A Canadian Cat

Oh, I figured it had to do so that but though maybe to succeed there had to be more. Ah well. Wow that was a short time window and clearly I was not in a position to stop it.

Minute 05-04: Everybody moves up. The final barrage ends. Is it just me or was that the wimpiest series of artillery barrages in history. Figure 32 Moving Up Just as the turn ends something happens at the bridge. There is an explosion that cannot be from the artillery. The Germans have begun the demolition process! Also as the turn ends Lance Corporal and his team notice some movement at the bend in the road. He signals back for fire support. Figure 33 Something is happening Minute 04: Orders The right hand section moves into the woods on the right. From there they can cover the advance on the bridge or assault the barn near it. The left hand section has a contact to fire upon. Stg Jameson will join in. Figure 34 Orders

Minute 06-05: It was a totally uneventful turn. The infantry moved up along the side of the road and the tanks followed along. Minute 05: Orders Captain Ferguson Arrives. One more tank arrives. Lt Jeremy’s CO wants to be closer to the pointy end today so he is starting out early. Several of the tanks in Captain Ferguson’s company had mechanical breakdown problems during the drive yesterday and are still being worked on in the rear. So Lt Jeremy’s platoon is operating at only two tanks until others become available. Captain Ferguson assigned himself to help out with the bridge mission even if it’s just in a backup role. The orders are more moving up and Captain Ferguson will catch up. Figure 31 Orders

I am a little behind on my write up. But I am not behind on my play. I'll try to catch up - right after I send Bil the next turn.

Minute 07-06: The last barrage beings as the turn began. Soon it will be a rush to get to the bridge. Figure 29 Final Barrage Minute 06: Orders Lt. Jeremy’s tank moves up behind Sgt Jameson’s and the infantry move up. Figure 30 Orders

I think that adding SOP type controls would be great. I have no experience with TacOps so cannot comment on the method. I will say that a programming or scripting solution would not be good. But there is no reason why a reasonably straight forward UI could not be created to let people choose from some standard SOPs with a few parameters to tweak. All of that could and should also be available to the AI as options during the plan definition. It would be great. It would also be a lot of work too. Hopefully some day.

Oh right I forgot to say if you have game saves for this could you share them, please? Either PM me with a link or to get a conversation started to have them sent. It looks to me like you have gone back in time to the turn where things stated to go side ways. So if you have the turn before bad things happened and the turn they started going off plus the one after that just to be sure. That would be helpful. Also if you are agreeable to sending saves the version of the game you are playing would be required too. Thank you.

I'm not sure if they would throw away a squad anti tank weapon just cause it was bulky. Heck I believe that in the Commonwealth forces PIATs were traditionally company level assets which means they would have to answer to the company Sargent major as to why they did not bring back the launcher. I was thinking more that if the rookie private unloading the truck (aka us with a crappy mouse) hands the guys boxes of 81mm mortar rounds instead of the boxes of .303 cal they would make him put them back instead of carrying them around with them for the rest of the fight

LOL I agree with @Pak40 that is how I read it first too. Anyway back on topic. This is a new flavour of wondering team member bug. I was going to suggest killing him off too - I have done that before. But it seems like that is not going to work in this case. Here is what I have done in the past for situations like this. First turn cancel the movement order - give no further orders. Wait a turn. Next turn give them a movement order back to where the bulk of the team are. This does not always work though only some times.

Oh, I never meant to Absolutely! Yeah, we do not see much of that kind of statement but it never bothered me.

Indeed always valuable. ASL already answered but I will add simply that if you look at my post history of bringing up game issues you can see that the stopped. That is directly because I bring them up on internal forums now or just log them if no discussion is necessary. I do like the Catholic analogy although some Catholics might take offences lumping me in with them and I might take offence at being compared to a Catholic but I won't I get it you are basically saying watch out you don't want to drink the cool aid with out thinking first. I am saying I have direct empirical evidence day in day out that shows me that if BFC say they will fix a bug they will. Period. I also have direct empirical evidence not to hold my breath because it may take a while. It is just how it is when you have a small team and a ton of work. OK I see you are trying to use a plethora of defects to argue you don't like the direction. What I am trying to say is the if people have a list in their own head of a bunch of super important bugs the they feel need to be fixed and the get more and more upset when they are not they are at best setting them selves up for disappointment and at worst deluding them selves.

Wow that is quite a beating. What was shooting at it. I notice that none of the hits are penetrating. Including the one on the gun barrel and tracks. Interesting. Could it be that non penetrating hits on tracks are not a total M Kill.

Agreed this could be very helpful thread to the next person - assuming they search for an answer to their problem Yeah the acquire system needs some love at some point. Loosing access to ammo like this is defiantly annoying but even more normal type activities can lead to unfix-able problems too. Now that troops are slowed down and tire more with heavy loads there is no way to drop / return stuff. If you accidentally grab a whole bunch of bazooka rounds for a small team suddenly they become slow and tire and there is nothing you can do to unburden them. So, you really have to be careful not to make acquire mistakes.

I just did a search for that. Several people feel like AT guns are harder to spot - including me actually. But I can not find any reference to it being a feature or fix. However I personally think you have nailed it: tanks spot less well. That was a change. And if tanks spot less well then AT guns are harder to spot - by the tanks anyway.

The problem I have with that statement is: what good would a more frequent sample rate really do? OK sure some "a tank drove over my infantry in the dark and under a smoke screen and they never saw it" could be fixed and that infantry unit would see the tank for the 3s as it drove over them and would then be lost in the smoke again. But that is about it. If we find cases where there is a consistent and repeatable spotting problem they should get looked at and a fix made - whatever that fix should be. We should not be trying to simulate some player's idea of "perfect pixeltroops"tm that would hurt game play. Yes, I am saying that units that fail to see stuff that we think they should is a good thing (as long as it is part of the random and reasonable way soldiers in combat might actually notice things). Yeah you read that right it is good that our units do not spot perfectly. Humans do not, soldiers do not, it is a fact of life. Fixed that for ya. The change was for increased spotting cycles locally for units that are near each other - they do not need to be aware of each other - the engine does and that is enough.

To be clear I should apologize to @Toblakai. I singled him out for my "if it ain't acknowledged as a defect it ain't really a defect" preaching but I mean to address everyone of us - including me. So thanks for the opportunity for a concrete example @Toblakai and please don't feel like it only applies to you

The board did not like the number of quotes I used continuing... I, personally, do not get the impression that WEGO is being actively shunned. I guess you could argue the problem of not being able to area target building faces in some situations because of the way the 8m action squares are handled could fall into this category. If you offered me to drop Real Time play so units in city streets could target building faces that they can clearly see I guess I personally would say yes please. I do not really expect that overall that trade off would really be a good one for the game because lots of people really like Real Time play and I only run into the problem of targeting buildings in a bit under half my games. I have head it said that the resource constraints on RT mean that there is a spotting cycle and that is bad but honestly the vast, vast majority of issues with spotting are not problems at all but people expecting "perfect troops"tm (see above about what known issue really means). Well I went looking and found nothing but my faulty memory. There is an anecdotal discussion about AT guns being harder to spot here: http://community.battlefront.com/topic/113864-rt-anti-tank-guns/?p=1513576 After rereading that thread my opinion is the reduction in spotting abilities by tanks is probably what changed. Right I know there are discussions about ambushes and many people have trouble getting them to work and my people have found the magic sauce and shared them on the forum. Hiding has a specific meaning and it is not appropriate for ambushing. Again hiding is not going to be fixed because it is not acknowledge as being broken. There might be some thoughts about improvements that can be made to make ambushes easier I cannot remember what Steve has said on the subject. Given my memory about the above me not saying anything that might embarrass me is a good thing. Another example of possibly a legit concern on the list of "game play stuff that @Toblakai would like to see fixed". Right, well summarized. Your priorities are not matching well with BFC's priorities. Not much that can be said other than hopefully as they work on engine features from time to time you see things you like. The only issue I have is that I do not believe that "the based gamesystem doesn't work correct" is fair. And this is my main point: BFC thinks the game play ranges from damn good to good enough. They have said they have a list of stuff they want to improve but overall they are happy with the way the game plays. They don't think it is not working correctly. Therefore the stuff that you don't like is not going to change. Therefore if we want changes in those areas we have to pitch solutions and ask for changes. LOL thankfully I am a 64 bit zombie so I'll stay away from your brains

I see, makes sense. LOL Catholic - I am pretty sure the Pope would not be welcoming me. Back to on topic: Testers are not allowed to make comments about fixes schedules etc. So, even if I had an idea of when I could not say. The only thing I can say is it has been logged. It was not rejected as something that will not be fixed. I trust them to fix it. At some point. Yep, and that has been acknowledged as a limitation in the current game engine (aka there is no intention to fix it as a bug and we have no idea where it might or might not be on BFC's list of features to work on). So, here is one thing that could go on a list of "game play stuff that @Toblakai would like to see changed". Yep, same as above. A bug that can be fixed. Yeah, similar I am not sure if this fits as perfectly into the bucket of "game play stuff that @Toblakai would like to see changed" but given my faulty memory lets put it there. So, this is a real problem. What you call a known bug is not the same as what BFC thinks of as a real bug. Here is what I mean. If you don't have a message form Steve or Phil saying - that says something like "that's not right we will fix it" or a tester saying "yuck that seems wrong I'll log that", then it is *not* a known bug. This is really important: There is no chance (other than providence) that something that you (or anyone else) thinks is a bug will be fixed if it has not been acknowledged as a bug. None. Here is an example from my own experience: the problem of plotting way points around bridges. It was one of the first defects I ran into. It was annoying. It was not possible to place way points around bridges. Things like putting way points near river banks was insane they would show up in the oddest places. I posted about it and eventually found a workaround thanks to some kind soul on the fourm (put the camera directly above and look down). I figured it would get looked at. Patches came and went. No fix. Finally, newly annoyed, I posted again and one of the testers said "I cannot reproduce that, I have never seen it before". "Arrrg" I though how is this possible. Well no one ever acknowledged the problem was real and therefore no one looked at it. Obviously. As soon as myself and this tester realized that we looked into it more closely and discovered the problem and it was acknowledged as a problem and fixed in the vary next patch. In fact the fix was in the product all along I just had to flip an option that was no longer needed because ATI had fixed a graphics driver bug the option was meant to work around. I'll say it again if you do not have a message where Steve or Phil say "yep it is a bug" or at least one where a tester says "I logged it" it is not a known bug and probably never going to be looked at. What this means is if you think something needs to be changed you need to sell it or live with it. Just wandering around say it's broke has zero value. I am not trying to be mean or cruel but our expectations need adjusting. What I mean is if there are game play issues that people think need to be addressed and you do not engage in discussion and get some kind of statement about their merit we cannot have an expectation that they will be addressed. There are many things that BFC (and my others BTW) think play just fine or good enough and do not have plans to change. All of us just sitting here hoping for something to be "fixed" need to consider that.

I have a misty memory of there being a bug about bunkers being undestroyable by direct fire. I really am not sure if I am remembering correctly or not. My memory also says it was fixed in a later version. But again that was a while back so I am not 100% sure. Time to do some searching but that will have to wait until later for me.

Yeah, that would be a problem. The only thing I can think of is position everyone as you want them and then save and reload to reset the clock. Then give everyone targeting orders as you want. If that takes a while due to needing to move teams I guess rinse and repeat. A bit sucky for sure.

Minute 08-07: Just more moving up. Nothing happened, the scouts report nothing going on at the front. Minute 07: Orders More moving forward. The final barrage starts in about a minute. We are way way behind. I need to pick up the pace but not at the expense of getting ambushed. Sgt Jameson’s tank will veer to the left off the road. I just have a feeling there are mines there, no real evidence but worry. Figure 28: Orders

Minute 09-08: It was a quiet turn with no new contacts and no artillery in the air. The lead infantry makes it to the place where the assault faltered the day before. Lance Corporal Graham carefully made lead his team forward to some bushes in the ditch next to the disabled tank. This is as far as we got yesterday. He was not actually here yesterday they were the reserve company yesterday. But not today! Brad Graham was pretty new to the platoon but already liked Lt McDougal and he had heard the stories about him. He also knew the drill: they had to protect the tanks as much as the tanks protected them. Once his team was settled into the ditch he directed them to watch forward so he could have a closer look at the tank. It was not good. The tracks were blown off but nothing else seemed wrong. There was no way he could make a closer inspection, it just was not safe enough but he suspected the road was mined. He pulled back a bit to pass his suspicions back. He knew Lt McDougal would be close – he always was - and he would tell the tanks and figure out what to do. Figure 26: Checking the destroyed tank Minute 08: Orders With two more minutes before the last artillery arrives my men need to cover some distance to get to into position so that they can assault the bridge after the last barrage ends. Movement is simple standard leap frogging along the sides of the road with the tanks pausing to let the infantry get further ahead before hunting forward. I don’t need to act on my suspicion that the road is mined yet. We will see if anyone get a positive ID on any mines once more infantry are up in the area. Figure 27: Orders

That does not sound very good. What version of the game are you running?

Good to hear.

I think this is a better way to ask the question - what is the item you want the most. It makes people decide what is important to them. Other wise I would just check all the choices