something odd with suppression

john g · Post by **john g** » Thu Jun 20, 2002 11:51 pm

This is something that I had never noticed before, and have never read about.
THis is on my win95 Compaq 4402, I never have had problems on my win98se HP4550z.

Due to a bios upgrade, sound driver upgrade and video driver upgrade SPWAW would now lock up with a repeating sound when playing, though that is not what the message is about.

To test different fixes to the problem I played using a Tiger about a dozen times trying different approaches to the sound lockup.

On my last runthru which seems to have fixed it, the Tiger had killed most of the Soviet tanks, and I had run one of the infantry forward to finish off crews. It found and killed the last Soviet tank and then started hosing crew.

The unit had gone to 20 suppression with a failed close assault on that last tank, so after killing it with a pf only shot, I then started chasing crew down.

A right click on the rally button took the unit to 7 suppression after I shot up some crew and they returned fire.

The next turn the unit was at 3 suppression and I again started firing, after it killed one crew I noticed the unit had gone to 1 supppression, after killing another it went to 0 suppression.

This is what confused me, I had never seen a unit lower its suppression by firing at enemey units and had never seen a unit go to 0 suppression in the middle of a turn, I never hit the rally button at all in that last turn.

Has anyone else noticed units lower their suppression by killing enemy units?

By the way the fix wasn't with the sound card, by using dxdiag to raise sound acceleration to max then going to system to change video acceleration to none, I got the game to stop locking up.

It was the video driver that was stopping during the playback of several different sounds. So if anyone else is having random lockup problems with older computers with integrated video and sound, you might fix what seems to be a sound problem by changing the video settings.
thanks, John.

rbrunsman · Post by **rbrunsman** » Fri Jun 21, 2002 1:12 am

I've seen it happen, although never to zero suppression. It happens enough to make me aware of it but not so much that I can understand/anticipate its occurrence. I just figure that if things really go my way in a turn I aught to check to see if a critical unit in the vicinity has gotten back that little extra bit of suppression so that it can now move or shoot.

I just recently had an infantry unit change its drawers and get back in the fight after I torched a tank that was virtually parked on top of them.

philbo · Post by **philbo** » Fri Jun 21, 2002 11:27 pm

John,

I believe this occurs becuase the threat to the unit is being eliminated. I have seen it happen with my units when I eliminate an enemy squad that was near me. I just chalk it up to my guys realizing that they are out of immediate danger. Hope that sheds a little light on the subect.

Phil

tracer · Post by **tracer** » Sat Jun 22, 2002 3:08 am

I've often seen supression (in the range of 1-4) drop to zero after destroying all threats. But if you attempted and failed to rally, the unit's supression will drop slightly if you eliminate enemy units, but will not go to zero.

tracer · Post by **tracer** » Sat Jun 22, 2002 3:20 am

Oh, and I've also experienced the sound problem you mentioned. It occurred under Win95, but I was in the process of building my current system so I never delved into it. I had yanked my Turtle Beach Montego SC to put in the new computer, and threw an old Creative SB-16 in to play some SPWAW while Windows was loading...sign of a true, hard-core SPWAW addict!

Gary Tatro · Post by **Gary Tatro** » Sat Jun 22, 2002 3:22 pm

You get a bonus suppresion reduction in the amount of 1-2 points. This is why is it always useful to rally your unit down to 1 if you can before you shot at the next unit. If you destroy it you will get your bonus reduction to zero suppresion. This is very valuable and benificial because the to hit at suppression of 1 can be significantyly different than the to hit at suppresion of 0.

Hope this helps.

Capt. Pixel · Post by **Capt. Pixel** » Sat Jun 22, 2002 10:40 pm

I've seen this too. It's fairly predictible - Eliminate an enemy unit - supression goes down. AFAIK the supression reductions are halved with each successful kill. And I have seen supression go to zero in this manner.

Tommy · Post by **Tommy** » Mon Jun 24, 2002 4:26 pm

I pretty sure this "Attaboy" reduction in suppression came in with the rev that also caused the additional suppression when a related squaddie took a hit; ie, when H2 is wiped out, the adjacent H3 goes from 0 to 8 on suppression. Overall, the effect of encouragement/discouragement of the team members in sharing the pains and gains of the team as a whole.

Tommy

something odd with suppression

something odd with suppression

When you eliminate or disburse a unit totally