Impressions of 8.2?

[Alby]

Think hes replying to the guy who always gets toasted by the germans

[Goblin]

Gotcha, just saw that feature. Thanks Alby.[:)]

Goblin

[Roo]

Sorry, Goblin,forgot to specify my post was directed at Major Johnson. After all, more info will help the dev. team to find out if there is a problem in the game or not.
*edit* As I read that, it appears that the preferences seem to be set to favour the Germans somehow, with him not op-firing and getting wasted by one shell. When I started, I used to use settings of 250% for me and 30% for the AI and had that sort of luck, but I've weaned myself off that because it was pointless - I was effectively cheating. On the other hand, if it's a conflict between say T-70s and Tiger IIs, then I'm not really surprised as to the result.

Although having said that I've never seen a tank get assaulted by crews with that high a rating before either [&:]

[KG Erwin]

Gentlemen, you need to make up your minds. On the one hand, I hear that German opponents (those ungodly Poles!) are too tough, but on the other hand that the Germans are still overrated. Well, we fixed the Poles, but they still are not walkovers, as is proper. This was demonstrated by the experience of the Kempf Detachment (a unique mix of SS infantry and Heer panzer units) in an assault early in the war. The Panzer battalion was decimated, and had to be withdrawn.

The thing about the assault-capable crews, that's something in the code that the OOB team can't fix on their own. This would require a mech.exe change, and the OOB team can do nothing about it. [:(]

[Major Destruction]

ORIGINAL: Major_Johnson

I play allot of PBEM games. I have one main person I play against. He always plays the Germans and I play whatever Ally is the opponent. I have yet to see the Russians make even a half an effort to make a game of it. The tanks get blown up with one shot, they almost never return fire, and they rarely if ever fire first when an enemy comes into range. Not to mention they can't hit the broad side of a barn door. I can't see how they ever turned tide against the Germans. It's mighty frustrating to watch the replays and see your guys just get mowed down without firing a shot. And this is every scenario I've ever played in any version of the game. I will say the infantry units have improved slightly. Anyone else notice this??

I hope you are playing with command control set to ON?
Otherwise your Soviet forces are having a far too easy time of it.

[RockinHarry]

ORIGINAL: Goblin

Mainly vehicle crews, although I just had a 37mm AA gun crew assault a PzIII at 30 percent. I suppose some of the crews might have been light ATG crews. Most are small, thats for sure. I used to ignore crews and proceed forward, but now I have to kill every one of them before moving a tank. Not a big deal, just wondered if it had changed (or something else changed that caused it?). Thanks for the interest!


Goblin

Still wondering![&:] Actually crews in V8.x should not be able to assault without a weapon in slot1. Could be that large crews, like those spawn by Flak or gun units have higher general aussault chnace, as assault chnace is also computed by number of crew members IIRC! The more crewmembers, the higher the assault chance. ...but as said...missing weapon in slot1 should actually prevent this.

Goblin,..If it´s a V8.x battle, can you send me the save file with attacking crews to harizan@web.de please?[:)] I´d like to investigate further.

[Goblin]

Its version 8.2. I save each campaign in the same slot, but I will try to get one! Thanks again RH.


Goblin

[RockinHarry]

Did some more tests and still can´t confirm about "close assaulting" crews![&:] Snipers and crews do if they have a weapon in slot 1. As soon as this weapon is removed there´s no more close assault and the units run away in "tank panic". Snipers have large close assault chance when dug in, as well as crews with a slot1 weapon. It´s usually way above 30%. When not dug in, it´s as low as 1% most of the time, but some successful CA are still possible though rare.

If you still encounter "Close assaulting" crews (crews close assaulting a vehicle) in V8.2, please send me a save file and I´ll investigate![;)]

Sometimes crews won´t retreat and instead just keep sitting there. I happens when a direct path to the retreat hex is blocked. That means an enemy unit in good order sits straight between the retreating unit and the retreat hex. As said, crews are retreated by the aI automatically and...IN GOOD order (ready status). Think that´s a game feature.

[Major_Johnson]

I hope you are playing with command control set to ON?
Otherwise your Soviet forces are having a far too easy time of it.
[/quote]


Somehow I get the feeling you got the wrong impression of my post. I never play with command control on, and the Soviet forces by and large have been push overs. They rarely fire back and they can't aim for crap. It's just been a shooting gallery for my opponent. I find it very frustrating to play as them.

[Major_Johnson]

I've been playing some PBEMs' lately. Allot actually! And I've been noticing something that I don't recall seeing in any previous version. For example, one of the scenarios I'm playing is called "The Castle", and the turns can be quite lengthy, at least an hour. When I started my last turn I had a Sherman that was routed, it had no shots or movement points. The Germans had pounded the hell out it during the replay. During my turn, whooped up on my opponent pertty good and beat back or destroyed whatever was near my Sherman. Like I said this turn took about an hour for me to take. When I was cycling through my units one last time I saw that my Sherman now had movement points and I was able to get it out of visual contact with the enemy. I've recently seen this sort of thing happen other scenarios I've been playing in 8.2. Is this a new feature, or am just noticing something that has always been a feature??

[CAPT Steve Rogers]

Impressions...

The M3/M5 series tanks used to have a problem in 7.x with the fire effect being that of an autocannon. Now, I see the Panther G doing it.

When I keep a Sherman company in reserve, they seem to suffer bad morale spontaneously. I'm still playing out my first campaign, the crews are all veteran or elite, but when sitting in laager, waiting to be committed, *stacked together* as platoons, randomly (it seems) a single vehicle in each stack will suddenly go from zero suppression to 80+.

Driving into buildings is a problem again for vehicles.

And with a 1.3 ghz, 368 MB ram, WinXP machine, I crash to desktop after 7 turns. *Every game*, like clockwork.

That said, I love the improvements, keep up the good work. Sorry for the rant, but I didn't see any threads for issues.

Oh, when I laod the game, it says my version number is 9.5

Velovich

[KG Erwin]

ORIGINAL: CAPT Steve Rogers

Impressions...

The M3/M5 series tanks used to have a problem in 7.x with the fire effect being that of an autocannon. Now, I see the Panther G doing it.

When I keep a Sherman company in reserve, they seem to suffer bad morale spontaneously. I'm still playing out my first campaign, the crews are all veteran or elite, but when sitting in laager, waiting to be committed, *stacked together* as platoons, randomly (it seems) a single vehicle in each stack will suddenly go from zero suppression to 80+.

Driving into buildings is a problem again for vehicles.

And with a 1.3 ghz, 368 MB ram, WinXP machine, I crash to desktop after 7 turns. *Every game*, like clockwork.

That said, I love the improvements, keep up the good work. Sorry for the rant, but I didn't see any threads for issues.

Oh, when I laod the game, it says my version number is 9.5

Velovich

This kind of stuff just boggles my mind, as 8.2 (and the upcoming OOBs) run fine on a Win98 machine. In XP, you should set the game to open in Win98 compatibility mode.
On my Dell PC, which uses XP, the game runs with no problems. Glitches in the game start and other problems are solely due to the configuration of your PC--you should have the latest DirectX drivers.

My Win98 machine (my primary PC) is now 5 years old. This uses a PNY Verto 440MX video card. One thing I have found is that the newest Nvidia drivers cause screwups in some games, so I rolled back to an earlier version to fix my display problems. I think this may apply to other newer PCs. The lesson is, the newest isn't always the best for running older programs. The newer games, with their increased minimum requirements, are squeezing the lower-tech games out, as these new games require high-powered PCs. In the wargaming world, this is an ongoing problem.

The old games may no longer play properly in this environment, which leaves many classic games (SPWaW included) in danger of becoming extinct within a few years.

[Riun T]

Hey,Gunny I just had to mention that I run XP on a 2.0gigAMD with a gig of ram and aMSI ti4200 vid card, and I noticed that things like secondary systems and features that are runnin in the background cause most of the problems for SPWAW in all the ver. I've played I had to shutdown things like Winroute, any NORTON ANTI ANYTHING,and go to the task manager and try and concauct,a semi clean platform for the computer to crunch for steel panthers. I think that the problem of getting kicked to desktop happened to me about 4 times till I tweeked the background applications,task manager graphs the game as useing 100% of the CPU when I play,so it's not too hard for me to think that much calculating does'nt need any background stuff gobbling up resources.
Can't stress enough, check what else is runnin??!?!
My invidia drivers work fine!!

[Portuguese Mercenary]

Well in 8.2 i like all the gaming but the stability seems to be worse than previous versions. I rarely had a CTD but it is quite often now. I hope it is connected to me playing LV megacampaign...

[KG Erwin]

This CTD in newer PCs is what's bothering me. I have straight Win98 in my five-year-old PC, with a PII 400 chip, 256MB of RAM and the previously-mentioned 440MX video card, which I added, and the stock SBPCI audio card. I have absolutely no problems with CTDs, BUT, as Riun mentioned, I have no other background programs running at all, except for the essentials to keep the PC running. SPWaW is a notorious memory hog, but this is a carryover from the original DOS- to- Windows conversion.

This problem MUST be associated with the individuals' particular PC configurations. The Tech wizards will have to examine this further. Sorry, guys, I am at a loss to explain these problems. [:(]

[RockinHarry]

ORIGINAL: CAPT Steve Rogers

Impressions...

The M3/M5 series tanks used to have a problem in 7.x with the fire effect being that of an autocannon. Now, I see the Panther G doing it.

When I keep a Sherman company in reserve, they seem to suffer bad morale spontaneously. I'm still playing out my first campaign, the crews are all veteran or elite, but when sitting in laager, waiting to be committed, *stacked together* as platoons, randomly (it seems) a single vehicle in each stack will suddenly go from zero suppression to 80+.

Driving into buildings is a problem again for vehicles.

And with a 1.3 ghz, 368 MB ram, WinXP machine, I crash to desktop after 7 turns. *Every game*, like clockwork.

That said, I love the improvements, keep up the good work. Sorry for the rant, but I didn't see any threads for issues.

Oh, when I laod the game, it says my version number is 9.5

Velovich

Where do you have that 9.5 version from?? [&:] Sounds very much like a corrupted or maybe hacked mech.exe file to me![X(]

[Portuguese Mercenary]

or maybe hacked mech.exe file

Who would hack an exe of a free game[&:]

[KG Erwin]

ORIGINAL: RockinHarry

ORIGINAL: CAPT Steve Rogers

Impressions...

The M3/M5 series tanks used to have a problem in 7.x with the fire effect being that of an autocannon. Now, I see the Panther G doing it.

When I keep a Sherman company in reserve, they seem to suffer bad morale spontaneously. I'm still playing out my first campaign, the crews are all veteran or elite, but when sitting in laager, waiting to be committed, *stacked together* as platoons, randomly (it seems) a single vehicle in each stack will suddenly go from zero suppression to 80+.

Driving into buildings is a problem again for vehicles.

And with a 1.3 ghz, 368 MB ram, WinXP machine, I crash to desktop after 7 turns. *Every game*, like clockwork.

That said, I love the improvements, keep up the good work. Sorry for the rant, but I didn't see any threads for issues.

Oh, when I laod the game, it says my version number is 9.5

Velovich

Where do you have that 9.5 version from?? [&:] Sounds very much like a corrupted or maybe hacked mech.exe file to me![X(]

Harry, Win 2000 displays 8.2 as 9.5, for some unknown reason. I have 8.2 on my work PC, from a proper download, and it indeed shows 9.5. My second home PC uses Win XP, and the burnt-to-CD same install shows 8.2 correctly. Portuguese Mercenary doesn't have a corrupted download. There is just some weirdness happening with some newer PCs and SPWaW. The tech wizards are looking at it, but I don't think it's a problem with the mech.exe itself. I believe the truth is that SPWaW is getting too old to properly run on many of today's high-powered PCs. We knew it had to happen sooner or later, but the same problem is happening with many other older PC games.

[Riun T]

Hey gunny, Whats Matrix research and dev. doing to find an engine to replace the old DOS format?? U better tell me the game won't die!!!!!!!! Anyway I was just wondering because Steel Panthers really Scratches my itch, and I hope the technical and tactical nitch this game gives Vets and Civies, is never filed with tears and memories like so many others, List too long to mention.
I would assume the overhead GOD like operations of games like SPWAW has been considered to be a odvious progression to stuff like Combat Mission or Starcraft,Age of Empires/Command and Conquer, but all these other games ( I've tried most!) still don't give me the same thrill.
Guess I would say they feel sort of arcadeish and technically jouvinile and U never get what I consider the mental and equivocal of feeling like you're plans and tactics, and maybe a little deviousness added to the job your forces accomplished.
In AGE U never keep up to the advances in tec. and allways less money!
In combat Mission U get no single weopon applications all forces area fire although the veiw option is nice.
Starcraft, Warcraft,CanC, very limited application to unsurmountable AI production and advancement.
And in all these other games NO units aquire RANK,EXPERIENCE,or battle awareness to develop their special abilitys. IE scouts I'LL play SPWAW FOREVER!!!?? RT

[KG Erwin]

Riun, I appeciate your sentiments. The old SPWaW engine offers scenario designers a template upon which they can expand the possibilities--for a good example, try out Fidel Helms' " I Come Creepin' " scenario. This game is simply an all-time classic, there's little doubt about that. You can play it for lifetime, and still not exhaust its potential. This is why I am honored to be a moderator here--how many classic wargames exist out there? Not many, if truth be known. As long as you can still play it on the evermore powerful personal PCs, it will thrive.