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Noob questions


tyrspawn

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First time playing shockforce or any combat mission games, enjoying it so far, but had some questions.

1. Is there anyway to enable tooltips? If not, is the light blue and gray thing a javelin launcher?

2. How do I give javelins from one squad to another? Is it possible to drop stuff back into a vehicle? I ask because I was playing the 4th-5th mission in the campaign where you have to pass through 3 phase lines and wait for orders and 20 tanks spawned about 400 meters away from me, whiping out most of my vehicles. I was about to pop smoke on a few strykers and quickly grab as much **** as possible from the vehicles, but only got 1 guy with a launcher.

3. Is there anyway to speed up time? I have also read on the forums that its possible to play the game turn based... I don't see anyway to do this and there is nothing about it in the hotkeys panel.

4. Is ceasefire the only way to end a mission? DO I get a penalty for it?

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1.What version do you have? in 1.20 if you hower over the inventory of the squad/vehicle a blue line will show up with the name of the item.

2. You cant. once its picked up its yours to keep, you cant unload it again. Only way to get a javelin moved between squads is if the javelin operator dies and another squad does buddy aid and picks it up.

3. No, its either RT (real time) mode or Turn based, you decide this every time you start a mission. if you play turnbased you can skip the 1 min show or just forward fast.

4. No, enemy surrender and time running out is a way to. and you wont be punished if you cease fire. unless you havent meet your mission goals because then you loose points.

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Let's me give this a try.

1) Sorry, no tooltips but the learning curve isn't particularly steep (in my opinion), You'res struggling now, you won't be struggling two days from now.

Light blue and grey thing. Hmmm. a bit vague. Their is a 'tooltips' of a sort for weapons in the control panels. If you place your cursor over a weapon the weapon's name will pop up. Javelin launcher pict is indeed grey and blue in the control panels.

2) Sorry, you can't transfer equipment. The only way to do it is to die. There's a chance someone from another squad will steal the laucher off your dead body.

3) Speeding up time. The second screen after you select a scenario to play is "Select Game Options". The top item is a choice between Realtime, Turn-based, hotseat, email, etc.

4.) If you want to stop playing you can always SAVE the game (in the menu options) and come back later. If you cease fire without achieving your objectives in the campaign it will be considered a loss, and too many losses will dump you out of the campaign. It doesn't make any difference in standalones whether you cease fire or not.

[edit] ooops! I see Chainsaw types faster than me ;)

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I am fully patched.

What determines the chance if nearby soldiers will pickup dropped equipment? Is there anyway to increase the chance? FOr example, if they are not cowering, I assume there is a higher chance? What is buddy aid? I have heard that term thrown around.

That really sucks that you can't give equipment between squads.. I didn't have the time to sort it out when an armored company plopped on top of me, just had to grab the javelins from the strykers and run.

P.S. I assume the AT-4 launcher is a self-contained unit like in real life and you don't need AT4 rockets to fire it in addition to the launcher, right?

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Let's me give this a try.

4.) If you want to stop playing you can always SAVE the game (in the menu options) and come back later. If you cease fire without achieving your objectives in the campaign it will be considered a loss, and too many losses will dump you out of the campaign. It doesn't make any difference in standalones whether you cease fire or not.

It's not always clear exactly what i'm supposed to do. On the mission I mentioned before I was told to pass through phase lines and wait for orders... which never came. I destroyed about 20 armored vehicles and tanks using javelins, TOW missiles and apaches, at the cost of about 1/3rd my personel and 5 strykers. I consider that to be a success, but when I did cease fire there were some strange objectives that I hadn't finished. It said I hadn't passed through phase line bravo, which I did (and it even said earlier on the screen that I did), and also there were two phase lines incomplete which weren't even on the map, PL20 and PL21. It also appears I didn't get any points for destroying all the vehicles.

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"What is buddy aid?'

Depending on your mood, buddy aid is either animations of soldiers valiently helping their fallen comrades, or its animations of bodies being looted. ;) Actually, its a bit of both.

If units are kept in place after a man gets wounded eventually someone will come over and lend aid. This is said to increase the wounded guy's chances of survivng by 50%. Also, if the wounded man is a specialist you may see his MG or Javelin or load of grenades be transferred. I've seen buddy aid being given to dead soldiers, I assume that would be just ammo scrounging.

It's not always clear exactly what I'm supposed to do.

Yes, some scenarios are better written than others.

Some orders deliberately mislead you to increase surprise when that horde of tanks show up. Some hide objectives to reward you for being thorough. Some drop you into the middle of an imaginary chain of events - describing what happened before scenario start and what will happen after - to increase "immersion". Basically, the more twisted the scenario designer, the more twisted the orders can get.

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Depending on your mood, buddy aid is either animations of soldiers valiently helping their fallen comrades, or its animations of bodies being looted. ;) Actually, its a bit of both.

If units are kept in place after a man gets wounded eventually someone will come over and lend aid. This is said to increase the wounded guy's chances of survivng by 50%. Also, if the wounded man is a specialist you may see his MG or Javelin or load of grenades be transferred. I've seen buddy aid being given to dead soldiers, I assume that would be just ammo scrounging.

So if one unit of soldiers get wiped out, and I roll over to them and dismount, my guys may take equipment off the bodies?

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Buddy aid is a mysterious thing, but if you place another unit on top of recently dead/wounded units they should eventually start applying buddy aid. There's no guarantee they'll pick up anything interesting, though. Sometimes the guys are simply at their max allowable load carrying capacity. Oh, and if you place another unit on top of your dead unit without first eliminating the threat there's also the chance the same thing will happe to them! :D

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In a pbem I have British HQ with dead mortar guy. But the other two guys are well and have still over 10 51mm HE. They are laying exactly with the mortar tube and I have given them a target order for a distant position some 3 turns ago. Till now the have not re-manned the mortar tube. Could it be a bug, or should i have more patience...?

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Question: if you open up a vehicle, does the sight range increase? There is an increased risk of being killed by small arms fire though?

Also, when infantry attack a tank, do they attempt to button it (i.e. attack the personnel/optics/sights, not just shoot at the chassis)

I read in the FAQ that rounds land on a per-pixel basis, so it would make sense for them to aim at the gun holes, optics, sights, fuel etc

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When you open up a tank the commander gets a less restricted view. That means that he will notice stuff faster when it is less than a kilometer away, especially when it is not right in front of the tank. Any further than that and it is worth letting the commander using those fancy optics inside the tank to aid spotting.

When infantry attack a tank they will not fire at optics etc as far as I am aware. Unless they have anti tank rockets they will die very quickly.

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People have tested out the 'unbuttond commander spotting bonus' thing and have assured me it works. I still haven't quite seen it in action yet, myself. This isn't the good-old-days where a 75mm Sherman TC had just a single swiveling periscope in his split turret hatch to view the world through. So the difference today is substantially more subtle.

about firing at optics. I don't think they really fire at optics but a big HMG is not shy about firing on heavy armor. The only thing a HMG can really hurt on a tank is the optics so it may fire randomly against the target until the optics get hit. Small calibre weapons don't usually even bother.

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