Matrix Games Forums

Hello, it's me again.

Just a few suggestions to improve the user interface, to provide more information to the player.

* Could some means be provided so one could examine the current HQ or Air leader without charging any PP's? Perhaps one could use "Return" to make a new Selection and "Escape" to cancel and make no change. Since "Escape"
currently results "No One", I guess "No One" would then have to be added as a selectable item.

* Add the Base fuel and supply levels be to the LCU display. At least the base supply level.


* Make more use of color to show nationality, including the "game nationalities" of US Army, USMC, and USN. Just as different colors are used for USMC and US army LCU's, I'd like to see different colors used for the text names of USMC, USN, and Army squadrons on the "Show Air" display. That would make it easier to delineate the service's squadrons
when doing Air transfers and such. The plane icon could retain their current color scheme so carrier-capable models are blue.

* Could the current flak value be added to each ship's stats on the "Show Port" and "Show TF" display? Seeing the flak values for each ship would be very handy when building TF's.


* A lower priority color suggestion. Add a bit more flavor by using separate colors for New Zealand and Australian ship units, rather than borrowing the British color. (I think Dutch ships already have their own color.)

* This one would probably be trickier. Could the projected number of PP's a TF will receive during the Execution phase be added to the TF display? TF PP's are very critical, but right now a player can only mentally estimate them based on the formulas in the manual.

* Could a parenthetical value be added beside the HQ PP level showing the projected number of PP's that will be subtracted to support TF's during the execution phase? For example, if 5th fleet has 4 TF's, all with destinations different from their home base, 5th Fleet's PP level would like something like "180 (40)"

* One more possible bug. PWHINTS theorized that only the LCU that came first in the database was used when calculating experience
for a battle. If that is the case, surely a weighted average of all the LCU's experience would be more appropriate. (Perhaps this
quirk is why one occasionally sees a "two squad attack" when experience and readiness for all the involved LCU's are pretty good.)


And at last I've dumped most everything I wanted to suggest about Pacwar for the past few years.

Best of luck to all the Matrix game projects.


Cheers,

John B. Curtis

Excellent suggestions John!

It looks to me like most of these would be relatively simple additions, it's just a matter of timing trying to get as much incorporated into the Patch and still get it out SOON!

We have been working hard to add color into the game. Your ideas for better defining the unit types with different text colors would also be a nice addition.

Aahh, the dreaded 2 squad attack! This one drives me crazy! Actually, I have looked into this problem quite a bit, and have come to the following conclusions:

1) The 2 squad attack notification does not mean this is how many squads actually attacked, it is how many squads are left after the massacre, er, combat.

2) Contrary to popular opinion, it doesn't matter which LCU is at the top of the list, the individual LCU experiences are taken into account separately to determine how many units attack or defend.

3) Combat does not exactly follow the rules as indicated in the rule book, there is some additional mysticism going on here. But the bottom line is this, "either" low leader rating and/or low LCU rating can cause 75%, 25%, 5%, or 0% to attack/defend in any given combat.

Basically, I don't think this is a bug, it's more a matter of LCU combat working somewhat differently than the way it is described in the rules!

Rich Dionne

Just one additional suggestion:

Since this game will still be in DOS format, I was wondering if a small utility could be added to the game that would automatically make a boot disc for us non-techie types.

It might work something like this:

You come to the installation screen and you are given two choices: 1) Install; and 2) Make Boot Disc.

If you click on #2 Make Boot Disc: You would be given an instruction to insert a 1.44mb floppy into your "A" drive. Then just simply click on "Create Boot Disc", and the computer will make the boot disc for you.

I have a number of DOS games (original Steel Panthers) with this feature and it sure makes creating boot discs painless - so I can still enjoy those old DOS favourites...

I hope this feature may be possible to add to this game and War in Russia. Thanks guys

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A King Tiger can give you a definite edge...

[This message has been edited by Von Rom (edited August 15, 2000).]

If you're concerned with Win playability, don't be. You shouldn't need a boot disk. Pacwar and WIR run fine in a dos window under win 95 and 98. Trust me, I do it all the time. Since they don't use memory expanders, Windows can trick them into running in windows instead of DOS mode.

Originally posted by Von Rom:
Just one additional suggestion:

Since this game will still be in DOS format, I was wondering if a small utility could be added to the game that would automatically make a boot disc for us non-techie types.

There is no need to boot to ms-dos mode with
Pacwar, unless the patch changes it too much, as it presently is, you can run pacwar in a dos-box, full screen mode, I have since I moved to a Pent II and win95 in 1998.

If you have trouble doing so, you may not have a properly setup go to ms-dos from in windows pif