Some questions ...

[Moon]

Rollstoy, yeah they would do that given enough time, but these guys ran for the heck of it with my guys on their heels.

Martin

[Salkin]

Is it possible to set difficulty level without nerfing realism?

What I mean is can we play the missions with more or less enemy forces in them, thus making the missions easier/harder?

//Salkin

[Markus86]

I have another multiplayer question. The possibillity, to improve skills, won't have any real effect in Multiplayer mode.

Will it be possible to start a match with different skilled units? For example, do I have the choice to pick the infantry squad "conscripts" for the cost of 30 points or a normal/elite squad for 50/80 points?

[mike57]

Hi everyone,

been playing CM 1 2 3 for a long time. I will buy TOW but, sorry, am dissapointed that no on map mortars or movement in and out of buildings. Going to be strange deploying no forces whatsoever in buildings. As an ex-soldier, [yes I know, boring], having a line of sight appreciation and field of fire from a second floor position often became essentiall. For artillery spotters in CM [as in real life]. Of course an obvious spot for enemy to shoot at, but by then the damage the spotter had help inflict was often already done. I look forward to the day when both these ommissions are added. They obviously really add to the game, especially infantry strong scenarios. Would like to add that when TOW comes out [and MTWar 2], I may well retire from public life and live in my front room with take away pizzas and a regular supply of liquid canned refreshment!

[Thomm]

Naah, I think it would be boring if ToW became the "Wargame to end all Wargames"!

Better leave some stuff out for the competition, or a sequel!

Best regards,

Thomm

PS: Still no reports of flamethrowers, yet

[hellfish]

Will the demo have multiplayer capability? I just happen to play various games every night with three other guys and this would be a good way of getting them sucked in...

[Arkel]

I was looking at russian site, and it listed all the guns for germany, but i was missing one... the dreaded 88, the Pak 43 88m is listed, but not the 88 AA gun which was often used in a AT role, it would be such a shame if this icon wasn't in the game

[syaped]

I also noticed there is no FG-42. My favorite rifle

[Markus86]

but not the 88 AA gun which was often used in a AT role,

I noticed this too. I'm not the best war historian but wasn't the 88 mm AA Flak, mainly used against soviet tanks (KV-1).

I think I read this a several times, that sometimes the german advance was stopped because of heavy tanks and they had to wait until 88mm AA Flak cannons were available.

But I wouldn't bet more than 5 bucks on my knowledge.

[Arkel]

Bump, any awnser from the devs/mods?

[Megakill]

this gun is present in the game, i think we even put online a video with all animations for this gun some time ago, as it requires a huge crew, smth like 6 or 8 people

let me double check with the guys

[1Cowboy8]

Oh....my....God, just happened across the discussion on the WWIIOL forums and saw this game mentioned. The game looks like a winner guys, I hope it does real good for you.

UUgh....I see the Grog Trolls descended quickly here. Lord do they irritate me. Someone posted on Waterloo, that the whole battle revolved around three buildings. Of course they failed to say that 99.999% of the actual battle occurred in the surrounding fields...not the buildings. Hard to get several thousand troops and field guns in such a small structure.

Sadly they are misinterpreting houses as places of real battle. A farmhouse is only good to get out of the rain, fix a cup o' Joe, and get someone on the roof with binoculars IF....and only IF its higher than the trees and hills, which it rarely is. Otherwise its an artillery magnet and a good place to get killed. I would much rather be holding Hill 272 in some bushes, with an easy backslope retreat from artillery.

Anyhoo, I am brand new here and of course my first post I looked at was the same "know-it-alls" that threaten "I wont buy this if X special feature isn't in it". Step off you Bozos and let the men work.

Matt, Moon, Mega - Thanks for being so informative and courteous here. Your doing great. Hope you are still that way in December and not grouchy old men by then

[Sigrun]

After spending a good hour reading this thread I thought I'd stick my two-cents' worth in. :eek:

Firstly, as somebody who has first-hand experience of combat, I'd like to mention that rural houses aren't the most popular places to be in a fight. They're fine against rifle fire, and even LMGs, but once somebody brings up an HMG, or a tank with a cannon (anything from 20mm upwards), it's out the back door PDJ.

Houses are for sleeping in, or hiding, or spotting/observing from (rural).

Having said all that, soldiers do use them, for a variety of combat purposes, and they should be useable in ToW.

And the solution, to me, seems pretty obvious (and has been touched upon earlier in this thread).

Can we see inside the tanks in this game? Would we expect to? So why do we expect to be able to see inside the houses? If we imagine our real self to be a commanding officer, looking down upon the battlefield from a very high hill, why would we expect to see semi-transparent houses and flashy camera-angles?

Indeed. So make the buildings like tanks (immoblle ones of course). No transparency, no 'special privilages', just another crewable object (and clickable like one). If the enemy rush one, and get inside, the fighting inside is invisible. And so on. If all the kerfuffle is about "presentation" and suchlike, do away with it. Have an occupied house get a little neon dot on it's roof, it doesn't need to be transparent anymore than a tank needs to be so.

That's the building issue solved in my opinion. Multi-floored? Let the AI deal with soldier placement by floor/window etc, I don't figure that would be particularly hard.

[Arkel]

Originally posted by Sigrun:

After spending a good hour reading this thread I thought I'd stick my two-cents' worth in. :eek:

Firstly, as somebody who has first-hand experience of combat, I'd like to mention that rural houses aren't the most popular places to be in a fight. They're fine against rifle fire, and even LMGs, but once somebody brings up an HMG, or a tank with a cannon (anything from 20mm upwards), it's out the back door PDJ.

Houses are for sleeping in, or hiding, or spotting/observing from (rural).

Having said all that, soldiers do use them, for a variety of combat purposes, and they should be useable in ToW.

And the solution, to me, seems pretty obvious (and has been touched upon earlier in this thread).

Can we see inside the tanks in this game? Would we expect to? So why do we expect to be able to see inside the houses? If we imagine our real self to be a commanding officer, looking down upon the battlefield from a very high hill, why would we expect to see semi-transparent houses and flashy camera-angles?

Indeed. So make the buildings like tanks (immoblle ones of course). No transparency, no 'special privilages', just another crewable object (and clickable like one). If the enemy rush one, and get inside, the fighting inside is invisible. And so on. If all the kerfuffle is about "presentation" and suchlike, do away with it. Have an occupied house get a little neon dot on it's roof, it doesn't need to be transparent anymore than a tank needs to be so.

That's the building issue solved in my opinion. Multi-floored? Let the AI deal with soldier placement by floor/window etc, I don't figure that would be particularly hard.

Exactly, just like the way any RTS handles it, like RA2, where you just see some guns sticking out the windows and some sandbags, or this new game Company of Heroes, where if you click soldiers into buildings you will see them enter using the door and then appear at the windows.

Infantry can just 'mount' the buildings + maybe a button to select the side(s) they should try to defend/look out of.

[Sigrun]

Originally posted by Arkel:

Infantry can just 'mount' the buildings + maybe a button to select the side(s) they should try to defend/look out of.

Quite. Give houses their own right-click menu (or whatever ToW's version of that is), with house-type commands available thereby.

I don't quite understand what this transparent house hang-up is (the one the developers appear to have). Sure, if we were talking about a city map it would have some relevance, and that would require a different solution, but on rural maps, where houses are isolated/seperate entities (as opposed to contiguous mass) there is no reason not to treat them as simply another solid crewed object.

For my solution to city maps, email me with a large retainer fee.

[M Hofbauer]

Originally posted by Sigrun:

So make the buildings like tanks (immoblle ones of course). No transparency, no 'special privilages', just another crewable object (and clickable like one). If the enemy rush one, and get inside, the fighting inside is invisible. And so on. If all the kerfuffle is about "presentation" and suchlike, do away with it. Have an occupied house get a little neon dot on it's roof, it doesn't need to be transparent anymore than a tank needs to be so.

That's the building issue solved in my opinion. Multi-floored? Let the AI deal with soldier placement by floor/window etc, I don't figure that would be particularly hard.

interesting.

noteworthy idea.

commendable thinking.

[RMC]

That is an interesting idea re: "crewing" buildings. A context menu to select what floor you want to occupy ala CM? How do you limit the squad firepower? Does the player select a covered arc for the squad to cover?

[Sigrun]

Originally posted by RMC:

That is an interesting idea re: "crewing" buildings. A context menu to select what floor you want to occupy ala CM? How do you limit the squad firepower? Does the player select a covered arc for the squad to cover?

Let the AI deal with it, in the exact same way the crew of a tank deals with it.

A house is similar to a tank in function...each window is the same as a tank's vision-slot or periscope. A tank has three guns, one main cannon and two MG's (typically), so I guess that would allow three mannable windows in a house? I'm thinking about ease of coding here, where a house is quite literally made to be a static tank. Probably more windows could be made mannable (like adding extra MGs to a tank?).

Maybe a simple AI-algorithm for which floors get occupied?

And instead of a dot on the roof of the house, have a small number, to indicate how many of your men are in there.

[junk2drive]

Maybe they already tried all of these building suggestions and it didn't work well.

[Sigrun]

Originally posted by junk2drive:

Maybe they already tried all of these building suggestions and it didn't work well.

Maybe. And maybe they got hung-up, for whatever reason, on thinking the buildings needed to be some kind of special cinematic experience, instead of just another battlefield asset.

[benpark]

I suggested this same thing about a week ago. They said it wasn't as easy as it sounded.

[Sirocco]

The reason given was gameplay balance. It doesn't appear to be an represenation issue. I'd be interested to hear what the gameplay problem was, if the developers are willing to share it.

[MorgTzu]

The devs do seem pretty familiar with the CC aproach that you are talking about and it was my first thought as well on day one when this was one of the first "hot button" topics...another dynamic though is what happens with opposing squads fighting inside a house. Since no CQB is modeled, how do they represent room to room fighting, I don't think as a quality issue that they want to abstract too much as it wouldn't mesh very well with the rest of the game. It is a bigger issue than just graphics, but I do agree that your ideas and the CC model are a darn good place to start. I also agree with some of the comments about real life, I was in operation Just Cause(Invasion of Panama as labeled by the talking heads) as an Airborne Sapper. There is no greater fear for an experienced grunt than having to go into an occupied house and clear rooms, on the other hand, there is great comfort if you know the enemy has no armor to make a strong position out of a solid building, but woods and other cover still feel more comfortable in rural or open terrain.

[ComradeP]

What will give an enemy gun the "captured" status after a mission? Will you have to have troops manning the guns at end, or is it sufficient to complete the mission/touch the guns.

What about tanks? They can apparantly get a new crew, but how would that work, as you probably don't get "extra" tank crews. Will you have to bail out a tank crew, split them up and split them up between tanks?

[howardb]

Someone might have asked this question but I can't remember reading about it anywhere. Can you order a tank to go hull down against a specific area/vehicle like you can in CM?