New Features for COTA

[jungelsj_slith]

ORIGINAL: Arjuna

Having said that, at some stage, when we have more powerful machines and have team play I would dearly love to fight the entire op Market Garden battle.

Market Garden with exit tasks and supply would certainly be a whole different ballgame

Is it possible for scenario designers to port HTTR maps to COTA? Or are the OOB's not there?

[Arjuna]

Well Moore's law isn't working at the moment. Two years ago I bought a bank of PC and I always get the cpu speed one notch down from the top and then it was 2.4 Ghz. Today the second best is around 3.3 Ghz and that's barely a 50% increase in two years.

[Arjuna]

ORIGINAL: molotov_billy
Market Garden with exit tasks and supply would certainly be a whole different ballgame

Is it possible for scenario designers to port HTTR maps to COTA? Or are the OOB's not there?

We will not be upgrading the HTTR estabs at this stage. Though by the time BFTB comes out you should then be able to design new scenarios for Market Garden using that.

[sterckxe]

ORIGINAL: Arjuna
Well Moore's law isn't working at the moment. Two years ago I bought a bank of PC and I always get the cpu speed one notch down from the top and then it was 2.4 Ghz. Today the second best is around 3.3 Ghz and that's barely a 50% increase in two years.

Maybe, but Moore's Law isn't so much about raw clock speed or even clock cycles as it is about processing power. Dual-core / 64-bit designs.

A good source is this :

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_category.asp?id=5

Greetz,

Eddy Sterckx

[Major Disaster]

HWTTR is a wonderful game! COTA looks even better! Good show, Panther Games!

That said here are some new features I hope get added into some of the follow on games (if they are not already in COTA).

1. Naval gunfire. It would be really cool to have Estabs for each class of major warship that would provide naval gunfire (e.g. BB, CA, CL, DD, Monitors, Rocket LCT, etc) with guns, ammo, reload times, etc.

2. It would be great if air strikes had Estabs as well for the diferent aircraft types (size of bombs, numberof bombs, etc).

3. Bigger maps!

4. Tank hardness as a function of it recieving fire from front, back, and, rear. Generally definding tanks would quickly face incomming fire so that the probablity of getting a side hit or rear against a single shooter would be low. Moving tanks should be much more likley to recieve fire from the side or back when presenting those sides to a shooterin that it wouldhave to stop moving to turn it front face to the shooter. Stopped tanks recieving fire from more than one direction should alos be morelill;eyto recive side and rear hits. I don't know if this is already modeled but I didn't see it covered in the manual.

5. Programmable mouse wheel. The mouse wheel is too vauable to use it just for scale. There should be some easy to hit buttons that alow it to control other functions (just like in your map/scenario editor).

6. Route preview that let's one see what route would be selected prior to giving an order to a unit.

7. Different arty blast radius for heavy armor, light aromor, dug in infantry, moving infantry, etc. (if there isn't already)

8. Command delays for British tanks calling in arty. This was a problem during the early war in that the tankers didn't coordinate well with the infantry and arty.

9. Msg finder. When a msg says (for example) 6 Coy retreating it would be nice to be able to click on the msg and istantly find 6 Coy.

10. Probabilty of CAS killing friendlies. (I still true, sad to say, even today).

[Major Disaster]

Oh, I almsot forgot.

11. A switch sides option for those of us who like to play both sides where one can jump back and forth playing the allies and the axis.

[MarkShot]

Thanks for you suggestions.

#6 is a new feature of COTA.

#10 - there is no fail safe mode for airstrikes like there is for fire missions. If you mis-time them or drop it too close, then you can have friendly casualties. Granted there is no real "bad luck" like in CM where the bombs overshoot their intended target and land directly on your own armor.

[BK6583]

I'll second #9 above.

[BK6583]

Another suggestion, although I realize with CoTA's imminent release it may be too late. When I was in the Army we had an arty fire mission called "Danger Close", which meant bad guys were more or less on top of us so we were calling arty fire almost right on top of us - a desperate defense requires desperate measures sometimes. I would like to be able to override the "Friendlies in the Way" when my guys are dug in or entrenched and REALLY need that arty support, no matter the risks. The risk of getting smashed outweighs putting arty on top of you since you're entrenched and attacking enemy is not.

[JeF]

Major,

As Mark said, #6 is a new CotA feature.

#10 is alreadyin HttR.

#4 : You can see in the MarkShot's Tips thread that front, side and rear armour are modeled. Things are mostly abstracted, a unit is composed of a bunch of tanks (not only one). Not all of them facing the same direction. IIRC, a unit is mostly effective in the direction it's facing and have reduced efficiency when hit from behind. I'm not sure about the morale penalty. It is always a good thing in HttR to hit from different directions.(*)

#9 Would be nice to do it with the mouse. It is currently available with the keyboard : Page Up/Down select message, Home selects the unit, End goes to the last report and selects the unit. Indeed very valuable.

#11 : Switching side to play both side is feasible with a little trick : launch two copies of the game. Host a network game with the first. Alt+Tab to the other and join the game at address 127.0.0.1. This is a reserved IP address denoting the computer you're on. Now you have two games linked on the same machine. You can play both sides (even in Hot Seat mode), switching with Alt+Tab.

Cheers,

JeF.
(*) Try my reproduction of the Heartbreak Ridge scenario (available at the Airborne Depot) and try to attack frontally or to hit on two or three sides. It makes a real difference.

[Major Disaster]

Wow! I didn't expect such a quick reply! Thanks! I'll have to try out the hot seat trick. [:)]

BTW, I had a question on Estabs.

Page 6 of the Scenario Builder manual says:

Otherwise we recommend you use the MG Template file. This starts with no forces or objectives on map, no reinforcement or air schedules and no victory conditions set. But it does come with a complete list of all forces used in operation Market Garden, plus some optional extras. It already has links to the Eindhoven map and the MGEstab file. You can easily change the map.

It lists a MG Estab template plus others (Estab1, Estab2, etc)? My HWTTR game only has the MG Estabs template. Where does one get the other Estabs shown on the figure? Is there an estabs template building tool where one can make their own estabs tempates?

Also, are the weapons and equipment items used by the scenario buidler tool or are they just informational?

[Major Disaster]

Plus here is one more thing to add to the wish list for future games..

12. I read in A Genral's Life by Omar Bradly that he considered that Patton was not ood a dealing with the "boring stuff" (to paraphrase) like logistics when he was a corps in North Africa. As such Patton (according to Bradely) was was bad about making sure that the fighting units got resuplied. My suggestion is (now that resupply is better modeled) that a new command attribute be added called administration skills. Corps commanders, etc with high admin skills would be better at resupply. Thus the Patton'smay be more aggresive while the Bradely's may be a bit less aggresive but better at getting supplies to the fighting troops.

[Major Disaster]

13. And while we are on the subject of command attributes another one could be combined arms ability. A comander could be well trained at say commanding infantry or armor, etc but poor at handling combned arms. Thus say an infantry Bn or Reg commander with a poor combined arms rating might have increased command delays whenever armor is attached to his unit. Early in the war it seems that the British leaders were well trained in their own disciplines but were not as well trained in combined arms as the Germans. This could be reflected by going the Britsh lower combined arms attributes. [8D]

[Arjuna]

Major Disaster,

Thanks for your terrific suggestions. I've just got back from a week in Newcastle. Once I get on top of things I'll respond in more detail.

[Golf33]

ORIGINAL: Major Disaster
BTW, I had a question on Estabs.

Page 6 of the Scenario Builder manual says:

Otherwise we recommend you use the MG Template file. This starts with no forces or objectives on map, no reinforcement or air schedules and no victory conditions set. But it does come with a complete list of all forces used in operation Market Garden, plus some optional extras. It already has links to the Eindhoven map and the MGEstab file. You can easily change the map.

It lists a MG Estab template plus others (Estab1, Estab2, etc)? My HWTTR game only has the MG Estabs template. Where does one get the other Estabs shown on the figure? Is there an estabs template building tool where one can make their own estabs tempates?

The screenshot in the manual was taken on one of our development machines that had a couple of old estab files still hanging around. You should only have the one estab file, you aren't missing out on anything.

Also, are the weapons and equipment items used by the scenario buidler tool or are they just informational?

Not sure what you mean by this one? Can you explain a bit more?

Regards
Steve

[Major Disaster]

Some other feature requests.

1. When selecting arty from the FS menu it is hard to see if the slected arty unit is in range of the target without zooming out the map scale to see the blue firing ring. It would be nice when selecting arty from the FA menu to have a line much like the LOS line that goes from the selected arty unit to the cursor with an min range, max range scale on it.

2. When say selecting a corps HQ one sees all the subordinate units highlighted. However, once a unit is detached it is no longer highlighted. It would be nice to be able to have either 1. the option of highlighting organic, non-attached units too or 2. highlight current subordinate units in one color and organic dteatched units in another color. The same goes for command lines. That way one can still see where one's organic suborinate unts are even when they are detached by selecting on their organic HQ.

[Deathtreader]

ORIGINAL: Major Disaster

Some other feature requests.

1. When selecting arty from the FS menu it is hard to see if the slected arty unit is in range of the target without zooming out the map scale to see the blue firing ring. It would be nice when selecting arty from the FA menu to have a line much like the LOS line that goes from the selected arty unit to the cursor with an min range, max range scale on it.

2. When say selecting a corps HQ one sees all the subordinate units highlighted. However, once a unit is detached it is no longer highlighted. It would be nice to be able to have either 1. the option of highlighting organic, non-attached units too or 2. highlight current subordinate units in one color and organic dteatched units in another color. The same goes for command lines. That way one can still see where one's organic suborinate unts are even when they are detached by selecting on their organic HQ.

Hi all,

Requests seconded!!!! [:)]

Rob.

[MarkShot]

Although not exactly what you are asking for, COTA's new OOB only display the organic structure at the moment. Thus, you can always see a textual presentation of the organic chain of command even if your current dynamic chain of command no long bears any resemblance to it. This has helped me in the situation which you described. Also, particularly useful in paradrop scenarios, where a unit or two keeps showing up every 15 minutes and you are later trying to figure out how they all fit together.

[Crimguy]

I know I'm off by about a month (or 6), but MD's suggestion #9 above is IMHO a terrific one. To this day I habitually try clicking on the messages at the top, fully expecting them to take me to the affected unit.

[RayWolfe]

9 is there for COTA. There is now a Messages tab in the sidebar, when the message relates to a unit, clicking on the message takes you to the unit in question. Also the messages can be filtered so you only receive the ones you want. Ain't Dave good to us? [:)]
Ray