Netherby

I saw some OpenAL files get downloaded with the update... Not sure if they were there before, you could try deleting them so it loads the system ones instead, but of course that could also make the game not work.. But it can't hurt to try if the game isn't working anyway...

Only the Hermes and Ion Beam Towers will shoot down any mortar rounds, the Hermes will generally only take it out a shot distance above the ground resulting in an air burst.. Which is just as nasty as it hitting the ground, but not so nasty as it hitting you directly.. Im not sure where this idea that AA deployables can shoot down Artillery or Missiles came from, perhaps due to putting them near the Ion Beam installations in the other map? But anyway they only provide protection from dropships [ March 23, 2006, 07:21 AM: Message edited by: Netherby ]

It's quite possibly mostly because of my terrible graphics card.. But should I really be getting lagged from Fire/Smoke/EMP missions even when I can't see them?

How long is the prematch time? I almost always get in with 1 minute remaining til the round starts, so thats what? 3 or 4 minutes load time? But I only have a dual 1.25 G4..

No problems here.. OSX 10.4.5 [ March 23, 2006, 02:55 AM: Message edited by: Netherby ]

Just a few things I wanted to mention about the game which are network/latency related.. I'm also only playing this on a 1.25 G4 withe basic Radeon 9000, so it's a little under powered and could be exaggerating these effects or even causing some.. I generally ping between 150-250 to the servers. Joining When joining a server it seems that the client possibly stores up all the data about the game from the moment it's connected, long before it finishes loading and caching.. Or it gets sent all that data as soon as it finishes.. Because you get hit with a massive lag period as you enter with stacks of messages scrolling up the screen and units all zapping around until it all catches up to "now".. If you join at the start of a round you will see the deployment clock jump a minute or two in time for what it displays as you first enter.. This isn't terrible, but if it could be avoided it would feel much nicer Smoke Smoke clouds seem to cause network latency.. I think I can generally tell the difference between an fps hit and network lag, so are these being broadcast from the server or something? Because things like the Fire Mission cause me to lag even when I can't see them (so shouldn't be losing fps trying to render them). Round Start/Bot Messages Rounds starting also give me a hugh lag spike, perhaps this is because a whole bunch of bots all deployed simultaneously or the sudden spam of bot voice messages saying they are doing something.. Bot voice messages do actually seem to effect my latency some what, though I suppose I could be mistaken and it just seemed like it.. Hit Prediction Is really good, it seems TOO good.. Which worries me that it could be all client side and eventually be open to exploitation by naughty people who like to cheat and make other people unhappy instead of play games to enjoy them.. Chat It doesn't wrap long messages.. So you just see text trailing off the edge of the screen and wonder what they were saying On the subject of a chat, a history would be nice too, so if you miss something in the heat of battle you can scroll back and see what was said or what killed you etc.. Anyway I think that was all the things I wanted to mention.. Oh yeah also the Drop menu coming up lags me too, shouldn't that be cached and come up pretty smoothly? Does anyone with faster computers and better graphics cards notice any of these things too?

I have a log of a start of map crash if you're interested still.. I also have another of a mid game crash and one that occurred shortly after pressing the join game button in the lobby..

I believe the problem is that drop orders given on previous maps are still followed on the next map, but without any way points shown or the bot actually displaying those orders if you select them.. So if that location happens to be inside AA radius on the next map, the bot will continue to drop in that location until the supply of that vehicle type is exhausted or they are given new orders.. They will most certainly drop over and over and over into AA fire with no visible orders, we have seen it lots of times and I think this could be the cause!

If you read the PDF with the game it says blast is modeled on penetrations based on the thickness of armour penetrated and a static value for each shell type.. "Each type of projectile has a "Fragmentation Factor." This factor combined with the amount of armor that was penetrated determines how much fragmentation is caused by the projectile's entrance into the interior of the victim object." So a 120mm penetration on thick armour is going to cause significant frag damage, while a 20mm probably isn't going to damage components unless you hit very close to them.. HEAT ammo is also more likely to set things on fire if it damages them I believe, according to the description of the hit mechanics anyway..

I played for several maps using ONLY the 76mm Paladin trying to find a way to use the weapon, shooting all sorts of different places and ranges.. It simply seems so much less effective than the 20mm in almost every situation I could find But weapon balance wasn't really my point here

I wasn't complaining about the 20mm, it is actually quite good, especially with the really high rate of fire, flanking a tank with the 20mm gives you very high chances of a kill! It's the 76mm that seems to lack any greater punch than the 20mm, yet has a much slower rate of fire.. To make it clear, I was having a lot of trouble even damaging things with the 76mm that I had easily taken out using the 20mm so I was a bit O_o But that's not really what I wanted to talk about here.. The in game card system would be really nice, the important things I would like to know are AP armour penetration vs range+density, various armour values at different slopes on the vehicles (like in CM you had the armour value at 90º, 45º and 25º or something like that). A visual cue for a penetration would also help a lot or is there already? When AP rounds do the explode effect does that mean they penetrated? Sometimes they bounce off which is obvious but other times they seem to explode.. HEAT rounds always explode so it's especially hard to tell if they are being effective or not..

Yes, you're right. I think the proper fix here is use the reticle to indicate what's happening instead of just leaving you to click and have nothing happen without explanation.</font>

Yeah they are team wide.. The resupply ship is very powerful, if you can push into an area and get one down it provides great point defense against missiles and anything with a high enough trajectory to hit.. If your ammo is full it is polite to move away so it detaches and someone else can get in.. The ship stays for around 2 minutes!

It seems vehicles may be invulnerable from the under side? Or at least very tough.. Some tank flipped on its side and I was shooting it heaps in the belly thinking that would surely be the weakest armour but I couldn't seem to damage it.. Could we get some clarification on the the underside armour strength? There are certain situations (besides them rolling over) where you can get a shot at their belly but from my experience it doesn't seem to make any difference?

The drop ship has point defense beams on it.. It is SUPPOSED to stick around to protect the area! It is quite a lot tougher than regular drop ships.. How ever I think it should stop resupplying a vehicle when the ammo is full and attach to other nearby vehicles.. Since if you don't move away once you're full no one else can get any ammo from it..

I take back what I said I about Hurricanes, they are instant death to almost any vehicle except the MBT (and often even to the MBT).. Lucky ATGMs can beat them, but even they generally die to the Hurricane.. Range is no problem for it either, if it has LoS it can kill you.. It is especially nasty against the wheeled vehicles because even if it totally misses the shot, your wheels still blow out and leave you a sitting duck.. It seems the only way to defeat them is with 2 or 3 vehicles attacking the single Hurricane to make the most of the long reload time.. This all of course assumes they are being controlled by someone who is good with it.. Not your average newbie..

There are a number of things about this game that just start to wear on you after playing a lot and the initial novelty of everything wears off and you are actually playing seriously.. Tank Steering Tank steering is just really really really frustrating! Firstly they won't turn hardly at all while moving, very unresponsive, it takes so long for them to turn you feel like you're key presses didn't register for about 20 seconds.. Secondly their reverse steering is non sensical.. If you are reversing and hold down left, it will turn right (as you would expect of a wheeled vehicles steering) but if you are not pressing reverse, yet still going backwards and press left, it will turn left! Now either way is fine to steer with, but it should not change between two different methods depending on if you are accelerating or not, it's simply frustrating! Turret Speed Turret traverse speeds on the faster vehicles like the Paladin and Tempest seem a little too slow, it's very frustrating to press fire and have nothing happen.. I can only assume this is from the turret not yet traversing to face the cross-hair since it never happens when the vehicle is stationary.. At the very least the cross-hair should display orange (like when you aim above or below the turrets vertical traverse) so at least you know you can't fire yet, instead of pressing fire and having nothing happen.. Wheels The wheels simply damage too easily from splash damage, if anything fires anywhere near your wheeled vehicle is almost ALWAYS loses at least one wheel! A direct hit fine, but from a mortar that landed 500m away? It's not fun.. Wheeled Vehicle Control It simply doesn't feel right.. I can't explain exactly what's wrong with it, but the traction feels wrong in a lot of cases and the breaking seems very random, sometimes you will just stop, sometimes slide, sometimes flip over.. All on the same terrain type.. Remember how good the Warthogs in Halo felt to drive? I'm not suggesting they should be like the Warthog, but the controls should "feel right".. Damage/Hit Feed Back Often you just wonder what went wrong.. Why was my AP shot to the lower front of the enemy tank ineffective yet their return shot at the same angle blew me to bits? Why did my entire 100 rounds of 20mm AP to the rear of his vehicle apparently have no effect at point blank range? I'm not suggesting the game should tell you details of each shot, but you SHOULD be able to tell the difference between a shot that was harmlessly deflected compared with one that ripped a hole in the armour.. At least over shorter distances.. It's simply frustrating to shoot round after round into supposed weak spots on a vehicle and not even know if you are penetrating.. Are 75mm AP rounds at close range not able to effectively penetrate even rear armour? Maybe they just weren't hitting or damaging components? It would just FEEL much better if you could SEE some sort of difference in graphical effect on the hit.. I also think statistics on average penetration of the different ordinance and the thickness of the various vehicles armour parts would help remove this whole feeling of wondering "well what went wrong? why did they kill me and not me kill them?".. People want to know why they lost, then they don't get frustrated because they can work out what they need to try to do better rather than simply not know and get fed up with it.. Final Words I realise that you are unlikely to give these thoughts much weight in your minds, as someone who has done some game development in the past I realise that generally we are a pretty arrogant bunch and often just dismiss other peoples ideas because we didn't think of them ourselves.. But remember you're playing it from a perspective where you understand the inner workings, you're not fighting blind.. We are, and no matter how detailed and awesome the inner workings might be, all we see is what is rendered on our screens.. Often it just appears to be a roll of the dice, since we have nothing to tell us otherwise..

When picking up hover vehicles the ship goes crazy and spins around all over the place unless you hold down break.. Other vehicles are fine, this happened when picking up a Hurricane and I wasn't able to try picking up the Tempest.. Are there plans to change the drop ship controls at all? I mean sure it should be hard to fly, but it's near impossible to do anything meaningful with currently..

Deployable AA turrets do NOT shoot ATGMs or Mortar shells, they will not target them.. ATGMs and Mortars are the main things that kill them! You must be thinking of the Ion Beam emplacements that can be captured..

You can already do that.. Just fire the missile without a lock and it is guided by where you point the cross-hair.. You can even launch multiple missiles before the first impacts in this way, but I don't think it was really intended for that to be possible..

I'v never had this happen.. Are you sure you didn't just press the wrong button?

Remember you also only get 6 Hurricanes, they ARE powerful and thats why you don't get many of them.. But they certainly aren't unstoppable.. They can get up quite a speed but they are slow to change directions and can't really go up hills. The plasma mortar is not all that effective for indirect fire unless the terrain is very flat (like the ice map) and travels quite slowly, so at longer ranges you should be able to dodge it quite easily.. At close range it's damn scary, but the reload time between shots is long, so if it doesn't manage to kill you, there is plenty of time to land multiple AP rounds into it! I'v survived a direct hit from the Hurricane (though it set my turret on fire) in the Thor, so it's not always an instant kill and was then able to rain AP rounds into it (before the ammo exploded and killed my gunner). And I'm happy in thinking thats one less Hurricane for them!

I was thinking along the lines of those cards too.. I think the corsshair colour thing might be trivializing it a bit too much.. But I would like to be able to think to myself "Ok, my 120mm AP round is effective against 100mm armour at about 1700 metres with 1.0 density, that Light Tank Im aiming at 2300 metres away only has 80mm armour on the side and the density is only 0.7 so I should be able to penetrate.." Rather than currently just going "Well I blew something up at that range before so I guess it might work"..

I think the current ATGM is far too agile, I'v had one come at me front on, turn 90º then do a full 180º to slam into the side of the tank all in the space of a metre or two.. It also packs quite a punch..

Ok well a few things I have noticed, I will group them under some headings.. But I would firstly like to say that over all the game seems really fun but quite realistic too! I think the hover vehicles are pretty good how they are now, I mean you CAN control them, it just isn't as linear as controlling something with wheels.. The drop ships though, I'm not entirely sure they can be controlled at all Movement Acceleration: Not so keen on the acceleration system, perhaps a better approach would be a throttle.. I mean it's ok but I would sort of like more fine grained control of my speed, rather than just tapping forward and having my vehicle sort of jerk forwards since I can't maintain any speed really except full.. Though I think the hover craft probably work better with the current system. Turning: As others have been saying, tracked vehicles seem very unresponsive to turning while they are moving, you really have to stop accelerating to turn at all.. Wheeled vehicles don't have this problem though. Terrain: Most terrain is pretty good, but some steep mountains seem to effect vehicles in bizarre ways, for example the Dozer will stand up at a right angle going up a steep hill. Structures seem a bit buggy, I have got sort of "stuck" lots of times where the ramp joins the top of the wall around the little bases on both maps, I can't seem turn properly on that bit.. Dropships also have a lot of trouble around structures, lots of times not being able to recall a vehicle near one or flipping over from hitting into it.. It's also possible to be flipped over when the dropship places you, which is pretty annoying.. Also on the ice map I'v had my vehicle get stuck in holes in the ground, unable to get out and the dropship can't pick it up either though I guess that's sort of realistic, just a bit frustrating. I feel that the tanks also lose too much traction on the ice, being almost uncontrollable, which is fine for wheeled vehicles but the tracked ones should be more in control. I would also like to suggest that the brakes be slightly more effective and possibly cause wheeled vehicles to slide at high speeds, based on the terrain of course. Gunnery Aiming: Holding down a key to use the aiming thing isn't too bad, but perhaps should be an option to make it a toggle instead of a key down/up action.. I don't like the zooming for 2 reasons, there is no zoom out (so you have to cycle through them all) and at high zooms the sensitivity is the same as when not zoomed, so the slightest mouse movement sends rotates the turret by large increments. So it's not really possible to make fine aiming adjustments with the higher zoom levels. I would like to be able to have zoom in/out on the mouse wheel or something like that.. Other than that the aiming system seems fairly good. Hits: I would like to be able to tell what the effect of my hits are better. Currently I have no idea if they are effective or not until the thing blows up.. Though sometimes you can see them bounce off, most of the time you have no idea, so a different hit effect for penetrations would be nice instead of them looking the same.. I would also like to know when the ion beam is hitting me or not and perhaps a rough gauge of how much armour is being burnt away.. I was certain the beam wasn't hitting me at all since it looked like it was hitting a wall, but then I blew up from it, so often it seems hard to tell where it hits.. A rough gauge showing estimated armour ablation percentage for different areas would be kinda nice for that.. Missiles & Indirect Fire: Firstly missiles seem kinda over powered, since they easily penetrate even the turret on the Thor and are quite hard to evade, the one vehicle that can shoot them down seems to have a bit of trouble with it too, unless its a very long range attack. They also change directions perhaps too quickly. Using indirect fire seems almost too easy, stationary objects like turrets etc stand no chance, but perhaps thats the idea? Effective ranges & Atmosphere: It would be nice to know what the effective range of AP slugs are at 1.0 density and by how much density change effects that range.. Perhaps the targeting computer could display an estimate of maximum effective range calibrated to the current density? Or is this something we are supposed to have to learn through experience? Anyway it seems like a very promising game!!!