Matrix Games Forums

Ok now that I have had the chance to play a few games online I’ve noticed a few consistent problems.

First the silent or stealth fire fight. When playing online units may be attacked and even destroyed by my opponent without any feedback to me. In some cases I may have opportunity fire, but nothing happens when I select yes. I had notice this before in ver 4.5 but not nearly to the extent I am experiencing in ver 5.01.

Second the wobbly retreat. It appears on some generated maps that the retreat hexes are not the same on both computers. For example in one scenario I saw two of my Panther Gs retreat west away from the enemy, while my opponent observed them retreat east towards his units. When my opponents turn started he attacked my panthers destroying one and immobilizing the other. The icons for my Panthers then disappeared from the position on my map and reappeared in the position as shown on my opponents map.

Third the save game artillery re-supply. I have observed that in some cases artillery units that were out of ammo when I saved the game, find themselves re-supplied with ammo the next time I load the saved game. A specific example is several units of off-board Nebelwerfers that were out of ammo for several turns before the save game, only to be fully re-supplied when we reloaded.

Finally. In the scenario “The Reduction of Calais” there is an armour car at the bottom right of the map that causes the game to lockup when it is moved north. The unit in question is Unit B1 a Recce Dingo Starting in hex 69,77. The game locks up when the host computer plays the Canadians in a two-player game. It appears that an opportunity fire condition occurs, but the axis player never gets the option to answer yes or no. The allied player just keeps waiting and the op-fire does not time out.

Can anyone confirm these? Or is this just a pproblem with my setup?

Nope, ive seen the same thing numerous times!
In fact we played a game with one of the matrix team, it was a three way(are you experiencing this in 1 vs1 battles or multiplayer?), Anyway, I had one turn where I had at least 15-20 of those "ghost opfire" episodes. It seemed evry second, I was being asked to op fire, then nothing happened, some of it seemed to be I was being asked to op fire, using units, whose weapons didnt have the range to op fire(should we be getting op fire requests from units that arnt even in range?)But there was also about 6-8 in a row, where I had an infrantry unit and an AT gun within 2-3 hexes of enemy and was asked to op fire, then NOTHING. I am in agreement with you, I sure dont recall this happening to this extent in ver 4.5.
If it happens only one turn or so I can live with it, but if it becomes rampant, then going back to OPfire off in online games may be my only solution, then of course you take the risk of being "junked" to death. Since online games is the very reason I play,(playing the AI is less than stimulating)
I am hoping matrix can address this in the next patch.

[ May 20, 2001: Message edited by: Alby ]

[ May 20, 2001: Message edited by: Alby ]

Keeping this up top,
Now experiencing constant op fire firing on previous unit.


[ May 20, 2001: Message edited by: Alby ]

well, guess its back to op fire off for online games.
it uses too much of your time when the other guy doesnt confirm it,or, even when he does sometimes. too many ghost op fires, too many firing at wrong unit.

When the games "diverge" and this starts to happen a lot - try saving the game and having one person send the save to the other players and restarting form the common save. Formt eh online games I've playerd this "divergence" is VERY rare when playing on my home LAN, and gets worse as the game goes on, particularly the more people are playing.

I have not had time to try it but if this is indeed what is happening then every 5 or 6 turns, "resynching" from a common save should help the problem.

THe 3 way agame I played with Bart and Alby there was only one really bad problem were my shots were not "getting through" and the unit kept resetting back to its full complement of men, and "phantom" response opfire was generated. A couple incidents of firing at teh previous target (which some folks would consider a feature ), but all told out of teh hundreds of shots I think there were maybe a dozen or or problems.

The architecture was not designed to be interactive to the extent we made it.

Those of you with LANs please report your observations with OPFIRE confirm on. The reliability on a LAN tells me this these problems are related to latency. Though we just don't have enough data to say for sure...

If "resynching" from a common save, as you put it would correct the problem why not implement an automated function that every few turns that does just that. Perhaps add an option in the option menu to turn “resyncing” on or off as required.

I don’t mind the problem that much, as I tend to attribute the effect to fog of war. My gaming partner on the other hand is somewhat more critical and dumped our last game in frustration. I have to admit it was getting to be a little much.

We have both been playing head to head over the net ever since V4. We are now finding that for some reason V5.01 has a lot more op-fire glitches than ever. We have played several very large scenarios for as many as 20 or more consecutive turns in 4.5 with very rare occurrence of the problem. In ver 5.01 we seem to get these almost constantly. Our net connection is over cable modems, and we only live a few blocks apart. Our ping times are consistently less than 20ms.

Now what about the other two bugs I listed the Artillery ammo re-supply and the inconsistent retreat hexes?

I don't know for sure...you two would be agood test case. I think poart of teh problem is an incomplete initial synching prehaps withregards the retreat hexes, so try to start an online game when youstart immediately save and send it to your opponent, then start again from the common save file.

The ammmo could be a "Limited ammo off" pref setting form a previous game? Pref setting from one game can "contaminate" others if you are not careful?? Don;t know about the unit problem..

I don't know the details of trying to resynch the games "on demand" - we have only so much we can do for a free game...Hopefully MC sales will pick up a bit once it ships!