1.1.4 Release...

[ClaytoniousRex]

...is now available via Update. You should be prompted to update automatically the next time you run DropTeam.

Important: If you were not already up to version 1.1.0 and had customized controls then you need to go BACK to the default keyboard or default joystick controls and recustomize your control set with this release. If you don't do this then many new commands from the 1.1.0 release won't work for you.

Fixes in 1.1.4:

</font>

• New scenarios from Hub and Alfa-142</font>
• Fixed "getting stuck" as a passenger if the building your squad is inside of is destroyed (along with a couple of other variations on this theme)</font>
• Fixed client CTD</font>
• Fixed CTD on several scenarios when playing with Shaders option turned off</font>
• OBJ model loading and "CollisionModel" tags for mods</font>
• Fixed intermittent server crash</font>
• Performance optimizations</font>
• Improved bots' ability to use mortars</font>
• Pods no longer smoke and burn upon self destruct (less performance hit when dozens of dead pods are laying around)</font>
• Improve bots' avoidance of AA when dropping</font>
• Slightly reduced range of the Hermes automated gun</font>
• New unit - Bacchus (see its own forum topic)</font>
• Fixed campaign scenarios to use new turret types</font>
• Fixed dropship sounds</font>
• Mines can now only be deployed during the Deployment Phase and they can only be cleared by the Cutter - HE weapons do not clear mines</font>
• Reduced default number of dropships per team to 15 (used to be 40)</font>
• You can no longer extract via dropship if the team has run out of dropships</font>
• You can now extract via Deployment Zones (works like the opposite of dropping in them) - you can do this even if no dropships remain</font>
• Fixed bad LOS spotting of Shrike</font>
• Dropships will dump their cargo instead of getting stuck going back and forth when between obstacles (d'oh! trees! d'oh! edge of world! d'oh...)</font>
• You can now press the "special action" ('B' by default) key to order a dropship to deploy before it normally would have (only works when at low altitude)</font>
• Fixed target reticle incorrectly showing reload activity for objects other than the one you control</font>
• Target reticle now shows reload due to switching ammo types</font>
• Inverted dropships that collide with the ground are destroyed</font>

[mcoyote]

- Bot usage of mortars is now downright anti-social. Well done -- they are pretty potent and further motivate towards combined arms for point defense.

As in, I just did two Raid maps and the bot mortar popped my Apollos a few times on approach, even when I jinked a few times here and there.

- Having fun with the dropship manual release -- you see a spot as you're passing over that you like and want to drop on and down you go.

Next logical question, of course, is "manual control" for dropships -- hit a key on descent and get Viper-like control of the DS.

Granted, the Viper controls are ugly, but it would be cool to be able to change mid-course, just hover in reserve, or extract and drop elsewhere.

[Chilibird]

Awww, battle creek didn't make it in.

heh, prolly too late for the cut, even if it was being considered

Anyways, I'm updating now. I think I'll hop on for some good ol DT carnage for a bit. See if I can get my mic to work well in-game.

[ClaytoniousRex]

Ice, we would have gladly included Battle Creek, but didn't know it was finished. Until you explicitly say so, we just assume all scenarios are a work in progress. We'll roll it into the next one!

[Neutrino 123]

I've played a couple rounds with the new patch. However, it seems to crash at the very end of the one that comes after "Hide and Seek", and then resets back to "Hide and Seek".

[bboyle]

Originally posted by Neutrino 123:

I've played a couple rounds with the new patch. However, it seems to crash at the very end of the one that comes after "Hide and Seek", and then resets back to "Hide and Seek".

I'm having alot of crash problems too..especially with Hide and Seek.

[BigChiefWahoo]

Holy Bat Guano!

I logged into a game boasting the spiffy new 1.1.4 and what a ride! Mucho carnage. Lots of big, noisy booms. My poor infy squad never could quite get their bearings.

Well done!

Any thoughts about letting all the wrecked, smoking vehicles remain and pile up, instead of magically disappearing? I think it would add to the immersion of the game greatly.

BigChiefWahoo

[Chilibird]

I think that was something that was discussed, but was decided that the performance hit after a while would be just too great.

Same with the server crash problem.

I also had a problem where when manually setting the range, I would get noises other than the normal sounds. Stuff like the gun firing noise, burning chassis, the infantry 'owww' noise, ect. Jung said the same thing happened to him, but it went away on its own eventually.

[bjarmson]

What's with all the bot usage of mortars? They never seemed to use them, then BAM, literally. And how are they so ungodly accurate with them? I've had them hit me precisely on top several times, and even when I'm moving cross country at a good clip they seem to be able to place them with a fair amount of accuracy. Hey these are mortars! They're supposed to be fairly accurate versus nonmoving targets, but highly inaccurate versus moving ones. I don't mind the bots using them, but when I'm bested in a one on one between my Thor 120mm versus a bot Thor mortar and he wins (after I've scored 2, maybe 3 hits). That hardly seems realistic.

I appreciate all the upgrades, but since 1.1, every upgrade seems to be skewed toward something or other. 1.1.3 had the dropship problems that rendered it virtually unplayable at times and the introduction of Cobra AA missles that can kill dropships outside their shown range. Now mortars (!?!?) are becoming king of the battlefield. At times, I'd like to go back to the simplicity of 1.0. No infantry to muck about and act idiotic, no goofball dropships going turtle or dropping you from 100m up, no ungodly accurate mortars lobbing their shells precisely onto your turrets top. Perhaps the 1.2 upgrade should take all the changes and try to make them as playable as possible. The way it is now, every incremental upgrade seems to introduce some weird new twists that sacrifice playability in order to add more gadgets. Let's get this game really playable first, then begin to tinker with its microlevel.

Just my opinion, of course.

[poesel]

Hmm I don't feel like bjarmson. The bots having and using mortars makes it more interesting. Camping is surly a thing of the past. And bot mortars are not much of a threat: they aim very good but they don't hide. They drive or drop it in the middle of the action and then they are cannon fodder for every 20mm out there.

Its just that mortars never have played a big role before 1.1.4 because no human wanted to use them. We probably just have to get used to them.

One thing I have to critisize though: at the beginning of the scenario (without human intervention) you now have six bots sitting in Thor mortars instead of the Thor 120mm. Either thing is a bit stupid but the mortar version even more. Get the 20mm Paladin and drive right in, killem all - no chance for them to do anything.

It would be nice if the bots would use some variation in their setup. Currently it seems that they choose just the most valuable available vehicle that bots can drive.

Bacchus: with its current speed its hard to outrun the bot mortars even at full blast!

Without the Hermes you are simply cannon fodder for the artillery (and this - thinking about that fact and all the fuss and argument we had here - is quite ironic IMHO). A bit more agility is direly needed.

But apart from that a good addition to the game.

The server seems to crash always after the second map.

One piece of information: you have to be commander to disallow the bots to drop. BUT: disallowing to drop also stops them from using the reenforcment zones which is a pity. Another button for the zones would be nice.

I also don't feel very comfortable about the need to be commander. There has been a thread long ago but I don't think we came to a conclusion. As of now noone really needed the commander (I never experienced a vote). Maybe we should start that discussion again (in another thread )

[konstantine]

Bot uber-ness has bothered me too. For example, attacking bots drop instantly when an objective game begins and at all times right after they die, while humans wait for the pick list, scroll through the pick list, choose a unit and wait for the drop-ship. Bots aim better in general (as noted above).

But I thought back to IL-2 and how hard it was to keep up with a bot squadron in that game. That pissed me off, but my conclusion then was that it is worth living with if it makes the overall gameplay better, and in my opinion it did then and the same applies to Drop Team.

[bboyle]

Clay...lots of problems tonite...hard to get on and lots of crashes and hardly any normal game-ends..usually just a server disconnect at the expiration of time.

[ClaytoniousRex]

Just fixed the thing that was making Delta Pavonis go down at the ends of those games.

[Jack Carr]

Originally posted by bjarmson:

...I appreciate all the upgrades, but since 1.1, every upgrade seems to be skewed toward something or other. 1.1.3 had the dropship problems that rendered it virtually unplayable at times and the introduction of Cobra AA missles that can kill dropships outside their shown range. Now mortars (!?!?) are becoming king of the battlefield. At times, I'd like to go back to the simplicity of 1.0. No infantry to muck about and act idiotic, no goofball dropships going turtle or dropping you from 100m up, no ungodly accurate mortars lobbing their shells precisely onto your turrets top. Perhaps the 1.2 upgrade should take all the changes and try to make them as playable as possible. The way it is now, every incremental upgrade seems to introduce some weird new twists that sacrifice playability in order to add more gadgets. Let's get this game really playable first, then begin to tinker with its microlevel.

Just my opinion, of course.

I agree.

I wanted to add a few more thoughts. I'll start with the one that's been bothering me the most. What's the scoop with objective games? The defending team starts out with 1000 points and the attacking team 0. Five minutes into the game, the scores reverse and it seems that nothing the defenders do can change it. I have played these games as the defender and seen the objective area, usually some type of base, change hands several times, but every time the original defending team occupies the area with multiple units and no attackers are in site or even near the objective, the defender's score never seems to increase. Or if it does, it changes so slowly that it makes little difference. I really don't understand what it takes to win this type of a game as the defender. It's gotten to the point where every time I log on and find that the game being played is an objective, I switch sides to play as an attacker so I don't get inevitably whooped. This may sound petty, but it keeps me sane. I play this game to win and when I storm into a base, take out two or three paladins and clear the area and then have three friendly vehicles show up with no enemy in sight and the score still doesn't move in my teams direction, I give up! What's left to do?

Also, at this point the game has become so complex with all of the additions that reading the original manual that came with it is near pointless.

One more thing. Due to the deadlier environment, cobra missiles that prevent any dropping, etc., I think the average survivability time has been reduced to less than two minutes and that's if you can even make it onto the battlefield. The game is lending itself more and more to CTF rather than objective/territory. I miss CTF games.

[ClaytoniousRex]

hard to get on and lots of crashes and hardly any normal game-ends..usually just a server disconnect at the expiration of time.

I think the server disconnect should be OK now, but are you also getting client-side crashes (crash to desktop with error dialog)? If so, please send a crash dump to me (if the Send button on the error dialog isn't working). If you don't know what I mean then say so here and I'll post instructions. Thanks!

[bjarmson]

Another game, another bot Thor mortar hits my Thor 120mm directly on top of my turret while I'm moving at full speed. This is the second game in a row where this has happened. If this nonsense happens again, I'll just quit playing till the next upgrade when mortars lose their godlike targeting ability and are unable to make direct-hits on moving targets. We go from one unplayable situation, the living-dead dropships, to mortars that have the ability to tell where their target will be a second or two in future. Hey Clay, mortars are only accurate against non-moving targets. They fire high arching shots, the chances of hitting the turret of a MBT at full speed is astronomically small. Yet your mortar units manage to do it every game with their temporal gunsights. I like that the bots seem to use them, it adds a new dimension to the game, but please, mortars do not have the accuracy to hit moving MBTs. As a defensive unit they make sense. However, bots use them as front line offensive units because they have the ability to hit moving vehicles with them.

And poesel71 have you actually tried that tactic against bots yet? It might work if you're playing all humans against bots, given the speed of the Paladins, don't think I'd bet on it though. Try it with six Thor 120mm and see if that works. Out of about 4-5 battles against a bot Thor mortar, in a Thor 120mm, I've lost two of them, by mortar turret hits on moving vehicles. This is no longer in the realm of luck.

I was about to give up playing 1.1.3 because the living-dead dropship thing was often leaving me several units short for long periods of the game, or destroying unit after unit during drops. Then 1.1.4 came out with these problems mostly remedied (although in a Dead Gulch game, I watched dropship after dropship drop its unit into the gulch, ouch that hurts). But, in addition to this, now the bots have the ability to hit, and kill, heavily armored moving vehicles with mortar rounds (and I'm only playing with bot accurracy set at about 3.25 out of 4, would they hit me every shot if I set it at 4?). Let's return some realism to this game.

Time to take a breath here and decide if it is more important to make this game more playable or only something to tweak once every week or two without checking to see if it works well. I'm beginning to wonder if I'm paying for the priviledge of being a beta tester. Also it's time to put out an upgraded manual, the old one, such as it is, is badly obsolete (downloadable is fine). Since 1.1 introduced infantry, things seem to be getting weirder and wackier with every update. Please return this game to a realistic playable state, then back off for a while to find out how things are working.

[poesel]

No I didn't try it with a 120mm Thor. As I said I used a Paladin. And against a moving Paladin the only artillery unit with some chance to survive is the Hurricane. The rest: drive close to them and shoot at leisure.

The mortars give the survivability of a Thor some dent (on the turret especially ) and I agree with you that the bots shouldn't be that accurate. If the mortars can calculate your movement ahead, why don't we have that feature for the 120mm then?

That wouldn't be fun gameplay wise and I doubt its a big problem for Clay to make the bots shoot worse.

[BigChiefWahoo]

You guys!

Shame on you. The more moving parts to this game the more immersive, and therefore the more fun. I *love* all the noisy, loud, thunderous, awe inspiting, earth shattering and ceaseless barrage of artillery. I also love the infy. I further love the swooping dropships and the endless drop rain of drop pods. Every update just makes this game better! "Cry Havoc, etc etc"

Keep up the good work.

As for the bot accuracy, I'm all for it. The deadlier the bots the better. If one doesn't like the default bots on the scene during the delpoyment phase, I've found that its pretty easy to assign whatever vehicles I'd like them in prior to commencement of the festivities.

And perfomance hit or no, I'd still like to see all the wreckage and smoke pile up. Mix in some foul weather, maybe some arty cover from your bots, and you've got some real good cover to for a drop pod rush.

Muy Bannana.

[bboyle]

Originally posted by ClaytoniousRex:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />hard to get on and lots of crashes and hardly any normal game-ends..usually just a server disconnect at the expiration of time.

I think the server disconnect should be OK now, but are you also getting client-side crashes (crash to desktop with error dialog)? If so, please send a crash dump to me (if the Send button on the error dialog isn't working). If you don't know what I mean then say so here and I'll post instructions. Thanks! </font>

[Jack Carr]

Originally posted by bboyle:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by ClaytoniousRex:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />hard to get on and lots of crashes and hardly any normal game-ends..usually just a server disconnect at the expiration of time.

I think the server disconnect should be OK now, but are you also getting client-side crashes (crash to desktop with error dialog)? If so, please send a crash dump to me (if the Send button on the error dialog isn't working). If you don't know what I mean then say so here and I'll post instructions. Thanks! </font>

[Neutrino 123]

The servers are still highly unstable, though there doesn't seem to be a set time it crashes as far as I know...

[ClaytoniousRex]

It's at the end of some scenarios, when time runs out. I just saw Delta Pavonis go down at the end of a game of Dead Gulch and am looking at it now.

[bboyle]

Originally posted by ClaytoniousRex:

It's at the end of some scenarios, when time runs out. I just saw Delta Pavonis go down at the end of a game of Dead Gulch and am looking at it now.

Me experience yesterday was the I got 'server no responding' in about 4 out of 5 games right at the end.

[Jalinth]

Minor bug here. I dropped a Squad of infantry on top of one of the REALLY tall buildings on a custom map (ResidentialTower.physicalobjectgroup). The pod landed on top of the building and just sat there, doing nothing.

Also I'm still finding that Infantry seem to be entering idspispopd at random times while climbing on buildings, and so falling through them.