mcoyote

(*tee-hee*...he said "shot in the dark" in this thread...)

I miss the bot's mortar-craziness ( I don't hear ride of the valkyries as I charge across Raid anymore with smoke and bits of things flying everywhere...). Still like the game, however . Defensive emplacements and bot wrangling will probably complete the picture. If we can keep the bots on a leash and control the enemy's advance more creatively it ought to be epic.

Running on Windows, AlienWare laptop, 3.2GHz dual-core CPU, 2GB RAM, something ugly by nVidia inside. DT v1.1.4. So picture that you're entering a level in MP play (may happen in standalone, not sure). The progress list grows with items like "Growing Trees..." until "Cacheing Objects" reaches 100% and then "Press RETURN to Continue" (or some such) shows up. If I hit return at that point, there is a slight delay before I actually enter the level. If I get impatient or think that I didn't hit return hard enough I'll hit it again. If I do that, once I enter the level the interface will not respond to keypresses in any way. I can switch to the desktop under these conditions by (e.g.) hitting the Windows key, but nothing will bring back keyboard control of DT until I restart. So, to summarize, if I hit return more than once at that point the interface will not respond to the keyboard any more. No other indication of error, but it's pretty reproducible on my system.

Given the pace of play in the current scenarios, sequential objects will probably be prohibative. However, multiple objectives-scenarios sounds attractive, particuarlly in larger games. In those cases, however, you may wish to thik of a larger mission area and have a minimum number of players to play to ensure that people have to commit to one front or another. OTOH, more platoon-type controls over bot behavior would help that along.

I agree with much of what you say -- it's not supposed to be easy or predictable or especially pleasant to mount an armored assault on anything of importance. I still prefer the destrictuveness of the bot artillery as-is, FWIW, because I have been able to productively evade it many times now and it keeps things tricky. I also don't think their facility with the mortars is other-worldy -- it's *very good*, but indirect fire (and prediction, even with mortar platforms) is possible for any player and we just have a lot of players who don't like to run arty wagons much. On to your questions, however: Defenses I do believe our defensive options are limited. I think doing emplacements or other terrain prep in the deployment phase would be very productive and would motivate a bit more thought prior to engagement and a bit more care on the part of attackers. Terrain mods could be made to be fairly limited -- i.e., trenches, sandbags, obstacles, etc. of only so much height/depth, and perhaps make the production of same take time during the deployment phase itself to force some forethought. The thought of non-explosive obstacles is attractive (e.g., jacks) but they need to be destructable to a point. AT and AA turrets are ok, but the AT turrets could stand to be a bit more durable or deadly (maybe not both) and we should probably limit the facility of AT turrets/bots to knock down aerial units since few humans could. Maybe more diversity with these, I'm not sure -- i.e., an ATGM turret or the like -- as opposed to bugger cannons or more damage resistance. FWIW, the MBT's are too slow in normal gravity/density. Most current MBT's are significantly faster and routinely sport anti-personnel and anti-material weapons beyond the main gun and coax MG. The secondary weapons thing is tricky, I realize. In SB, when you normally assume the cmdr's .50 the automated gunner takes over the cannon and vice-versa, but you don't want this to shut down your infy because suddenly they get popped whenever they get within 50 meters of a tank. To counter that, perhaps, any switchably-automated secondary weapon could have a very short range or whatever is not being crewed at the time by the player simply isn't active. Since these turrets traverse very quickly, however, you might as well stick with the coax in those cases. FWIW, the infy could stand to have an ATGM or (when bot'ed) use their ATG's a bit more aggressively. Dropships I'm liking dropship behavior lately, but more and more I'd like to assume manual control of a dropship during decent and egress, possibly with the option of setting a unit down again and using a dropship as an in-scenario airlift capability. Considering that dropships are a limited resource and are very vulnerable to a set of air defenses already, such capability would still come with a risk and a price and would probably motivate some additional creativity during engagements. Having an airlift capability might offset slow MBT's also. I've had some good success with the drop pods. They could stand to be a bit less visible, IMO, to increase their survivability or descend faster (again, maybe not both). Bot Wranging: Yes. They need to act like player-centered platoon members, basically, to keep them out of trouble. Tell them to line up for road travel to follow the leader, line abreast and hull down, etc. but stay under fairly loose control of a player while shooting autonomously, etc. Again, I come back to SB's (Steel Beast's) pretty suave platoon model. If you've never played SB Pro PE (or especially the original Steel Beast) you really ought to -- DropTeam has other things to recommend (certainly as just a game) it in contrast, but they have the team management functions down very well.

Oh, I dunno. I just did a stretch of "bloody iwo" and that was a hoot. Yeah, I got beat up pretty bad, but the battlefield was epic. There was one place where I was the lone survivor of an HMG squad literally hiding behind the burning hulk of a galaxy and my drop pod, squad corpses all around, with a paladin circling around in the smoke looking for me. In all directions were smoking hulks of vehicles, downed trees, and craters. As I said, epic -- actually got a bit of that creepy feeling that I was somewhere I didn't belong, which I consider to be good sign. I did get the pally with my ATG, but got shot a bit later . When the attacking forces can deploy the anti-air/PD units and keep them alive the heavy armor has a chance to knock out the mortars. I believe with a bit more balance and practice this battlefield should be pretty fun.

- Bot usage of mortars is now downright anti-social. Well done -- they are pretty potent and further motivate towards combined arms for point defense. As in, I just did two Raid maps and the bot mortar popped my Apollos a few times on approach, even when I jinked a few times here and there. - Having fun with the dropship manual release -- you see a spot as you're passing over that you like and want to drop on and down you go. Next logical question, of course, is "manual control" for dropships -- hit a key on descent and get Viper-like control of the DS. Granted, the Viper controls are ugly, but it would be cool to be able to change mid-course, just hover in reserve, or extract and drop elsewhere.

Now I would disagree with your second point (nobody would wait that long to come back). The massive popularity of the CounterStrike FPS variant (which I played for literally years), revisited in numerous, subsequent FPS games, was in part due to its new twist -- if you die in a squad action, you're done until the next round. That was immensly frustrating and compelling at the same time. The next time through you really didn't want to die as much so you could see the scenario through. In truth, DT is actually more like an old-school FPS (i.e., DeathMatch). Scenarios benefit from being shorter in those settings and done several times in succession in a "round", but they get your attention, as a result. You die, then you study what happens while your mates battle it out, and you want to try again. In truth, that's the best verison of an AAR -- the time you sit out waiting for the scenario to start over because you bought it last time around. If you want to see a modern version of this for free, download the current version of America's Army. It's still an FPS, which is fundamentally limited and adrenalin-driven, but its vastly more interesting because dying actually matters. EDIT: The more I think of it, the more I believe that two modes of play would be desireable, potentially in the same scenarios (thought I can't say if that would work always). I.e., continuous and limited/no-respawn. If this would fly on the same scenarios, just make the no-respawn mode be 1/4 (or something) the time of the continuous mode. I guarantee that this would motivate many players to husband their resources and work on their accuracy. Yeah, the bad news is that this makes one think that we are looking at an FPS, and the similarity is undeniable simply because modern FPS games (i.e., AA) truthfully lean on team tactics, cover, and the like that we value in armored combat. [ August 23, 2006, 02:48 PM: Message edited by: mcoyote ]

The drop pods could do with some more speed and/or appear a bit smaller. As it is their arrival is pretty obvious and invites rapid arty response and such. They do improve infantry and deployable mobility quite a bit, however, and I think they are a great step. I've also been dropped on inclines and had dropships flip and such. I'm sure writing terrain avoidance routines for these things is a handfull, however. I'd vote that a dropship just look for the nearest flat, relatively clear surface of a given area to wherever you clicked and/or never land in the first place -- just tether the vehicle down. The downside of these is that they don't let the player hang themselves, which they should rightly be able to do, but it also spares the dropship from having to manuever so carefully beforehand.

Eh...I dunno. A half-way approach that would, unfortunately, appear a bit weird would be keeping around a certain number of corpses -- say 10 or 15 -- and treat it like a FIFO. That would appear weird because they'd still be disappearing at pretty much arbitrary times, so previously obstructed sightlines would suddenly become clear, etc., but that's how it is now. Nonetheless, that would make for a bit more noisy battlefield.

If you use q/z to zoom in/out you will be able to see more, FWIW.

That seems unlikely -- I haven't done sepcific testing but it certainly appears that damage of this sort is cumulative. I have pumped a few 76mm rounds into the same general area on a Thor and eventually had them penetrate. It's concievable, however, that I got lucky and hit some vulnerable spot without knowing it.

The way I play, probably not much interest. I think most groups, even established teams, would prefer to spend more time in the saddle than rewinding. It's not that AAW's aren't valuable, it's just that when you get pwned in a game such as this 90% of the time you know why when it's over anyway and you'd rather hop back in and try again.

Actually, given that AFV's will shortly be able to transport infantry this isn't really an issue to me. That will make them effectively faster and more survivable. I am still very curious about weather, night/day, and NV/IR visualzation. I think those would add some value for the reasons I stipulate above -- we have such nice large maps, it'd be crime to leave those pretty sight lines unobstructed .

As an aside, in one encounter I had last night somebody dropped a heavy mortar carrier very close to me (I wasn't looking at the time, my bad) and he started dropping mortars on my Thor right away, before I realized he was there. Three times (it took a while, I was AFK helping with my daughter's teething) the mortars went off over my head and dug (and later, deepened) a hole under/around my Thor, but my status lights remained green and the Thor remained functional until I crawled out and got popped by somebody else's AP. That right there was funny. Given that the Thor is pretty tough, it may be realistic to displace all that dirt while holding the armor together, but it was still fun to watch.