kai Posted October 31, 1999 Share Posted October 31, 1999 I must admit, this game took me by surprise. What a beauty. If I use view 1, I feel as if I'm there amongst my troops. It took me a minute to get accustomed to the interface but once I got the hang of it, it was a painless procedure. I saw some screenshots and I see snow. This will be great. What combat theaters and terrain's are planned to be included int he full version? Snowy steeps on the outskirts of Stalingrad? Sandy road of the Desert Fox through Tunisia? Since this is a beta I think the full unit markings will be there, on tanks and other vehicles. I wish to know if the elite WaffenSS units will also be modeled in the game? Forgive my asking as I don't have time to read all the posts but can the Stuka's be called in to punish the enemy with some horrifying air strikes? Oh, and I forgot to add my only concern so far. I just wish there would be a way to select multiple units. As in the scenario, all these foot soldiers have to be clicked on and assigned orders, I would prefer if we could click and drag an area and the units in the box could be ordered at once. So if I want to send a group of soldiers in the advance, I could do it without having to click on every one and ordering it move. [This message has been edited by kai (edited 10-30-99).] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest PeterNZ Posted October 31, 1999 Share Posted October 31, 1999 I can answer one or two of those questions, save someone else doing it. YES to airstrikes, and going by the 'game in progress' report (about turn 15? from the Combat Misison link) they are very deadly! The allies in that one had a p47 zoom in and bomb the hell outa a cpl of armored units, poor germans. NO to more theaters, just the western front till the sequels come out PeterNZ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kingtiger Posted October 31, 1999 Share Posted October 31, 1999 Kai, Hi. You are one of a few to request the click and drag for multi-select of units. I think this is not really all that necessary for this game. Why, you ask? 1) I typically see that option in real-time strategy games. I know it is required for those types of games, like Starcraft ot Age of Wonders. 2) By not having this feature, it requires the user to do a couple things. First, by default it requires you to check the status of the unit. I select units by right-clicking by default because I am likely to need to modify it's movement and I would like to see whether it is targeted or whether it is targeting anything else. Imagine multi-selecting and seeing 15-20 or more LOS markers (colored lines between opposition and selected unit). Once I select a unit by right-clicking, the first thing I look at is kills. Did i miss anything. It forces me to check the progress of the particular unit, i.e., how much further to the specific spot does it have to go. I know, in some RTS games a marker is always at the desired location. 3) This forces the user (you and I) to be precise. In the end it will result in better coordinated attacks and significantly better unit placement. Hope this helps. Sincerely, Richard Kalajian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kai Posted November 1, 1999 Author Share Posted November 1, 1999 I must say that few of the people that suggested this option are correct. when playing the scenario, I would like to select a group of troops and send them through the trees. I like to conserve energy and clicking on each and every unit and ordering it to move ahead is very annoying. I play with the paths turned on anyway so I see in the planning turn where each unit has to go, if I want to modify their route I can click on the unit. Or if there was a way to link few units to a platoon commander so that we could move a group of soldiers just by clicking on the commander and issuing him orders. I am all for precision and in time of combat units can be ordered one by one, but if situation requires to move a large number of units over a distance, it would be just more convenient to be able to do it faster. Hope this explains the usefulness of click & drag. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kingtiger Posted November 1, 1999 Share Posted November 1, 1999 Kai, Hi. I still wish it weren't being considered, but Steve or Charles from BTS said, it's on the list. Or maybe it was Fionn. In case you don't know who Fionn is, he is the one that lost most of his forces due to artillery and airpower against a fellow named MOON. Down with multi-select for units! Richard Kalajian ---*** As mentioned below by BTS, it's a lot of work and my concern is this, "If I select a formation and part of that formaion bumps into a house, do they go in? What about a forest? What happens if one of the five units enters a house and gets resistance. Does the rest of the squad help? Does the squad continue and leave a chunk of the formation behind? What happens if I am just moving the masses across open field and would like to use this tool to make my plotting easier and make sure to keep the units together, and one of the 5 units is supressed, do the other four stop? Do they stop and hide (logical)? In any case, it is a nice tool for the masses. It is something I am sure to use. I can definitely do without it. I would hate to have to code this sucker. ***--- [This message has been edited by kingtiger (edited 11-01-99).] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Big Time Software Posted November 1, 1999 Share Posted November 1, 1999 Hi Kai, What we would *like* to add is a special order for the HQ unit to do a group move. This is not the RTS kind of thing that KingTiger fears, however. Such a feature would truly suck, so we are very much in agreement with KT The way it would work is plot all attachments in relation to the HQ's orders. So you could position 3 squads in a line and the HQ behind the middle one. One set of orders from the Platoon HQ would then keep the rough orientation based around the HQ's orders. Unfortunately, this is a lot of work and most likely will not make it in for version 1.0. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kai Posted November 1, 1999 Author Share Posted November 1, 1999 That's exactly what I had in mind. That's why I said "if there was a way to link few units to a platoon commander so that we could move a group of soldiers just by clicking on the commander and issuing him orders." Say we could right click on a ss troop and link it to the commander. There already is a line from a unit to a commander, now we could just have them link up to form a team. So we could link up few units to a commander and form a battle squad where the entire squad could be moved just by issuing an order to the commander. Ability to form a some formation so they all move in sync with the commander behind and perhaps few choices as- form a line, wedge, dome, scatter.. I think all it takes is just few more options when right clicking on a unit. However, I must express some dissatisfaction with the demo. My tiger was standing on a road and when the tank destroyers came through reinforcments one of them came into view of the tiger. I saw the two exchange a serious of shots. The tiger (not moving, buttoned, just standing still, facing the hellcat) shot all 4 rounds way up above the hellcat! while all 4 rounds from hellcat hit the tiger. First 3 hit and shell broke up, the 4th penetrated front hull and boom goes the tiger. Can you imagine the foam in my mouth when I saw shot after shot from the tiger flying way up above the hellcat? I really hope this was some freak accident in calculations for shell projectory and I saved the game few turns before so I'll go back and replay the turn I hope this will be unacceptable in the future version. I don't want to get into my ww2 tank warfare history but the superior targetting of the tiger with it's vetaran crew who shot 4 rounds and missed all of them is outmost ridiculous. Tiger's could engage and knock out allied tanks from some 2k, which was out of range for allied tanks. I hope the team will tweak this up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kingtiger Posted November 1, 1999 Share Posted November 1, 1999 Kai, No whimpering. I fealt the same way when my Tiger and a Stug were knocked out immediately by the M18 kittens. But, then (2 seconds later - I laughed, kinda like a mad-man). It was awesome. Herr Oberst got smoked as well. You are not alone. Can you say HVAP? High Velocity Armor Piercing ammunition used by Hellcat. Very effective. It is always easier to shoot down at a target then to shoot up at one. Sincerely, Richard Kalajian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnnymo Posted November 1, 1999 Share Posted November 1, 1999 Don't worry, Kai. I've played Last Defense twice as the Americans, and both times lost ALL THREE Hellcats on the turn they entered. Reading these posts about how amazing these TDs are is really getting to me... BTW, is BTS going to reimburse us for all the "sick-time" we use to stay home and play this game? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moon Posted November 1, 1999 Share Posted November 1, 1999 Beautiful! It's so important, I'll say it once more: It is always easier to shoot down at a target then to shoot up at one. You WILL see this in Combat Mission with the 3D environment! Just watch as the round - which barely missed- sails on and on and lands on the other side of the hill, whereas the round coming from above misses and lands a few feet behind the target! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harold Jones Posted November 1, 1999 Share Posted November 1, 1999 Johnnymo, Don't try to sit there and go head to head with the German armor. When the M-18s arrive have them target the Germans and then give them Fast movement orders off the top of that bald hill. There are some pretty nice positions close by. If you are lucky you kill one or two enemy with your opening shots and by the time the return fire comes you are well on your way to a safe spot. Last time I played I killed the STUGs and the Tiger for the loss of one M-18 (I wasn't as hull down as I thought) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fionn Posted November 1, 1999 Share Posted November 1, 1999 Kai, It's war, **** happens. Maybe 9 times out of ten that Tiger would smoke those Hellcats but you found the 1 time in 10 it didn't./ It doesn't mean there's any problem with the game. You were just unlucky. ------------------ ___________ Fionn Kelly Manager of Historical Research, The Gamers Net - Gaming for Gamers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnnymo Posted November 2, 1999 Share Posted November 2, 1999 Harold, thanks for the tip. I should have prefaced my story above with something like "I left my Hellcats sitting in the open..." but I didn't want to seem like an idiot. Too late now, you had to go and expose me. Looks like I need to break out of ASL mode. My assumption was that I'd be a lot more likely to hit his armor since I had the jump on him and wasn't moving. Of course, I did hit his Tiger a couple times, but there sure were a lot of shattered shell fragments bouncing off. Die and learn, I guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Hoerter Posted November 2, 1999 Share Posted November 2, 1999 Regarding the group move comment. I can see a bit of use for this one. Drop a move for your infantry platoon to get the blue lines about where you want them, then tinker a bit for fine control. A bit of a time saver. Justin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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