A Canadian Cat

If you have LOS to the area behind, at and in front of the fence likely yes. If the easy stuff is sorted people are going to need saves so get an idea of this is normal or not. Just to point out something important this game actually models crews having to notice an enemy and not just "if they can see the ground they automatically see all enemy on that ground". That means that sometimes your guys are not going to notice the enemy right away. Sometimes the enemy sees you first even though you think it should be the other way around. That kind of variable spotting and the angst it causes are normal and a game feature. What would not be normal is if you have clear LOS and your guys never see the enemy driving in the open when the test is repeated.

LOL yeah that would be helpful wouldn't it. Here it is:

We are going to need a little more information before any meaningful things can be said. What time of day is this? How many trees are involved? Is there any smoke on the battlefield? Some quick things to check. Make sure smoke is turned on <alt> k. Make sure you have trees turned on <alt> t. If it is dark out then the artificial brightness, <alt> b, makes things appear like you should see them when you might not.

Night tends to generate a lot of ? s because of the poor spotting. That's my two cents worth.

I have not noticed an increase. The phenomenon of ? Showing up next to your guys has been there the whole time. Here is what is happening: when none of your units are selected the view of the enemy is the total package and includes all spotted enemy units plus all suspected enemy units. That is when you can see ? near your own units. Basically someone thinks there is an enemy at a location even though other units of yours know they are not there. Now select one of your units near a ? and you will likely see that ? disapear. With your unit selected you see the view that that unit sees and it knows there is no enemy near by. Not it is still possible for a tank to have poor visibility and possibly still register a ? close by but for the most part what I wrote will hold. It has always been thus.

But don't let that stop you. Sounds like a cool project.

Good to hear you fixed it. Another possible way to get something like this is to accidentally install the upgrade to a different folder. I am not sure what error message that might generate but an error message about missing a .BRZ is a possibility.

Good question. It is not clear to me that mine fields actually track individual mines as much as entering one gives a chance of triggering one. We do know that the number of mines are tracked but I don't know that the exact locations are. If the exact locations are then your concern would be valid - better spacing means more mine casualties. But if mines are abstracted then it will make no difference. I am not sure how to test this. Perhaps saved games with repeated minefield crossings would do it. Then you could look at the crater location and see if they were always in the same location.

OK got it more observation needed. We would also need some comparisons with the engine v3 game too. I like the idea of trying out the withdraw command to see where they might go.

Very interesting read. I actually didn't notice significant changes to behavior. Apparently I was not watching close enough. I was attributing the changes I saw to the more staggered and spread out stance of teams. Less total wipe out of teams so more guys still left to retreat. One question though how sure are we that teams favour front doors over other doors? I have a few questions in this regard. Is there a statical difference that shows they favour the front door? In all cases or only certain geometric configurations? And is it significantly different from the v3 engine?

Yes, that has been asked for before. Would you want to vary the time during a game or choose it once at the beginning? In the past there have been a few people who like the idea but not really a large number and a few don't like it much. Myself included. I feel that varying that aspect of the game would cause some confusion and make long PBEM games go even longer. Plus I actually like that after issuing orders I can only watch. I think it is part of the feel of the game. All commanders at some point have to just watch as their troops execute the plan.

It has been a while since I played with text in PS but I believe you can select the layer with the text in the layer view and then with the text tool you should be able to click on the existing text to edit it. Including selecting some or all of it to change the font attributes.

There is this which outlines the known extra steps that you might need to take: http://community.battlefront.com/announcement/27-special-upgrade-4-tech-tips/ For many people it was a simple process that caused no problems. Here's hoping it goes smooth for you...

Very wise not to open it. Are you sure you got the file you wanted though? The MO of those sites is to trick you into downloading various other files other than the one you really want. I have little doubt those downloads are unsafe. Frankly no one should even go to those sites let alone download anything from them. They are so full of malware and crap.

Perhaps, you never really know what Steve or Charles has cooking. One of them could wake up in the middle of the night with a brilliant idea. However I do recall Steve talking about trying various design alternatives for this in the past that he was not happy about.

LOL made me think of this: https://xkcd.com/1534/

Here is what I do for buddy aid. I believe this is what @MOS:96B2P is describing. If the casualty or crater is not in or near the centre of the action square I give the unit I want to perform buddy aid or get into the crater a slow order to an action square that takes them directly over the casualty or crater. Then I give them a pause of 20s, 30s or 45s depending now how far away the casualty or crater is. Push the BRB. In the next command phase they will be directly over the casualty or crater and you then cancel the remaining slow order and issue a face command or whatever else you want.

A couple of threads that might help (probably what @MOS:96B2P is referring to):

Yep those are possible ways to go. My personal preference would put other work above this but that's just one opinion.

Initial plan The initial plan looks like this: Looking at the map the obvious route is to take the road on the right through the farm and villages. As you might expect obvious routes tend to be protected. Given the fact that my tanks from the 745th are equipped with Rhino attachments and I have four platoons of engineers cutting through the bocage is also an option. Looking at the map there is a path that roughly parallels the road that has some long fields and some fields with gates that reduce the number of bocage breaches needed. The plan is to push a company plus tanks along each avenue and see where the resistance is and adjust as needed – including abandoning one or the other.

I don't think it should be tied to the play levels. While not one is actually going to play exclusively on the real darkness setting everyone does need to understand what the real tactical environment is like.

Those would be good too yes.

When you order the v4 upgrade bundle pack you get access to a dizzying array of install packages. If you just pick one game you will be less dizzy. One of those install files is the all in one install for the Mac. That will be able to install the base game and all the modules and packs on your Mac. They will all be there. Once you activate your game with the v4 code you will be able to play the base game on the Mac. There will also be (he says with confidence) an executable that will allow you to activate the modules and packs that you own. With their keys. My understanding is that this will work. Having said that your email to sales could be a wise thing to do. I know the base game keys that were issued before this were OS specific. If the module keys were never OS specific then this will just work. If they were OS specific then there could be a glitch. My understanding is that Steve's goal is for this to be possible but you should probably get verification that this is already just going to work or that they will help you get it to work if you run into trouble.

And to top it off the game does not reflect how dark it really is. Even with the artificial brightness turned off it is no where near dark enough. In fact I'll pitch this idea here: I would like to see the game have a toggle (either on off or three levels) for darkness and fog. Lets use darkness as an example with three levels. There would be "what the pixel soldiers actually see" where you can only see stuff 10m away from the camera if that is what the visibility is, "what we have now" where you can tell it is pretty dark but can still see to give orders and find units and finally "artificially bright" where it is like now with the artificial light that makes it easier to play in the night. Similarly for fog. And having only two levels would be OK too. The point is we have a way to see what the soldiers see - which in the case of darkness and fog is often sweet * all. If we knew what it was like for them we would not be as surprised when stuff like this happened. Well we *would* be surprised but you know what I mean This idea originally came from a discussion that @Bud Backer and I had although I think he had the idea and pitched it to me. But I liked it so now I pitch it when I get the opportunity. What do you guys think.

What @Baneman said about command delay is only one part of the problem. The real kicker comes when you fully appreciate that your roll as player is *all* the commanders. Command delays are fine when you are thinking like the company commander and you are issuing orders to coordinate your platoons to assault a position. It is perfect then. It completely and utterly falls apart when you think about your roll as the squad Sargent who realizes his men just stepped into an ambush. There is no way in hell that a command delay of 30s or even 10s makes any sense when you just need to get into that ditch near by to get some cover. Or when you are playing the roll of the tank commander and you need to get your driver to back up over the crest of the hill right, this, second. There is no planning that needs to be done. There is no back and forth discussion between various peers with different information. There is an order and the frantic execution of it. Period. @Bil Hardenberger created a very cool self imposed initiative system that covers what is good about the command delay but in my opinion the command delay from CM1x is utterly broken and I am glad to see its back.