ZaPPPa

What needs to be fixed is that the game needs to be moddable. Simple as that.

If 1C would have done what every other developer out there is doing and put the concealment (opaqueness) values in XML files, we wouldn't have had this outburst on negativity on this forum. The most moddable games are by far the most succesfull games.. How 1C could have missed this is beyond me. Edit: SirReal, I changed it to 1C, happy now? PS. Point still stands by the way. With Battlefront being the distributor and having a vested interest in the success of the game, they could have stepped in and negotiated moddability in the game. [ May 10, 2007, 11:16 AM: Message edited by: ZaPPPa ]

Yeah, but in real life each tank is occupied with a human with human intelligence. In the game the tanks are occupied with AI with less brainpower than an ant. Therefore you have to abstract certain things. Let's do a little math shall we? Let's say I have to manage 4 tanks and 24 infantry. According to your logic I am not allowed to pause the game. Which gives me 1/28th the time to react that every unit would ordinarely have because I have to divide my attention over 28 units.. I have to to switch the camera 28 times and be able to process 28 individual LoS processes instanteneously.... yeah, that's very realistic.

Ability to hover over an enemy unit and see the Cover percentage and Chance to hit would help a lot. For the devs I suggest taking a look at how Jagged Alliance 2 (Gold) gave feedback to the player about cover and line of sight and implementing something similar.

Every unit should have a 'size' and 'vision' attribute. Then take the LoS calculator and change it so units with low 'vision' have a harder time to spot units with a low 'size' and vice-versa.. Tanks have low 'vision' but high 'size' and infantry high 'vision' and low 'size'.. Voila, proplem solved. Allegedly bushes already have an effect on LoS. Take the 'LoS degrade' attribute per object and multiply it by at least 2. Every object should also have an 'density' attribute. Take the LoF calculator and if a shell hits an object, the 'density' value has a random chance to either stop the shell, prematurely detonate it or change the path of the shell. This random chance is calculated before a unit decides to shoot and thresholds are put in place to prevent a unit from shooting if his chance to hit due to blocking is too low.

A degraded LoS would be fine, if the LoF would be degraded as well. A tree will stop a shell (once) and not many real-life tanks would want to waste precious ammo firing through a forest like that.

Tactics? What tactics? With an non-functional LoS system, there are no tactics. Every map is a simple wide-open field. Shoot enemy Tanks from max distance, Shoot enemy AT guns from max distance, retreat your infantry out of enemy gun range and mow down or run over enemy infantry with whatever armor you have left. That may be a tactic, but it sure does not resemble a real-life one.

P4 3.1Ghz 1 GB Ati x1800 (1280x1024) XP Computer is almost 3 yrs old and the game runs smooth on max settings.

LoS needs to be overhauled. Infantry don't stand a chance against a tank, because the tank has the same visibility as an infantry man though a tank commander is looking through a tiny slit. This takes away the tanks natural weakness, which unbalances the game tremendously. Waypoints.. How this didn't make it into a large-scale tactical game is beyond me... I mean, wow... Rookie mistake I guess. Experience for soldiers needs to be rebalanced. Currently Infantry will never progress as fast as tanks and AT guns. Map variety.. open, flat and boring.. I believe that assaulting over an open field is not a preferred tactic in real life, so why is this whole game doing nothing else? If the engine cannot handle many objects, maybe you should have gone for a different engine then.. Other games can do it, so wy not this one? Lots of potential, but plagues by rookie mistakes unfortunately.. Keeping fingers crossed for ToW 2.

Used Download Accelerator. 360KB speed. Had to endure a four hour blackout during which the internet connection dropped unexpectedly at least five times. Still the download succeeded and the game installed perfectly.

CoH abstracts it as well. Units enter building and then are placed statically at the windows. There's really not a whole lot of animations involved and there's no need for furniture.

If all this is true, then the game is still worth considering. However, like Webwing said, the lack of an official answer is not a good sign. I wouldn't mind some level of abstraction when it comes to concealment. If the engine cannot handle a huge amount of trees and foilage, the developers should have abstracted it instead of taking the easy way out and creating open maps. Theatre of War is geared towards the simulation aspect of warfare, not the CoH arcadish style (which is fun in its own right by the way). If anyone can handle a little abstraction, its hard-core simmers. Close combat is all about position and cover & concealment pretty much determines which side will have the upper hand. Take this out of the equation and limiting it because of PC specs and you change the game completely..

I'm still wondering if cover and concealment is actually going to mean something. I have looked on the boards and haven't been able to find an answer. If hiding behind a bush is not going to have any effect on the LoS and hiding behind a wall is not going to help against rifle fire, all tactics are out the window and the game becomes meaningless. In Close Combat cover is everything and many hours are spent making the perfect battle plan, using the terrain as much as possible. Without C&C a battle plan would involve not much more than a frontal assault with maybe a flanking manouvre and everything else would be a simple rock-paper-scissors deal.

Not necessarely. The graphics engine may have been updated in the mean time or even completely replaced by a newer version. This could be one of the reasons for a long development time.