Slacking..

Ok so I did the whole 'slacking at the end of the map' thing. Yay for Allies.

Im theorizing that the new RDP system, allowing 2 items to be researched at once, is a boon to the allies. See RDP isn't about the fact that the new equipment is so much better than the old stuff, its that people like to drive/fly etc the new stuff..So now the Allies can up to 4 new pieces of equipment in the first week..guess where ppl are going to play with the new toys.

Attack objectives are the big thing for 1.17. Whooptidoo. I think that attack objectives without distinct TOEs are going to be crap...Whats the point of an attack objective (with matching defensive) on a town when the enemy has the same spawn list in every town?

Also still no talk of upgraded tools for allowing commanders and stuff to coordinate. When are we going to see upgraded chat system (hardcoded to Brigades too imho), ingame rosters, CoC etc, christ even brigade signup!

IMHO another example of CRS putting the cart before the horse or still being too scared to take that final leap by putting TOEs in...which is what Deployment is REALLY about.

Also no sign of an interface for moving brigades around etc...they have a lot of work to do.


I think I should check but I think I actually ended the last campaign with a positive KDR in the BEF army. That'd be a first.

Made captain in the French army, yay for binos.

Still halfway to Lt in FAF..ugh.


And for a parting gift, which I'll link one of these days when I stop posting from work, Killers crack comment of the day where he said that he'd like to see spawning from trucks...

Jeez Killer not like you've come out with crazy stuff youd like to see before. Howabout shit your actually going to CODE in the next MILLENIA?!

The official 1.17 prediction post.

Ok Im getting mine in early. This way it'll look better if Im right.

*drumroll*

1.17 will be released on Oct 27th @ 3pm CST.


Thats 7 weeks and 1 day from the release of 1.16.

Area Chat.

Gophur mentioned in the weekly production update that they are considering implementing area chat in 1.17. To the best of my knowledge this will actually be audio commands that can be heard by other players including enemy players...All I can say is WOOT!

Hopefully it'll be something like the Day of Defeat system, where you had 3 menus of abotu 10 choices of commands each..Things such as 'Stop, Charge, stick together, contact left, contact right' etc. While not a be all and end all I think it will lend a lot to teamwork ingame on the micro level.

See I believe that deployment will do a lot for coordinating the macro (or strategic) level of the game, ie: Getting 4bdge to attack town X with coordination from 61 wing etc. What deployment doesnt do is really help out in the tactical element of the game. By this I mean the 5 infantry guys on the back of that beddy who are going to blow the FB, or a bunch of inf trying to cap a CP or defend it.

Teamspeak is better than this but obviously not everyone is on TS, espcially players who aren't in your squad or brigade. And lets face it a lot of people either dont pay attention to or miss text messages.

So here's to hoping that this will improve teamwork amongst blue tags. Another fun fact is that the enemy will also be able to here what you are saying, though Gophur said that they were possibly making it so it was unintelligble to the other side. 'Course if they included accents it would be for most everyone.:)

Cheers to area chat.

Doc also promised a few 'surprises' and gave another long arse post on the RDP system.

Personally I dont think 80 percent of us GIVE A FLYING FCK DOC! Tell us about deployment, new UI elements, terrain II, unity II...anything but godamn RDP. Ok maybe its just me that doesnt care but nothing shits me to tears more than RDP talk.

Random Friday thoughts

Hrrm hope they announce features for 1.17 today, Im already starting to get the shakes. Waiting to see 'whats next' in this game is just a big a deal as playing the game itself. I wonder if I'll ever reach the stage where I'm more eager to get in game than actually find out whats coming next. Probably not.

Somewhere on the public boards I posted a mock press release from CRS detailing the launch of the NA theatre in June 05. I swear if they release it anywhere near June I'll find that post and link to it like crazy...Nothing like an ego trip.
The biggest thing , imho, is the new terrain engine/builder. I know 'he who shalt not be named' is working on it currently , which , I think means they want to have it done in the next cpl of months. Once thats done they can start filling out the NA theatre with CPs.

So June is probably to soon, but second half of next year? Im excited are you?

Anyway back to 1.17. New tanks are coming, woot for Sherman! Im not excited about Crud III but that 6pdr will be nice. It'll be interesting to see how the first of the 'tier 2' stuff will go.

On RDP, we saw the first of the new RDP system this week. French and Brits got 2 items each, bell/stuart and spitv/daimler respectively. Personally Im not sure if I like the new RDP, seems a little too much too soon. Now it might be better once they start introducing the tier 2/tier 3 stuff and flesh out the vehicle sets more but right now it seems a little to, easy? to get stuff. Just my opinion.

Now in regards to RDP bombing etc..this weeks hottest whine/flame fest...
On a player level Im not a fan of strat bombing. Boring catassery at its best. Right now though the Allies have the much better catass's.
While I do feel bad that the Axis are so far behind its not like they dont have the players to do it, its just they dont want to do it.
Still, yes, I would rather see it more balanced...anyway Axis are screwed when they get 3H and we get 6pdr..muahahahaha.
Maybe I wish there was more of a fight to RDP, maybe better EWS to allow fighters to scramble. Currently by the time EWS goes off and you scramble a fighter the bombers have dropped their bombs, turned around and are 50 miles away. Blargh. Flying factory patrol is even less exciting than flying bomber missions.

Id like to see organised flights of bombers with escorts fighting past interceptors to drop their bombs...way more exciting..

Total frustration in one easy step!

Spawned into a depot in Haybes (iirc) as an LMG. Got a great spot nestled up against the depot near the CP door, with a nice corridor where EI would have to cross leaving the AB...

In quick order nailed 3 EI...then a 4th came around the corner of the CP building and I couldnt fire..WTF!!! ARRRGH!!! My cursor must be on the chat bar...no nononono! brrrrt Im dead...In fact I had started to enter text and hadnt pressed enter...

Frustration in one easy step, yay!


Maybe it was karma for the cheesy mission success I got earlier...Walking a AA gun outa beurllion (sp) to Feschaux, hoping a laffy would come past....A stuka lazily passes over me and med range so I quickly deploy and get off some snap shots...One hit...Stuka noses into the ground...HAH!

Then I get bored and start to walk back, get even more bored and despawn...mission success rescued!..HAH..bad trooper bad.

I hate St. Truiden

No really I do.
Late Saturday night I OICed my first ever big attack (several brigades worth) on St. Truiden. The damn axis players didnt cooperate by letting me capture it in a blaze of glory. Damn Axis!

After 3 hours we held half the town and they were down to rifles. Unfortunately so were we. It ended pretty much when they blew our FB. Lets just say I was an extrememly frustrated and po'ed troop by the end. Ugh.

Kudos to all those who fought though, people listened to me, guarded depots (well some..:)), ferried troops/atg/aa's in by truck, continually spawned inf at the FB etc etc, I couldnt ask for anymore and even felt a little guilty that I didnt do a better job of directing the troops.

Still the bug has bitten me and I really cant wait for the oppurtunity to do it again.

Few things I think I will try to do differently.

1. Dont do the truck driving. If you have enough ppl ferrying infantry in , get out of the truck, you cant type while driving and you really should be on the ground directing the troops as best as possible.

2. Dont be afraid to ask specific players to do a specific task. Asking people by name gets better results than simply yelling 'need guards for depot'

3. Type in CAPS. Unfortunately thats all you have as an OIC (Comms upgrade CRS!!)

4. Use your squad to do specific roles. What do I mean by this? Well, for the attack I was on a TS channel with 10-12 other ANZACS, which means I had the best communication and control over them. What I shouldve done was micro manage that resource into doing specific jobs such as 'guard the SE depot' or 'setup and AA gun on this road and shoot inf crossing it'...Most unsquaded players wont either do it, or hear it, so if your squad is willing they are your best resource for doing those nitty gritty things that need to get done.

5. Have a plan and do some recon. Make sure you have a damn good idea of how the town is laid out. The web maps are best for that, if you can find them the ones with AI and all buildings are great. Next time if I have time Im gonna spawn in town on training server though.. Im also a fan of inserting a infantry team in early to act as recon in town.
To the second part of having a plan, well as they say no plan survives contact with the enemy, but I think you should have a least a rough idea of what you'd like to attempt, and if you have the numbers and the time and good initial battle plan does wonders. Unfortunately I sux at this. KC & Cav are the masters.

Playing chicken.

Ok the reason I think I get in headons still is that it becomes a game of chicken. Neither plane wants to pull off and expose itself to getting shot.

Or I could just suck.

What REALLY annoys me is that I only get a damage on the other plane....I mean come on!!!

Totally crapped out as FAF last night. Wish they'd update CSR for this campaign already.

Diest fun.

Got 4bdge organised to go stir up Diest. First action was an infantry patrol into town...I got shot by AI (right after Amarant told me AI tower was near us and I knowingly said we are outside its arc..doh)...
Later on we managed to cap the spawnable and had a highly enjoyable infantry fight for the depots for the next 15-20 minutes, the brought some armour out but obviously didnt have much, a pity if we'd had just a few more anti tank assets it mightve got interesting. Was damn fun though! Really enjoy working with the 333rd , great bunch of guys. The new flag buildings, I feel, are much more enjoyable to fight around. Were plenty of grey targets to shoot at anyways...

I still suck with a rifle.

Inviso bug was still present I think? but no so bad? not sure really. Probably we were benefiting from it more in that fight anyway.

Infantry fights are simply the best, there was an Island fight in Gravenpolder night before that was FANTAStIC, and that was with the invis bug.

1.16 first impressions.

First off:

The new ingame map ROCKS! Really it rockrocksrocks. Zoom out so I can see where Im flying (no more getting lost over France). zoom in to see where exactly depots are (no more hunting for the spawnable).

Did I mention I LOVE MOUSEWHEEL ZOOM? No really I love it. Funnily enough I just went and bought myself a scroll wheel mouse on the weekend. woot.

New buildings are nice, love the flag building, church is good, looks even better ruined!

Bridges, shrug, nothing really to report here, but I think Im gonna like attack objectives.

The bad:

The inviso bug: Players are invisible up to 15 seconds after spawning...eek...hope this is a bug and not a feature. Supposdly CRS will fix today. Unfortunately this seems why i was shot a cpl of times in Gravenpolder, espcially my LMG..still bummed about that I was setup to mow them down as they left the spawn..only ended up with 6 kills.

Initial 1.16 impressions.

stupid blogger

Initial 1.16 impressions.

New ingame map rules. can zoom out to see where Im going when flying, can zoom in to see exactly where each depot is.

Wonder if TGPO will go outa business?

Bridge icons and .objective command are a little confusing, need a primer.

Buildings look good.

Did I mention the map absolutely rocks?!?!?!!

Initial 1.16 impressions.

Didnt play much last night , sick as a dog right now. However I played around with 1.16 a bit.

- First off, the new ingame map ROCKS. rocksrocksrocks. No more getting lost while flying , you can zoom out till you see 20+ towns on the map. No more looking for which depot is spawnable, you can zoom in till you see all depots and names. Basically its a bloody useful tool now. Only real complaint is the whole switching to it/ctrl-c thing. Though this seems to be a problem only the first time you switch to it.
And rickB said they wouldnt let him turn on grid and contours for this patch !!!!!!! woot. contours will be nice, hopefully ppl might play a little more tactically. Though the damn fields of Flanders are flatter than roadkill.

The bridge objective icons and .ob are a bit confusing, will need to look into that. CRS REALLY needs to post up legends explanations of what it all is BEFORE the patch comes out. Duh. Didnt see any blown bridges.

New buildings look nice, will have to adjust to the flag building looking completely different.

Had a few fps hits while flying and fooling around with the map but apart from that FPS seemed to be better.


Oh yeah and with no RDP Im back to flying hawks , 1 109 1 stuka and 1 110 damaged...waaah I miss my Dewo 20mm loving.

1.16 goodies.

Should be a good patch, Im not all that excited about destroying bridges but there are plenty of things in there.

- I like the idea of the number of attack objectives being limited by server population, it APPEARS at this time to be a reasonable solution to Euro time map rushes. While its not going to stop them taking towns it should stop them from taking 10 at a time.

- New buildings: Cant go wrong with some new eye candy. New flag building and the new church look espcially good.

- New supply link into Bertrix. This has been a LONG time coming and will make the French very happy, no more Bertrixgrad.

- In game map: Wow bunch of features on this, looks very exciting.

- New anti tank guns: Im gonna go out on a limb and says this sucks more for the Axis than it does us. Why? Because the 6pdr is the anti 3H. The axis are not going to like an anti tank weapon that punches through there favourite tank frontally at long range. AHC better RDP this second.

Damnit

Looks like Im gonna be wrong on my prediction CRS are gonna release 1.16 today.
Then again while I want my prediction to be right I also wanna play the patch tonight...PaTCH FEVA!

Blowing your wad.

Sunday night, bad night for me in the Dewo. Not for lack of targets, just my own general suckiness.

French were setting up for an attack on Cassel so I went looking for targets in and around. Ended up flying all the way to Lille, nothing htere at first. Finally I caught a 110 taking off, dived in behind him, burst of 20mm and a flaming we will go. Only mission success of the night.:P

Came back to Lille to find a JU low just after takeoff..woot! I thought...Dive in, burst of 20mm...suddenly theres another red circle in front of me...another JU...keep going burst of 20mm...and another red circle, again a JU, this one is turning and rams me. #$%%$@!!!! I got 3 JU damages...#$!^^%$!!!1*^. Im really tired of JU pilots who use ramming as a tactic, they do it a lot.
Though I guess if I was a Blen Id do the same thing, learning to avoid those headons from now on.

Anyway I found another Dewo and went hunting east of Cassel again...and let me digress here for a second. At the time the attack is going fullscale on Cassel and we have plenty of FAF/RAAF flying Cap over town (st. omer is one town west) but theres no EA overhead. So im telling them CONSTANTLY over text, 'Come East , interdict planes coming from Lille!, get the Stukas before they can drop'..Cause lets face it if you let the Stukas come to within visual of the town they are going to drop their bombs I guarentee it. Of course the lemmings just kept circling over town as I headed east.

And 'lo and behold what did I find? A bloody gaggle of 7 Stukas!!! flying in formation (see post title)..Think I squealed like Korimus on TS and then almost lost it typing the report over text...
Anyway I line up behind one Stuka and gave him way to much cannon. He doesnt go down???...Some of the Stukas break off, I circle and line up another and run out of cannon on him...!#$!#!!! Talk about blowing your wad. I mged another and RTBed...

Mission Result: 1 JU damaged 0 kills. Some how I managed to shoot all my 20mm into one JU and it didnt even die.

ISUXISUXISUXISUXISUXISUXISUX...oh and actually it didnt matter because I took a mg round to the torso and crashed my dewo on landing. woot for me! :P~

Of course later I can hear the reports on objective...'Ju over town!, 110 over town! 109 over town!'

Yes its called interdiction you idiots.

pach feva!

Sept 9th, 3pm CST

Thats my prediction for the release of 1.16. Im gonna link to here on the forums if im anywhere near close.

Para rules, redux.

Here are two questions I will pose about the implementation of Paras:

'How will paras fit into the deployment environment?'

Will Paras be a brigade of their own? Seems a little much for specialist troops, if not how will they be integrated with another brigade, is it even possible? I still maintain that Paras would only be spawnable at AFs. The rest Im not so sure.

How do you fit Paras in with the attack objective environment without them losing their chief weapon, surprise or have them become the ultimate precap weapon

Heres two example to highlight what Im talking about:

Attack objective is placed on town X behind enemy lines, defenders see this and move troops to counter possible para drop, Paras drop and are slaughtered due to defenders already setup.

However in the other example (assuming paras can cap without an attack objective):

Allies prepare large armor column just outside of EWS range of town, Paras drop on town and cap flags like crazy...as Paras drop armour column begins drive in at full speed, in 5 minutes most flags are capped and the AB is camped with no prior warning for the enemy except for EWS.



One possible solution is to only allow Paras to cap flags without attack objectives that are behind enemy lines. The problem here however is that you cant do a Normady type airborne landing, ie attacking a 'frontline' town (because its nearest counterpart is on the english coast) with paras while a seaborne force moves in.

I think Im gonna hurt my head if I keep thinking about this.

Screw it CRS just let paras cap flags without attack objectives and we'll see how it works out.:)

I guess if you dropped an airborne force onto a garrisoned town they would die pretty quickly anyhow so more power to em.

Personally I would only use paras to drop onto towns that I know didnt have garrisons.

Quiet night on the front.

Did some dewo missions, no luck for me except getting bounced by a 109F (fun!).

Launched a half hearted attack on Ieper, apart from a fun 'run around each other in cirlces' fight with another rifleman it didnt achieve much (i lost). Even with 3 FBs into town.

I think KK will need to give the squad a lesson in the historical significance of Ieper (Ypers) to the ANZAC.

KC was out learning the ways of the ATR...I dont think Ive managed to get a tank kill in one but its certainly handy for shooting stationary EI. He got a 232 kill of course.

I did get a p38t kill with an SMG though....'I dunno Ma I was shooting at it and it blew up'...I think a matty hit it and its ammo cooked off...but I'll take it.:)

I think I need to just realise that Im not a good ww2ol player skill wise, couldnt get a mission success as French army to save my life last night. All I need is a cpl to get Captain (how long have I been playing? too long!) , need binos damnit.

Gotta go rewrite my Para rules , the ones I did write really didnt take into account attack objectives.

4 mana to tap an A13? WTF!

Classic just classic

I noticed this on Comstars blog @ comstr.blogspot.com. So credit to him.

Chat channels

CRS cant update their chat system quick enough.
3 easy things to make it so much more effective:

1. More channels! Consider your a brigade officer you might need: Brigade chan, Div chan, Objective chan, Squad chan, BEF chan, Air chan...etc etc.

2. Permanent prefixs for different channels: Eh you say? Let me explain......
A prefix would be something that broadcasts on a particular channel before your message everytime you transmit. For example: No. 1 channel slot is my brigade channel and I have my prefix set as '7 IC - ANZAC' ...the engine will provide a [ ] around the prefix ...so when I type 'Spawn Tienan - St. Trud FB' what will show is 'Troop76 [7IC - ANZAC] Spawn Tienan - St. Trud FB'. Maybe on objective channel I have it set to my unit type ie [A13].

Personally I think this would be rather useful in allowing ppl to see whos leading, what unit someone is, what squad someone is in etc.

Now a problem I see is abusing this prefix with profanity or the like. So the other option is to have a set of choices for each channel type.

ie Obj can either be unit type, rank, squad.
Brigade can be rank, ICness, unit type.

And the engine would fill it in for you.

3. Customizable colours for different chat channels. Fairly self explanatory. Let me set my brigade channel to show up on my screen as Green, mabye squad as red...etc. Again another simple tool to allow easier and better communication amongst your fellow players to promote teamwork.