miscellaneous feedbacks

[black_cat]

Well despites my memory problem I happen to quite like this game, so here are a few comments and small suggestions for improvement :

- default area fire does not seem to use HE ammo. i.e. if you give a generic "target" order aimed at a map location, it seems the AI is happy to shell the target with AP ammo. I had about 6 or 8 T70s pounding a German AT for 5 full turns to no avail. At first I thought it was a bug or something. Well the default ordonance selection may be considered so [;)].
As things stand now, it is a bit of a drag to have to use the full menu just to get the proper ammo.
It seems pretty safe to default to HE: what good could come from using a diferent kind for blind area fire (unless you ran out of HE rounds and are in a pinch [:)])?

- as a replacement for the current rather flaky save game interface, I suggest having a look at the way "world at war" handles it (also from Matrix games, no copyright problems there [:D]).

- I am in no way an expert, but it seems to me the lethality of AT guns against infantry is a bit high. Especially when the shelled squad is 10-15m inside a forest. They should be pretty invisible once suppressed, and spread out enough to prevent a single shell from wiping out the whole squad.
- Also the spotting logic does not seem to take suppression into account. Again I have no expertise to put forth, but I guess even a green squad should become pretty invisible once everybody fell flat on the ground, especially to a gunner located 200m+ away (I mean, an AT gun is not a sniper rifle).
What I would expect would be a first clean shot on a green squad (easily spotted due to their lack of experience), but then, if the result is suppression, the squad should disappear from view unless it starts moving again. This ability for concealment is one of the (few) advantages the infantry has over vehicles, and I think modeling it in the game could shift the balance a bit on the grunt side (as for now even my grunts spend most of their time in halftracks or on tank backs, since I see so little advantage in moving them on foot).

- about infantry vs vehicle spotting:
Even the "advance" order leaves the infantry too easily spotted (especially green troops, but even veterans). It looks more like a casual patrol giving away its position than a squad moving with caution inside a combat zone. One could imagine a "sneak" or "probe" order (possibly unavailable for green troops) representing indeed a full cover crawl toward enemy positions, where spotting would be very difficult except in open terrain (or forest border maybe). This move should be extra slow: the "advance" speed looks more like usual walking speed for a patrol; the "probe" speed should be at least halved to abstract the frequent observation pauses and moving from cover to cover. This "probe" order should of course include the option to hold fire in the adjustment phase.

Unbuttoned vehicles at full stop having the same spotting ability as infantry looks also very optimistic in favor of vehicles. For trained scouts in light armored cars, why not ? But what about main battle tanks ? Considering the precious few incentives to deploy infantry on foot (in the attack), giving the grunts a significantly better spotting ability seems rather realistic and would increase the reward for combined arms tactics.

- survivability of infantry in houses seem a bit low too. I would expect a lot more suppression/break and a lot less killed squads from small arms fire.

- an option to load a platoon on the closest vehicles would considerably improve the setup phase.

- as it has already been said on this forum, having a visual clue about the distance travelled during a phase would really help in the planning of coordinated attacks. For instance the destination path could alternate between two colors to show the segments that will be travelled during successive phases.

- I'm not quite sure if this is already the case, but I think the AI should be allowed to shift individual positions automatically when a unit is located within a small distance (5-10 meters in front) of a position offering a direct firing solution. For instance a tank at the edge of a forest should be allowed to move automatically clear of the last few trees blocking its aim, or a unit near the top of a hill to advance near the ridge, etc. This would, I think, be a perfect complement to the "engage" order (a kind of "engage/move" variant), which would imply moving into a direct fire position (at the risk of exposing the units to return fire, of course). The idea would be to have the AI check a few spots around the unit (for instance a 1 meter step grid within a 10 meters/120° arc in front of the firing unit) and plot a small position and orientation shift accordingly. Here again this could be restricted to experienced units.
One could even imagine a kind of Combat Mission "seek hull down" equivalent for elite units (but the line has to be drawn somewhere between player control and automation, of course).
These kinds of auto-adjustments would lessen the micromanagement currently needed to adjust firing positions. Just a matter of taste, but I think this would correspond better to the general abstraction level of the game. Especially if this ability is restricted to veteran/elite, this would reflect the need for the commander to delegate detail execution to experienced platoon leaders while still forced to tell everything in detail to the greenhorns [:)].

As my remarks show, I think the main improvement would be to tweak the balance slightly in favour of the infantry.

I hope these remarks will be taken as constructive criticism. I find the basic concepts, scale and implementation of this game very well thought out. It is fun, reasonably fast paced and has the right level of abstraction to allow the player to concentrate on global tactical planning (recon, manoeuvering, focusing and shifting the firepower, etc.).
Keep up the good work, and thanks for this game and your reactivity to players input.