Area fire time suggestion.

[souldierz]

One feature I think would be good to have is a time selection on area fire like the pause button.Let's say some enemy shoots at you from a building or you suspect a building has enemy in it,you then tell a team of infantry or a vehicle to lay area fire on this building for 30sec or 1 minute or however long u see fit.When the time is up then they automatically stop the area fire, leaving you free to pay attention somewhere else.

There's been many situations playing real-time where I lost track of who was area firing, due to all the forces on map and then after when I found who was shooting they would be low on ammo.I think it would get ride of some of the micro managing aspect of telling them to area fire then cease area fire while your trying to do something else with other forces on another part of the map or even getting ready to get troops to assault the building being fired on.Could be optional, you don't necessarily need to put a time limit on it every time you area fire, but it would be extremely helpful.On the plus side it is a realistic feature to my knowledge, because commanders do tell some vehicle crew to lay area fire on a building for X amount of minutes for whatever the reason.

I have no idea of the code or work required, but would this feature sound possible or acceptable?

[Drescher]

There is a workaround already in the game. Just give your unit a fire order, lets say with a 30second pause, then issue a move command. At the next waypoint give them a face-command, and areafire command is overwritten. Not the best option, but its working. Maybe if you experiment with the commandoptions there are even better workarounds.

This works better with vehicles, as they dont have to reach the new location by foot and leave the cover they are in. A small backwards move with a face command works the same.

[YankeeDog]

Ya; you can set up an endless string of timed Area Fire orders right now just by using small move orders between the different targets. As noted, this works better for vehicles than for infantry as it's often not convenient to have infantry popping up and moving around, even a short distance. Though it does look a bit funny when you have your vehicle jockeying back and forth like it's trying to parallel park while firing...

Seems to me that the simplest way to improve this without dramatic changes to the interface would be to add a "null move" order, which would just give you a new waypoint on top of an existing one -- they could be literally stacked on top of each other in the graphical display. Then you could just select each stacked waypoint in turn, and issue a pause and Area Fire order to each one. You could use this for other purposes as well. For example, you could have a scout team arrive at a location, immediately hide upon arrival, and then "unhide" 30 seconds later to look around.

[Sergei]

There's been many situations playing real-time where I lost track of who was area firing, due to all the forces on map and then after when I found who was shooting they would be low on ammo.I think it would get ride of some of the micro managing aspect of telling them to area fire then cease area fire while your trying to do something else with other forces on another part of the map or even getting ready to get troops to assault the building being fired on.

I think you have a legit issue (it isn't easy to notice that units are blasting away all their ammo) but I'm not sure if that would be the my preferred way to go with. I'd like improvements in the interface, ie. better presentation of information to the player, not necessarily more commands.

[souldierz]

The suggestions mentioned seem like a good work around and I'll give it a try.I'll try ordering both vehicles and Infantry separately to area fire on a location then pause for 45 sec or so,then order them to move slow on the exact terrain tile they are already on with a face command in the direction they were shooting.

That might be the little trick I was looking for, but I seemed to have overlooked it.Thanks for the tips, I'll give what you all mentioned a try:)

[souldierz]

WOW, I can't believe I didn't see this trick sooner.What a game changer and a blessing that this trick is in game.Works out perfectly so far.No more constant pausing or wasting time with selecting and telling teams to cease area fire.

On ridge lines or terrain edges the troops stay in place how they are when giving the area fire command with pause for X amount of time,then slow move on the same terrain tile with the facing order.They don't even flinch and that keeps them in good cover.Same with MG's.When they are deployed you can do the same routine,but don't give them a deploy order after you tell them to move and face on the same terrain tile.After about 5 seconds he quickly redeploys his MG without moving.

In buildings when the same thing is done (except now I learned to use the quick command,it's better in this case),the troops finish their shots and then move to a new position in the same room, which I think is perfect.

Out in the open area, like around trees and bush's when the same thing is done(except here it's better to use the slow command in most cases),the troops cease fire when they finished moving to another cover spot and that also works out perfectly.

The suggestion YankeeDog made about stacking the waypoints I think is a brilliant idea.You would definitely be able to suppress different enemy locations without the troops leaving the room or having to micro manage the area fire.With vehicles this is already a breeze and I done it a few times with excellent results.Couldn't do it with soldiers, but if you could, that would be off the chains, straight up, wild(that's a good thing).:)It now leaves me with some spectator time to enjoy the firefights.