Matrix Games Forums

I'm starting this to point out minor issues with the game that I think could be improved on. Ill add to it as I remember them.

1.) The "greying out", of orders that have no effect on a unit, thus making the game more user friendly to new players and save confusion.

For example;
a.) The only formation that artillery units can move in is road column, yet it is still possible to select all the other formations for this move, which to my knowledge have no effect.
b.) Being able to change the formation frontage, and depth, when a single unit is selected, as this has no effect on a single unit.

2.) An arrow shaped footprint for units moving and defending in arrowhead formation.

3.) I would like to be able to manually order a bombardment, from mortars and infantry guns, that have been deployed in the Bn reserve location by the AI, without if affecting the line units conducting their assault.
It would still stay attached to its Bn HQ unless you give it an independent move order. Manually giving the unit a bombard order would not detach it from the HQ, so no re-plan would happen as the force size would not be modified.
If you try to do this at the moment it causes a re-plan and the whole attack falls apart.
I think this is necessary because the AI will not do a preliminary bombardment during an assault, or do a very good job of suppressing fire on a dug in enemy position.
From my experience, the mortars under AI control only react well to the enemy, once they have been ousted from their entrenched positions.

daz,
 
I like 1.)
 
2.) I'll need to seek advice from Miquel and Paul on that one.
 
3.) I agree but I would go further so that you can place them under command for move/supply but also in support of a different force for fire tasking.
 
I would add another. Re-institute the preparatory bombardment task within the attack code. We used to have it but got rid of it. It will have to wait though till we get sequential tasking, so we can lift it and have it walk like a creeping barrage.

ORIGINAL: dazkaz15
3.) I would like to be able to manually order a bombardment, from mortars and infantry guns, that have been deployed in the Bn reserve location by the AI, without if affecting the line units conducting their assault.
It would still stay attached to its Bn HQ unless you give it an independent move order. Manually giving the unit a bombard order would not detach it from the HQ, so no re-plan would happen as the force size would not be modified.

[&o]Bravo! Superb idea. A small step towards making up for lack of an operational level fires support coordinator (US- Cmdr DIVARTY or Field Artillery Brigade; German ARKO and HARKO)

ORIGINAL: dazkaz15
... the AI will not do a preliminary bombardment during an assault, or do a very good job of suppressing fire on a dug in enemy position.
From my experience, the mortars under AI control only react well to the enemy, once they have been ousted from their entrenched positions.

IS this expected Dave? I know it is true for Corps or Army level arty. But I'd think bn mortars are likely to prep the objective. At least now that indirect fires has been fixed. The bn mortars are doing so much better. But I haven't been watching for prep fires since the fix.

In the attack bombard capable units go on-call. If they see someone on the objective or one of the other units in the attack do and request a bombardment then they will more likely bombard that enemy. This can occur at any time during the attack and it will often occur before the assault units reach the objective. SO it has the appearance and effect of a prep bombardment but it is a not a dedicated task if you know what I mean.

ORIGINAL: Arjuna

In the attack bombard capable units go on-call. If they see someone on the objective or one of the other units in the attack do and request a bombardment then they will more likely bombard that enemy. This can occur at any time during the attack and it will often occur before the assault units reach the objective. SO it has the appearance and effect of a prep bombardment but it is a not a dedicated task if you know what I mean.

Isn't this implemented with a "arty direct support only" order with an attacking unit which includes bombardment units?

The Arty direct support only option means that if checked any bombard capable unit within the force group will only respond to requests from units with the group - ie it will ignore requests from nits outside the group.

Thanks for the reply's Dave.
4.) When left clicking on an enemy unit, the information for that unit is not displayed unless you have the information panel up for a friendly unit first.
So for example if you have displayed the OOB then click on an enemy unit nothing is displayed. Quite annoying this one, but it has been like it for a long time now.

5.) The player should not have to click on no rest every time you give a bombard order to artillery at night, to ensure they fire.
If you order fire from a battery, they should respond, no matter what time it is unless they are utterly exhausted, in which case there should be a warning message to warn you that, they won't respond because they are too exhausted.
If an artillery unit runs out of ammo, and can no longer support the attack it should immediately revert to rest in situ, and a warning message should be displayed to let you know,
same with becoming too exhausted to carry on.
It should be impossible to set a bombard order for an artillery unit that has no bombard capable ammo, and there should be a warning beep if you try.

Also in the fire support tab, under the Arty Ammo slider, should be a fatigue, slider.
calibre of ammo for that unit should also be displayed to assist in selecting the right size of gun for the job.

There should be a hot key to select all bombard capable units on the map to make it easier to check that all the bombard tasks are on a target.

Some of the bombard boxes are still open ended.

Werfer units should not have to move to the reserve loc, if they are in range of the attack destination, when assigned to an HQ for direct fire support, during an attack.

My artillery will respond to direct calls for fire at any time of night or day. It will usually require some adjustment to rest settings when firing via a HQ. (e.g. is several Bn are grouped into a Regt sized artillery unit, then the HQ's rest settings impact artillery response - however except for exhausted artillery there is no such restriction on the individual batteries/Bn). Note that excessive firing can render a Bn unresponsive even in daylight, even with ample on hand supplies - this enforced resting isn't amenable to correction with the rest settings.

Artillery not firing at night unless no rest is selected.

After 16 minutes

The unit has insufficient ammunition to fire for 1hr 40 at standard rates, it also is fairly high fatigue to contemplate firing that mission. (Given the time and space requirements, and the ammunition possibilities, firing *should* commence immediately but fire intermittently - I suspect it is looking for sufficient rest overhead to permit the whole engagement).

My experience of 10-20 minute bombardments is that they fire on request however, and can be repeated on adjusted aim-points as required on completion.

ORIGINAL: Lieste

The unit has insufficient ammunition to fire for 1hr 40 at standard rates, it also is fairly high fatigue to contemplate firing that mission. (Given the time and space requirements, and the ammunition possibilities, firing *should* commence immediately but fire intermittently - I suspect it is looking for sufficient rest overhead to permit the whole engagement).

My experience of 10-20 minute bombardments is that they fire on request however, and can be repeated on adjusted aim-points as required on completion.

Thanks for the feedback Lieste

I did a bit more experimenting with your comments in mind.

Reducing the duration of the bombardment to under 1 hour did indeed make it start firing.
I tried several durations, and 1 hour seems to be the cut off point. Over 1 hour duration and it continues to rest, under 1 hour it starts to bombard immediately.

Issuing the order with no rest, and a 2 hour duration saw the bombardment start right away. So it would seem that if you order a duration over 1 hour, you need to click no rest.

Would be interesting to test if it would start to fire with the normal rest setting once it got to a point in time where it had enough ammo to finish that duration of mission, or it would kick in once its fatigue was sufficiently low enough to finish the mission.
One thing is for sure with such a low amount of ammo it wouldn't need much in the way of reduced fatigue to fire the round it currently has to hand.
I might do some more testing when I have time again.

ORIGINAL: dazkaz15

I'm starting this to point out minor issues with the game that I think could be improved on. Ill add to it as I remember them.

1.) The "greying out", of orders that have no effect on a unit, thus making the game more user friendly to new players and save confusion.

For example;
a.) The only formation that artillery units can move in is road column, yet it is still possible to select all the other formations for this move, which to my knowledge have no effect.
b.) Being able to change the formation frontage, and depth, when a single unit is selected, as this has no effect on a single unit.

2.) An arrow shaped footprint for units moving and defending in arrowhead formation.

3.) I would like to be able to manually order a bombardment, from mortars and infantry guns, that have been deployed in the Bn reserve location by the AI, without if affecting the line units conducting their assault.
It would still stay attached to its Bn HQ unless you give it an independent move order. Manually giving the unit a bombard order would not detach it from the HQ, so no re-plan would happen as the force size would not be modified.
If you try to do this at the moment it causes a re-plan and the whole attack falls apart.
I think this is necessary because the AI will not do a preliminary bombardment during an assault, or do a very good job of suppressing fire on a dug in enemy position.
From my experience, the mortars under AI control only react well to the enemy, once they have been ousted from their entrenched positions.

4.) When left clicking on an enemy unit, the information for that unit is not displayed unless you have the information panel up for a friendly unit first.
So for example if you have displayed the OOB then click on an enemy unit nothing is displayed. Quite annoying this one, but it has been like it for a long time now.

5.) The player should not have to click on no rest every time you give a bombard order to artillery at night, to ensure they fire.
If you order fire from a battery, they should respond, no matter what time it is unless they are utterly exhausted, in which case there should be a warning message to warn you that, they won't respond because they are too exhausted.
If an artillery unit runs out of ammo, and can no longer support the attack it should immediately revert to rest in situ, and a warning message should be displayed to let you know,
same with becoming too exhausted to carry on.
It should be impossible to set a bombard order for an artillery unit that has no bombard capable ammo, and there should be a warning beep if you try.

Also in the fire support tab, under the Arty Ammo slider, should be a fatigue, slider.
calibre of ammo for that unit should also be displayed to assist in selecting the right size of gun for the job.

There should be a hot key to select all bombard capable units on the map to make it easier to check that all the bombard tasks are on a target.

Some of the bombard boxes are still open ended.

Werfer units should not have to move to the reserve loc, if they are in range of the attack destination, when assigned to an HQ for direct fire support, during an attack.

Regarding 2.) it would be ideal to have the units defend in the formation they used to assault, and stay on the position when they reach the objective instead of messing around with the suicidal column formation, reorgs and repositions.

4.) can be solved with some keyboard shortcuts which would mean less mouse moving and button clicking is required.
Z = previous tab in command bar.
X = next tab in command bar.
C = switch tabs between obj/brg/etc. and info/e&s/cmd/dep/etc.

5.) My artillery are also lazy swine who don't want to get out of bed to bombard.

Biggest problem imo is the crazy column formations. I can't believe more people aren't mentioning this so I'll make up for it by repeatedly mentioning it myself.

yeah I've had to switch arty to no rest to get night fire even when the arty is not that fatigued

Just an update, with an addition.

1.) The "greying out", of orders that have no effect on a unit, thus making the game more user friendly to new players and save confusion.

For example;
a.) The only formation that artillery units can move in is road column, yet it is still possible to select all the other formations for this move, which to my knowledge have no effect.
b.) Being able to change the formation frontage, and depth, when a single unit is selected, as this has no effect on a single unit.

2.) An arrow shaped footprint for units moving and defending in arrowhead formation.

3.) I would like to be able to manually order a bombardment, from mortars and infantry guns, that have been deployed in the Bn reserve location by the AI, without if affecting the line units conducting their assault.
It would still stay attached to its Bn HQ unless you give it an independent move order. Manually giving the unit a bombard order would not detach it from the HQ, so no re-plan would happen as the force size would not be modified.
If you try to do this at the moment it causes a re-plan and the whole attack falls apart.
I think this is necessary because the AI will not do a preliminary bombardment during an assault, or do a very good job of suppressing fire on a dug in enemy position.
From my experience, the mortars under AI control only react well to the enemy, once they have been ousted from their entrenched positions.

4.) When left clicking on an enemy unit, the information for that unit is not displayed unless you have the information panel up for a friendly unit first.
So for example if you have displayed the OOB then click on an enemy unit nothing is displayed. Quite annoying this one, but it has been like it for a long time now.

5.) The player should not have to click on no rest every time you give a bombard order to artillery at night, to ensure they fire.
If you order fire from a battery, they should respond, no matter what time it is unless they are utterly exhausted, in which case there should be a warning message to warn you that, they won't respond because they are too exhausted.
If an artillery unit runs out of ammo, and can no longer support the attack it should immediately revert to rest in situ, and a warning message should be displayed to let you know,
same with becoming too exhausted to carry on.
It should be impossible to set a bombard order for an artillery unit that has no bombard capable ammo, and there should be a warning beep if you try.

Also in the fire support tab, under the Arty Ammo slider, should be a fatigue, slider.
calibre of ammo for that unit should also be displayed to assist in selecting the right size of gun for the job.

The timings for the bombard should be able to be altered while the bombard is taking place to reduce or increase the duration. This used to be possible, I don't know why it was changed?

There should be a hot key to select all bombard capable units on the map to make it easier to check that all the bombard tasks are on a target.

Werfer units should not have to move to the reserve loc, if they are in range of the attack destination, when assigned to an HQ for direct fire support, during an attack.


Some of the bombard boxes are still open ended, others are a strange shape, off centre.

The ability to stop a bombard while it is taking place with out effecting its deployment order. At the moment if you press the delete key to cancel a bombard, it also cancels its rest, or defend order, meaning you have to re set it every time.


6.) Changing of the default behaviour for a unit that arrives late for an assault at time, so that it slips its attack time rather than bunkering down, as requested by the community, here:

tm.asp?m=3313015

There is a hotkey to display all bombard units. Doing this and drag selecting the whole map will accomplish 'selecting all bombard units' without significant additional effort.

Alternatively (and how I run it...) I select Bombard as the range ring display, and can then see what bombard units are in the selection and their ranges without losing information on deployment of all other elements. This is also important in my modifications to my personal Estab due to significant increases in minimum ranges for gun armed units (Minor increases or decreases for specific howitzer units, although a large correction to the M3 Pack How, and M2 Pack How, which have inappropriate minimums ~ should be 'identical to M2 How' and 'longer than the 105mm Pack How' respectively. There are also large (but relatively insigificant) increases in the minimum range for mortars.)

ORIGINAL: Lieste

There is a hotkey to display all bombard units. Doing this and drag selecting the whole map will accomplish 'selecting all bombard units' without significant additional effort.

The problem with this is its 2 presses of the hotkey for the display of the bombard unit, as the first key press displays all gun units.
Then its a zoom out in order to select them all, on a large map that is several rolls of the mouse, then a drag select over the whole map, then a zoom back into the location that you are managing the battle in order to select the correct bombard marker and place it correctly, and its not always that fast to find exactly where it was that you were paying attention to on the map once zoomed out, especially if your new to the map.
Then when you finally get to the section of battle you are monitoring, you find you can't move the bombard marker correctly, as you can no longer see the friendly line units, and when you press the 1 key to display all the units, the bombard units get de-selected!
I honestly believe that a hotkey for selecting, not displaying all bombard units, while I am zoomed into a battle area in order to move a bombard marker would be my most used hotkey.

ORIGINAL: Lieste
Alternatively (and how I run it...) I select Bombard as the range ring display, and can then see what bombard units are in the selection and their ranges without losing information on deployment of all other elements. This is also important in my modifications to my personal Estab due to significant increases in minimum ranges for gun armed units (Minor increases or decreases for specific howitzer units, although a large correction to the M3 Pack How, and M2 Pack How, which have inappropriate minimums ~ should be 'identical to M2 How' and 'longer than the 105mm Pack How' respectively. There are also large (but relatively insigificant) increases in the minimum range for mortars.)

What I do at the moment is zoom out select all the units, and then zoom back in again.
Another method I like is to select the unit straight out of the OOB list.

The problem with this the map centres on the unit you select, so you then have to find where you were on the battlefield again, which usually requires another zoom out and in again.
If there was a way to suppress this centring on the selected unit it would be very helpful.
For example holding Alt key down while clicking on the OOB list, would prevent the centring, and leave you looking at the current location on the map, but with the unit selected, that may be quite some distance away, so that an order can be placed, at your current zoomed in location.

This would actually be useful for all orders not just bombard ones.
I find the range rings not very helpful when there are a lot of bombard units as it just clutters the map, the image below is from just a small scenario, in the larger ones it gets even more confusing.

The suppress centring option key, and a select all bombard unit hotkey, would for me make managing artillery far easier.

If that isn't what you want (though I generally find it helpful), then consider using the numeral keys to select from unit types:
Numeral keys from the main keyboard:
Currently set to 1-All Units ~ you want 8-Guns Bombard (or the closest equivalent*) - this is also useful for rapidly finding armour, mechanised or 'soft' units for special missions (assault over open ground, sweeping woods/towns etc.). Also useful for quickly finding depots and re-positioning them if the battle seems in danger of becoming more fluid than ideal...

*As I spend most of the time within the tutorial doing testing of new code or estab variations I intimately know the forces allocated so don't need the 'helpers' to organise forces quickly. I am aware of their existance and utility, but don't actually use them often enough to recall the necessary keys for keyboard shortcuts, or their exact naming convention... hopefully this is close enough to be useful though.

It does have the side-effect of removing the display of other units: I'd like to have the ability to limit the 'pick list' while continuing to display the supported/other units (albeit perhaps using 'small icons' for the off-list units?) You can fairly easily set "8", drag select the whole selection group, then "1" to display all other units, with only guns selected though, which isn't too onerous.

ORIGINAL: Lieste

It does have the side-effect of removing the display of other units: I'd like to have the ability to limit the 'pick list' while continuing to display the supported/other units (albeit perhaps using 'small icons' for the off-list units?) You can fairly easily set "8", drag select the whole selection group, then "1" to display all other units, with only guns selected though, which isn't too onerous.

No you can't Lieste. Hitting the 1 key while you have the bombard units selected will remove the selection of the bombard units.