Bridger15

on my monitor at work this is my issue.

Yeah, think of them as a defender's tool like entrenchments. Although there may be maps where the attacker gets TRPs, I don't know.

Are you kidding me? Is this why the graphics are so much worse than other games? Because the AI, physics, and everything else is all on the same core? That's reprehensible if true. Edit: Wow, it's really true. That's extremely disappointing. Love the BFC game design, can't get behind their engine/UI choices. I'll still enjoy the game, but lament that it could have been so much better.

I didn't mean to say that the mechanical calculations were more detailed, but I do know that all of the projectiles are calculated using an physics engine. It's not just a % chance to hit or miss, the projectiles are fired at a specific angle with a velocity and their ability to hit or miss is based on how the physics models the shot. That said, CMBN certainly does have a lot of other things to keep track of (individual ammo capacities, unit morale, C2 status, etc.). I'm still not sure that keeping track of all those statistics is enough to make the engine the way it is though. I bet you could dedicate one of my 3.0ghz cores to AI, one to keeping track of all the statistics, and one to physics, and you'd still have the GPU which could render a lot more quality than what's in CMBN now. I think the real problem is man-hours. BF probably just isn't a big enough company to have enough coders to put in all the shiny production quality that you see in AAA titles. I'm still quite put off by the lack of tooltips though. that's my only major concern. Everything else is just me picking nits.

Supreme Commander had many many more units on a much bigger (and more detailed) map in a much bigger and more detailed engine. It also had a much better camera system. If I could zoom out and then zoom in on my mouse it would be much easier to move around the map. Is there a slider or some kind of button I could use to move the camera faster so it doesn't take me 12 seconds to move from one side of the map to the other? Also, the closer I get to a ? icon the smaller it gets. This often results in the icon being buried in a hedge/bocage when i get close enough to give orders.

Why are we drawing small cover arcs?

ah, thank you!

It definitely looked "double wide." The problem is that my engineers will blow open a hole and then immediately run through the gap into wide open enemy MG fire. Can't I make them blow open the bocage without running through it after? That way they can blow it again to make it wider if necessary... I had some other wierd issues with that game and vehicals. One halftrack I cleared of orders, gave it new orders, and then when i started the turn it counted down from 5 second pause, then reset to 5, then counted again, and kept doing that no matter what I did. Every time the turn started the halftrack would just sit there on indefinite pause.

I've got some really weird behavior with my tanks. I opened up a gap in the hedge with my demo charges, but my tanks refuse to use the new opening. I give them orders directly to the opening and through, but they get there and turn around and go a completely different way. The only thing I can see maybe stopping them is foxholes on the other side.

Seems to make sense that you always want to ammo bearers near the heavy weapon that can use their ammo, so why don't they merge with the appropriate squad the same way a split rifle squad will reform if you leave them near each other?

Place them in the colored areas and wait. Like, behind the hedges? I didn't think you could see through the hedges?

small covered arks? You mean target arcs? From where? Behind the hedge? I didn't think of disembarking the armored cars.

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. You're given a single squad split up into teams, 4 Halftracks, and 2 Armored Cars. I tried splitting up the teams and having them scout by themselves slowly through the hedges. They died without seeing what shot them. I tried moving the armored cars slowly into the center, they died without seeing what shot them. Then I tried moving the infantry and armor in together at the center point. I managed to get sight on the AT gun and a squad or two, and suppress the AT gun so it didn't instantly kill all my vehicles, but then my squad was continuously killed by enemies behind hedges that I couldn't' see. The whole point of the mission is to recon the enemy forces but they never actually show up to my spotting. If i sit behind a hedge for a long time they never get spotted. if I move out from behind the hedge, the units die and the enemies still don't get spotted. What am I doing wrong? (playing on warrior difficulty btw).

Following this chain of logic, the most intuitive system (IMHO) would be to click on the intended target and hit a "support" button, then it shows you any FO that have LOS to the target (and the quality of those observers when factoring in their rank, range, etc.). But it's pretty easy to spot FO right now. At least I think it is. I haven't played any REALLY big scenarios yet.

I know fraps can make movies. I'd like to be able to have people submit replays to me and I could make movies of them, commenting on the strategy etc. I do this for Company of Heroes in a show I call Tales of Heroes. Thought about doing something similar for CM, but no replay system makes this difficult. It shouldn't be too difficult to put in if they had been planning for it when they built the engine. If not then it may be way too hard, I just don't know. The way other RTS games do it is simply have a saved starting game state, then save each of the commands and when they are given. Then when you watch the replay the game is literally re-playing the game. All the same orders are being given and all the same calculations are being done (using the same random seed). This makes the replay file very small (less than 1MB). Theoretically this should be possible with any game that can have a real-time element, but there may be something in CMx2 that makes it harder than normal.

I'd like to save at the end of a mission, and then send that file to a friend who can watch the entire battle exactly as it played out. This allows people to share games and show off strategies. There's a whole website dedicated to just this aspect (www.gamereplays.org) for many RTS games. It also helps with bug tracking and balance issues. If someone comes on the forums and says "OMG TIGER IS WAY TOO POWEFUL IT SHOULD BE 3,000 more points!" or (more likely for this forum) someone says "hey I'm having a real problem beating this mission" the response could be "show me the replay and I can see if I can help you). It would also be useful for recording Video After Action Reports. A few of those have been posted, but AFAIK, you have to load each PBEM file one at a time to watch the action, you can't just save one big file and watch it all in a row.

Not having read the whole thread, here's my contribution: Tooltips. Tooltips are the way you learn most strategy games. This game would be significantly more accessible if every UI Button had a tooltip with a paragraph describing what it does. How exactly does move differ from quick and slow? Hover over the buttons for 1 second and you have your answer. No digging through the manual's table of contents, just hover. This has been implemented in every game i can think of except this one. There are 0 tooltips. There should be more I can't imagine a little text would suck up enough resources to rule it out. Maybe in the next version?

I'm sure you guys are hard at work on the sequel to CM:BB, and I hope that in that version we can get some kind of playback system for saving and watching matches. The game already has the capacity to save game states and orders and load game states and execute orders from a file (PBEM) so it seems like it shouldn't be too hard (from a programing standpoint) to provide a start game state and then write all the orders + random seed and have the game play out the same way (similar to other RTS games). Perhaps it's a lot more work than that, but just wanted to express my interest in such a feature should it be possible.

So I have 2 Questions: 1) I love the We-Go system of CMx1, and I'm sure it can be used to play PBEM, but can we play "live" games with We-Go? I.E. i invite someone to join my game (provide an IP or however it works) and we can play We-Go instead of real-time? 2) After a game, can I save the mission as a replay and upload it for others to watch? I'm assuming this would be basically the same file used in PBEM, but would love to be able to easily export the replay to share. 2b) If above is yes, what kind of tools will we have while viewing a replay? Can we switch sides to see what each player sees? Can we click on individual units in order to get their sight/sightlines without being able to give orders?

to the OP: If you want to avoid the black bars on the right/left side of the youtube video, render your output at 1728x1080. I had the same problem with my CoH videos for a while, but this fixed it.

I doubt anyone at Relic was under the false assumption that they were designing a simulation. They were making a game based on a historical war, not a simulation based on that war. Those two design goals are completely different. You could level the same criticism at chess, or fooseball, but that doesn't make them "lesser" games because they are not designed as simulations. They just fall into a different category. That being said, CM is a game too, it simply has simulation leanings. Unless you think the Germans and the Soviets got together before every battle and agreed to a specific point value of units?

I'm actually a big fan of CoH. It's not trying to be a simulation, so I'm not sure it's fair to judge it as one. Wow, didn't expect such a vitriolic response. I wasn't trying to say you guys are amateurs; just that it looks that way. I allowed for the fact that graphics quality might have suffered from higher CPU usage on the simulation side; not necessarily from poor developers. I'm very surprised and disappointed to read this. I thought there would be a little more professional understanding of game development from the battlefront team. So much contempt for such a clearly fantastic game? Of course you can say you don't like CoH or the genre it stands for, because you prefer more simulative games (I can enjoy both, for example), but to say it has no substance proves that either a) You have not actually played it or You have some misguided prejudice for any non-simulation game having to do with history. Either way it's disconcerting. I had more respect for you as developers until now. I know exactly what I'm talking about. There's an example of a game with 5 year old technology that looks amazing on 5 year old PCs. Then you have this game which looks like it was designed 10 years ago. Certainly production money/scale has a lot to do with it. I'm not trying to say it's something that's in your control (I'm not a programmer), it's just disappointing, as was your response. I'll still enjoy the game I'm sure. I did enjoy CMBO and CMBB back in the day, but realistic mechanics aren't always enough. I have to be in the right mood to forgo graphical immersion and play something entirely based on mechanics. I guess I was just hoping for both. I like being sucked into the moment and imagining I'm there, watching a scene unfold and trying to direct troops on the battlefield. I'll withhold further judgement till i get the game however. Here's hoping it's awesome enough to suspend my disbelief

Oh wow, I wasn't aware that scale was possible. That would certainly explain a lot! Of course. Guess I'm spoiled I already preordered, I was just thinking out loud.

I'm not a programmer, and I have no idea if all of the physics calculations involved in creating historical outcomes has a major effect, but I can't help be disappointed by the graphical quality. I just have to wonder: if Company of Heroes came out 5 years ago, why can't CMBfN look even half as good as that? It's certainly a step up from CMx1, but I think there's still something severely lacking in the graphics department. It just looks like it was made by amateurs. I'm not saying I could do better, and I'll probably enjoy the game regardless, but always in the back of my mind I'll be thinking "damn, I wish this was on the CoH graphics engine..."

What is MSR and ASR? Was thinking Main Line of Resistance or something like that?