salwon

Slightly off topic, but one of my favorite missing-the-point lines in a review came in one for Take Command: Second Manassas where the reviewer complained that there weren't enough unit types. Objective labels (beyond the designer) are a good idea, but there has to be a way to turn them off.

It's certainly a fair "everyman" review, but it really should've been given to someone with more patience for the genre. Of course, then you run the risk of Dorosh reviewing it...

Never going to happen, as Steve has said a million times.

It is. You have to be careful anytime you give a facing order to a unit on the move. If you don't have the waypoint where you want the facing order implemented selected, they'll just be given a "relative" face order. eg: You want a unit to move into a building, and face directly across the street, 12:00. Let's say the building is at 3:00 to them right now. If you give the move order, then just give the face order by clicking on the building, you will see your squad moving with a face command attached to them pointing to 3:00. When they get to their location, they will face 3:00. However, if you click on the waypoint and then give the face command, you should see the blue facing order attached to the waypoint itself, instead of the squad. As a general rule to avoid any problems, always make sure you give face (and deploy, and target, and target arcs, etc) from waypoints. Unless the unit isn't moving, of course

This brings up an important question: when will we see proper Bacta modelling?

Give the face/deploy command from the move waypoint - that is, give the disembark order, then click on that waypoint and change facing/deploy. That should work.

I find that it's harder to take down a wall in one shot, but two or three hits spread out to adjacent sections will usually bring down a pretty big chunk. The "wall" action spot is (almost?) always about 1m or so in front, but targeting it should work fine anyway. Example: -----------X----------- Let's say X was the spot you wanted down. In 1.08, you could target its AS and be reasonably sure that it would come down in one blow. Not so much in 1.10. So I recommend this: WWWWWWWWWWWXWWWWWWWWWWW 312 That is, hit the spot you want first, then immediately left and right, and you'll usually get something like this: WWWWWWWWW*****WWWWWWWWW And basically you've taken down more of the wall in three shots than you previously would've. Summary: Spread the fire out, and the results will be better. Disclaimer: I base these results on a few playthroughs of TFT scen. 02, and not on any rigorous testing.

I was wondering about that - it seems like you'd have to have fewer pure riflemen on hand and more guys lugging ammo...

That wouldn't be good for the whole "sneaking out" thing. "Crap, they have the door covered! Okay, we need to very quietly go out the windows..." "Sarge, there's bars over all the windows!" "Johnson, grab the shotgun!"

Does your infantry have anything heavy with them, or is anyone wounded? That slows them down....

From a non-pro, let me see if I have this right: he's arguing for 1) an organic MG squad at the platoon level, similar to what the Army has, 2) an SMAW in each squad, 3) one rifleman in each squad goes to platoon HQ 4) 60mm mortars at the platoon level, to be used as handheld direct fire I could get on board. Battlefront, set it up and release the module. Let's test this bad boy!

I agree on this one (as well as hidden trenches/god-like knowledge of walls): moving UNDER covering fire should be different from moving INTO covering fire I get around this by not doing it when playing Blue, but H2H you might have to have a gentleman's agreement to play by RL rules and not game rules. Foxholes will have to be in WW2, there's probably just a lot of under-the-hood issues that need to be ironed out. But hey, once they're in WW2 they'll be in SF2! Visible trenches/walls seems to come from the fact that these are both "Terrain" according to the game, and both sides have knowledge of the terrain going in. It's not like CMx1 where trenches were a unit that needed to be spotted. If that's the problem here it might be difficult to fix. Can both sides see when a building is destroyed out of LOS?

The AI only does what it's scripted to do - it won't maneuver for an attack on its own (even if "all" it has to do is move into the town. AI is hard). You can look at the QB map in the editor, it may be an older one that just hasn't had a plan implemented again. Put in your own, and voila!

What's the first rule of street fighting? Creating an entry point where there was originally none is a time-honored tradition in urban combat. It seems to me that the only problem here is that blue (or red, I imagine) has instant knowledge of the wall coming down, which is clearly not WAD. The rest - just saying "deal" seems harsh, but, well, deal. Edit, to expand and not sound like such a jerk: Moving through windows is one of those things that seems like it should be there, but would lead to such a drastic increase in the complexity of the sim that it's not really feasible. If you can go through windows, why not go up a ladder to the roof, or why not rappel down from the roof? These are things the ASL guys were fighting over, but the law of diminishing returns comes in very quickly with this level of fidelity. An Uncon unit has a supreme stealth advantage - blue won't know you're there until YOU decide to make your presence known. Set up your cover arcs etc for maximum instant effect, which can be drastic, and understand that "Force Preservation" will not be a high priority for your higher command.

Eh, on further reflection...there's definitely a fine line between the good-more and the too-much-to-be-useful-more. It would be really easy to clutter up the UI with diminishing returns on gameplay, so I can understand why the icons are as they are. I think a simple shading of the icon might work best - completely filled is good, empty is bad. Then allow the user to cycle through a few options, let's say Strength, Supply, Morale, and Suppression. This way you could tell at a glance how your pixeltruppen are doing without having to squint to read the tiny bar next to the unit symbol. Again, it would be very easy to just create more clutter with things 90% of users would never use. The only problem with this is that it would be hard to tell blue from red

This thread made me laugh.

I just realized that the Airborne Assault series (esp. CotA) has a great implementation of this - basically you can cycle through what information is shown on the chits: morale, supply, current orders, etc. Just a small indicator of some sort on the floating icon would really help IMO.

My name is Steve, so I feel equipped to answer I don't see what you mean though - the TOE for both sides are completely different, so even an even fight will bring about tactical nuances. And when you bring Russia into the mix, they organized the rifle companies differently, so that would lead to changes that the scenario designer would have to implement... There's unlikely to be AI changes between the sides, simply because the necessary AI hasn't even been determined for something as simple as chess! But the differences in equipment and organization should necessarily lead to a different feel to each side.

Are you still seeing this with 1.10? I remember large wooded maps used to be unplayable, but it seems like they've mostly fixed that.

Just look at Ireland for an example of what works and doesn't work when fighting terrorists: Didn't work: civilian murder <-> retaliation murder Did work: infrastructure development and job creation. Once bored young men have jobs, they don't really have a reason to kill anyone anymore. And it didn't take very long to turn it around, either.

That sounds perfectly reasonable, I just don't like how in the game area fire is aimed at the whole floor. With no chance of friendly casualties from small arms, your RL scenario becomes firing into a building with your men inside and no consequences! I definitely use area fire in trouble spots, just not ones I'm about to move into. Like I said, if you have your overwatch set up well they should take care of anyone who pops up. It's Australian, maybe we can hope for the NATO module? I just wanted a picture of a 155 round and that one looked suitably intimidating. Basically, if you're playing blue, you have access to some of the best toys in the world, and the best men at the helm, and only one of those assets can be replaced. The choice between dropping a building and a dead squad is no choice at all. If you can't guarantee immediate and OVERWHELMING fire superiority on the building you're trying to take, just pound it with arty until it falls (or at least until anyone inside wishes they were dead). Javelin rounds work well for this purpose too.

A pet peeve of mine: how did your men know that was an HQ, and not just an infantry squad? I like the idea of giving more info on lost contacts, but personally I think all contacts should be listed as rifle squads until proven otherwise (in LOS for an HQ ID, firing an MG/AT, etc).

Did anyone else just drool a little bit?

Now, for practical advice I almost never use area fire on a floor, it feels way too gamey to me. Keep at least a squad + MG in overwatch and let them take care of targets on the fly, it'll be much more accurate than an area fire command (exception: HE shells on a target on the roof). Hunt is good if you don't know where the enemy is (night MOUT), but in general it can cause erratic behavior (squads split between floors where contact was made). Use FAST to get on the ground floor, and then quick or assault (personal preference) to get to the top. Remember, working from the ground floor up is much harder than going top down, or laterally if adjacent buildings have connected floors. Keep plenty of overwatch and go room-by-room and you'll be fine.

Again, Steve has said very clearly that they're not going to do this. Persistent map damage is on the list, though.