Dark_au

Glad you like it Konstantine I've actually been thinking of an interesting idea for an objective mission based on this map.

I guess you are right on the MRLS I can see it becoming as easily abusable as other things are. I much prefer and Ontos style concept myself. 6x 76mm or 4 x 76mm with say 20 rounds of HE per gun. It would be a great supression weapon for AAD.

I guess I prefer to leave the acuracy the same but up the threat level. Artillery's main role should be to supress and terrify the enemy with the risk of exposure.

I was thinking mainly of the BM-21 2 of those pouring 40 rockets apiece at a defencive position would be more than any AAD could handle you'd hope. With realistic reload times it wouldnt be too overpowered. Have 2 launch modes, ripple and salvo. I like the Ontos idea too though. 6x 76mm HE in either ripple or Salvo mode. Not hugely deadly but enough to make people wince and to keep the AAD busy.

Oh and also maybe some ways of basing score on attrition. Plus some way of scoring based on a per unit basis. Ie a tag line which has <pointsPerUnit> for a zone.

Dev team, Is there a chance you could do something about artillery (mortar carriers mainly not the hurricane). Pre the latest patch these were a lot more deadly. I believe you corrected an error with the damage going through the ground. With the escalated use of AAD very few rounds get through and the ones that do are not enough of a threat. some options may be. 1. Lessen AAD effectiveness or make it more susceptible to target overload 2. Increase the HE yeald 3. Allow for round fusing options such as impact or proximity ( to get air burst rounds) 4. (my fave) allow a higher chance of units bieng flipped by close rounds (ground shock) 5. Limited number of "Smart rounds" 6. Limited number of Anti-personel rounds ( firecrackers if you are Slammers fans) 7. Some form of self propelled Howitzer maybe something on the thor chassis with the Ontos idea. Only equiped with 120mm or 76mm ( or 155mm ) HE rounds for semi indirect fire. 8. Sci-Fi Version of a Katyusha 9. Allow grouping of bot driven Mobile artillery into human controlled salvo's

The only dedicated objective server has vanished... Whats happened to it?. Is there any chance of getting that to be objective / territory

Gday Dev team, What are the chances of extra options in the <Gametype> section. What I am thinking of is say a true or false line which stipulates if Infantry can capture the objective ( I find the concept of infantry scoring points for holding an area a bit tenuous ). Also maybe an exclusive type of hold where by the attacking team can only score points for holding the objective if the defender has no units left in the zone. What about a numeric section too which stipulates how many units are the minimum to hold / defend a zone.

Basic attack strategy for any map can fall into several categories but the easiest 2 are:- Massed firepower. This is the role I think the hermes was intended for. Like a sci-fi analogy to the WW2 formation lead bombers. Form a phalanx of armour around a hermes and a command track and roll at your enemy. Pros:- gets maximum firepower into a minimum arc. especially as artillery is less than usefull now (tactical). Replacements can be dropped back into the formation whilst on the move. Cons:- Hard to organise and maintain coherence especially with bots. If the enemy decides to defend over an arc then its easy for them to concentrate a cone of fire into the formation and negated the attackers need for the concentrated punch. Chaos and Harrassment. Engulf the enemy from all sides. Keep him facing in different directions and hit him from the flanks. This is what we commonly see. It can be very wastefull for the attacker though if the defender can get enough overlapping fields of fire. Pro's:- unpredictable to the defender. gives them a large field of fire to cover. Cons:- Chaos goes both ways, if everyone isn't keeping up on each others positions then you get friendly fire incidents. From a defencive stance your base tactic is to pick the route you want your enemy to take and try and channelise him into that route. This can be by denying all of the map except one area to land on. Once you have him landing there you need to use mines to narrow the channel into an open killing ground preferably at that point you can hit him with the turrets and hull down units getting a crossfire. Trouble is with this that the attrition on your finite supply of turrets will eventually open up other drop zones. Especially with human controlled infantry opening gaps. Unfortunately unit attrition doesn't really factor in too heavily as in a 30 minute game there is always enough units for the attacker to keep up pressure. I think that given a longer mission time the advantage of attrition will swing in the defenders favour as the attacker runs out of everything.

the important bit on that map is the second hill not the objective one. If you just defend the target hill then the engagements happen in 2 bands. Long range sniping at incoming enemy and then plugging holes at close range as the enemy appear at the top. The second hill offers a falnk view of the best avenues of approach and the ability to take shots at the enemy vehicles heading up the hill while they are moving slowly. This means that the only area of the objective hill that needs mines and point defence is the blind arc from the second hill ( NE - SE on the objective hill)

Squidlord if you are on PC then Quickfrac alread is some ways to bieng an external map and scenario editor. There is a PDF available in the modding forum on how to make a scenario

By using cohesive tactics. That was why I suggested the FO mode for Infantry. Infantry scout out enemy artillery, Friendly artillery engages it. forcing it to withdraw or or be anihilated. This is the whole point of using tactical recon. The idea isn't to remain hidden but to choose where you get seen and why. Feint and counter feint. Get inside the enemies descision cycle and once they have lost the initiative you keep pushing until they collapse. This is the basis of all warfare.

Adzling... I wasn't in a hurricane... didn't use one in that whole game. If you remember I had a go because your mate was crowing about getting revenge on me cos he killed my Thor. I'd stopped even trying to shoot at hit cos its pointless. Hurricane is artillery, its assualt Artillery ( think Sturmgeschutz) Yurch you are wrong about the intel on the modern battlefield. What about systems like JSTAR. What about internal tank systems like IVIS, CVIS. Clay I'd retest that Hermes, I had one bat at least one HEAT away yesterday at about 6-7000m while I was shooting at Dirtana from the top of the hill in Haven. I notice that no one comments on the fact that this invisible vehicle is able to detect the round anyway. If its invisible then it can't be broadcasting a signal capable of detecting these rounds ( or you'd just put a simple sensor on and all its EW is gone) Maybe thats the easy sollution have the Hermes so that it has 2 modes, EW mode and AAD mode and make the 2 exclusive.

but at long range its pretty imune to KE and it swats HEAT and HE out of the air. Any round which passes above its sensors is toasted. As someone who loves artillery its not fun and balanced. I model 1/35th and my favourite are artillery pieces (especially mortars). I disagree about artillery bieng just point and click. You've been in games with me using the Hurricane... I'm I just pointing and clicking?. Sure taking out turrets with a Thor mortar isn't much of a challenge. Hitting a moving item with that is extremely hard and takes an understanding of the lead required.

OK lets see if I can explain my dislike of the Hermes better. If you take away the Sci - fi element of the game then what we really have is a sim of Armoured warefare in the 1950 - 1970 period. This can be stipulated by what they have lost. They have the ability to make anti-matter drives but they have lost the ability to do Dynamic-lead ( first appeared in the early 1970's). Yet they have effectively got laser range finders ( late 60's early 1970's). ATGM's that are simillar but more powerful to a TOW (1967 onwards). In that time period as today artillery IS the king of the battlefield. In fact the whole battle field is structured around artillery. The whole purpose of most military actions is to maintain your artillery cover whilst supressing the enemies ability to use artillery. This has been true ever since the greeks and romans first used artillery in disciplined and organised armies. A mobile unit even in small numbers that can so easily negate this is fundamentally wrong. The natural enemy to artillery is Artillery. And lets talk specifics here. What is the mechanism by which these vehicles can so easily defeat an incoming round, for one thing how are they detecting it. If they are using any sort of broadcast signal( radar, ladar, madar ) then any EW cloaking they have should be negated too. Plus the very fact of actually pin-pointing the rounds motion and plotting an intercept lead angle is a staggering feat Especially while the host vehicle is moving and jinking. We can't easily do this today yet we can do things that all of these vehicles don't do. And if they can do it in the sci-fi setting then where are all of the techological improvements on what we are capable of doing. Where is the Sci-fi version of the archer which can stop, set up its postition, fire off 12 rounds ( using a autoloading 155mm L52 artillery piece) and be back in motion within 90 seconds. This includes the ability to do 6 round simultaneous impact. Coupled with this it fires self configuring shells which can decide in flight what sort of round they will be on impact ( HE, HEAT, Anti-personel etc)

Clay has kindly uploaded the latest version of this. V0.46b this has some bug fixes and also has an easier way to assign a rule to all of the road points. To do so select one of the road points. Assign a rule to it and then double click on it in the list and all the points will get that rule.

I've made a new scenario which you can get here:- Where Eagles Dare This is an objective scenario with a difference. Its a meeting engagement where neither side begins owning the "Zone". The Hill top complex is defended by 2 AAD towers 1 of each side as there was no active 3rd side tower available. This is sort of what may have happened if the US and USSR had arrived at Hitlers Hilltop Retreat at the same time. The 2 AAD towers are to ensure that neither side can drop straight on the objective. There are 2 roads which wind their way up to the complex and offer excellent places for infantry to ambush light vehicles. The inventory on this is the same as Rumble in the Jungle ie all light units and infantry. Oh it also requires the skybox textures which are in my A Tough Nut scenario.

I was more refering to ATGM's in bot hands where they are far too accurate

Its not the EW side which negates the tactical manaeouvering but the AAD. There is an addage amonst Tank commanders that goes along the lines " Any TC who relies on his armour to keep him safe is an idiot". What the hermes does is exactly this with the way it is miss used. Someone can sit out in the open without any tactical understanding and rely on the EW to save them from Bots and the AAD to negate all but KE rounds at long range.

addendum:- an easy way to even out the atgm's could be to put similar restrictions on them as apply to current real atgm systems. Take a TOW carrier for example. the TOW can only be fired in maximum optical zoom. You can't move while its in flight. It has a very limited lateral travers ability. It can only be fired at targets between +20 and -5 degrees in the vertical plane. It can't fire over large bodies of water. It can't opperate if the smoke gets too heavy. The launcher must be level before it can be fired. The missile itself has very limited capability in terms of speed / distance of target due to poor tracking speed. The other thing that could improve things is to make trees stop rounds. especially HE, HEAT, Mortar type rounds.

Personally I am not enjoying this game as much since 1.1.0 here are some major gripes. Hurricane(my fave vehicle) is now completely porked. Its ammo is now gutless and it has become sluggish and unresponsive. Part of this could be the lag bought in by the infantry. Pre 1.1.0 I could pretty much guarantee a 1 shot disable (not nessecarily a kill) on a thor or an apollo. Now I can put 3 shots into a thor and still be shot by it. this isn't a lag aim issue either as I can still nail a palading or a shrike. This vehicle was never an easy one but could be very effective if kept up to speed and manaeouvering. Infantry.. well all they seem to have bought in is lag. I thought I liked them but they are S**ting me to tears now. Hermes. This is a stupid vehyicle which counters the need for tactical manaeouver. Its far too powerfull with a 20mm its EW and AAD. I think this should be split into 2 vehicles an EW vehicle and an AAD vehicle. The AAD side of it is too strong and overused. at long range it can bat away all but KE rounds and at that range KE isn't much use. ATGM's and the Shrike. The ATGM's are too strong especially as they don't really require aiming or lead. There should be some sort of counter to them too. Whatever they use for guidance should be able to be jammed or defeated in some way. I just played in a game where I got nailed in an apollo twice by a shrike. It can kill a tank 1st shot yet I put 3 well aimed HEAT rounds into it at long range(big showers of sparks) yet it was not effected by them it seemed and still nailed me. If it can kill me with one shot then so should a 120mmheat kill them 1 shot. It takes a lot more skill to hit a fast moving small vehicle with a HEAT round than it does for the shrike to hit a slow moving tank. In fact stupidly the Paladin chassis vehicles are a lot easier to kill than a shrike.

and what happens as soon as the 20mm antimatter round hits its first molecule of air or whatever fluid you are in?

Is it possible to make an active AAD tower which is not owned by either side (so it is deadly to both sides)?.

Right but there are things like ARENA which are fitted to current tanks for AAD against ATGM

Thanks for the info Clay. My vote would be for making them show up as Poesel Says when they are in LOS and at a certain height. I then also think they should be susceptible to AAD. One idea I had to make the infantry a lot more useful would be to give them an FO mode (forward Observer). Whereby they can mark a target, with a laser range finder or some such and have that info show up on the map as a red diamond (rather than a red dot). Maybe even give them 0.1 of a point for each target they ID like this.