User Suggestions Topic (Facts/Specs/Etc.)

[Gcoat]

Tyrant,

- keep pre-set formation unless defined otherwise;

(esp. infantery line, wedge etc, etc.)

- shoot & scoot

- always turn to direction of enemy positions (unless hasty retreat)

- when 'on hold', keep it that way. Even when defining multiple waypoints for objects

- option for pre-defined firing/kill arcs/zones

- infantery should be able to use/enter buildings

- 'dynamic' i.e. real time in-game LOS tool

- more freedom in placing units before game starts (I know this is a mission designers' choice, but I just like to have a little more freedom to place my units)

edit:

1 more thing:

I don't like it when units appear suddenly near the border of the map without being able to comfortably zoom in and out to get an good overview. The zoom/view function should be extended beyond the borders of the map.

Likely mentioned by others, but I really miss them.

Mark

[slbm]

Well, I believe, just as some of you have already stated, that before adding new units, campaigns etc. it would be a good step to improve what already has been implemented. I like the game very much, but I believe that designers can introduce many solutions already tested in other games, like Close Combat series - and thus make the game more realistic on one hand and more user-friendly on the other. So for the sake of realism I'd like to have:

- infantry, which can hide in the grass, bushes etc. and is not instantly spotted by vehicles' crews;

- tank crews, which can button up/down, affecting own vulnerability and also spotting ability;

- AT guns which can hide behind bushes, sandbags or smth. Now you can't really hide a gun and wait for the tank to approach. Also gun emplacements, as seen on the third mission of the Polish campaign, don't seem to give much protection, if any.

- surrendering soldiers.

For the interface I'd love to have:

- Line of Sight/Line of Fire tool;

- Possibility to target entire enemy infantry team, not only particular soldiers. Of course targetting enemy individual can be useful, if you want to take out enemy sniper, machinegunner or leader, however if you are attacked by a wave of infantry, it turns out to be of no use.

- Enemy infantrymen should not be identified right away. Now if they are spotted, we instantly know who is a sniper, who is machinegunner and - which is the most surprising for me - who is a NCO. Presumably our soldiers have super-binoculars and they can see enemy insignia at 200 metres. Also vehicles should not be instantly identified (rather as a "light tank"/"tank destroyer" etc.; I doubt if a pinned down soldier sitting in a deep trench could tell a difference between Pz35 and Pz38 at 500 m.

- ability to maintain formation.

I would appreciate some of this features much more, than any new unit, campaign or mission.

Adam

[Markus86]

I like your ideas slbm. They sound really good and should be a good improvement. Let's hope that 1C implents them. They don't sound that unrealistic and should be possible.

Additional some new weapons and tanks would be nice (flamethrowers, magnetic anti tank mines, satchels, ...)

But the other things are more important.

[FinnN]

For me the most important omission is smoke and the biggest flaw is the 360 degree view that vehicles have. If the devs are looking at overhauling the LOS system I'd really like to see those two addressed as a minimum.

I'd like to see prone soldiers not getting up to reload and trenches not shown on the map until spotted. Also I'd like units to try to keep together more - right now officers and veterans will wander off on their unless ordered otherwise.

For bigger changes, when you give a move order to infantry units it'd be nice if the end points adjusted themselves slightly to take cover into account. I'd like to see infantry units able to fire over walls when standing up and (maybe) also jump over low features.

For mission designers I'd like an option to open up a dialog box for the player, the save the selection with the mission results on exit. This would allow for mission designers to create conditions for draws, ceasefires, partial victories, etc and use these for creating a dynamic campaign.

If buildings get added, then I'd like to see flamethrowers and some demolition weapons. If they get destroyed then I'd like to see occupiable rubble being generated, and for that matter the ability for infantry to take limited shelter in shell holes would be good too.

Finally I'd like whoever it is that's designing the official campaigns to look again at the basic philosophy. It seems to me that most if not all missions involve defending (or worse attacking) against huge odds. It's challenging, but it's challenging for the wrong reasons. I guess we're in the realms of fantasy now, but a dynamic campaign would be great!

Have fun

Finn

PS One thing that I'd like to see is more tidbits from the developers - lots of stuff gets mentioned on the Russian forums which never makes it here. How come?

[slbm]

Yes, I agree that smoke would be very useful. I also thought about something else. I used to play Close Combat series a lot and now I am naturally comparing both games. After couple of days of playing ToW I realized what is the largest difference in gameplay for me. Obviously I consider the possible improvements I have mentioned above important, but that's something else. In CC there was no possibility to save game in mid-battle. In ToW it is, and it is very useful. At first I wondered how I could play without it in CC? I think the answer is, that the opposing forces were more balanced. I mean, that in Close Combat loosing one more tank did not mean, that you're going to loose the entire battle. In ToW, at least in missions I've already played (but not only, judging by some entries on this forum), loosing one vehicle is often disastrous (as you have for instance 4 7TPs against some 20 German Pz IIs and Pz 38s). And then you have to reload the game, which makes it - in my opinion - less pleasant to play. And less realistic, as it seems more like some FPP shooter, where you save-and-load until finally you manage to kill that goddamned enemy tank or whatever it is, which makes trouble. More balance could help that, though it would also make game shorter (in terms of time needed to finish all the campaigns). Nevertheless I would prefer it that way.

Adam

Edit:

So basically I agree with FinnN - the philosophy of mission-creating should be changed. I also like your idea of dynamic campaign as you described it. But I don't know if it is possible within current game engine. Maybe only in ToW2? The good news however is, that there is a mission editor, and we should have many community-created missions, which will be more to our taste

[ July 23, 2007, 12:58 PM: Message edited by: slbm ]

[Gnasher]

"So basically I agree with FinnN - the philosophy of mission-creating should be changed. I also like your idea of dynamic campaign as you described it. But I don't know if it is possible within current game engine. Maybe only in ToW2? The good news however is, that there is a mission editor, and we should have many community-created missions, which will be more to our taste "

Its entirely possible to create unpredictable, replayable missions, it just takes alot of work to code & test such missions. Stay tuned I'm working on such a campaign right now, however its proving very time consuming to test to a point where I'd be happy to release a beta!

[slbm]

That's great news Gnasher I'm a bit ashamed, that I'm only complaining and not making such a mission myself, though now I'm pretty busy with apartment renovation and hardly have time to get to the computer, much less to play. When I'm finished with that though, I'll try to make some missions on my own

Adam

[StkNRdr]

Many, many great ideas posted so far.

All I can add:

A categorized determination of victory. Possibly: Major Victory, Minor Victory, Stalemate, Minor Defeat, Major Defeat.

This would be based on a new, more complex calculation of the final statistics of objectives held, forces remaining and casualties.

At the end of each battle there should be a complete statisical section with summaries of what you started with, lost, etc. that you can drill through to the individual soldiers. Maybe with the ability to save the stats to a separate file.

And what about final campaign statistics. All the info is there for each battle, just save it until the end of the campaign to see those totals.

Wouldn't it be interesting to see if an individual soldier makes it and what he accomplished?

[FinnN]

Originally posted by Gnasher:

"So basically I agree with FinnN - the philosophy of mission-creating should be changed. I also like your idea of dynamic campaign as you described it. But I don't know if it is possible within current game engine. Maybe only in ToW2? The good news however is, that there is a mission editor, and we should have many community-created missions, which will be more to our taste "

Its entirely possible to create unpredictable, replayable missions, it just takes alot of work to code & test such missions. Stay tuned I'm working on such a campaign right now, however its proving very time consuming to test to a point where I'd be happy to release a beta!

Yep, I was thinking more of future official campaigns.

On units stats, I think it'd be a nice starting point if you could see a man's medals in the info panel without clicking on him individually. This'd make them stand out a lot more, especially in the more tedious moments when you're searching for veteran units to replace the green ones you get initially during unit selection.

Have fun

Finn

[OSRS72]

I have played a lot of strategy games and I think this is one over the better ones.

But there is always room for improvement.

I don't how much time the creators of the game spends reading these forums. I hope they have the time for it, because in here lies the ideas to create the perfect game.

Here are my suggestions so far:

1: Line of sight must be improved

2: Line of sight / fire tool

3: More orders: Ambush, spread out, way point, don't fire until enemy is closer than x meters

4: Reactions based on experience

5: More aircraft possibilities

6: Better Fog of War so specific unit types (e.g. commanders, MG gunners) can't be id'ed so easily. This includes foxholes.

7: The ability to place sandbags, gunpits and foxholes.

8: Weather effects that also affects FoW

9: A quick battle generator: Choose Map, Year, Units, Mission, Weather and so on.

10: EVERY unit from any of the CM series should also be included in this game. I miss some of them. But I would rather have the first 9 things fixed before having more units.

[slbm]

Originally posted by OSRS72:

3: More orders: Ambush, spread out, way point, don't fire until enemy is closer than x meters

There already is a waypoint order, though I think only for vehicles. Simply shift+click.

Originally posted by OSRS72:

6: Better Fog of War so specific unit types (e.g. commanders, MG gunners) can't be id'ed so easily. This includes foxholes.

I totally agree, it is really unrealistic, that you can tell who's the commander and who has a sniper rifle at a distance of 500 metres or so (especially if the enemy is not firing). The same should apply for tanks (as I've already stated above): initially it should only be "light tank", "tank destroyer" etc. Not knowing if you are dealing with - for instance - long or short-barreled Pz IV would make the battle more realistic and exciting. Provided of course, that the missions would be more balanced and you could actually fight at long distances.

Adam

[Gnasher]

One more from me.....

Ability to order infantry to fix bayonets for close quarter hand to hand combat, it would be very cool to see your troops give the opposing force a tickle of the old cold steel & run them through. "Them fuzzywuzzies, they don't like it up 'em sir, they don't like it up 'em!"

This should probably also have an effect on the opposing forces moral as well.

[Gnasher]

" The ability to place sandbags, gunpits and foxholes. " & don't forget Camo nets as well!

I've been thinking about this....

This might be acheiveable by making these objects as some sort of deployable units, maybe with a purchase value. Sandbags 3, Camo nets 7 for example.

They could then be purchased & deployed along with the other units at mission start. As the 3d models already exist I suspect some of the more talented could add these as a mod & the level of which could be dictated by mission builders in the editor.

This would be an excellent feature for both SP & MP. I suspect that trenches might be a bit much, but a new foxhole object with similar properties to a trench but just able to take 2 men would work I reckon.