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Have to click to see if a jeep is occupied...


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This depends on whether the vehicle has a driver of it's own. Some jeeps come with an organic driver while others don't so that you get one more passenger.

The same goes with any vehicle: if you tell a tank crew to bail out you'll end up with two icons, one for the tank and one for the crew. If you tell the crew to get back in the crew icon disappears.

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A recon squad in a jeep is different to a tank crew, though, right?

A tank crew is supposed to stay in the tank, by and large. You don't face the question of "do I have a useful unit in that tank".

By contrast, you can have a sea of jeep icons in your recon force and have no way of knowing, other than clicking on each, which contains a recon unit and which does not.

It doesn't surprise me that the type of people who play CMSF overlooked this obvious issue ;)

GaJ

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A recon squad in a jeep is different to a tank crew, though, right?

Er, wrong :) American doctrine was to use the Jeep and the guys in it as a single unit just like a tank. Unlike a tank, however, dismounting was a regular part of its tactical doctrine. However, the Jeep didn't normally operate independently of the crew. Contrast that with a Jeep that has a dedicated driver only. In that case the Jeep is supposed to operate independent of whatever it is transporting.

So, to differentiate between a Jeep with a dedicated crew (and therefore no passengers) it simply gets the Jeep icon. Just like a Tank gets a Tank icon. It's internally consistent and there for good reasons.

It doesn't surprise me that the type of people who play CMSF overlooked this obvious issue ;)

Errrrrr... it's the same in CMBN too, so what are you trying to say? :D

Steve

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LOL

I have no idea why I haven't bumped into it in CMBN.

I just opened a CMFI scenario that had a bunch of jeeps and found the problem for the first time.

I'm glad you agree that a tank isn't the same scenario as a jeep: dismounting is a regular part of jeep use. In fact, surely it is a key part? You don't scout with the mounted jeep, you zoom somewhere to scout, then dismount and actually scout right?

Therefore, unlike a tank, it really is a genuine question you face: is the scout team in this jeep or not?

I can see how consistecy of implementation is helpful for the implementer. I haven't yet come to see how making the scout icon disappear when they mount is helpful for the player...

GaJ

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It's always been an issue of debate but there's been no easy fix. At one point I think the icon for a Humvee or UAZ was that of the passenger, to help recognize them - but then they looked like infantry when seen from a distance, which of course wasn't very helpful either. Removing the icons from empty vehicles wouldn't work well either, because then you would have confusion between functional and destroyed vehicles.

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I can see how consistecy of implementation is helpful for the implementer. I haven't yet come to see how making the scout icon disappear when they mount is helpful for the player...

It's helpful to the player because it means the player has a game to play.

All vehicles work this way. They have crew spots (which are sometimes exclusive to the original crew as in the case of tanks and ACs) which are filled by the first eligible infantry unit to mount the vehicle. Any further spots can be filled by other infantry elements. It's the same with a truck. If you dismount the driver, you get a truck icon and a driver icon. If you load up a squad onto the driverless truck, one of the squad becomes the driver.

One way of telling whether a vehicle is mounted is to double-click-select the recon unit. Only vehicles with members of that unit mounted as drivers will, IIRC, be highlighted.

It would be nice for the jeep icon to change to one with a man sitting in it when it's mounted/got a driver, but I don't think icons can change like that can they?

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It depends on whether the vehicle has a driver or a not. If you put a scout team in a halftrack or a jeep that has a driver it will show the scout icon over the vehicle icon because they are passengers.

If you put a scout team into an empty halftrack or a jeep, it will have simply the vehicle icon because the scout team becomes the crew.

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So what?

I mean, yes - I understand that this is the game mechanic: that scout teams are treated like "jeep crew". But what possible rationale is there for how this helps me, as the player?

What I want to know is "where are the available scout units that I have?"

I don't want to be clicking through jeeps looking for them...

GaJ

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I'm fairly certain that this is a very specialized condition and has some signs of the tempest in a teacup phenomenom.

The vast majority of time I deal with jeeps, they already have a specified driver. I'm trying to remember battles I've played, most of the time the jeeps have drivers. Some battles might have had an empty jeep or two. If you buy one in a QB, it comes with a driver. So it is a condition that likely manifests in a specific scenario where you are given jeeps without drivers and a plentiful sprinkling of scout teams?

The rationale is the reduction of UI clutter and this is always a double-edged sword. I mean, you could argue that tanks should have two icons all the time, one for the crew and one for the vehicle and the point would be that this would help you identify an abandoned or dismounted tank. Another player would like a different icon for an abandoned tank and a different one for a dismounted tank. A third player wants no icons for dismounted or abandoned tanks at all.

How do you solve this optimally?

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Can it be so hard to get? Each unit has an icon. Some units need to be entered by another unit to use - eg. driverless jeeps or bunkers. In these cases the two units join into one, hence one icon. To separate them you need to bail out the crew. If a second unit enters the car or bunker, it retains its icon because it remains a separate unit. It can be told to leave by giving a movement or dismount command.

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ZPBII,

You are focused quite tightly on the issue of "driverless jeep + scout team = jeep icon". You think it should show a scout icon. I understand why you think that, but here are some other iterations of that issue.

Driverless jeep + HQ team = ?

Driverless jeep + one man who survived from my bungled attack = ?

Driverless jeep + jeep driver from a different jeep = ?

Driverless jeep + bar team = ?

If the jeep + x took the icon of whatever sits in the jeep, the player could not find out who has wheels.

I agree that it would be nice to have some sort of icon which differentiates that status. I know that I frequently hunt to see what status my vehicles are in:

Driver?

If Driver, is it Armed?

If Armed, is there a Gunner?

Right now the logic is internally consistent. If they did what you're asking, without integrating all the iterations I listed (and all the other possibilities) then it would merely create more confusion.

Ken

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So what?

I mean, yes - I understand that this is the game mechanic: that scout teams are treated like "jeep crew". But what possible rationale is there for how this helps me, as the player?

Because sorting that out in the code is a set of choices. For most vehicles, vehicle-plus-crew means you want to see the vehicle icon, not an infantry icon. Making exceptions to that requires coding and testing and choices as to where the exceptions apply, which will not always suit everyone. For example, I'd rather have the current situation than have to remember that scout team jeeps can't reposition themselves when the scout team dismounts, as all other vehicle icon plus passenger icon combinations can. So whichever choice BFC make, they irritate one of their customers. They decided to go with irritating the ones that require more coding and testing to please.

Consistency is good for the player. The fact that you've not even noticed the general rule of the model so far argues that this is more important, in the grand scheme of things, than your current issue with not knowing what you did with your scouts (which is arguably entirely your fault). And you still can find them by double-clicking the icon of the first scout you find (if they're a scout platoon, like it sounds) and you can find them by using the TO links in HQs.

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The vast majority of time I deal with jeeps, they already have a specified driver. I'm trying to remember battles I've played, most of the time the jeeps have drivers. Some battles might have had an empty jeep or two. If you buy one in a QB, it comes with a driver. So it is a condition that likely manifests in a specific scenario where you are given jeeps without drivers and a plentiful sprinkling of scout teams?

It also happens where large teams are given jeeps: H/MMG with a leader; ATG teams with a leader maybe some medium mortars, I think. A 6 man team in a jeep or a 5 man team in a Kubel doesn't leave room for the driver, so he's omitted. For me, this is a good reason to include the weapons carrier vehicles in the odds-and-sods pack (and future families).

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Oh well, no big deal.

To me it seems bizarre that when a recon team gets in an HT it's icon stays, but when it gets into a jeep it disappears.

The recon team is only in some theoretical sense the "jeep's crew". From a pragmatic point of view, it is an infantry unit I want to transport somewhere, not a crew I want to operate a jeep.

If it doesn't seem strange to anyone else, well, I'll move on...

GaJ

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Dismount a halftrack crew and order a scout team into it. They will crew it and their icon will change into that of the halftrack.

I do understand your point, it's just that the UI is a quagmire to sort out and the more you think of a really simple thing the less simple it starts to seem.

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