Some questions ...

[Melnibone]

Q. Are there on map mortars?

[Moon]

No mortars. They have been in the earlier builds but have been removed. All arty including mortars is now simulated as being off-map for the time being.

Martin

[Arkel]

Originally posted by Moon:

No mortars. They have been in the earlier builds but have been removed. All arty including mortars is now simulated as being off-map for the time being.

Martin

Ok, but will arty fire in salvo's? Like for example 6 salvo's of 10 shells, or will you be able to fire it's ammo, let's say 60 rounds?

Any why did you remove the mortars? Even CC had 120mm mortars

[FI_Macca]

Thx for the answers;)

I can't wait:)

Regards

Mac

[John Kettler]

Rollstoy,

Having played BiA for the X-box just the other night, I can tell you that it is, in many ways, a maddening gaming experience. A pebble seems to have more brains than my men do, as when I try to line them up behind a stone wall. Half seem to think being on the enemy's side of the wall is a great idea! Basic combat orientation seems almost nightmarish (much of the time, playing head to head, neither of us knew what he was doing, and how many ill protected codebooks can there be? How about some real infantry missions?) It seems very difficult to find and engage the enemy, practically impossible to kill the foe, and all too easy to die. The visuals are great (should be, given the detailed ground truth workup done), but some routine items, such as hand grenades, even for the Germans, are all but nonexistent. The German base of fire fireteam seems to have no MG-42, completely hamstringing the German squad, which is built around the all-important LMG. This becomes glaringly apparent when mostly Kar98K equipped Landser encounter Americans armed with

Tommy guns, M1 carbines and M1s. The volume of fire is annihilating. Holy unholy slaughter, Batman!

BiA, at least in head-to-head, is a cool game rich in potential, but it fails time and again at key

aspects of what it's modeling. I've watched my friend play the campaign game, where the tactical situation is at least reasonable, but the idiot soldier syndrome and other aspects, including the common to both head-to-head and campaign game inability of elite troops to even clamber over a three foot stone wall or go prone, really interfere with playing and enjoying the game.

From what I've seen so far of ToW, it's already light years ahead.

Moon,

Considering the engagement ranges we're talking about, the removal of mortars strikes me as being more than a bit odd, especially since light ones

would have to be well forward (on the map) in order to do much good. Any idea why they were pulled?

Regards,

John Kettler

[RabidRabbit]

Any why did you remove the mortars? Even CC had 120mm mortars

Yes, good question. Why would mortars be taken off of the battlefield?

[John Kettler]

Megakill,

If real trenches, as opposed to, say, antitank ditches, are in the game, then please put parapets on them and fire steps in them, so that they can be used for protected movement and be fought from.

Regards,

John Kettler

[ August 01, 2006, 07:16 PM: Message edited by: John Kettler ]

[RMC]

And put in grenade sumps too.

[Gpig]

... and a nice little shelf for my cup-o-joe.

[hellfish]

If there isn't a little place for the latrine in the trenches I'm totally not buying the game. And I wanna see turds floating, dammit!

[John Kettler]

Har! Har! I've played games which had trenches sans fire steps. They tend to be easy to get into, hard to get out of, and great places to die. All I'm asking for is what should be there in the first place in a true fighting trench. And yes, I know grenade sumps should be modeled, too, but that might be more than the engine can handle.

Regards,

John Kettler

[ August 02, 2006, 05:42 AM: Message edited by: John Kettler ]

[Lt Bull]

2. Does the game feature close combat?

Originally posted by Megakill:

2. no hand for now - to hand - combat - only firearms and grenades, otherwise we would spend another year making all animations (you can see soldiers relading guns, taking grenades, etc, etc)

This is interesting. So what will we expect opposing soliders to do once they find themselves in the same area/foxhole,trench etc? Just stand around shooting at each other at point blank range while reloading their weapon? Hope they don't throw any grenades. . What happens if they are all out of ammo? I could say surrender but what if their guys outnumber the enemy?

Lt Bull

[Megakill]

Actually good question. Will try to play a few infantry heavy missions and force such situations.

From what I saw before a typical attack on the trench will be lead by a lot of grenades, then firefight at point blank range and the few survivors would try to flee due to loss of morale, usually only to be shot in the back...

[Thomm]

John Kettler,

I am afraid you do not do BiA justice. I have both BiA games, and - at least in single player mode - the difficulties you describe occur maybe once in every 25 movement orders, and can be corrected quite readily if you observe where your squad is going and adjust their waypoint slightly if necessary.

But in general, I find the way those guys move and use terrain amazing, especially because it is most likely the result of clever terrain encoding, something that can IMHO be easily transferred to a RTS game.

Essentially, even if you are not content with BiA, you have to admit that it is a benchmark in many ways! One might say that OFP is more open, but the AI in BiA is much better at what it is supposed to do, namely prevent being flanked!

In the same way, the much-"discussed" EYSA is the current reference for 1:1 modelling of WW2 infantry in a RTS game. Love it or hate it, it still is at the moment, and there is much to learn from its successes and mistakes.

Same with BiA, in my opinion!

Best regards,

Thomm

[Moon]

From my experience when infantry gets so close as to allow for hand to hand combat, things are over real quick one way or another. You won't see any hand to hand combat animations but after a few point blank shots with rifles or pistols, one side either routs or is dead within a very short time.

The only reference from EYSA is how not to do it if you ask me, Rollstoy. TOW is on a different planet than that game.

I agree with Rollstoy on BiA though - I found the AI pretty good. However, of course this is mainly due to the heavily scripted and pre-designed maps and generally limited course of action (granted, not to one but usually to 2 or 3 different solutions). And it cannot be easily transferred to a RTS game, at least not TOW. Compared to BiA, TOW's maps and engagement ranges are about 1 gazillion times bigger, and from that alone you have a lot more possibilities and options to do things than in an FPS game.

Martin

[Markus86]

On the screenshots (for example: http://www.battlefront.com/products/tow/screenshots/index_14.html#55 ) is in the GUI a backpack graphic, with the description "Ground". What does this mean? I hope that this is not a stupid question, and I'm the only one who doesn't understand this.

[Megakill]

Originally posted by Markus86:

On the screenshots (for example: http://www.battlefront.com/products/tow/screenshots/index_14.html#55 ) is in the GUI a backpack graphic, with the description "Ground". What does this mean? I hope that this is not a stupid question, and I'm the only one who doesn't understand this.

You can order soldier to pick up a weapon lying on the ground (from killed enemy for example, or your comrade).

[Thomm]

Originally posted by Moon:

The only reference from EYSA is how not to do it if you ask me, Rollstoy. TOW is on a different planet than that game.

Well, to be objective I think one has to compare EYSA to the gazillion of braindead WW2-themed RTS games out there, with their mega-tons of wasted artwork and graphic FX. Or, perhaps, with CC, a comparison where EYSA fairs rather well in some respects (no crawl of death, for example).

The bottom line is that if I extrapolate the fun that I had with EYSA and its great 1:1 atmosphere and RTS pace to what ToW is bringing to the table, I predict that I shall be a very happy customer!!

Best regards,

Thomm

[John Kettler]

Rollstoy and Moon,

The problem I have with BiA and other combat games is that there seems to be a department of perverse design at each firm, a unit which prides itself on taking out the very things, in many cases well proven realistic features, which will really make the game sing and instead do things to drive players mad.

Why is it, for example, that in the first Star Wars: Battlefront I could go prone, yet years later, in a bunch of RTS and FPS games, I can neither go prone nor jump? BiA has lots of great features and wonderful visuals (gliders landing in the middle of a firefight), but it's as though someone tried to sabotage the project by removing what ought to be common features for a game of this type. Elite forces that can't cross a low wall? Come on! Similarly, the Ghost Recon game set in Mexico City has a sniper weapon which has two modes: not enough magnification, so you can't see to shoot effectively, and way too much, so you completely lose situational awareness. Last I checked, this problem was solved back in the Vietnam War. Anyone ever heard of zoom, or at least a rational intermediate setting? You're supposed to be able to hold your breath for sight stabilization in this Ghost Recon game by expending stamina, but neither my friend nor I can figure out how to do this on a vanilla X-

Box. And did you know that no one seems to know what a bipod is or even how to rest the weapon on a solid, stable object?

Paradoxically, the sight on the M16 type weapon is better for most combat. We get a UAV for recon, but no grenade launcher, plus some genius decided that putting tactical feeds smack in the center of the player's FOV was a good idea. Wish I could make him try to fight while blinded by one of those after another in mid firefight!

In Halo 2, which I love playing, especially cooperatively as the Warthog gunner with my friend driving, the Covenant pulse rifle has magnification, a feature largely obviated by the complete absence of even an aiming dot, let alone crosshairs. The Covenant carbine does, though.

The aged Star Wars: Battlefront has better sniper rifle treatment than either of these more modern games. And don't get me started on the glacial traverse and movement rates when in magnified mode

in nearly every/every such game I've played. Is this a processor throughput issue or simply lousy design, endlessly iterated?

I don't know what EYSA is and have never played OFP in any form, so can't comment on those, but I can about Black. It too is beset by the same idiotic defects, including super commandos who literally can't jump so much as a foot high, insane initial weapon allotments, etc. Metal Arms (the robot miner game) has better modeling of many functions than do a lot of high end FPS/RTS games. How sad is that!

Am thrilled to see that infantry can already low crawl in ToW and hope that the devs have paid careful attention to the seemingly endless great leaps backwards the various major game design houses keep coming up with to undo what progress has been made. It's a real shame when Homer Simpson can do in his games what elite commandos can't do in theirs!

Regards,

John Kettler

[ August 02, 2006, 06:27 AM: Message edited by: John Kettler ]

[Thomm]

JK: By all means, especially if you have a decent PC, get Operation Flashpoint!!

Best regards,

Thomm

[David Chapuis]

Originally posted by Megakill:

3. no coop for now, just death match up to 4 players

Coop is a very good idea for addon.

Please explain the difference between 4 player deathmatch and coop? Are you saying 4 humans playing at the same time, all against each other?

Germans, Russians, Orc & Elves?

[syaped]

Hope this hasn't been asked yet. Will you be able to order different units to all move at the same speed? It's so annoying in some games when you try a large offensive and the faster (and usually weaker) units speed ahead to be caught alone and destroyed.

[Megakill]

4 players can fight against each other at the same time (picking any army they want)

[Thomm]

The new AAR looks very promising!!

Question: If a gun crew was forced to abandon its gun, would it not be standard procedure to render the gun unoperative before leaving it to the enemy?!

Best regards,

Thomm

[Megakill]

Originally posted by Rollstoy:

The new AAR looks very promising!!

Question: If a gun crew was forced to abandon its gun, would it not be standard procedure to render the gun unoperative before leaving it to the enemy?!

Best regards,

Thomm

As far as I understood - they just ran away in panic...

In any case there is no such feature - as "automaticly damage your weapon when fleeing"