Matrix Games Forums

The more I play this game the more I appreciate it and enjoy it. However, one thing bugs me - the playback feature when playing pbem games. Perhaps I am just not using it properly, but I've red the info available in the manual and looked here, and I can't seem to get any satisfaction from it.

From my perspective, its really important to be able to see all of the battle summaries and combat animations from the pbem turns in the round that immediately precede your turn. However, the playback feature doesn't let you view any of the combat animations and I've found it very difficult to and not-intuitive to view the different combat summary screens. The only way I seem to be able to do it is to pause the vcr and then click on the combat detail button - but this does not seem to always work.

Am I doing something wrong? I think perhaps I must be, because it seems like such an important feature more people would be asking for an upgrade if it worked as poorly as I'm able to achieve. What am I doing wrong that I can't get a good playback of the turns of the other 4 nations when I use this feature in pbem? Thanks.

the combat detail screen lists everything that is on the animation screen, you just have to get used to it. So if you click on the detail screen after each combat, you can then see what each die roll was during that combat. hover over the 'attack' icon between the unit icons and it will show you the attack and defense modifier numbers.

the thing that you won't see though is where each of the modifiers comes from, which isn't shown anywhere else for that matter. after awhile of playing though, you'll get used to where the majority of modifiers comes from.

Don't pause the VCR while it's running; just hit the little "star" icon on the combat summary screen to bring up the combat detail screen. If you do that, the VCR will pause automatically. Once you've finished viewing the combat detail screen, close it and close the combat summary screen, and the VCR will resume automatically.

actually, it'd be really nice if the playback control went away in the detail combat screen. Since you can't play from that screen anyways, it's kinda pointless and i always end up moving it around all over the place so i can see the details...

Yep, I often click-and-drag the VCR controls out of the way of the combat detail screen when viewing the results.

Yup, I do that too!
If only one could move the Combat Report pop-up... gee wouldn't THAT be nice??? Just an option to have it on the left or right bottom of the screen inset of smack in the middle...

Thanks, guys.