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Don't know if it's a bug but I guess it's really a question at this point. Am playing a generated campaign (Germany vs. Poland) and am noticing the OP fire sequence is much more difficult to get a kill and when I'm firing on my turn versus the same conditions and firing during my turn.

Specifically I got the bum's rush of Polish tanks and OP fired on about 12-14 units when they were from 2 to 4 hexes away (snow storm visibility). Anyway, got a number of hits but nothing was destroyed.

On my turn one of my tanks fired three shots at three tanks two hexes away and got three kills.

My question- is the hit/kill calc the same or different for a shot taken during OP fire versus one taken as part of my normal turn?

Great game and am enjoying it thoroughly...

Originally posted by Mac:

<snip>

I would also suggest that landing craft wouldn't use the l-key to unload carried units...<snip>

Hey Mac, why don't you left click on the troop you want loaded and THEN use the 'L' key? Loading works from both the loader and the loadee's viewpoint. You don't always have to load from the transport, you can load from the passenger unit.

BA Evans

Playing a generated campaign, Finland vs. Soviet Union in 1939. First battle was a decisive victory, screen pops up to let me fix/change units, then the campaign summary screen.

When I press the 'Press Button' button (to go on to the second battle, I hope), the "Select a Front" screen pops up showing satellite views of Europe and the Pacific. There's also a French flag icon. No amount of clicking or keypresses does anything. Have to CTRL+ALT+DEL to get out of it.

I've got the savegame file from the point just after the battle but before units become veterans if that would help. Happens every time I load it.

Tried making a couple of other generated campaigns and just surrendering to see if it would happen again, but it didn't. In them, I was able to go on to the 'Modify Campaign' screen and get into the second battle with no problems.

Op fire selection seems wrong at times. For example, i have an inf squad and a inf at team hiding in the same forest hex, both unsupressed and dug-in. An enemy tank shows up in an adjacent hex. The inf squad assaults the tank like it should and fails. The tank don't fire back. The second op fire confirmation request came from a mg team couple of hexes away which of course doesn't have any chance to damage the tank. After answering no to this request, the op fire sequence is over without the at team ever getting the chance to attack.

Something is wrong here i think. The AT team didn't even get the chance to close-assault the tank even though it was one hex away and unsupressed. Perhaps more op fire than from two units should be allowed. Perhaps the routine determining which two units that get the chance to fire back should be changed.

1. I would like to second Fredde's observations concerning OP fire.

Instead of the closest two units with appropriate weapons often two units 20+ hexes away with inferior weapons get the opportunity to fire.

Btw, was OP fire limited to only two units before v4, too ?

2. Yesterday I fought a battle against the Brits. They had a number of 40mm flaks, speed=0. But when they were retreating they took their guns with them !

(Now, that's what I call real dedication ! )

[This message has been edited by headhunter (edited September 20, 2000).]

Originally posted by headhunter:
1. I would like to second Fredde's observations concerning OP fire.

Instead of the closest two units with appropriate weapons often two units 20+ hexes away with inferior weapons get the opportunity to fire.

Btw, was OP fire limited to only two units before v4, too ?

Remember that the opfire has nothing to do with which unit has the appropriate weapon or is the closest unit. It's about which unit happens to be awake and spots the enemy/acts first. ie. experience plays an important part here.

I too have pondered why only 2 units get the chance for opfire, perhaps the Matrix gurus will comment on that.

2. Yesterday I fought a battle against the Brits. They had a number of 40mm flaks, speed=0. But when they were retreating they took their guns with them !

Well looking at the OOB file the 40 mm AA gun has a movement allowance of 1. This 'man-portable' gun thingy afaik was main reason why small guns were immobile in earlier versions of SPWAW, but as they often were so light the crew was able to move them this 1 move point was given to them.

Voriax

Remember that the opfire has nothing to do with which unit has the appropriate weapon or is the closest unit. It's about which unit happens to be awake and spots the enemy/acts first. ie. experience plays an important part here.

In one situation I had three tanks directly in front of an enemy tank and a AT gun ~10 hexes away.
op-fire came from a tank ~26 hexes away.

On several occasions, a crew got the op-fire, while two full strength, not surpressed german engineer squads and a mg were one and two hexes away from the enemy unit.

Also left flank units were op-firing on enemy units on the right flank, leaving the left flank with no shots left to defend themselves.

I agree that initiative and experience should be major factors in the selection of the op-firing units, but at the moment, this feels too random for my taste.

If there were no limit as to how many units are allowed to op-fire there would be no problem.
In real life there would be no such limit.
I think it is in the game to conserve time and in my oppinion, this is a good thing.

The computer should first "compile" a list of all units that could op-fire and then choose the two best of them based on weapons and distance.

Well looking at the OOB file the 40 mm AA gun has a movement allowance of 1. This 'man-portable' gun thingy afaik was main reason why small guns were immobile in earlier versions of SPWAW, but as they often were so light the crew was able to move them this 1 move point was given to them.

Ah. I right-clicked on the AA gun and there I did read that speed was 0. Is speed different from movement allowance ?

[This message has been edited by headhunter (edited September 20, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by headhunter (edited September 20, 2000).]

In any case, it would appear that what I feared is true, that being adjacent to a unit no longer gives those who are unsuppressed enough, to automatically assault. I would prefer the basic two op fire possibilities, with any assaults added in, to prompt me as op fire does, instead of automatic assault.

I've seen noone comment on this yet, but it's still my belief, that the system has changed from what it was previous, in regards to when a unit has minimal range, that it's not firing back when a unit beyond that range fires on it (before, it could be reduced to a '0' range, but would counter any fire placed on that unit). On first thought I would think that this action being incorporated into op fire would be better too, but now I'm not so sure, automatic may be better. As things stand, if it became part of op fire, I wouldn't know necessarily if that unit was different from any of the others who been extended their full range, so that it would flow into the ebb of the rest of the units of it's type. I think the only way that could work well, would be that it stayed as it was in V2.3 or some dot or something came on the prompt somewhere to tell you this was a unit responding possibly to a unit that had fired on it, but that it's range was insufficient. That brings me back to my original question regarding this. In V2.3, when the unit responded to fire directly on it, did this then switch it's range to the enemy unit so that it could fire back? Because, if it did, then obviously the unit has thereby had it's range switched, to where it will then op fire like any of the other units, instead of it's fire range being returnd to what it was before it was fired on.

Headhunter: I admit the opfire may need some fine tuning. Your suggestion of checking all available opfires and choosing two best (closest?) sounds good.

As for the AA gun, too fancy wording..the speed is 1. I dunno why right-clicking showed speed 0, possibly it was suppressed to hell and thus was not able to move, just flee?


Bug report: *EEEK*

The autosave function counts turns wrong. Lets say I have a 'solitare turn 15" and decide to load it. All is fine except the turn counter will be 14. If I do a normal 'manual' save and reload it then the turn counter behaves normally.

Voriax

Originally posted by BA Evans:
Hey Mac, why don't you left click on the troop you want loaded and THEN use the 'L' key? Loading works from both the loader and the loadee's viewpoint. You don't always have to load from the transport, you can load from the passenger unit.
BA Evans

Normally, I use this BUT this isn't possible with the landing crafts as it seems to think that it's impossible to load from the beach into the ship which is not in the same hex but the neighbouring hex. This is of course the normal case, nowadays, where you can't load into a transport in a neighbouring hex.

I can load the troops, when I use the loading from the ship's perspective. Get it? I HAVE to load from the transport now and then I can only load 1 unit. This could be fixed in many ways and I hope it gets fixed.


------------------
Markku "Mac" Rontu

"Understanding is a three-edged sword,
your side, their side and the truth."
- Sheridan in B5

The sequence of Opfire "activation"
is fairly random. Experience plays a big role as does range but the result is that an experienced unit far away may opfire before a unit closer. Assaults are not assured, several things must happen and again depending on experience the assualt may happen or not. It has top be random or it would bog the game to unplayable lengths to include more "control".

Two "Opfire events" per "trigger" was found to be a good compromise - more and you tend not to be able to move.

Paul: I like op fire, in the sense of number of attempts, quite well. What I'm describing though is quite apart from this. V2.3 would appear to have always allowed assaults (with exceptions due to no op fire left for the unit or very high suppression etc.). As it appears now, it seems to suggest that infantry will 'rarely' be given as a possibility as part of the op fire, if there's any tanks in the area, so that for all practical purposes the infantry can no longer assault in op fire phase, dependant, or independant (as it was before) of user command, so that tanks will once more be able to get right int he face of the infantry, fire away, and then back off a hex just before releasing control to the opponent again.

Do you have any clues on the subject of reduced ranged units not responding to direct-fire on the unit beyond it's range? Is that feature no more with the new op fire prompts? Thanks.

I'm having some sound issues with the game - I noticed some a couple of other people had posted w/smiliar problems, but hadn't seen any reply - though I may well have missed it!
My game has no BG music, enviornmental sounds and only maybe 20% of the weapons or vehciles make any sound. (the ones that work are mostly MG's). I'm using a Creative SB Live! PLatinum sound card. I didn't have any problems with any of the previous releases of the game. Any Ideas? Other than that - awesome game!!!!!!

Originally posted by xavier:
In PBEM games, the VCR playback don't work.
:c

I'm having the same problem, but was surprised to find only one memo buried deep in the thread.

I never really did realize that PBEMers were such a minority. I was used to not always seeing airstrikes and artillery due to limited memory on my P166, but to see no replay at all was the FOW I hadn't experienced since SP1!

Have you had anyone suggest a solution?

ps I tried it on my wife's machine P333 98megs ram etc with no replay either.

Cheers

Chris

Pual i have tried another generated campiagn and found as in my early post that mortars of any size and nation continue to fire all there alloted shots at close targets using direct fire .in return these siad units after they have hit the same vech 4-5 times remian unseen and op fire is passed over .often i almost have to run the mortars over to see them i know that being small of size and also using limited intell makes them hard to spot but shorely after at least 3-4 shots even infantry let alone 81mm mortars should reviel themselfs.this can be the only reason why after 4-5 shots no op fire happens on my side even with afvs that have high exp and ammo to spare? thanks for a truly top game.

I would like to add to the op-fire issue that while the player is limited to two op-fire events, I've seen the AI op-fire four times !

I think that unbalances the game too much.

[This message has been edited by headhunter (edited September 21, 2000).]

Originally posted by Sgt Gunn:
I'm having some sound issues with the game - I noticed some a couple of other people had posted w/smiliar problems, but hadn't seen any reply - though I may well have missed it!
My game has no BG music, enviornmental sounds and only maybe 20% of the weapons or vehciles make any sound. (the ones that work are mostly MG's). I'm using a Creative SB Live! PLatinum sound card. I didn't have any problems with any of the previous releases of the game. Any Ideas? Other than that - awesome game!!!!!!

Did you patch the game? If you did, did you install in the right directory? Do you have two 'snd' subdirectories?

Voriax

A couple of things going wrong on Win NT 4.0.

1. In Wild Bill's Omaha scenario (the one from Scenario Depot), I try moving my landing craft toward the beach. Eventually, one of the big guns from the strongpoints hits one of my craft and the game dumps me to the desktop. I tried turning off all the sounds, but that didn't help.

2. In the Maus that Roared scenario, I was having a similar problem when a vehicle was destroyed. I didn't happen for every vehicle, and it happened when a BA-60(?) or one of those little tracked motorcycles (like from Saving Private Ryan) were destroyed. I would see the hit, in one case I saw the wreckage, then the program fell over. I guessed that this might be a sound problem, so I turned off all the sounds, and I haven't seen it since.

3. When I turn off all the sounds, including the soundtrack, the soundtrack still plays during the battle.


------------------
Billy Yank
I don't define "my own" the way you want me to.

I have recently gotten access to an NT SP6 machine and it appears there are a lot of issues with the game on NT. Some of them may be related to the OS's lack of of full DirectX compatiblility.

We will continue to look into them, but you need Win2000 fom what I can tell to get the game fully functional on an NT based OS.

I don't think that anyone has pointed this out yet but I appear to be facing a whole army of zombies!!

I am playing the first battle of a long campaign as Germans fighting Poles. The first thing I do every turn is to save the game into a new slot. During the enemy's turn a number of polish units were heavily hit by opfire and arty and have reduced numbers. This was confirmed by right-clicking on them.

However if I select end game and return to the main menu and then immediately reload the newly saved game all of the damaged (but not destroyed or dispersed) units are back to full strength.

To check this I shot a unit with a sniper and caused a casualty (4 men down to 3) and was left with 0 shots. I then saved the game, exited it and reloaded it and the squad was back up to 4 men but I still had 0 shots remaining!