. If I'm suddenly pegged by a random mortar shell flying out of nowhere without any warning then that's just frustrating. I appreciate that this is an issue, but it's not the issue I am seeing (well, I mean, I'm seeing it too, but that's not what I'm talking about). Sometimes the turret is facing correctly, but will not fire. It's not still traversing to the target. I agree completely about the turret traverse speeds - if anything I think they're faster than I'd expect - but what I'm talking about above is with the turret being perfectly on-target and still not firing. Perhaps something is causing it to get stuck in a "traversing" mode when it appears to be aiming straight, I don't know. But when it occurs it is very, very broken and frustrating. It also occurred in the Paladin IC, so it's not an issue exclusive to hover vehicles (just as a note).

Having fought against turrets a bit more now, a few more thoughts on them: AA turrets can back up an assault by preventing enemies from dropping in nearby during the fight (e.g. reinforcements from destroyed vehicles). With jammers as backup their positions aren't obvious when scattered around a fortification. They can be easily destroyed by enemy forces who get LoS on them, but they may make a difference in the meantime. AG turret fire, significantly, makes the views of vehicles they pass shake strongly (sensor distortion?). It occurs that, while they can't hit anything worth beans, the view shaking could easily be the deciding factor in a battle between two tanks. Obvious problem with this is the turret requires babysitting to be effective at all in this scenario (as friendly armour is relied on to do the damage while the turret suppresses the enemy) and the turret can be easily killed before its shots arrive at the target and start disrupting their fire. It also turns out that 10mm ion beam is an unstoppable destructive force against turrets from any range and regardless of any point defence available. Suggestion: are the bots suppressed effectively by passing turret plasma bolts? If not then this would be a good feature to add, as it seems to be the main danger of the AG turrets at present (and where it works, it's definitely potent - AG turrets should probably be priority targets for anyone). Another use could be dropping them around the objective to support an advance, like the AA turrets, though this requires the enemy to be heavily suppressed (to prevent untimely dropship death) and lacking any AA assets of their own. Also noted was that EMP appears not to affect turrets or prebuilt emplacement towers. They seem to fire as normal while in the effect. Unsure if this is a bug or a feature. (thought: what's EMP do to dropships?) Interesting stuff though.

I'm finding there are just too many situations where I look back and think, "well, what could I have done that time to have not died?" and just draw a blank. When I've managed to empty my entire magazine of 20mm AP into the side of a vehicle that I've seen killed by a frontal hit, to no discernable effect at all, it's just frustrating. Re: the wheel damage, the main thing we have in mind is - drumroll - the Hurricane, everyone's favourite vehicle. We were doing a lot of playing in Paladins yesterday, and Hurricane plasma bolts can miss completely (on the order of 300, 500 metres) and still knock out two wheels of a Paladin, presumably from the shrapnel. This is especially damaging to players who are trying to play in an actual team, because losing two wheels pretty much incapacitates you in most cases and forces an extraction. If that's the case, can I suggest at least toning down the shrapnel and making the direct explosion do most or all of the damage? It's a plasma bomb or something after all, and it doesn't look from the graphic like it has anything to turn into shrapnel in it. Also, I'd like to comment on artillery in general, fire support notwithstanding as it's sort of a special case. What I'm finding is what I'm sure soldiers since artillery's inception have found out: being shelled randomly from afar with no way to retaliate is not fun. I tend to hop into the artillery vehicles fairly often myself, too, and I'm sure it's not fun for player xyz who just gets obliterated out of nowhere by a gigantic explosion. Since there's generally no way of telling if or when a mortar shell is going to land, it just feels like you died for no reason. (Post-Review idea: a warning that a mortar shell will land on this position, and a temporary little alarm waypoint planted there. Still useful for attacking turrets and fortified positions, but without the "well dead for no reason again" vibe) Note that the Hurricane is somewhat, but generally less, able to produce this effect, since generally the Hurricane can't hit you if you can't see it at all. I honestly don't know how to fix this. Maybe a drop of lethality of mortars across the board. I like the general concept of them but in practice getting killed by a mortar is very frustrating and just feels like you died for no reason. Claytonious, I think the problem with the vehicle steering is that there isn't a game in the world that's used keyboard vehicle steering and pulled it off successfully. You really need some kind of analogue vehicle steering. Halo did the weird thing with the mouse and that just felt superb. Also, though this is more a personal taste issue and I don't know where your vision for it lies, they don't feel agile enough. They have a very strong tendency to roll if turning at much speed, yet their rate of turning is horrible except in the rare situations where you manage to turn using the brake. I'd think that if the wheeled vehicles are going to suffer the horrible wheel damage limitation that they should at least have agility that makes up for it, but as it is, if the tracked steering worked right the tanks would be just as maneuverable anyway. The firing issue Netherby talks about sometimes feels like a bug to me. Think 10, 15 second stretches of the turret refusing to fire at all even though it's apparently on target with the firing vehicle stationary or moving evenly. Having a Tempest facing perfectly for a barrage on the rear of en enemy vehicle, but unable to fire for that long for no discernable reason? Very frustrating. (as an additional note, after some experimentation the ion beams actually seem quite viable and interesting. The "Tempest Death Pack" might be an interesting strategy, but as it stands the above fire issue cripples it) I mostly saw this issue with the ion beams, but I have noticed it affecting all vehicles. If you try to reproduce it, bear in mind we're playing with around 220+ ping. (G'day) I didn't mean to write a huge essay on this, but all the issues that I've listed are incredibly frustrating to me and I think they could drive a lot of people away from what's otherwise a very cool and promising game. As an aside question, will you be releasing any new public test versions? If so, do you have any frequency you want to release them in mind, so that we aren't all hitting issues you've addressed internally already? Thanks for reading.

Ctrl-M is the button to get out of indirect fire mode. Maybe you were the victim of an unfortunate bug.

They're okay as throw-away AA cover, in my experience, but they give a full point when killed. If you have a close game between a turret-happy team and one that doesn't deploy turrets at all, the one without turrets wins, simply because they get free points from the throw-away turrets. Also, I'm talking about the dropped AA turrets, not the AA ion beam emplacements, which are much more useful. No problem at all with those things. Usually the bots will avoid deploying in the AA cover area, though sometimes they get stupid and you get a kill. The problem is, that kill is bought at the price of the other dozen AA guns you have on the map, which probably won't kill anything but are very easy to kill themselves. Also, the bots love deploying at the edge of the air cover and going on a turret killing spree. I'm not saying the turrets are totally useless in all circumstances. I'm just saying that in my experience they're about a quarter the effectiveness they'd need to be worth that point they give when they die. I was wondering if anyone else had better ideas for using them. One thing I do sometimes is drop turrets around the enemy flag area if our team takes it. That can help a bit, though the turrets usually die in short order anyway. It's occurred to me to try and dig very substantial trenches so that the turrets can't be hit by direct fire from more than 300m or so, but that would take a fair while and seems like more bother than they're even worth (why not just put whoever is driving the Cutter in an AAA/EWV paladin instead?).

Unless I'm mistaken, only the prebuilt AA installations do this (and then it's only the prebuilt beam AA installation, but that's okay because the missile installation is a lot better at actually shooting things down). As far as I can see the others don't do this at all (and as they drop like flies to ATGMs that seems to be supported). Can someone clear this up? I'm pretty sure I'm right in this case. Would write more but I have to go.

I thought it'd be good to discuss a topic dear to my heart: turrets. Has anyone found any way to use turrets? So far I've established two main uses for turrets: - annoying the enemy by restricting drop area for a short time before the turret is destroyed; - adding a limited amount of automated defence to the inside of a fort. Anytime they're used outside those roles, they seem to just get killed by long-ranged fire of pretty much anything. AA guns are great, but their range is very limited. AG guns have great range, but they're totally ineffective at actually hitting anything beyond about 100m. Even slow-moving vehicles they miss every time, and weapon impacts don't usually seem to be catastrophic. I've tried hiding them in holes and tried covering them with sensor jammers, but they just get killed by direct fire from tanks. Tried hiding them behind hills, same deal, except with the hiding you're likely to get gaps in AA coverage that the AI will exploit ruthlessly to get a dozen points from turret kills. Also, they're quite vulnerable to indirect fire when anyone bothers with that. So has anyone managed to use these successfully before? If so, what for? So far my experience of them is that they're mild nuisances at best, and not worth deploying because they're worth just as much as an enemy tank if killed. Maybe the AG ones would be worth a little more in the objective scenario, where the fort is more important, but I still can't see them lasting in the face of indirect fire on the fort at all. Sensors and jammers seem to suffer from a similar problem. If they're placed, they just get killed and become a free point with very little coming from their use. The best use for jammers that I've found is to drop them in the middle of a fort, since they cover the whole thing from there. Apart from that, though, their tiny range combined with gigantic size makes them easy pickings for enemies. I haven't really found a use for sensors as their range is so small and they're so obvious to the eye. The Cutter is fun (and taking the forts is very, very useful especially on ice map) but I'm having trouble seeing the digging as very useful simply because of the huge amount of time it takes to dig. By the time you've made any kind of useful fortification, probably 8 minutes of the map are gone, and you could have been doing something more meaningful in that time instead. Does anyone have any observations of these things? Maybe some of the developers could shed some light on it.

For some reason I'm thinking of the CM "data cards" that the vehicles had, showing the armour effectiveness and the armour penetration values. It also occurs that the crosshair could change colour (green/yellow/orange/red) based on the penetration chance for the range you're pointing at for the current ammo type. Maybe the crosshair thing is a little too much (I don't know what sort of feel you're aiming for exactly), but could the data cards be a good addition? It'd also be nice to have a feel for the relative armour strengths of the different sides of the vehicle, even if that feel isn't entirely accurate on account of the real simulation being more detailed than the card info. This seems a bit pie-in-the-sky for an idea, but maybe a summary of engagements would be useful. For example, it would be cool if I could pull up a log of what effect my weapons were having during a battle, even if the log was time-delayed or only appeared after the match (to prevent cheating). Then I could see the effect of each of my shots listed in the log. A couple of other features I'd love: - please make it so if I control-click while using a targeting mode (drop target, support fire target, etc.) it doesn't take that as my target location. At present, the game will both select the spot as my target and move my view there. - it'd be really cool if control-clicking on the tactical map would switch to 3d mode facing and nearby the point I clicked (like how it works in the 3d mode). I understand control-click already has a meaning in the tactical map, but perhaps that could be changed (to shift-click or something), so it's consistent. I often find myself wanting a close-up view for things like turret positioning, and that would provide it straight from the map. - vanilla capture the flag seems really unrealistic and boring. What if the flag was actually returned by a dropship? It could just come down from the sky, pick up the ball and leave (like they do for everything else) and then come down and put the ball back at the return point. It'd have to have a few caveats, like it'd have to suck the ball up from the ground or teleport it up to prevent obstruction problems, but I think it'd be really interesting. It could also allow the enemy team to shoot down the dropship to prevent its return. Other possibilities include having to wait around in the ball's vicinity (~50m or so) for a while to call in the dropship, instead of just driving over it. Maybe the requirement of having your own flag at home to cap could be lifted, to counter the added difficulty of the returning. It doesn't make much sense that you need your research data/construction materials/whatever you imagine the ball to represent in order to capture the opponent's, anyway. I'm still curious about a lot of stuff - especially bot orders and the deployables - so we still have a bit to check out. As Netherby says it looks great so far.

I'll just be brief. - way too little feedback on weapon impacts. When you're getting hit you can see oh no, frontal crew compartment penetration, some injury, but to whoever shot you it looks pretty much like just another "miss". This also makes it very hard to get the hang of the gunnery when you're just beginning. - tracked vehicle turning while accelerating seems weird, like if it's traveling at full speed it won't turn. - vehicles seem to tip very easily on some terrain, e.g. my bulldozer trying to go up the side of a reasonable but smooth incline managed to tip *backwards* and end up sitting on its rear. - agreed that the bulldozer seems prohibitively slow. Maybe there's a good reason for that, but I don't see it yet. - agree with the other thread that "end scenario" and "quit game" are very confusing. My reasoning went like this: quit game must quit the game, therefore end scenario means to leave the server. I would suggest relabeling them. - the bots seem way too accurate when it comes to shooting down dropships. There's just no way a dropship will survive a descent within effective weapons range of a bot, and that just seems wrong. AA guns, fine, battle tanks, no. I know it's not impossible to shoot down the things, but bots are just too good at it. - maybe there's a way to do this already, but I haven't seen it - it'd be nice to be able to get info on a server, in particular what players are on it. Similarly, it would be great to be able to join a server from the buddy list. - the server list doesn't seem to query the tracker until you press Refresh List. I'm not sure if this is a feature (it'd be okay if you could join from the buddy screen) but I think it should get the server list when you select that screen. - UI - little niggle, the scroll boxes allow you to scroll down past the end of the list. - the ATGM manual tracking seems REALLY unrealistic. It looks like the AVRiLs in UT2004, where they can turn instantly. Maybe a gentle curve would be more appropriate? Seeing one of the things do somersaults around a dropship just makes one go "buh?" - can we have a female voice or two for the macros, please? And if we have it selected could it say herself in the messages (ex. yllamana killed herself) instead of himself? It's a little thing and I'm sure women aren't exactly your target demographic, but still. - a voice preview option would be great, since as far as I know one of your voices might be female, as I can't hear them previewed. - just one I noticed launching DropTeam, it doesn't take long to load but a loading bar just to show people it's loading (not just displaying a splash screen) would be great. It's not a big delay, even on my system at the bottom end of your requirements, but it's appreciable. Just to not list all negatives, I love the drop concept, the armour modeling, the cute backstory, range of vehicles, range of supported play types, that it runs on my computer, the whole extraction/resupply thing... Very cool and enjoyable. And the camouflage on the vehicles changing in the different terrains is a great touch. Oh, and I LOVE the HE fire mission. It's like calling down the hand of God.

I'm having the same problem as Bnej, now. I was playing fine the other night (playing against Bnej, in fact) and tonight I crash every time I join a server, after it loads. Tried two different servers and same problem. I'm running the G4 1.25 dual with the mirrored drive doors, but it has 1GB of RAM installed. It still has the default Radeon 9000 with 64mb of RAM. I've sent the log off to Claytonious' email address. I just tried again on a third server and it now works just as inexplicably as it didn't work before. Very odd. Also, other people were on the servers I was crashing out of, so it wasn't apparently a general problem with them.