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General Comments on Demo


1ADVet

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-a quick one, why are we interrupted by individual casualties and jerked away from our screen? How can I disable this feature?

-tactical map? what tactical map? I see no towns or features identified, no intelligence plotted, not even a "goose egg" indicating objectives, or arrows indicating main attack and so on.

-mission: who's on my flanks?, what's the general situation?, what do we expect the enemy to do? Where's the analysis on avenues of approach, trafficability and so on? Lots of things I expect in a mission order simply not there. Yeah, I realize there's not much point in adding CEOI and other info like that but the mission order does need fleshing out. Am I wrong or am I just staring at a few units in the middle of nowhere not knowing where anyone is? Not even knowing where the enemy is? I need to know more information because I need to have a plan--that drives my initial deployment. Seems like deployment is driving the plan here.

- I was a big fan of CMBB/CMBO-game mechanics/controls matched up well against scale of battles ( really close to Hohenfels Battalion TF Exercises) and WEGO system fitted well, preventing micromanagement from bogging down tactical thought. And others developed some great scenarios and add-ons. I tried earlier TOW and always lost interest--the scale was simply too down in the weeds for me. I mean if I wanted a Command and Conquer style "RTS" that's a different ball game. And I will be the first to admit the WWII is still my cup of tea; not modern warfare unless you consider, for example, the Arab-Israeli wars.

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AI pathfinding is still atrocious in this game and the friendly ai has no idea how to drive tanks as they go every which way but where you want them to. Graphics are great and the battles are fun, but I am so frustrated with the pathfinding that I can't see myself buying this game. It has so much potential, but the developers don't seem to understand that if you tell a unit to do something, that it should at least try to do it and not run around in circles.

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AI pathfinding is still atrocious in this game and the friendly ai has no idea how to drive tanks as they go every which way but where you want them to. Graphics are great and the battles are fun' date=' but I am so frustrated with the pathfinding that I can't see myself buying this game. It has so much potential, but the developers don't seem to understand that if you tell a unit to do something, that it should at least try to do it and not run around in circles.[/quote']

are you joking? ToW pathfinding is pretty good!

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There's an option in setup to disable the pause for casualties thing.

I reviewed all the SETTINGS: nothing sems to look like it disables casualty interrupt. Do I have to re-install the demo and alter the initial set-up? That seems like going around your elbow to get to your nose.

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Regarding the 'SmartPause' feature. Typically the 'Options' should have a setting for it in the 'Game' section in the lower right hand corner. It is present in TOW2's version, but completely absent in the new TOW-Kursk demo. I'm not sure if the full version may be missing this setting or not.

To manually adjust it change the setting in the a file found at:

'\Program Files\Battlefront\1C Company\Theatre of War 2 Kursk 1943 Demo\users\game.ini'

Set 'SmartPause=0' and save the file. This should turn off the feature unless something is wrong with the demo code and it is ignoring this setting.

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Thank you for the advice on changing the code. I shall try it today. I was wondering whether my demo was different from everyone else's for a bit there. Also, I obviously suffered brain fade in hurrying to the game and missed the fact that the situation/order has a scroll button. There is more there than I originally thought. Is there an annotated tactical map somewhere I also missed?

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In the Scenario where you play as the Germans, I sent a Hummel into the enemy lines and it drove around in circles. I repeated this game several times and it did the same thing. The tank AI is drunk, and yes, I have both TOW1 and TOW2 Africa and this game behaves very similarly. It's too bad because it has a lot of potential. Very frustrated they can't get it right.

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Regarding the 'SmartPause' feature. Typically the 'Options' should have a setting for it in the 'Game' section in the lower right hand corner. It is present in TOW2's version, but completely absent in the new TOW-Kursk demo. I'm not sure if the full version may be missing this setting or not.

In Kursk, this option was relocated to the game itself. Go to in-game settings and you'll find smart pause option there.

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Thank You. I wondered what Smart Pause meant (before manual posted and left flip corrected) but guessed and disabled it and the casualty interrupt went away.

Some observations:

- I tried sizing the battlefield and find that the random maps could not be sized while the single titled mission could be sized. Not sure if this just a demo quirk or is characteristic of the TOW series.

-Still would like to see some info on flanking unit activity or at least something like "Your flanks are secured by such and such". And standard tactical map info like hills designated by height and villages/features named.

-The demo seems sized at company/platoon level which means that maneuver is limited (it usually is at that level unless you go down to fire and maneuver at fire team level or overwatch when moving tanks). But if you are maneuvering individual squads/fire teams/individuals you have no real "feel" developing for a coherent company command executing a mission. At least as far as I've played thus far. Something that CMBB had that I cannot quite define. Anybody else feel like that? It's a demo so one shouldn't make hard and fast judgements, and I won't. I will wait and see how the game develops as it moves toward gold status.

-The camera movement is a bit frustrating. I was playing a Soviet defense mission and found myself unable (without considerable fiddling) to see some of my emplacements on the flanks. My camera stopped like it ran into a barrier. Then I had to "maneuver" it to see my units.

-Deployment is really limited (the size of allowable deployment "hexes"). I simply could not take advantage of existing terrain features and physical features like emplacements even though I was widely separated from the enemy.

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In the Scenario where you play as the Germans' date=' I sent a Hummel into the enemy lines and it drove around in circles. I repeated this game several times and it did the same thing. The tank AI is drunk, and yes, I have both TOW1 and TOW2 Africa and this game behaves very similarly. It's too bad because it has a lot of potential. Very frustrated they can't get it right.[/quote']

If you set the Action Mode to stationary your Hummel will not move unless ordered to move.post-29690-14186762149_thumb.jpg

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