A Bend in the Road Ahead (I hope)

[c3k]

Gents,

This thread contains what I think are necessary tweaks to the CMx2 engine. Yes, I said "necessary", but by using "tweaks" I hope you understand that I mean them as improvements to a game engine which is very good.

Why then are do I deem them "necessary"? Because the longevity of CMx2 is dependent upon its PLAYABILITY. I think these tweaks increase the playability and do nothing to detract from the accomplishments that CMx2 already represents.

1) A scenario UI revision. The manner in which a player chooses his scenario needs to be reworked. The strength of this game system is the amazing number of scenarios which can be created and played. Yet, there is no way to organize them, tell which one's been played, review them, give feedback on them, delete savegames, etc. For a more in-depth look, I refer you to this: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=72661

and this: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=76751.

This single revision would be the greatest addition BF.C could make. (For the naysayers out there, I am in the midst of creating my own spreadsheet so I can track the items that've been listed in the threads I've just linked to.)

2) Air Support and Artillery Support UI tweaks. Both of these basically involve giving the player more INFORMATION about what is/will happen, not giving the player more CONTROL. Nothing I've suggested would change what happens, only the information flow to the player would contain usable information. For an in depth look, I refer you to these discussions: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=83949 and http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=83664 and http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=84222 and http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=83192

Again, these are changes to information, not control.

3) A weapons HOLD order, which would also include AFV weapons. Right now TARGET commands let any and all firepower loose. Your US squad will fire Javelin after Javelin until the TARGET line disappears. Their small arms will fire rapidly as well. However, there are instances when you don't want ANY Javelins to fire, but you do want the increased small arms fire which TARGET represents compared to TARGET LIGHT. As well, the issue with ATGM's being fired from AFV's instead of just the autocannon. Or, holding autocannon fire and only using coax machineguns. All these issues can be resolved with the HOLD command.

The HOLD can only be issued after a target has been selected. As soon as that target is gone (destroyed, out of LOS, TacAI detects a higher priority target) all HOLD orders are erased. That resolves the issue of a squad HOLDing its Javelins while shooting at a building and then they see a tank. This idea is discussed here: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=83224

It has also been discussed, in differing versions, in other threads.

4) The lack of feedback up the chain when one of your units takes a hit or casualties. In large scenarios action occurs with no feedback to the player. The player is forced to poll every unit at the beginning and end of each turn (WeGo) and check for status change, such as suppression or casualties. All too often casualties are incurred in "quiet" sectors and the player has no idea when or where it happened. I've suggested having the unit icon flash a yellow "!" whenever the unit's suppression increases or a casualty is incurred (or if an armored vehicle is lazed, or fired upon). See this: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=83193 and http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=74868

I hope that some form of these ideas can at least be considered for possible inclusion. I have no idea what amount of work it would take or even if BF.C considers any of these to even be worthwhile. However, I obviously feel that these would improve the PLAYER EXPERIENCE with CMx2 without diluting the simulation environment within the game.

Thanks,

Ken

[Battlefront.com]

Well, understanding that the suggestions made by you guys would take us about 10 years to do, and yet you guys don't do very well prioritizing what's most important (seems to change with ever thread ), here's my take on these specific 4 things:

1. Some minor improvements are possible, but there's a thousand things that would come before things like allowing players to add notes. It's a neat idea, but so are a couple thousand other things you guys have come up with

2. Not necessary for Normandy. In fact, we'll be disabling a bunch of stuff for air and artillery strikes for Normandy because currently there is more control and weapons variability offered compared to WW2 capabilities. The information you're looking for is tied to those controls, so if we disable the controls we defacto don't need the feedback. When we revisit the design for CM:SF 2 we'll look at the UI again (I've followed the earlier discussions).

3. Some sort of way to control certain weapons is definitely something we've been playing around with for a while now. But we've changed the TacAI a lot over the past year and many of the problems people have experienced have gone away. Still, more specific control is certainly desirable.

Having said that, a "HOLD" Command is not the right way to go. That's backasswords IMHO. Special stuff should remain unuseable by default and that means player AUTHORIZATION to be used, overrideable by the TacAI in extremely obvious situations (like using a Javelin against a tank instead of a M16 ). This would allow you to Target then "authorize" the use of a secondary (and limited supply) weapon.

We're not saying this will be in CM: Normandy because we're not sure there are enough circumstances to warrant it. Panzerfausts are about the only thing we can think of and we think the TacAI can handle that one fine. For CM:SF 2 we're back to extremely varied and complex weaponry held by a single unit, so it's far more applicable there.

4. Some sort of Big Picture situational awareness improvements are on the list. I have no idea how many of the ideas that have accumulated on paper over the past 2 years (i.e. before we shipped) will make it into the game. There's always less time available than we want, of course, so it's never safe to say something specific is in until it is in.

Steve

[cabal23]

"1) A scenario UI revision. The manner in which a player chooses his scenario needs to be reworked. The strength of this game system is the amazing number of scenarios which can be created and played. Yet, there is no way to organize them, tell which one's been played, review them, give feedback on them, delete savegames, etc. For a more in-depth look, I refer you to this: http://www.battlefront.com/community...ad.php?t=72661"

It already exists, it's call Z-Bee mod manager. As for deleting savegames, I keep a folder on my desktop linked to saved games, outgoing and incoming so I can clean them out periodically. Not need to program something so easy to do yourself.

[meade95]

I agree completely with #1 - 1) A scenario UI revision -

I think an update to reviewing scenario's would be much more helpful and appreciated than BFC currently seems to think (with Steve's response).

[thewood]

I think 100% of the players use Windows of some sort. I still find it hard to understand why a simple standard windows file interface isn't used. I would think it would have been easier to use those APIs than build a custom interface. Just a simple scroll bar that a mouse wheel can access would be a big step in the right direction.