Acquire command tweak request

[YankeeDog]

I've actually mentioned this before, but it's been a while and I just had this issue arise in a game again so I thought I'd bring it up again to politely pester:

It would be great if the small arms ammo increments offered in the "Acquire" command were tweaked so that there was always a low option. As it is now, problems can arise when you're trying to resupply a smaller team.

Example: I had a 3-man scout team (2xThompson, 1xGarand) get involved in a pretty hot firefight and burn off a lot of ammo. So I sent them back to a truck to resupply. .45 ammo for the Thompsons wasn't a problem -- the truck was only carrying 300 rounds, and the game gave me a variety of choices of how much .45 to acquire, from the full 300, downwards.

But Acquiring .30-'06 for the guy with the Garand was an issue. A Truck carries 1000s of rounds of .30-'.06, and the minimum amount that can be Acquired goes up with the amount carried. So for .30-'06, least I could pick up was 500 rounds; my choices were either to not resupply the rifleman at all, or burden the team with a ridiculous amount of ammo.

So... it would be great if the Acquire options could be tweaked a bit so that there is always a lower option for # of rounds acquired -- say, 100 or so. Bear in mind that you can always use the Acquire command multiple times in succession, so if the options are 100, 500, and 1000, the player can acquire 200 rounds if he wants to by selecting 100 rounds, twice. As such, I would argue that always having a low-quantity Acquire option is much more important than having multiple high-quantity options. I've noticed that you sometimes get the option of Acquiring 2,000 rounds all at once from vehicles like trucks, which is pretty unnecessary. I don't remember the last time I used the Acquire command to acquire 2,000 rounds of a single ammo type all at once (if I ever have), and on the rare occasion where I might need this much ammo, it would be very easy to just select 1,000, twice.

Cheers,

YD

[womble]

Good point. I wish you could just take "as many as you want", maybe by a type-in box. Would save the Acquire command having to do any dividing up, and mean you can split things the way you want. The current increments have nothing whatsoever to do with the way ammo was parcelled up historically, they're just arbitrary chunks, so it'd be no worse than it is now, wrt "historicity". It'd be a bit slower for RT-bunnies.

[George MC]

I wish my scout teams would survive long enough to need re-supply!

[Childress]

I wish my scout teams would survive long enough to need re-supply!

I hear you! A bit off topic: do Scouts enjoy a, well, scouting bonus by virtue of their specialization? In addition to their binocs...

[YankeeDog]

I hear you! A bit off topic: do Scouts enjoy a, well, scouting bonus by virtue of their specialization? In addition to their binocs...

IIRC, this question has been brought up before and the answer from BFC was "no," there is nothing inherent about scout teams that makes them better at spotting or at stealth than another infantry team of similar size and loadout.

[Childress]

OK. Thanks, YD.

[poesel]

One thing that's strange with 'acquire' is that it is the only instantaneous action in the game. Everything else takes time (*) but getting ammo is instant. Which is of course no big problem but still a wart somehow.

But if acquire would be possible from outside a vehicle we could have two things:

1) idle, unsuppressed soldiers near a source of ammo would automatically pick up ammo matching his weapon to fill it up to normal levels

2) ordering a soldier to acquire - as it is now - will make him pick up another full load of ammo (so he ends up with twice his normal load unless you order him away before that). This is also necessary for picking up 'foreign' ammo which you don't have a weapon yourself (e.g. mortar bombs for ammo bearers) or things like Fausts.

Ammo would be loaded in packets: after x seconds you get y number of rounds. Thus ammo acquisition would be granular and take time. Which IMHO would make the process a bit more realistic.

(*) ok, making artillery call doesn't, too

[Baneman]

One thing that's strange with 'acquire' is that it is the only instantaneous action in the game. Everything else takes time (*) but getting ammo is instant. Which is of course no big problem but still a wart somehow.

...

(*) ok, making artillery call doesn't, too

And BailOut

Which has also been known to be a pain in the butt sometimes

I carefully do NOT map that one to a key at all.

Ammo would be loaded in packets: after x seconds you get y number of rounds. Thus ammo acquisition would be granular and take time. Which IMHO would make the process a bit more realistic.

I DO like this idea though.

But since that sort of tweak isn't going to happen soon, in the meantime I'll settle for adding a +1 to YD's request - always having a small amount option in ACQUIRE would be most useful.

[JonS]

One thing that's strange with 'acquire' is that it is the only instantaneous action in the game. Everything else takes time (*) but getting ammo is instant.

This is why I have no problem with forcing units to mount and dismount to Acquire. The "loss" of a turn represents the time taken to actually find the ammo you want, break it open, and stow it away. It's still waaaaaay too fast, but better than just magically grabbing it while walking past the vehicle.

[Michael Emrys]

On the subject of the Acquire option, I have a question. Not so long ago I was playing a game with some halftracks, some of which were armed with .50 MGs. The MGs were starting to run a bit low on ammo, but I thought, "No problem," as I had noticed that in addition to the ammo organic to the MG itself, the HT also carried some spare ammo of that caliber. "I'll just use the Acquire function to move some ammo from the vehicle's stash to the gun." Well, I tried that and the ammo did indeed disappear from the vehicle's stash, but nothing was added to the MG's supply as shown in the UI.

So what's the deal here? Where did the disappeared ammo go? Has it been added to the MG but is just not shown in the UI? That would be kind of odd as it doesn't happen with other units acquiring ammo. Related question: Is it possible that in such a case it isn't necessary to use the Acquire function, as the MG will automatically draw ammo from the vehicle's supply? If not, how the heck can the player tap the vehicle's supply?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Michael

[womble]

This is why I have no problem with forcing units to mount and dismount to Acquire. The "loss" of a turn represents the time taken to actually find the ammo you want, break it open, and stow it away. It's still waaaaaay too fast, but better than just magically grabbing it while walking past the vehicle.

Absolutely. If "Acquire" became a waypoint command, that didn't require a whole minute, it would have to include a time element as well.

[Vanir Ausf B]

Related question: Is it possible that in such a case it isn't necessary to use the Acquire function, as the MG will automatically draw ammo from the vehicle's supply?

This has been my experience.

[womble]

This has been my experience.

Indeed. The green ammo is what's in the gun already, and that will reload from the white ammo when it depletes. IIRC, if there were 500 rounds in green when the vehicle was fresh, it will grab rounds in batches of 500 when the "currently attached box" empties.

Using acquire to get the ammo will give it to the crew, AIFAIK, so it should appear in the crew's allocation. You would have thought that they'd share, though, once the track itself was empty, since they're obviously the same formation...

[Vanir Ausf B]

Using acquire to get the ammo will give it to the crew, AIFAIK, so it should appear in the crew's allocation. You would have thought that they'd share, though, once the track itself was empty, since they're obviously the same formation...

I think this is true. The .50 cal rounds Michael acquired are now in the crew's pockets. The problem is that AFAIK the game does not allow ammo sharing with vehicles. So if there is a tripod-mounted M2 .50 cal team in the same formation as the halftrack he could dismount the crew and they would share with that. Otherwise that ammo is effectively gone.

[womble]

...the game does not allow ammo sharing with vehicles...

Quite, though the converse is permitted, I think: mortar rounds, at least, get shared direct from the vehicles they're carried in if an eligible tube is close enough.

[Bulletpoint]

I just wish they didn't actually have to go in and sit in the vehicle to aquire. Being reasonably close should be enough.

[Michael Emrys]

Indeed. The green ammo is what's in the gun already, and that will reload from the white ammo when it depletes. IIRC, if there were 500 rounds in green when the vehicle was fresh, it will grab rounds in batches of 500 when the "currently attached box" empties.

Thanks and thanks also to Vanir Ausf B. That takes a load off my mind. I hate not knowing why something has happened.

Michael

[Bulletpoint]

Absolutely. If "Acquire" became a waypoint command, that didn't require a whole minute, it would have to include a time element as well.

Surely it should take time, but the Tactical AI should handle it. Right now, players using WeGo need to use a lot of time for this, while realtime players can do it more quickly.

It could work a bit like buddy aid.

[womble]

Surely it should take time, but the Tactical AI should handle it. Right now, players using WeGo need to use a lot of time for this, while realtime players can do it more quickly.

It could work a bit like buddy aid.

I think we'll want more control over it than we have over Buddy Aid. Hell, I'd like more control over Buddy Aid than we have: I've lost a few pTruppen to the "Well we've not been shot at for a minute, so I'll move to help my fallen squadmate who happens to be lying in the only place the enemy can actually see in this AS. Urk." effect.

You wouldn't want some random Broken, low quality crew member stripping the last SMG ammo out of the last untility vehicle that you'd been saving for whatever Assault team ended up with the best morale status just prior to the push into the farm complex, and micromanaging everyone to keep away from the pinata would be a nagging chore.

It's a rather more complex action than Buddy Aid, more determined by circumstance, harder to program into an AI; currently the AI doesn't re-arm...

As to the time required, I don't think it's nearly enough, even for WeGo (and pretty silly for RT), but it's an abstraction that can be lived with, considering the limitations.

[JonS]

As to the time required, I don't think it's nearly enough, even for WeGo (and pretty silly for RT), but it's an abstraction that can be lived with, considering the limitations.

Yup. About the only things that can be said in favour of this in RT is that you can only bomb-up one unit at a time, and while you're bombing up units you aren't paying attention to the rest of the battle.

As you say: an abstraction, but not entirely unreasonable. Making it easier and faster would be unreasonable.

[Baneman]

I think we'll want more control over it than we have over Buddy Aid. Hell, I'd like more control over Buddy Aid than we have: I've lost a few pTruppen to the "Well we've not been shot at for a minute, so I'll move to help my fallen squadmate who happens to be lying in the only place the enemy can actually see in this AS. Urk." effect.

You wouldn't want some random Broken, low quality crew member stripping the last SMG ammo out of the last untility vehicle that you'd been saving for whatever Assault team ended up with the best morale status just prior to the push into the farm complex, and micromanaging everyone to keep away from the pinata would be a nagging chore.

It's a rather more complex action than Buddy Aid, more determined by circumstance, harder to program into an AI; currently the AI doesn't re-arm...

As to the time required, I don't think it's nearly enough, even for WeGo (and pretty silly for RT), but it's an abstraction that can be lived with, considering the limitations.

Agreed Womble.

But we have strayed from the OP request to be able to always have a minimum ( probably 100 ) amount to select rather than the massive 500 that you start with.

Which should be much more doable than anything else alluded to in this thread.

[Bulletpoint]

Ok, let's say then that it should take time to get the ammo, and that the player should choose who and when. But please, less "game of musical chairs"

There is no realism or challenge in having a cumbersome user interface. unless you want to simulate army bureaucracy.