RUNNING POLL - gameplay features [Feature Requests Go Here]

[Mgellis]

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this one but perhaps there should be an Investigate order. You get a contact and you don't have a patrol mission set up and maybe you don't want to set up a whole mission; why not launch an aircraft (or send a ship or a sub) and then open up the orders menu and have an option that does not automatically attack but does send the aircraft to take a look (and automatically attack if the contact is hostile)?

Maybe it would go right under the two attack (automatic and manual) options in the orders menu?

[Wasicun]

What about range circles for the aircrafts and ships?
I mean, at the moment you can see circles about sensors, weapon ranges and so on. I think it will be great if you can view the range of your aircraft too (based on your current speed... and how many fuel you still have)

[Apocal]

Now that I've had some real free time to throw down into Seaman O and chew through most of the stock scenarios:

1. Would it be at all possible to get the "intermittent emission" settings in CMANO? They were extremely useful in Harpoon 3, especially for scenario designers. I recall there were settings for active emission duration, a duration for the length of silence and variant figures for both times. It was cool seeing radars turn on 30 seconds, then go off for thirty minutes, flip on for 2 minutes, then flip back on fifteen minutes later, etc and created an interesting search problem.

2. Will there ever be a full or ironman realism setting (like Harpoon 3) that only allows the player to order assets currently in communication with his flagship/ops center? This was another great Harpoon feature and it really showed the limitations of employing submarines as a overall task force commander, especially if you forgot to put "check-in" waypoints and lost control of your sub for hours or days or (occasionally) permanently. Maybe enhance the communications model so similar situations could arise with aircraft or surface ships due to battle damage, jamming or stringent EMCON? Maybe a new setting for "check-in" times (every x hours come up on comms for y time) as well?

3. Periscope-depth modeling. Its somewhat annoying that subs at periscope always stick there periscope up and keep it there. It probably isn't helped that even older surface search sets in relatively high sea state (sea state 3 and 4) have no trouble localizing a - presumably transient - radar contact and determining, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that its real.

4. On that note, apparently the Mk.1 Eyeball works to spot very large wakes at 40,000ft above the ocean. Through solid cloud cover. At night. In a very heavy rain storm.

5. Maybe some additions to the modeling of naval aviation?
5a. Aircraft carriers launching and especially recovering aircraft should be locked into their current heading and/or have the aircraft in the groove abort their landing, flying back into the pattern to try again once the boat stops turning.

5b. Players should have the ability to "pre-load" the decks with ready aircraft, instead of having to flip back and forth between the air facilities tab and the aircraft tab to figure out which aircraft is already on-deck and ready to be launched as an alert bird and which will have to be pulled out of the hangar, moved on an elevator and so on.

6. Just remembered something: its too easy to determine that submarines and aircraft have been killed currently. Could we get something like the "hulk" status of dead/sinking surface, where they still are registering as a contact, even after being killed? Obviously for aircraft/missiles this wouldn't last long, but one of the toughest things about your common missile defense scenario is figuring out if you've killed the target and its debris registering as new contact(s) or if the radar blip you saw was your own missile's detonation.



In the spirit of not being completely negative, none of these are deal-breaker issues and just tightening a few fidelity screws would really add massive layers of depth to an already outstanding simulation.

[guanotwozero]

[Suggestion] One weapon launched at a time.

Whenever I launch an airstrike mission, the aircraft will use its whole weapon load on the target. While sometimes this is desirable, at other times it's a waste, e.g. 4 GBUs dropped where one is enough to kill.

It would be good to have an option of only launching one weapon (or a subset) at a time. That way if the first misses, the next will be launched, otherwise go for the next target.

A further development of that could be to launch a subset at one target, and then another subset at the next target even before the first have struck, e.g. 4 ASMs at 2 distant targets.

It could perhaps be partly implemented by 'safing' the weapons, with certain condition flags doing the 'freeing', e.g. manual selection (checkbox), previous weapon expended, or target 'subset quota' fulfilled, causing the current target to be deselected. Mind you, that would mean that such a subset quota has to be configurable too, e.g. 2 per target.

To some extent similar logic is already there, e.g. aircraft launch 2 AAMs per target. I'm just suggesting expanding it and allowing more user control.

Of course, such attacks can be done manually, but it can be a management headache to do so.

[Veracity]

I would like to see the ability to select multiple targets when manually allocating weapons. Clicking one by one is very tedious.

Thanks!

[guanotwozero]

[Another Suggestion - you got me started [:)]] Active mission waypoints

There are a few ideas floating about regarding mission planning and ToT so I'll throw in my punt.


Just as area RPs and targets can be added to missions using an ordered listbox, so could waypoints (WPs).

Each WP could be stateful, i.e. be used to set alt, speed, ENCOM status, etc, as well as perform certain actions like refuelling, launching munitions or even joining another mission.

I suggest that the state of each WP be mission-dependent (local instance), so that the same map WP could be used for different purposes by different missions.

If each WP appears in the box as a link/hotspot, clicking it could bring up a state/action editor. Possibly this could also allow other missions' WP instances to be read, so as to coordinate multiple missions. e.g. Mission_A's planes arrive at WP_6 at the same time as Mission_B's planes. Speed between WPs could be auto-calculated so as to facilitate this.

This idea would allow good ToT planning, as well as all sorts of other mission stages.

e.g. a tanker mission could position the tanker at different places at different times, so as to best service outgoing and incoming strike missions. The strike aircraft would be instructed to refuel at those same WPs while the tanker is there.

As usual, such actions can be done manually as a mission progresses, but it would be altogether nicer to plan them all before launch. Maybe make us feel we're sitting in a darkened Ops Room living off coffee and cigarettes [8D]

[jufinace20]

The visibility of the Message Log would be much improved if a translucent background is applied (right now it is transparent, and the log is all but unreadable when using the Relief Layer.

[jufinace20]

The perpetual communication with deep submerged crafts is at best unrealistic. I would not dare to suggest a Flagship paradigm with limited comms between HQ, and units (like in Harpoon II/ANW), but some kind of limitation (e.g. delay) to the communication (commands & recce) with (and between) subs would be an enriching feature.

[Dide]

+1[:'(]

[mikmykWS]

ORIGINAL: jufinace20

The visibility of the Message Log would be much improved if a translucent background is applied (right now it is transparent, and the log is all but unreadable when using the Relief Layer.

You can display this in a second window. Game->Game Options->Check off message log in separate window, click ok

Thanks!

Mike

[mikmykWS]

ORIGINAL: jufinace20

The perpetual communication with deep submerged crafts is at best unrealistic. I would not dare to suggest a Flagship paradigm with limited comms between HQ, and units (like in Harpoon II/ANW), but some kind of limitation (e.g. delay) to the communication (commands & recce) with (and between) subs would be an enriching feature.

Control of submarines is also very popular so in this case we balked at realism for the sake of providing a fun game.

Might take a look at different realism settings one day though.

[jufinace20]

True indeed (that is how I tend to use it), but I was mentioning the 'in game window' instance. As I titled it: just a suggestion...

[jufinace20]

I guessed so, but your magnificent product is so focused on realism that simulator-oriented users are bound to stumble on this point of command&control of units.
They can always resort to self-control.[;)]

[riflebrigade]

How do you enter your vote?

[mikmykWS]

Go to top. Check off the wanted entry and hit the submit button.

[riflebrigade]

Thank you mikmyk for your prompt reply but I can not find the wanted entry on the page.

I assume it is in or adjacent to the Poll area of the screen?

I tried a "wanted" search and could only find "wanted in your post answering my post.

[Vulcan101]

Been playing this since its launch. I've been very impressed by the game and support so far, particularly the community scenarios.

I have a few suggestions which I feel would (may) improve the game.

i) With strike missions, what would be really helpful would be if once the target has been destroyed, the mission could be removed from the list in the mission editor and a message added to the AAR. This would make things a lot tidier and also allow the player to see at a glance which targets are left.

ii) Where a recce plane only has cameras or no real time imaging capability, RF8, RF4, RA5 for example, it would increase realism if the player doesn't get the "take" from a recce mission until after the aircraft returns from the mission. This would certainly add to the realism of the game and would increase the degree of fog of war.

iii) Whilst I can manually set a speed for a strike aircraft on the way to and over a target, it will always default to cruise on the way home. The number of heavy losses I have received following a successful strike is depressing in the extreme. The ability to set the speed manually for a returning strike aircraft in the mission editor would be good.

[mcp5500]

Primary and secondary missions. Mission 1 while traveling to mission area 2. ASW during transit. missile launch at location. Also i would like to see an automated way of adding and removing Units from. missions. this also can accomplish the first task.

[mcp5500]

Also I would like to see a new detection trigger that seansers classification. The opposing must detect the selected unit but detecting units must return a classification for the trigger to launch it. Launch the tregger not when called out unit is just detected, it must also classified by the detector before the trigger will execute.

[Demuder]

I don't know if this is the right place for it, but since this poll looks like exactly that, I would like to suggest the addition of a minor feature. Make it so we can order weapons with active datalinks to self destruct.

Turning and retargeting is very nice, but although I have no hard facts about it, I am pretty sure one of the main functions of the datalink would be to destroy the weapon should the mission parameters change once it is underway or the target is simply gone. From a gameplay perspective, I just don't want superfluous torpedoes, AMRAAMs or tactical Tomahawks running around until they burn all their fuel