Matrix Games Forums

Hello, after a major two-week learning curve, and reading, posting, inciting the impatience and generous responses from Veteran Wite players, I have endeavored on my first PBEM game -- Road to Moscow.
however, after saving the pbem file, and sending back to the Soviet player, it is with great dissatisfaction that my opponent cannot replay my turn! He is not able to see the smashing of the Soviet ground and air units. He has to rely on his commander report.
Surely there is a way for replay of the opponents turn? Or were all the couriers killed in actions?
thanks,
The Mantrain

From an earlier posting, there is no playback. Apparently it was discussed during development but was decided not to include it.

There is no replay in the game. You have to rely on the F11 key and scan the various battlefields, and/or review the CR screen. Pavel has talked about adding a replay feature in the future, but there are other higher priority items and adding a replay would take quite a bit of work. We realize that having a replay is nice to have, but there is plenty of info to be gotten now, and you can see the lack of detailed review of all your opponent's moves as extra FOW.

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

There is no replay in the game. You have to rely on the F11 key and scan the various battlefields, and/or review the CR screen.

Eh? Still sitting on the financial fence awaiting funding before buying. How on earth can you play a game where you can't see what your opponent has done during the turn? I presume I must be missing something (does F11 help you with this?). [&:]

Yes, the F11 key helps in this regard. You will be able to see all the enemy air/ground actions and a detailed combart report for them. It's no step-by-step move replay, though. Not that you'll miss it that much.

At first I was annoyed that feature was missing. But I must say that the F11 key does a good job and allows me to see at a glance what happened and you have access to the details of the combat report if you wish.
I played some PBEM scenarios and I didn't feel I missed something.
But I agree adding a replay would be nice.

What I miss with no replay is that you are not able to learn from your opponent's moves in this game. It also leaves me feeling like each turn is quite disconnected from the last. Kind of like having a new chess problem to solve with each turn rather than witnessing the ebb and flow of a battle. It's like "Here's a configuration of units, what are you going to do?" followed in the next turn by "Here's a configuration of units, sort of like the last one but you're in a worse position, what are you going to do?" Speaking from the Soviet perspective here.

A War in the Pacific style replay (without the sync bug, of course) would add significantly to this game in PBEM.

Having played games with no information regarding enemy movements whatsoevwer the last years, I must say that the F11-reports does a good job of telling you what has happened. I fully agree, however, with the above statement of not being able to learn from your opponents moves. It would be great if the air recon or close proximity of enemy units could reveal fragments of other things than is the present case, like unit commander; parent HQ; number of AFVs; supply status; general fatigue of unit; support units, and so on - the type of small pieces of information that can give you the wider picture if you have the inclination to study them. It would basically be the sort of information that gathering of prisoners, recon sorties and radio surveillance would give you.

And it wouldn't be to difficult to implement, would it? The system simply have to pick a little here and a little there from the information it handles anyway (this might be where I'm wrong, of course). [:)]