Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: golden delicious

ORIGINAL: rhinobones

Are you quoting from an old John Wayne movie?

No- but I suppose it's possible that's the original source of what I reported. The bending of the rail lines might not work in reality, but burning the sleepers and moving or burying the rails would certainly be doable.


".

..it's a period-of-history thing, ACW rail-track metal was poorer in quality than modern rail, so could be softened more easily than 21C seamless hi-speed track, cf British Rail and relatively recent problems with points and track renewal..

ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

..it's a period-of-history thing, ACW rail-track metal was poorer in quality than modern rail, so could be softened more easily than 21C seamless hi-speed track, cf British Rail and relatively recent problems with points and track renewal..

Well, most scenarios aren't set in the 21st century, and in those that are rail transport is generally much less important. I imagine 1930s Soviet rails were no better than 19th century American rails.

I don't know if this was mentioned in an earlier post (I'm too lazy to look through the other 6 pages) but how about something that would assist in keeping formation integrity, particularily in large scenarios. An opponent of mine sent me a Barbarossa 41 scen he moded by changing the color scheme of the various armies from the german side. I'm not sure exactly what would be a good fit for the game in this regard but it would greatly help more inexperienced players forming more cohesive defenses as well as more effective attacks. I've been playing fitE, DNO, GiO, simultaneously and made the observation that I could really use something along this line

I, too, haven't read the entire moster thread, so my apologies if this has already been suggested ...

Would it be possible to have the "next unit" button (or a new button added for this purpose, or a keyboard shortcut, hot key etc.) select only units that have MP left, i.e. that still need my attention? Presently, I am spending a lot of time simply scrolling through all units to identify those that have a non-zero MP value. [:)]

ORIGINAL: Heldenkaiser

I, too, haven't read the entire moster thread, so my apologies if this has already been suggested ...

Would it be possible to have the "next unit" button (or a new button added for this purpose, or a keyboard shortcut, hot key etc.) select only units that have MP left, i.e. that still need my attention? Presently, I am spending a lot of time simply scrolling through all units to identify those that have a non-zero MP value. [:)]

You could save yourself time by browsing by formation.

ORIGINAL: golden delicious

ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

..it's a period-of-history thing, ACW rail-track metal was poorer in quality than modern rail, so could be softened more easily than 21C seamless hi-speed track, cf British Rail and relatively recent problems with points and track renewal..

Well, most scenarios aren't set in the 21st century, and in those that are rail transport is generally much less important. I imagine 1930s Soviet rails were no better than 19th century American rails.

..only if from early railroads, by 1930 russian metal was quite good and quality control had improved greatly. ACW stuff varied from soft to very brittle partially the reason for the low rail speeds ..

ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

..only if from early railroads, by 1930 russian metal was quite good and quality control had improved greatly.

Very sceptical. Even if standards had improved, they still can't have been very high. Russia largely achieved the massive quantitative gains of the five year plans through major qualitative loss. They were unable to produce copper wire good enough to use for military telephone lines, and this was one of the many non-sexy items for which they depended entirely on American lend lease during the war.

ORIGINAL: golden delicious

ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

..only if from early railroads, by 1930 russian metal was quite good and quality control had improved greatly.

Very sceptical. Even if standards had improved, they still can't have been very high. Russia largely achieved the massive quantitative gains of the five year plans through major qualitative loss. They were unable to produce copper wire good enough to use for military telephone lines, and this was one of the many non-sexy items for which they depended entirely on American lend lease during the war.

..sure, but russian iron came from a limited number of sites, so the composition (esp the sulphur content i think) was standard, (they made excellent iron canons during the napoleonic era for the same reason, crap gunpowder but good cannon), in the US during the Civil War metal came from many different sites so varying amounts of impurities. Further much of the processing base work was done by the early 1900s, types of smelters were standard as was the purifying process, where as in the US ACW several different types of more or less efficient smelters existed

..all metals have a DNA type thumbprint linked to their geographic location

Some mentioned earlier in the thread but worth mentioning again, and some new:

* Possibility to enlarge the minimap, and then click on it to go to that area.
* A command or button to center the minimap on the current location.
* An option to remove mousepointer-jump-to-dialogue.
* Map scroll on programme window edges and not on map window edges.
* Objective list.
* Being able to click or left/right-arrow in the scenario editor name (forces, units) editing window so you do not have to backspace a long name to fix an error in the beginning.
* Place exclusion zone 1/2 as objects in the terrain palette so you do not have to right click each time you want to add or remove a zone.
* A confirm window when using right click-fill to border in the editor. It is dangerously close to erase, and just another click with the mouse before you realize your mistake, and the undo command is useless. Or make the undo command multi-clickable so you can go several steps back.
* In deployment mode and map mode, a list or right-click menu when chosing map painting mode and place/remove unit/whatever, so you do not have to click all the way through the choices each time.
* Generally have a possibility to move pop-up windows, and also to make them larger. Only being able to see three events in the editor, when the window could be enlarged to six or seven events (on my screen) is a little bit frustrating, not to talk about the size of the briefing window in editing mode. The same goes for the force editor and other windows, bot in-game and in editing mode.

I enjoy the game as it is, but these small changes would make it even better!

/feldgrau

ORIGINAL: feldgrau

* Map scroll on programme window edges and not on map window edges.

This will be a pain for all of us who automatically go to the map window edges. Also the minimap will still have to scroll the same way.

* Place exclusion zone 1/2 as objects in the terrain palette so you do not have to right click each time you want to add or remove a zone.

If you use the hotkeys (1&2) this is a lot faster.

* A confirm window when using right click-fill to border in the editor. It is dangerously close to erase, and just another click with the mouse before you realize your mistake, and the undo command is useless. Or make the undo command multi-clickable so you can go several steps back.

Amen.

ORIGINAL: golden delicious
This will be a pain for all of us who automatically go to the map window edges. Also the minimap will still have to scroll the same way.

Well, it is not a big thing, so just disregard that point. [:)]

ORIGINAL: golden delicious
If you use the hotkeys (1&2) this is a lot faster.

Still takes a lot longer than if there'd be just to chose excl zone 1 in the palette and click away as much as you want.

/feldgrau

ORIGINAL: feldgrau

Still takes a lot longer than if there'd be just to chose excl zone 1 in the palette and click away as much as you want.

/feldgrau

Right so. And you could use the fill feature or blob draw.

ORIGINAL: Telumar

ORIGINAL: feldgrau

Still takes a lot longer than if there'd be just to chose excl zone 1 in the palette and click away as much as you want.

/feldgrau

Right so. And you could use the fill feature or blob draw.

No doubt there would be an improvement. However I suspect the engine currently treats exclusion zones completely differently from terrain, so it would be quite a difficult feature to implement.

Just bought the game last night and loaded it up and want to make a few quick comments about the UI. Please keep in mind I have not played this game in years and I do have CRS (Can't Remember Shit) disease.  I did look over my old rule book to make sure I wasn’t just missing something. Now with all the disclaimers over with here goes.


1. Please do something about the jump map. It is to hard to move around on a big map.  Some have already suggested poping up a window with the entire map. I think this would work great. I also recommend having some way to tie the min-map and the main map together.  As it is right now, when I move around on the main map the mini-map does not update.

2. On pages with long list please at a top of list and bottom of list buttons.

3. When doing planed attacks, add an option to multi select units and give orders all at once and a select all button.  I might have missed something but last night when I was assigning fire support I had to individually give orders to each available unit.[/ol]

I am not sure this has been covered before. I tried to make myself clear in an earlier post but want to elaborate my post a little.
For me, there are two reasons to play a specific scenario against the computer more than once.
 
1. Try to achieve better VP and better results for VP for friendly/enemy losses
2. Try to minimise losses while increasing the enemies losses.
 
The first point is very well implemented as it is right now. It is easy to count VP and compare them with earlier games. The second point, however, could be much improved. Right now all statistics are available but not the results or the interpretations of it.
 
For example, I just played through "Last Stand in Africa 1942-1943" - which I think is a great scenario - as the germans. I am interested to see a good overview of my losses per equipment GROUP type that is Tanks, Artillery, Infantry, Aircraft etc. I would like to see the added sums for total assigned equipment at scenario end (the survival forces), the losses per group type and also the losses in percent of total losses and own losses of that equipment type. Also the total used equipment (for example assigned tanks + lost tanks = total amount of tanks). Such statistical information is very fun and give you something you could compare against if you would like to improve your score other than going for only Victory Points.
 
The information are already in place. It´s just sad there are no good summary of it. It could be presented graphically if possible but at least with numbers and percentage and easily compared against the enemies losses. If that is not implemented the information gets easily overlooked as just a list of numbers and doesn´t tell very much at first glance. I do sum up all of these losses though.
 
For example. When the scenario ended some facts I could get out of the figures was:
 
Allies
------
          Assigned                       Lost   Loss Ratio
Tanks  1.647 (2.994 total)         1.347  45% of own equipment
 
Aircraft 1.151 (1.782)                631    25% - || -
 
Guns (not calculated yet)
 
Infantry 8.205 (17.708)             9.503  54%

German
------
            Assigned           Lost  Loss Ratio
Tanks    468 (784)          316  43% of own EQ, 19% of Total EQ LOSS
 
Aircraft   160 (1.106)      946  86% of own EQ, 60% of Total EQ LOSS
 
Guns
 
Infantry 1.715 (6.097)   4.382  72% of Own EQ, 32% of Total EQ Loss
 
------------------------------
For me, these figures are interesting and give me some understanding of losses of different equipment types as a whole. I could use them to
get better results if I choose to play the scenario again etc. But with the current implementation I think the game doesn´t use its possible
potential to really give you that sort of information.
 
Ok, that´s my suggestion for improving the end-scenario summary screens.
 
 
 
 
 
 

HOw about a button that allows you to see which hexes are spotted, which are known and which you have no information about?

Like placing a grey mantel over all unknown hexes.

... a great tool I think ... so I'll reiterate
 
... either a setting to highlight the active artillery unit's hex range with graduated highlight colors for each arty piece's range (long range tubes=yellow; medium range tubes=orange; etc.)
 
... or a setting to highlight all of the current player's arty ranges  (if anyone's played BiN or BiI; the way the AA units ranges are highlighted would be a good example)
 
Arty is so critical to toaw, this would be a great help