2.03 Update Feedback

[jack54]

I guess I got the HQ and subordinates wrong[&:]... I thought we would be able to highlight a HQ and all attached units would highlight on the map. Seems it's for selecting all units. (drat, drat, and double drat I never play without limited orders.)

2.04 maybe [:)]

[CapnDarwin]

jack54, When we select units they can take a single order which breaks the limited orders, but we missed the need to "see" the units in the selected chain. We will see what we can do in 2.04.

[jack54]

ORIGINAL: Capn Darwin

jack54, When we select units they can take a single order which breaks the limited orders, but we missed the need to "see" the units in the selected chain. We will see what we can do in 2.04.

Thanks Capn... didn't mean to seem ungrateful I just misunderstood. As always you guys are the Best!

[CapnDarwin]

jack54, you are fine. We missed what you guys were saying on this.

[Lowlaner2012]

Also thanks for the patch, like Jack I thought it was just for being able to see the units under an HQ..

[pekische]

I also thought I will see command chain...

[ComradeP]

It seems artillery, at least the German artillery, is much less effective when firing at terrain with some cover than in earlier versions, including the pseudo-2.03 for the Grogheads contest.

I like it! Now, holding defensive positions is a viable strategy and artillery doesn't blow tanks away with impunity in difficult terrain.

I just finished the first scenario of the School Teacher campaign. No permanent core losses yet, 1 fallen out tank, 4 fallen out Marders and 1 destroyed Marder. I restarted a couple of times to get the encounter with the Hinds right. When the Gepards don't hit, the Hinds can easily destroy several units of tanks which is not a good start for the campaign.

The scenario encourage clever use of smoke as it's forested and it's difficult to get a range advantage.

One of the companies was on overwatch where the Jaguars are now (I moved the tanks to the southeast when the Hinds came near), the other shot up Soviet tanks moving to/through the eastern objective. There were 2 smoke hexes between them and the objective, the Soviets couldn't see a thing (a single smoke hex wasn't enough to hide them). The other company's in the north.

The Jaguars are not joking around, they're very good at destroying tanks, even better than most of my Leopards thus far.



A suggestion for AI improvement: when the AI has suffered serious losses in an area, or when it's facing tanks without any tanks of its own, it should probably not keep pushing in that area. In the north, after the Leopards had destroyed a few mechanized infantry units, the AI kept advancing with...AD and HQ units.

Also: I'm not sure if very small units get a defense bonus, but my Leopards couldn't seem to destroy a 1 element HQ unit that was moving around in a town at 1 hex range even after perhaps as many as 20 shots, if not more (as in: 20 instances of the blue line appearing).

I believe this was going to be changed in 2.03 or possibly 2.04: there's still a considerable difference between the time a self-preservation move takes to happen (almost instantaneously) and the amount of time it takes for a regular hasty move order to happen when you schedule them.

[fvianello]

ORIGINAL: ComradeP
A suggestion for AI improvement: when the AI has suffered serious losses in an area, or when it's facing tanks without any tanks of its own, it should probably not keep pushing in that area. In the north, after the Leopards had destroyed a few mechanized infantry units, the AI kept advancing with...AD and HQ units.

+1

[cbelva]

ORIGINAL: HanBarca

ORIGINAL: ComradeP
A suggestion for AI improvement: when the AI has suffered serious losses in an area, or when it's facing tanks without any tanks of its own, it should probably not keep pushing in that area. In the north, after the Leopards had destroyed a few mechanized infantry units, the AI kept advancing with...AD and HQ units.

+1

This is an area that we are still working on. Rob and Jim will tell you that I have been beating on them pretty hard regarding this issue. Especially ADA units leading the attack. It is better than it was, but it still needs more work. The problem is making sure that we don't break what is working right. We have a pretty good AI now in the attack, but it needs some tweaking and that is just one area.

[cbelva]

ORIGINAL: baldbrother

Also the Leopards waited until the WP tanks were just two hexes away until firing. Then it was a toe to toe slugfest with all 15 Leopards going down along with 17 T80's. Also at the end of the first turn a whole lot of bridges appeared over the river up in the top right of the map then vanished at the start of the next turn!

I am going to guess that your Leopards were in an urban hex. Units defending in an urban hex with a "Hold" profile is now going to hold their fire until the enemy is closer. This was done for two reasons. First, people were complaining that they could not set up ambushes because units were firing too soon. Second, we noticed that units in cities were firing too soon giving their position away. That allowed the enemy to drop arty and start firing at a distance slowly attriting the forces in the city. Now you may not know that there is a force hiding in a city/village unit you have moved closer.

Note, this restriction of holding their fire is for units in a hold profile only. Units in a screen profile will still fire at units at a distance. In testing I found a good strategy was to place my infantry in hold and then my tanks in screen while the enemy was moving up. Infantry stayed hidden while the tanks would pick off enemy subunits as they are moving up. Then as the enemy gets close, you can place your tanks in a hold profile.

This is not the perfect solution, but with the way orders are handled in the game now, it seemed a good compromise. There are plans in the future to give the player more options regarding movement and stationary profiles that would allow the player to have more control over engagement ranges. But until such as time, we are limited and there will be trade offs.

[ComradeP]

How is visibility at night supposed to work?

Currently, units with thermals or night vision goggles can't spot anything beyond 500 meters in the second scenario of the School Teacher campaign, but when another friendly unit spots something, the enemy unit can suddenly be attacked. How does this mechanic work?

I'm stumbling into Soviet positions, and the Panzergrenadiere are very vulnerable in a firefight with an enemy equipped with ATGM's at close range. After a unit is spotted, other units can suddenly fire on them as well.

The performance of the German artillery has its ups and downs, it's not remotely as lethal as the US artillery was in the Grogheads contest 2.03 version, and that's fine for difficult terrain but Soviet units in the clear also often take no to low losses. Tanks being a bit better protected is one thing, but it's difficult to deal with the large Soviet infantry units without some sort of reliable average (in terms of casualties caused by artillery) to plan with.

It might be difficult to code, but units with a hasty move order not stopping when facing light resistance would also help. At the moment, my tank companies are often stopped by a single Gremlin team that they fail to destroy.

Some sort of hint as to where enemy reinforcements would come from (what edge/side of the map) would also be appreciated. Both in the first scenario and this one, I've had to restart (in the second case after several hours) because the enemy warped reinforcements in on top of my spearhead.

The sudden change in visibility for dawn sadly resulted in one of my companies getting mauled by 30 T-64BV's that were invisible to them before. I guess that dawn is supposed to take place in an entire orders cycle, hence the sudden increase in visibility instead of a gradual increase. The hints for when dawn or dusk will arrive seem precise, but they're not: it dawned at 04:20, instead of 05:02. That's a bit cheesy.

Overall, I still like what looks like a reduction in artillery effectiveness, but several improvements to how movement works for hasty moves would be nice.

[cbelva]

ComradeP, regarding night visibility and units with thermals, what is the weather? Bad weather can significally retard thermal imaging. If the weather is clear, a unit with thermals can see quite well.

[ComradeP]

"Night, clear, visibility 500 meters"

Neither my Jaguars nor my Leopards can see anything until they're adjacent to it or until another friendly unit spots it, when suddenly they can fire at it.

[cbelva]

Can you post a screen shot showing the LOS overlay? I just checked the los for a unit with thermals at night and it looked good.

[ComradeP]

It looks normal, but this isn't actually what the unit can see. There's a T-64 BV unit two hexes to the left, another unit two hexes to the right and yet another unit two hexes to the northeast that all pop-up as soon as visibility increases.

I can understand not being able to accurately spot units in towns or woods, but they can't spot anything on the open either beyond 500 meters.

[cbelva]

Sorry to keep asking, but can you send me a saved game file. You can email me at <crbelva@comcast.net>. We need to take a look at this. I personally not seen anything like this. There is the possibility that might not see the units in the town or woods. However, I would think unit sitting in the 82 or 77 would be fairly easy to spot. I will also have Capn D take a look at it. Thanks

[ComradeP]

Save sent. It could be that the unit 2 hexes away in the clear moved there just before the visibility improved and was further away at the time the screenshot was taken, but I haven't been able to spot units at a distance in the open in the northern part of the map either.

[cbelva]

I set up a test scenario and I confirmed. I am wondering how this got by testing. I personally ran some night scenarios and did not see this problem.[:@] I will have Capn D look at this who is our resident sighting expert. Thanks for finding this. This might be something we have to hot fix before the next patch. I will discuss with Rob and Jim after they get a chance to look at this.

[Yankee66]

ORIGINAL: cbelva

ORIGINAL: Panta

A little warning notice. It seems that v2.03 overwrites the previous Scenarios and Saved directories. I lost (on this computer) all the maps made by other users and my own scenarios. It is convenient to backup the files you don't want to lose.

I don't think it over write saved games, but it will overwrite prevous Scenarios and maps since we had to update them for the patch to work with them. Sorry about that. If you reload the other maps, they should work.

Does that mean that on my end, something maybe went wrong?
Because after the update to 2.0.3, I still have the downloaded maps (Red Storm 9 and Fulda Gap) working as if nothing happened.

[battlerbritain]

I'm liking v2.03 so far.

A big improvement so a big thumbs up from me

The game plays a lot quicker, helos + SAMs + AAA behave themselves and results seem a lot more 'authentic'. Things are happening roughly how I'd expect them to.

I like the way helos bug back to the FAARP a lot quicker when out of ammo.

Not tried nighttime stuff yet though.

Well done on a big improvement.