Future Directions - Features

[wodin]

Narvik map for one had loads of impassable terrain..great map aswell.

Harry you have PM's blocked you know?

[RockinHarry]

ORIGINAL: phoenix

I think Dave said the facing thing was 'fixed' a long while back - by which I mean the way units are facing all the wrong way at scenario start. Is that what you mean?
I don't have a clue about map making etc. Sorry. Just gave you the shot from COTA because I assume if that kind of terrain was possible there then it is possible in BFTB. But you would need someone who knows about these things to answer you.

No, it´s just the odd Cohesion loss, when units do their initial facing at battle start. Assuming appropiate intel on enemy units is given, units actual facing gets more or less right. IMHO what is calculated at games start s/b precalculated before the first game seconds, or even "fixed" in the scenario editor.

With regard to slopes and layer setup, I´ll do some further testing, in order to grasp the game engine limits. I assume it has something to do with the 100m sub grid and anything below is likely very much smoothed/averaged, yielding in slope steepness that is far less than what one would expect in that cases.

Could also make a difference with regard to "metres per altitude layer" setting. Currently I have it at 5m for my Veritable map, as I wanted a finer resolution. Highest areas are around 40m, so layers used is 0,5,10,15...40. Theres a hill (Moyland wood), that declines very steeply towards the Rhine river plain, at a very short distance (around 50 to 100m), from 45m to sea kevel. Steepest slopes I get are 16°, when they more should approach the 30° level.

Maybe Bil H has the idea to get that working for his 30m sub grid setting for LOTB. Could be, I´m going one step to far with details, but currently I don´t want to start the map anew.[:(]

[RockinHarry]

ORIGINAL: wodin

Harry you have PM's blocked you know?

Thanks, "fixed" [;)]

[Alchenar]

ORIGINAL: wodin

Alchemar.not sure that fits the scale mate...

No it is, there's a big difference between placing a Company on the crest of a hill and placing it on a forward slope.

[wodin]

Yes but unlikely a whole coy will be placed on a hill..platoon maybe..but coy unlikely..the coy would split into paltoons..remeber that sort of level is abstracted.

[Phoenix100]

Wodin, in the BFTB tutorial vid, I believe, Dave makes a point of showing the new detail grid which allows you to position units (meaning, generally, I guess, companies) behind, for example, the tree line. So why not behind a ridge? I have noticed, however, that it's not so straightforward in the game and that the destination indicator tends to snap to a position which isn't always where you would want it to be. I have always assumed that the box indicator (which you can change the dimensions of) for a unit's 'footprint' indicates roughly the position of the unit's men. Though, as you say, it's clearly an abstraction of sorts (it's a rectangle, after all) I had always assumed that if you want, for example, the unit to be behind a ridge, you should ensure that the limits of that rectangle are behind the ridge. Am I wrong?

[wodin]

Pheonix I understand that...putting a platoon behind the ridge I can imagine all tanks lined up in hull down position, but if you talking about a coy size tank unit you have to be talking about some sort of abstraction going on as the platoons use tactics within the footprint. I'm not sure how often a whole coy of tanks all lined up in hull down positions happened..I just think that sort of thing like hull down is for a lower scale..you have to think that they are in hull down positions within the footprint or at least some of them are..

Now setting up a Inf coy behind a ridge or along a treeline is coy level stuff...see what I'm saying some tanks in a coy maybe hull down others maybe moving to attack from the side etc..platoon is the manauvre element of a Tank unit so I feel putting them all in hull down positions be possible..coy it will be that some are and some aren't but presume a few are..etc etc. Also remember the terrain isn't as hi res as say the platoon level game Bil is making where I expect hull down would become something you can do and set as an SOP maybe. Or I would say that that scale it's a good feature request to ask for..

[Phoenix100]

Yes, I see what you mean. Yes, of course, you don't have to deal with things like 'hull down' or not - I agree.

[altipueri]

Having played the game a bit more and seen some of the points made I think for a team of a couple of guys (for that's what it seems to be now) they could do with a source of revenue. My blunt advice would be to grab as much of that Defence Department consultancy money as they can whilst there's still some around. However, as a wargamer:

I think the game is easily good enough as it is. Crikey, Phoenix and I have each had a few hours banging away Hofen and nothing in the game was so in need of fixing that we didn't get a few hours good play.

I think I read somewhere that there was a move to update COTA/HTTR scenarios so they all run on one engine (BFTB?)? If so that would be great - and I presume they would be sold as a pack or add-on. Maybe all included in new 2013 sales of BFTB and $20 for previous owners of the game in some form.

Making new scenarios does seem to be a really laborious labour of love, especially given the nit picking that will greet errors. But how about a fictional variation or two for some or all of the existing scenarios. For example (see my Monschau windows thread) the US pitched up at Hofen with 12 3" AT guns of the 612 Tank Destroyer just 2 days before the German assault. German intelligence probably was still saying the sector was weakly held - so would that have made a difference? The original scenario designer should be able to make some such changes without too much new work required. You can take a view on whether the changes should be disclosed to players before or after. I guess another example would of course be Arnhem where the Brits were warned, but it was too late to really change plans.

[Phoenix100]

HTTR already available as a a pack to put into BFTB, Alti - to buy, I mean. Somewhere on the Matrix site. Get it if you can. The battles there are great, though there's only about 8 or 10 scenarios, much less than the original HTTR. The COTA pack is just about done, I believe and will probably be sold within a couple of months or so. That is to include all the COTA scenarios, I think, so will be well worth it. There are great, interesting battles in COTA. I still play on the old COTA, which has less options than the BFTB engine, less info available, and I assume isn't so sophistique - but - to be honest - I haven't really noticed (it works fine, anyway). But not worth buying original COTA now when you can get the pack in a couple of months.

You should try Manhay Crossroads next, from BFTB. As Axis. That is tough, but small and manageable, again, like Hofen (about the same size as Hofen). The RL battle was a real turning point, I think, in that Manhay was where the Axis advance ended up getting funnelled when it couldn't get anywhere in the north. It's a very challenging scenario. I've never won it, I don't think. You start off strong (as Axis) but the allies get a lot of arty to cripple you with. I have no idea how to win it.

[Bil H]

ORIGINAL: RockinHarry

With regard to slopes and layer setup, I´ll do some further testing, in order to grasp the game engine limits. I assume it has something to do with the 100m sub grid and anything below is likely very much smoothed/averaged, yielding in slope steepness that is far less than what one would expect in that cases.

Could also make a difference with regard to "metres per altitude layer" setting. Currently I have it at 5m for my Veritable map, as I wanted a finer resolution. Highest areas are around 40m, so layers used is 0,5,10,15...40. Theres a hill (Moyland wood), that declines very steeply towards the Rhine river plain, at a very short distance (around 50 to 100m), from 45m to sea kevel. Steepest slopes I get are 16°, when they more should approach the 30° level.

Maybe Bil H has the idea to get that working for his 30m sub grid setting for LOTB. Could be, I´m going one step to far with details, but currently I don´t want to start the map anew.[:(]

Regarding slope effects, they are definitely more clear as you apply a finer grid. The attached example is with a 50 meter movement grid and 5 meter contours... of course the lighter the gray the slower the movement. The problem I have with slope effects right now is that they can totally get overwhelmed once terrain elements are applied when really they should be cumulative. Not much we can do about that and I don't see it as a huge issue.

Bil

[RockinHarry]

Thanks Bil, looks great! So do you mean slope effects (speed, traversability) do not properly adapt with other terrain layers, or vice versa?[&:]

[Bil H]

ORIGINAL: RockinHarry

Thanks Bil, looks great! So do you mean slope effects (speed, traversability) do not properly adapt with other terrain layers, or vice versa?[&:]

Sorry for the confusion... what I mean is that as you add terrain elements, foliage, ground types, etc. the slope effects like in my image above become less and less obvious under all those layers. They are still there, but it becomes hard to differentiate them.. and if the terrain type has a slower movement than the slope gives, then that terrain type will overwhelm the slope effect and in essence there will be no slope effect any more. Ideally, I would expect the slope effect (movement modifier) to be added on top of the terrain type.

That probably doesn't help at all does it? [:D]

Bil

[RockinHarry]

ORIGINAL: Bil H

ORIGINAL: RockinHarry

Thanks Bil, looks great! So do you mean slope effects (speed, traversability) do not properly adapt with other terrain layers, or vice versa?[&:]

Sorry for the confusion... what I mean is that as you add terrain elements, foliage, ground types, etc. the slope effects like in my image above become less and less obvious under all those layers. They are still there, but it becomes hard to differentiate them.. and if the terrain type has a slower movement than the slope gives, then that terrain type will overwhelm the slope effect and in essence there will be no slope effect any more. Ideally, I would expect the slope effect (movement modifier) to be added on top of the terrain type.

That probably doesn't help at all does it? [:D]

Bil

Thanks, just what I meant and no, It helped! [:D]

I could imagine there´s some simplifications (or abstractions) in the game, meant to help AI path finding and decision making, so that sort of detail can not be well implemented into the game.

[stardark]

Some sort of frontline indicator would be very handy indeed!

[RockinHarry]

In the meantime, I figured that a "frontline" can be established well by proper use of the intel settings, for both sides forces. [X(] [:)]

No idea if this has been asked for before...at times I´d like to see both sides forces footprints/range rings at the same time. So far, one can only make selections either for friendlies, or enemies, but not both. Would be helpful to see how much enemy and friendly footprints/range rings overlap, so one can better estimate what´s going on with particular unit behaviors. [:)]

[bardolph]

This has probably been mentioned already but one thing I would be interested in seeing is multi-multiplayer, like say what is available in TacOps or Scourge of War. It would be very useful to be able to have multiple players per side or on one side for co-op, each with their own command and limited intel on friendly forces not under their control. I would imagine that military clients or prospective clients would find such a feature useful as well.

[pacwar]

At the risk that someone else has suggested this let me propose the following...when you get a message about a specific unit it would be useful if you could just click on the message and it would either take you to the unit in question on the map or highlight the unit in the OB so you could click on the OB and get to the unit...as it is now, unless I've missed something, when I get a message that unit so and so has halted or failed in their assault I've got to pause the game and search the OB and/or do a quick visual scan of the battlefield to figure out where the unit is...perhaps this is just a reflection of too much micromanagement on my part but some of the messages can be critical...

[Arjuna]

pacwar,

That's an excellent suggestion and it's been on our wish list for years. Alas it so far hasn't risen to the top of the pile. Hopefully soon.

[Arjuna]

ORIGINAL: bardolph

This has probably been mentioned already but one thing I would be interested in seeing is multi-multiplayer, like say what is available in TacOps or Scourge of War. It would be very useful to be able to have multiple players per side or on one side for co-op, each with their own command and limited intel on friendly forces not under their control. I would imagine that military clients or prospective clients would find such a feature useful as well.

Welcome and thanks for your suggestion. This too has been on our wish list since we first designed the engine back in 1996. But I do think its time to look at this more seriously. Paul Vandoren has just supplied us with some of his scenarios from the Knock on All Dooors Ex Pack he has been working on this last year. They are huge. They play but slowly due to the number of units. One option to address this is to go to multiple commands and run a seperate AI thread for each command. This would distribute the AI processing over multiple cores and take advantage of modern CPUs. I have asked Paul Scobell to look into running an experiment to see if this is worth pursuing.

Having multiple commands per side is foundation for supporting co-op play. Thanks for the timely input.