A mixed barrel but easy to load and get going

[Adam Parker]

Well my trusty P4 2.8 512ram easily runs this game at the suggested resolution, 32 bit, high details and without an option for anti-aliasing to be switched on. I took Erik's advice all over this forum before installing and went to nVidia for my latest GeForce Ti4200 8xAGP card drivers. This is a relatively old card now folks but a goodie.

Digital Download using the suggested Star Downloader was a snap (as I'm finding regularly now) too.

Well, firing the game up after setting my preferred Graphics settings, led straight to the scen selection screen and I chose DDay as the Germans. After intuitively chosing my forces, the scen loaded fairly painlessly - and there was the map highly zoomed out in front of me.

My eyesight having been ruined now by too numerous 100-800 page rulebooks [;)] I went straight in unread. Newbie 1st class.

I figured fairly imediately how to zoom in an out with the mouse wheel and scroll across the map by simple mouse movement. And the mouse scrolling was blessedly smooth (not like World at War for example where the map just jerks around). This gave me great confidence that my system could handle the action to come.

But then the questions started. How do I change map perspective? Up and down? Rotate left and right? I tried all my Total War franchise tricks to no effect. Then by accident after many tries I pressed Shift+wheel/mouse move - and voila! Still why the need to push a key? Why not a left button+drag?

The graphics looked cute. Zoomed in this game is like pushing little airfix tank sets across a HUGE diorama. Inf movement looked cool too. Then the first downer for me. This game wasn't like Koios' Alexander/Caesar. To do anything tactical you need to zoom out. This first scenario has objectives at the far left, right and centre of the map. And zoomed out, the graphics just don't cut it. Hence why go all 3d in the first place? The 2d Steel Panthers franchise top-down art makes more sense.

Others have commented about the lack of intuitiveness in loading infantry to transports. And that immediately faced me. Why couldn't I just click the inf or drag and drop? Defeated I had to open the Adobe rulebook to find out how. Simple in the end and only once the game turn starts running (unless I missed something there).

Thereafter, whenever I tried to select a half truck, my inf would highlight as being ready for orders! The one time I did want my inf, the half truck selected! You do need to zoom in pretty close if units are tight to select the party you want.

Gameplay: Well moving into combat was very tedious (I didn't use time compression as I just didn't know what I'd face). I stumbled across how to call in indirect fire. My Stuka's came into battle whenever they wished (not me) and targeted areas of the battlefield which were of little interest tactically at the time.

By fluke and a yellow line I noticed that one of my armored cars had made a sighting. Why no voice prompt? Then I too noticed frequent movement path glitches as my units bungled into one another and simply stalled in place needing a human hand to free them.

Once the action started and the first shots flew, I got more excited. However, the camera would start zooming into kill zones and returning rotated from the command perspective I had chosen. Turning off zoom to kill stopped the ad hoc panning (I think) but not the sudden rotating of the camera. Then once casualties started coming in I simply lost control of my command. Though the game is turn based I found myself in an RTS stunned dream. Who fired at who, why are my units buring?

I'll definitely give this game some more play and try to refine my sitautional awareness in it. In summary though:

1. The game runs fine on an older but reasonable rig (no need for 2g of ram!).
2. Movement into contact with the enemy can be very tedious.
3. Unit movement works for the most part but be ready to untangle unnecessary bottlenecks.
4. The focus on 3d is nice but given the breadth of map expanses may be the weakest link in the end (I can't see any way other than huge virtual table tops to simulate mintures company level armored command, if this is Koios' continued desire).

Kudos for making a game where jumping in without the rule book is 85% successful. And don't forget Ost Front gamers... Expect lot's of white.

Adam.

[Erik Rutins]

Adam,

ORIGINAL: Adam Parker
My eyesight having been ruined now by too numerous 100-800 page rulebooks [;)] I went straight in unread. Newbie 1st class.

Ahh, you crazy wargamers! [:D]

But then the questions started. How do I change map perspective? Up and down? Rotate left and right? I tried all my Total War franchise tricks to no effect. Then by accident after many tries I pressed Shift+wheel/mouse move - and voila! Still why the need to push a key? Why not a left button+drag?

Try clicking down your scroll wheel button and then moving the mouse - no shift key required!

The graphics looked cute. Zoomed in this game is like pushing little airfix tank sets across a HUGE diorama. Inf movement looked cool too. Then the first downer for me. This game wasn't like Koios' Alexander/Caesar. To do anything tactical you need to zoom out. This first scenario has objectives at the far left, right and centre of the map. And zoomed out, the graphics just don't cut it. Hence why go all 3d in the first place? The 2d Steel Panthers franchise top-down art makes more sense.

I can actually play fairly zoomed in, just using the double-click on the unit icon and clicking on the mini-map to move where I need to.

By fluke and a yellow line I noticed that one of my armored cars had made a sighting. Why no voice prompt? Then I too noticed frequent movement path glitches as my units bungled into one another and simply stalled in place needing a human hand to free them.

We will take another look at this. I think I just personally leave more spacing between my vehicles and platoons so that this is less likely, but in general I think it works well.

Once the action started and the first shots flew, I got more excited. However, the camera would start zooming into kill zones and returning rotated from the command perspective I had chosen. Turning off zoom to kill stopped the ad hoc panning (I think) but not the sudden rotating of the camera. Then once casualties started coming in I simply lost control of my command. Though the game is turn based I found myself in an RTS stunned dream. Who fired at who, why are my units buring?

I think this is just a matter of preference and/or getting used to things. Without the kill cam on, it shouldn't move your camera at all (doesn't for me). The events are clickable as are the unit icons and the highlight when a unit comes under fire allows you to double-click on it to see what's going on (or click on the event message once you see that something has happened).

Kudos for making a game where jumping in without the rule book is 85% successful. And don't forget Ost Front gamers... Expect lot's of white.

Thank you for your feedback!

Regards,

- Erik

[redwolf]

Re: the voice prompt.

I think it would be nice to play a soundfile when a unit makes a new spotting, but not unconditionally as there will be other people who think it's annoying.

You could condiitionally play it when a file for it exist on disk, not ship one by default and have people drop in a "mod" when they want that.