Troop's ww2ol Blog.

What's a lazy blogger to do?

2005-08-25T12:26:00.000-04:00

Vulch off other blogs that's what! I'm feeling rather guilty that I had no news about open beta etc. so I thought I better put something up. Thanks Sres and Comstar.:D

Also haven't been in game much, studying for my Series 65 (Register Investment Advisor Representative) and have a part in a community theatre play (computer geek and theatre geek, did I mentioned I was in the band in High school?).

Anyways:

Open beta for Battleground Europe

Click here to get open beta started

Welcome back soldier program

New Sounds for 1.20

How to have a bad night in ww2ol.

2005-08-19T13:19:00.000-04:00

I'm due for some seriously good karma after last night. Now, let us begin my tale of woe.

First off was the Para mission from Brussels to attack the NAB at Antwerp. This was actually the best of the night , its all downhill afterwards. We made it to the DZ where the jumpmaster lagged/went idle/spaced out. So we ended up dropping all over the place everywhere from right on the AB to 2k north of it. Nevertheless we were picked off fairly quickly.

So then I get to thinking that a surprise glider attack would be a better idea. Paras give to much warning (Oh look at the big silk thing floating in the sky!). We mount up some infantry at a rear town and start to glide in on the JU. Luckily for us we found the only panzer guarding the NAB. Oh happy times! Everyones dead before the JU even comes to a stop.

Ok, ok one more try. Load up infantry again, got about 15 this time, we were going to land outside of the town this time. Coming in for landing and the pilot lags into the ground. All passengers dead. woohoo.

The moral of this story is to never, ever get into a JU with troop. Not to mention the fact I got shot down the night before ferrying sappers to Tienen, and then when we tried to do it by truck I got strafed (probably by the same plane) with everyone getting killed.

To add insult to injury while we were waiting for our JU on the 3rd trip I decided to shoot a small movie at the AB. After doing 3-4 takes and boarding the plane I realised I had closed out fraps earlier in the night and therefore had shot nothing.

Oh and my headset mic stopped working.

BLAH!

I'll be back tonight.:D

Rats perform emergency server maintenance.

2005-08-19T13:08:00.000-04:00

Courtesy of the Rat Cam.

That there is some hi tech servers...

Redux

2005-08-15T10:44:00.000-04:00

Here.

And I'll keep saying it.

Fun with VD!

2005-08-15T10:20:00.000-04:00

That's visual damage you gutter thinkers.

Blew my first tail off yesterday. Stupid newbies who go on autopilot out of a combat zone.....(Click here to see what Im talking about).

My other expierence was on the receiving end unfortunately...

Here's a brief transcription of my radio lag from the incident.

'Haha that 110 sucked, the worst BNZ ever'
'Now Im going to line him up for a sweet kill'
'HOLY MOTHER OF GOD WHO JUST SET OFF A BOMB BEHIND ME' (Actually that's what a 190 sounds like when it unloads on you)
'Flat spin, this isn't good'
'Stick forward...this aint working, lets check the plane'
'Tail is there'
'Left wing is there'
'Right wing is th...nope ...missing one right wing'
'uh oh'
-end transmission-

1.19.5 first impressions.

2005-08-12T14:42:00.000-04:00

1.19.5 is , as far as I can tell, the gold candidate for BE release. (Sept 13th, per EB Games). Almost certainly there will be a patch to download on release day, but that is pretty standard amongst the MMOLG industry nowadays (and consider it will be a month between gold and release).

There's not a lot new in this release but there certainly are some pleasant suprises:

- Desktop icon to launch game. Thank god. I know there was a way to do it beforehand but that involved, you know, effort. 3 woots.

- New trees and bushes. Sweet looking, mmmmmm berries (though they look like red 6 sided dice to me) and cool spruces?. 4 woots.

- Improved performance. Definately FPS is better, less chugging over towns and the like (still rough but much more playable). Made 2 110s go boom over Aarschott last night. 5 woots.

Thats about it boys and girls. We anxiously await 1.20 news today from CRS.

Ramblings on ToEs.

2005-08-11T15:17:00.000-04:00

Preface: ToE = Table of Equipment. The term assigned to the game mechanic where brigades will be tied to a specific location with a specific list of equipment.

Just sitting here at work throwing some random thoughts about ToE's in my head. I still don't know exactly how they will be implemented and to be perfectly honest I dont think CRS is 100% sure either.

But that doesn't stop me thinking about some of the variations...let's take the following situation for example:

I was thinking of 2 ID , BEF. We have 3 brigades and typically our AO is the southern half of the BEF front. (Stop yelling at me about security, if the Axis haven't figured this out after 3 years of it being this way then we have nothing to fear.). This front is usually 3 towns - Aarschott, Tienan and Eghezee. 1 brigade per town, brilliant! But thats kind of boring no? What if I want to attack an Axis town, do I have no chance to double up my brigades to create numerical superiority? Well I probably will have the ability to do that but that then leaves one of my towns empty.

Well that kind of sucks doesn't it?

So what if CRS gave us the ability to create 'demi-brigades' where the ToE of a brigade could be placed in an adjacent town (must be adjacent no?) and would comprimise half or a 1/3 of the listed brigade strength.

So for instance 2ID would be laid out as following , 5 BDGE (inf) in Aarschott, 4 BDGE (inf) is in Eghezee, 2AB (armour) is in Tienan. I split 4 BDGE into two parts leaving the weaker in Eghezee and moving the rest into Tienan for an attack on St. Truiden alongside 2AB.

With the addition of extra maneouver elements I think this would make the ToE game in ww2ol more complex and more fun/challenging for all involved.

Yes/no?

There once was a man from Bombay...

2005-08-10T15:42:00.000-04:00

'So he lined up a stuka
and thought he would nuke her'

Somehow , someday I will fit those lines into a limerick.

Weth mah car? (Ratings Update.)

2005-08-10T14:27:00.000-04:00

Gophur blames Jack Thomspon for his lack of Red Ferrari.

Blinking cursor.

2005-08-10T10:30:00.000-04:00

Been staring at a new post window for about half a day now. Inspiration is dodging me.

So ww2ol is to get a Mature 17+ rating. To quote the PS forum post title '.WTF?'. BRP's* are considered blood and violence? Please. Maybe the sight of turrets popping is to much for poor innocent 14 year old eyes. Yeah that must be it.

Cheers to the ESRB and knee-jerk reactions. 'Oh my god! That evil Grand Theft Auto game can have a scene where you have sex with a hooker! Quick call the Whitehouse!'. Because killing cops, running over pedestrians , doing drug deals and pimping weren't reason enough. People suck. And I still think the GTA series went downhill after No. 1.

So the good news is that CRS will probably give us more blood. Hey you might as well get good value out of your rating!

*If you still dont know what a BRP is your still a noob.

And yes I have nothing better to do than steal stuff from Comstar's blog.

Exxxcellent

2005-08-04T16:47:00.000-04:00

A new ~~sacrifice~~ monitor for my computer..

WW2OL broke my monitor.

2005-08-03T11:41:00.000-04:00

My monitor blew up last night while playing ww2ol. Made some very interesting popping sounds when I tried to turn it back on at which point I decided discretion was the better part of valor.

Looks like now I'll have to replace the 19" monitor which broke and was using the 17" that blew up last night to cover. Blah.

(And no ww2ol didnt really break my monitor ok?)

On Patrol!

2005-08-03T11:35:00.000-04:00

Head over to Torgen's Rat Patrol Radio for lots of ww2 goodness. Great tunes and material from ww2 including a monthly trivia contest where you can win a free year long subscription to ww2ol! Damn why am I telling you this?

Anyways I've added a link to the sidebar.

An ingame visible hardcoded CoC.

2005-08-01T14:01:00.000-04:00

On Friday night Bruner called for someone to take command of the BEF on .hc..

*crickets chirping*

*train in the distance*

So I voluntered. Why? Because I thought I could do a better job than most.

HAH.

The first thing I did was try to get an OiC for each of the 6 BEF brigades. Talk about getting blood from a stone (though thanks to Stalker2, raygunn, quizno and Bigass who did step up). I spent a good 15-20 minutes switching between brigades, yelling on .hc, getting people to join one channel and for that managed to get 4 OiCs. 1 who was from my own brigade (no brainer), another was a non-HC member, one who was a RN officer?!? and one who was an actual brigade OiC.

At this point I organised an attack on Hoog which failed within 30 minutes. I figured it would fail anyway due to our numbers but still it shouldn't have been the cluster that it was.

See I believe in the power of delegation, I do it in my own brigade and wanted to bring that theory to the BEF as a whole. Something which I had accused higher levels of the BEF of failing at previously. My apologies to those who I accused.

The simple fact , as I see it, is that while people want to be led most of them don't want to have to do any leading of their own while being led. People are lazy.

Anyway enough of my rants and back to my particular issue at hand which was finding the 6 BEF Brigade OiCs. CRS has talked about a scalable, in game, chain of command for sometime now but the hell knows when that is coming. I'd like them to add a few / commands to give us something to work with right now.

So here are my ideas:

/coc - In game or out will list OiCs, (either player name or [empty]) in your level of command. IE If you are currently a corp commander you will see Corp OIC, Division OiCs and Brigade OiCs. If you are a divsion OiC you will only see Brigade OiCs for your division. Brigade OiCs can also see OiCs for their division.

Or possibly a div corp brigade option to the command where players can chose what level of the CoC they want to see.

The next part is harder and involves actually getting people into that CoC.

Officers - /coc [yes] will set you as the OiC of your unit (bdge, div, corp, army), unless the spot is already filled. If so then a prompt will appear for that player to relinquish the spot or not.
- /coc [no] will remove you from your current CoC spot.
- /coc [yes] [level] Where level is brigade, div, corp, army.
May also need to be some facility for players of a higher rank to remove other players from a CoC slot. Say for instance if I've been running the BEF for a while and gone idle and Luggs or someone logs on and wants to take over he can remove me.

At the the end of the day its a quick way for commanders to find sub-commanders who are actually willing to lead. Those officers who are in the AHC and don't actually want to lead can simply remove themselves from the CoC for the time being.

Needs some fine tuning but damn it would be a useful tool.

/orders

2005-08-01T10:40:00.000-04:00

Well this is one I didn't think of.

CRS introduced the /orders command with 1.19.4 and it rather rocks. Now when you spawn in on a mission you get the mission briefing text. Mission leaders can also change the briefing while in mission and it will be broadcast to all players on that mission.

Very very nice.

Infantry AI has to go.

2005-08-01T10:38:00.000-04:00

There is no reason for it to exist. Remove it now.

There are AO's and EWS so people can't waltz into towns undefended. Infantry AI simply serves to annoy the hell out of myself and other infantry players.

Oh yeah I love nothing better than spending 15 minutes working my way into town to be cut down by a computer controlled savant who can see through walls and never misses.

It has NO redeeming qualities.

Taxi to victory.

2005-07-28T14:10:00.000-04:00

The online gaming wiki can be found here .

A particularly infamous irc convo about ww2ol can be found here.

I can laugh about it now..:P

JU-52s.

2005-07-27T11:38:00.000-04:00

I must admit I love flying the JU. I look for any oppurtunity to practise my skills with it, usually involving doing infantry resup runs. Finding landing strips next to an AB can certainly be an interesting expierence.
The JU is also ridicolously easy to fly (as mentioned in a previous entry my 4 year old son can fly it) and does so even on two engines. This is something I've had particular exposure too the last two nights..

- Two nights ago we were attempting to rush para's to Grobb to get it contested 20 minutes before the server went down...In my rush to get off the AF I made a rudder turn and dipped my left prop into the ground...took off no problems and while the trip was a bit slow I had no problems flying. Gods I love this plane.

- Last night I wanted to ferry sappers from Leuven to Aarschott...circled Leuven a cpl of times and attempted to land on a fairly open strip of land east of town...whoops berms!, tonk tonk. There goes the left prop again. Taking off wasn't as easy this time. I had a short field with limited maneouver, as I started taking off the plane was dipping to the left, I found myself physically leaning the other way in some sort of attempt to right the plane. Took off at not quite a 45 degree angle while just clearing some trees.

It was at this point I realised I still had my flaps down.

Why I play.

2005-07-25T10:46:00.000-04:00

So I just pre-ordered Battleground Europe, 'Troop your a fanboi!' I hear you say.
Well your right and let me tell you why.

First off I realise this game is not perfect and I for one have disagreed with a lot of CRS's decisions but at the end of the day one fact remains:

There is no other game like World War 2 Online.

For sure there are ww2 FPS's, simulators and even games that combine all elements such as Battlefield but they are all lacking.

I've played Battlefield 1942, used to play a lot of Day of Defeat and still some Counterstrike, why do I keep coming back to ww2ol? Because it gives you a point to playing.

The biggest knock, to me at least, for games such as DoD or Battlefield is that there is no POINT to winning the game. Sure the action is fun, the graphics are better than ww2ol but what do you get for winning a round? For winning a map? Nada.

ww2ol players are a different bunch and I'll bet that if you ask them that this is the way they feel. I can play Counterstrike for short periods of time, I still do for a quick action buzz but I get bored quickly. 'Whoopee I killed 3 CTs and planted the bomb, welp lets do it again!'

You might say 'but troop in ww2ol your fighting over the same map as well!'. Your right but the scale is 1000x that of a counterstrike round or a Battlefield map. ww2ol is something I can follow when I'm not playing, I can check the web map and be emotionally invested in whats going on. 'Crap they took Luxembourgh back!', 'woot we got Oostmalle'.
When we fight to get a town tonight we know that our actions are going to matter tommorow. A campaign that lasts 6 weeks is certainly more interesting than a map that lasts 30 minutes.

No one in 4 years has come close to making a meta game such as ww2ol. Maybe one day they will and maybe I'll go play that, but until then CRS has my money.

BRP's aplenty.

2005-07-25T10:44:00.000-04:00

Had a personal best with the 2pdr on Sat night. Setup outside the AB at Grobb I got 13 kills and eventually despawned when I ran outa ammo. Never depleted the ammo in a anti tank gun before. 11 of those kills were infantry, any idea how hard it is to snipe infantry running perpendicular to you with AP ammo?

ps If you dont know what a BRP is your a noob..:D

Bringing back mission priorities.

2005-07-21T11:39:00.000-04:00

So I had an idea to bring back mission priorities but in a completely different manner than back in pre 1.19.

Here's the situation that brought up this thought :-

4 BDGE is attacking a town and using missions to split the players into 4 teams. Second we also have a mission up in our defensive AO to defend an FB we recently brought up.

We want the bulk of our players joining the 4 offensive missions, our defensive AO is pretty quite but we want a few people there so the Axis don't get an easy FB takedown.

This is where mission priorities and some visual cues in the UI come in.
A mission creator can assign a priority to a mission, maybes its 1, 2 etc like before or offensive/defensive/resup or something like that.Once the mission has been posted it will be highlighted in a different colour in the brigade HQ screen depending on its priority. For example P1 missions are red while P2's are a light blue.

Most importantly rank gain/score is NOT affected by the mission priority, it is simply a means to assigning priorities for people's attention within the brigade.

Thoughts?

I'll take 'Improving the game' for $400 Alex.

2005-07-19T14:05:00.000-04:00

A. Making parts of it available while spawned in.

Q. How could I make the UI 100x more useful?

I like the new UI, it definately has some cool features. Those include the ability to see how many are spawned in on a mission, who they are and what they are using.

The problem is is that commanders like to play the game to, we like to spawn in and shoot stuff. Most players spend 90% of their game time spawned in, therefore making all those snazzy UI improvements useless for that time.

How damn cool would it be to hit a button and bring up the following:

'Mission comment/objective' - Wow people might actually read it then.
'Mission numbers' - Damn useful for a MSP or a commander needing to know how many bodies are on the field.
'Mission members and equipment' - Now I can actually find who my tanks are and PM them if necessary. Or see if I need more infantry spawning in, or find a sapper for that nasty panzer who's trying to give me a lead buzzcut.
'Mission list' Bring up the current missions available to your brigade.

THEN the UI would be truely useful.

kfs1 are you reading my little blog here?

Campaign 22

2005-07-19T10:11:00.000-04:00

Kicks off today. 1200 CST.

I'm going to be running a 4 BDGE Op tonight testing out some ideas on brigades and missions. Hopefully I'll give an AAR tommorow.

Self Propelled Anti Air for ww2ol

2005-07-15T16:07:00.000-04:00

Per Doc in the forums the following vehicles will be modelled to fill the SPAA role for the various armys.

The main decider for these particular units was that the chassis's are already modelled in game:

For the Germans - The SdKfz.7 with quad 20mm FlaK.38.
-Nice bloody firepower, 4x20mm? Ouch. On the + side, the sdkfz is fairly slow and doesnt offer much protection. Im wondering is the gun position open? If so then its strafe, rifle, nade bait.

For the British - Vickers with twin Besa 15mm.
- Damn Brits have sucky tanks. Seriously underpowered compared to the other two , however its by far the fastest and best armoured.

For the French - Laffy with 2x25mm Camle.
-Hrrm I'm not sold. Sure its 2x25mm, but the Germans get 4x20..50 vs 80 vs 25(Brit). More vunerable that the sdkfz and just about as slow. Still if you connect your gonna do some damage.

The other thing is these could be very good for infantry suppression. Espcially the Vickers as it has armour.

Still can't wait to suprise some Stuka with twin barrels of 25mm one day.

Another annoying post about Troop's new computer.

2005-07-15T10:57:00.000-04:00

You know the trouble with ww2ol's code? Other people.

I get phenomenal fps in unpopulated areas, I'm talking 100+, but put me into a town where there's a lot of fighting going and down she goes. FPS as infantry dips to 30-40 with occasional spikes down to 20 and lower. Planes suck even more.

I must say that the water looks DAMN nice with a decent video card.

I'm considering getting another gig of RAM to see if it makes a difference, but that seems to be a rather expensive option.

Hopefully as 1.19 matures and turns into 1.20 they'll fix some of the performance issues.

Stupid moments in computing.

2005-07-14T11:56:00.000-04:00

So setup the new PC last night, almost no problems whatsoever. Those that did occur were user-error.

My two favourite from last night:

1. After installing win2k wondering why the hell I couldnt get my internet connection to work. Helps if you remmeber to install the ethernet card driver Troop!

2. Wondering why the Thief III CD I got with my vid card wouldn't worked. Even swapped out a CD-ROM drive at one stage. Helps if you look at the disc and see the big 'DVD' letters Troop.

Played some ww2ol last night. They better get the new graphics coder up to speed fast. That's all I'll say.

Sitting at work and all I want to do is go home and play with my new baby..:D

Ok so sorry about the firebombs.....

2005-07-13T09:44:00.000-04:00

On FedEx vehicle for delivery Jul 13, 2005 8:28 AM

So I was thinking Friday would be good. Then I got the tracking numbers and they said Thursday. Then I checked it this morning and I got the above message.

WOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

Stand down, stand down.

2005-07-12T15:54:00.000-04:00

firebombs rescinded. neweggs webpage was screwing up and my mobo and cpu are enroute and due a day early on Thursday.

woot.

Waypoints, recon reports etc.

2005-07-12T13:55:00.000-04:00

(I'd link to the production notes piece but www.wwiionline.com is blocked by my work. Funnily enough ahc/ghc sites aren't. shhhhh.)

Gophur mentioned some cool features going into 1.20 and frankly I'm kinda excited by them.

What could potenially have a big impact is waypoints. Finally, finally we get some command and control elements for tactical groups on the ground. It's not the be all and end all but its a start.
To be a success I believe they will have to achieve two things: 1. Be easy to use and 2. Be easy to see. If they are I think you will start to see infantry players (tanks to I suppose but I don't care..:)) actually start to group up and perhaps some semi-realistic tactics start to evolve.
One of my biggest frustrations is the tendancy of infantry players to 'go it alone' and rush in to places piece meal. While, yes, it is somewhat human nature to have this 'rambo' approach to gameplay I also believe is that previously there was simply nothing there to facilitate players grouping up.
Now if a commander can lay down a waypoint(s), players would be more likely to actually go to that waypoint knowing that others will follow as well. I'd love to see waypoints setup with people grouping up to provide gun lines, covering fire etc.
Next we need quick easy voice commands, more effective LMGs (for covering fire) and good visual cues for command and control. On the topic of visual cues Gophur mentioned that different coloured tags would be introduced, not sure for who though. Hopefully OiCs, brigade members, mission members maybe (rainbow tags anyone?..:)). Also improvments to chat coming Gophur mentioned hopefully which will involve coloured text and ways to distinguish custom channels (ie 6, 55, etc).
The new tanks I couldn't give a rat's arse about.

Im such a lazy blogger.

2005-07-12T13:42:00.000-04:00

Cause I got nothing than a random 'notes' post.

- My son loves flying planes in ww2ol. Actually let me rephrase that, he loves crashing planes in ww2ol. He thinks it's funny, not so good for my stats though. That's why he will one day inherit the second account I'm getting.
My PC is in the basement and he will wander down the stairs and say 'Daddy are you playing the army team game?'. Minitroop does love the 'army team'. He can actually fly a JU-52 level and straight (who cant?), I like to tell my passengers who's piloting the plane about mid-flight. heh.

- Firebombs for newegg if the cpu and mobo aren't here by Friday. Funny how they 'found' the postal order they received on Thursday!?! just on Monday after I called them twice about it and bitched out the last girl who took my call.

- Joint Operations kinda blows. Mortars implementation is nice though.

- Have to figure out if the video out on my new graphics card is helpful. Be nice if I could run that to my second pc to record the output. I still have grand plans for making some kickarse ww2ol movies. ('Group of Mates' is in pre-production..:D)

- In 4 years I've never been on the front page for the ww2ol newspaper. Man I suck.

Back from vacation.

2005-07-11T10:36:00.000-04:00

So I haven't posted in a week because I've been vacationing from home. Why don't I post from home? Because I've got better things to do, I only post when Im avoiding doing work. Therefore I only post when I am work. Dont tell my boss ok?

Found a 17 inch monitor in my basement, dont ask me how, I just did. Big improvement over the eye killing 15".

Ordered all the parts for my new computer. newegg is going to get a earful if they don't get the motherboard shipped today. Should all be here by Friday.

Actually just opened the box to my video card. Free copy of Joint Operations and Thief III. Bonus! (Yes I have everything delivered to my work. Two reasons 1: My wife doesnt know what I get and 2: I dont like having boxes sitting around outside my house).

Here's what I ordered:

AMD 64 3000 CPU (socket 939)
Asus AN8-E motherboard (Has SLI, I won't be using it but it was a good asus motherboard with pci-express and the nforce4 chipset.)
Gigabyte Geforce 6600GT vid card.

Will stick the HD, Ram and Power supply from my old PC. Will eventually buy a new PS and setup two pcs and get a second account for ww2ol. yeehah.

Lucky me.

2005-06-29T10:03:00.000-04:00

My practically brand new 19" monitor has decided to stop working.

Wow am I happy.

10 easy dot commands to make the game better.

2005-06-28T17:17:00.000-04:00

edited due to stupid formatting errors

Or / commands to appease kfsone.

1. /brigade "text" : Transmits "text" on brigade channel only, in different colour (ie blue). Available to officers only.

2. /mwho : Lists all players on your current mission. Available to all players.

3. /prefix "#" -u -ic: Sets a automatic prefix on channel (#) only available to brigade, mission or objective channel.
-u will give unit type surround by paranthesis,
-ic is only available to mission commander or brigade officer. Sets prefix as OiC or something similar.
So if type /prefix 1 u each time I transmit on slot 1 it will automatically put a (A-13) (for example) in front of the text. Available to all players.

4. /boic -a -hc: -a Lists all officers online for your brigade. -hc Lists only AHC officers online for your brigade.

5. /missions -#: Lists all missions available for your brigade.
-# Gives detailed info (ie origin/target and poster) for that
particular mission.

Ok so that's only five, and yes some of them are just replications of information already available. The important part is that these commands are available while spawned into the game world.

I'll leave it up to you guys to suggest another five.

Cool site

2005-06-28T10:25:00.000-04:00

ww2ol stats

Check it out. Great site. You can track town captures by campaign (including current) as well as RDP bombing progress.

Very nice.

Adding to links.

Metz situation rectified.

2005-06-28T10:13:00.000-04:00

CRS are patching today and rolling back towns around Metz. Hopefully this patch will fix my CTDs as well.

Axis wailing can be heard from Metz to Berlin. Sorry guys maybe you shouldve spent more time defending towns up north than playing in obviously bugged towns (how many CTDs does it take for you to figure it out? 10? 20?). Realising this the Axis are now yelling for a reset.

Good work for doing something CRS. Im not completely unsympathetic to the Axis concerns but when certain players start spouting off that it's not their fault they took the towns and kept playing there then I start to feel less concerned for their cause.

And if the Allies ever are in the same situation and keep attacking bugged towns then I'd expect the same to happen to us. I'd also spend my time screaming at people to stop attacking obviously bugged towns.

1.19 so far..

2005-06-27T10:26:00.000-04:00

Not so good.

CRS in all their wisdom started the campaign a day earlier than they said they would. They had stated previously that they would patch the game on Monday and start the campaign. No, instead they start the campaign on Sunday with some definate show stopping bugs. The one where no one could spawn at Metz and other towns nearby without CTDing was a good one. Of course the Axis took Metz, good work GHC for exploiting bugs!

The other problem is is that I keep CTDing like a mofo, I can safely say than in 4 years of playing this game I've never had this much trouble with CTDs. Joy is me.

Hopefully CRS will see the light and do a patch/reset to right this farce. We'll see.

Disclaimer: I love 1.19 itself, I love brigades and the new mission system (needs a few tweaks), sounds etc.

Here we go.

2005-06-22T14:58:00.000-04:00

Gophur says:
"We are preparing the patch to 119 for release. This is going to be a very large patch, around 100mb. There are a lot of changes in the game, the biggest by far though is brigade and persona based UI and spawning. This will fundamentally change the game as players will no longer search the map for "where" to play but will look for "who" to group with by joining a brigade and going on the missions that the brigade has posted. The game in all respects will be a more local, more personal experience and one which we are glad to finally unveil.

We hope you enjoy the patch."

Download will also be available via bittorrent.

Per Badger there will be a short intermission with a Battle of Britain scenario (Howabout an Invasion France scen huh CRS?!) for stress testing/rule testing followed by the start of a new campaign.

yeehah.

Progress report.

2005-06-21T14:53:00.000-04:00

New computer upgrades target: $450.

Progress so far: $90.

$360 to go.

My infantry wish list.

2005-06-21T14:37:00.000-04:00

- Bouncing grenades: It's more than embarassing that after 4 years CRS can't figure out how to code these.

- Increased flexibility for LMGs: LMGs should have a greater traverse, and be easier to deploy/undeploy.

- Bazookas/PIAT/Panzerschreck: Decent ranged personal anti-tank weapons? Tankers won't like it but they should learn not to drive into towns unprotected or spawn into ABs that are camped by infantry.

- Mortars: I personally think that large scale artillery wouldn't be much fun to play with, but why not mannable mortars with HE and smoke shells. 2", 50mm, 3", 81mm. I'd love nothing more than to start an attack with a quick mortar barrage and laying down a smoke screen for the infantry's advance..

- Different paratrooper classes: At least rifles and LMGs please.

- Infantry loadouts: I want an SMG with 2 satchels and as much smg ammo as possible. Thats it.

- Medics: A little 'gamey' perhaps but still kinda fun and adds flavour to the game. You know there would be people that would love to play them.

- Better Command and communications tools: I espcially want voice commands , ala Day of Defeat, which have a limited range. Commands like 'follow me', 'rally here', 'charge', 'contact enemy' etc would be super handy for rallying blue tags around you and atomspheric to boot.

Alright CRS get on that would you? Thanks.

Day of Days

2005-06-17T12:55:00.000-04:00

Just once I'd love to do a D-Day in ww2ol. This is still my 'dream' moment the one that crystallizes your hopes for the future of this game. I think everyone has one.

Of course an operation that large would simply get airquanked to oblivion in todays ww2ol. But let me give it a shot anyway.

It would be a massive operation requiring maximum effort from the airforce. Like real life, total domination of the air is needed (and even more so) to pull off a cross-channel invasion. However in ww2ol defending against air quake is hard so I'm going to go all out in my attempt to shutdown the Luftwaffe.

Air War:

RAF/FAF will peform CAP over invasion fleet, primarily to protect the transports and also over objective towns.
The bulk of our fighter forces however will focus on shutting down the Luftwaffe AT their airfields. We will attempt to airquake the primary airfields (Vliss, Knokke etc) and interdict from other secondary airfields (Cambrai, Lille, Seclin etc).
In fact to successfully pull this off I believe the MAJORITY of your players would have to initially be in the air. Getting the transports across the channel is the operations most vunerable phase.
This airfield CAP will be coupled with commando/paratrooper raids at each Airfield. Paras/inf will seek to disrupt/destory planes leaving those AFs + draw off Axis ground troops to defend those airfields.
As the transports land CAPing the AirFields will still be a priority but secondary importance will need to be given to defending MSPs and bombing of the target towns.

Allies have 'some' advantage in that there are so many airfields in the SE of England.

Naval War:

Transports: Transports will primarily bring trucks for MSPs and heavy armour. Secondary loads would be ATGs and AA for flak traps.

DDs: RAN are going to have to have DDs in close to the transports for AA cover and out wide for protection from enemy DDs.
Once transports are landed, DDs will provide fire support for ground troops and AA cover.

Ground War:

As many AOs are to be placed when the transports have landed.

(In 1.19 iirc) there is a link to Vlissegen from England. A force of paratroopers it to hit there as the AOs go up with their focus on delaying, distracting german forces.

Main forces of Para's are to drop on target towns (most likely two, Dunkerque and ??)as AOs go up. Again their main aim is to destroy armour in the AB, harass and distract the defenders.
MSPs deploy as safely as possible with several in reserve, with as much AA protection as can be given. Armour is also to be carefully hoarded.
Essiantely these towns will have to be overwhelmed with infantry with maximum effort coming from the RAF/FAF to absolutely bomb the crap out of said towns. Attacking forces will have little to no armour support. Its unlikely that if the attacking infantry cannot overhwelm the towns in the first 10 minutes then its not going to happen. Paratroopers will continue to be dropped either on the AB or surrounding towns to act as cutoff.

Even IF the intial captures are successful the operation would need to be continued to capture a couple more towns to act as a bridgehead.

3 critical portions to this plan:
1. Getting the transports across the channel unmolested.
2. Camping the AFs and having as much bomber support as possible.
3. Overwhelming the town quickly.

Of course what'd really happen is your fleet would get spotted halfway across the channel, your AF cap would get attrited to death and then you'd have 20 Stukas bombing your transports to smithereens. Eventually you'd get one MSP down and some Paras and they'd be dead within 5 minutes.

Still, if you had the numbers.....

Sweet sweet RAM

2005-06-14T11:00:00.000-04:00

My gig's worth of RAM arrived back from Newegg yesterday.
Hopefully in time for 1.19's release this week. :D

Weekend notes.

2005-06-13T10:32:00.000-04:00

Did a little beta stress testing on Saturday. Things of note:
-I hope this is not just anecdotal but battles appear to be LOUDER. Which is a good thing, nothing worse than going into a firefight and it being quieter than a walk in the country.
-New side strafing animation looks nice.
-MP40 seems to be less deadly.

On commanding, was reading Sres's post about his successful run of attacks OiCed (S! Sres) and noticed he acted as an MSP on at least one of them. My OiC attempt (and success.:)) this map was Engheim and I acted as the MSP for just about the whole attack. Having your OiC immobile with extremely limited visibility is not a good thing, but unfortunately a good portion of the time no one wants to volunteer to be the MSP.

Rightly so though, cause MSPing is damn boring. I must admit I usually don't understand why people want to have fully enterable and exitable vehicles in ww2ol so much but this is an instance where it would be rather useful. Allow the truck driver to hop out of the truck with a limited loadout (say a rifle with 50 rounds) and move around and more people would be willing to drive those MSPs out.

The other solution which Im going for is to have a second account and PC.:) Hopefully by the end of next month I will purchase the parts to a new system:
- AMD 64 3000
- AN8-E Asus Mobo.
- GeForce 6600 GT PCI-E

I already have the RAM (RMAed to Newegg and returning today woot) and have spare RAM for the old system (thanks to a $100 giftcard from BestBuy) so the old PC will become the second account/truck driver.

Hopefully the wife wont notice the $30 month charge from Playnet.:P

Oh and 1.19 is supposed to be released this week all things going well. Wootalicious.

Random 1.19 thoughts.

2005-06-09T16:02:00.000-04:00

In-game keymapper: Good.
- Thankgod for this, I can remember one unfortunate occasion where I accidently hit the key I had mapped mouselook to...right before I was about to make my final run to sap a Pz IVD. It was like the scence out of a bad horror movie, Im trying to run one way and my head is pointed the other, and I didnt get the panzer. Damnit.

Btw go here for some great info on fine tuning your turret control or mapping it to your mouse! (This is an open forum so available to all players.)

New Sounds:
The best of the lot -
New Thompson
MG-34
Turret Traverse
Air raid siren (though this will probably get annoying.)
Footsteps
Smoke Grenades (pop crackle fizz!)
New richocet sounds.

First time I logged onto Open Beta I spawned in as infantry to find a pzIVg driving down the middle of a town...bullets ricocheting off it, mg34 blasting away...very SPRish. Im all inspired to get my ww2ol movie done. Working on storyboard right now and will scout locations tonight.

Seriously some peoples license's should be revoked.

2005-06-08T12:24:00.001-04:00

Or maybe not. One 4G driver last night puts himself 50m from a French depot and proceeds to turn his tank 180 degrees away from the depot. Quickest , easiest sap I ever had.

Sres's myths of 1.19

2005-06-08T09:44:00.000-04:00

Go here to read.

The new computer concerns are definately bunk. I spent all weekend playing open beta (and remember its still beta) on an AMD 2100 XP, 512mg RAM (half of what I usually have) and a gf5600 Ultra and had no problems whatsoever. If your trying to play ww2ol on anything less well then you should've upgraded a year ago.

4 years ago..

2005-06-06T11:29:00.000-04:00

I went down to my local EB and picked up a first day copy of ww2ol. Oh boy those were the days. Multiple servers, lawsuits threatened and British Chars.

Happy 4th birthday ww2ol!

Comeback version 2.0

2005-06-03T10:50:00.000-04:00

Lets try this again shall we?

So since last I spoke I've joined the AHC. I'm actually enjoying it. I think it's because of my inate need to boss people around.

Waiting for 1.19 to come out. Still contemplating taking a day off work just to play the open beta. Brigades will be nice, sounds are great (love the smoke grenade), can't wait for crouch sprint. Air raid siren will get annoying though I bet.

Favourite mission of the night: Armour EWS went off at Lacapelle and being somewhat bored I spawned in (sapper) to check it wasn't a real attack. Hoped in the church tower and noticed a pz IVg sitting east of town all on its lonesome. My eyes lit up as one word coursed through my head 'NOOBIE!'. So off I snuck with all my might ninja skills to nail this sucker. It was almost unfair, he didn't even shutoff his engine, he even fired MG at me at one stage! He mustve thought he got me! Dear god I could smell the noobiness! Anyway one charge later (remember boys and girls, halfway down the hull on the left side for your 4G satisfaction), and boom.
I started the walk back and lo and behold there's another lone 4g! (obviously I had some cosmic karma coming). I was behind this one so I didn't even sneak. Boom. Two dead noobs. Delicious.

Do your ears a favour.

2005-02-03T13:07:00.000-05:00

For the last cpl of years or so I've been using a dinky $15 headset I bought at Staples, mainly because I needed a microphone. Last night I realised what I've been missing. I went out and bought a decent pair of headphones (with mic) for 35 bucks (Platronic .90 audio's) and the difference is stunning. Coupled with my soundcard I put in a couple of months ago the sound is so much better in ww2ol and other games I play. I feel like an idiot for letting my ears down this long.
At 35 dollars the investment is well worth it, the Platronic .90's came fairly well recommended in a cpl of reviews I read. I would've like to buy some surround sound headphones (speakers are not an option in my house) but to get a set that perform decently means paying a lot more than I'm willing right now. Also I'm now convinced that inbuilt motherboard sound is NOT as good as a decent soundcard, invest some dollars in a SB Live or if you have a bit more splurge on a Audigy 2 card, trust me.

Sidenote: CompUSA has to be the most disorganised stores I've ever been in. I check the availibility of the headset I was buying online and it was in stock, so I go to the store to pick one up. They have headsets in the computer parts area but no Platronics, I wander over to the gaming section and find some Platronic headsets, hanging by themselves, at the end of a aisle in the Xbox section. There are .70's though. I finally track down an employee (nice guy but has only been working there 2 weeks) who goes off to see if they have any in stock, he comes back to say they should have 3 and they are next to the monster cables section?!?! This is a completely different section at the back of computer parts and there is a bunch more headsets (why are they not with the rest????) but no Platronic .90's. The sales associate notes that when the instock number is as low as 3 it might not be accurate and they could be sold out, somewhat frustrated I turn to leave and my sleeve gets caught on something from the opposite aisle...oh look a stack of Platronic .90s hanging on the end of a aisle ACROSS from the other headsets in the TVs section.
WTF Compusa? (I'm still trying to figure out the crack monkey organisation of their PC games section) Get your shit together.

How would you 'score' a recon mission?

2005-02-01T13:49:00.000-05:00

I was reading Comstar's post about how precamping is the defender's fault and it got me to thinking on some issues with ww2ol combat.

Herein, I believe, lies the fundamental problem with ww2ol:
'How do you replicate the 24 hour presence of permanent combat units on the battlefield in a game with a population that is neither present for 24 hours or restricted to one combat unit AND keep it a fun game to play'

In real life tank columns don't drive right up to the enemies encampment (aka the AB spawn) before the defence is alerted. In fact in real life if there is a large force of tanks / infantry a cpl of hundred meters from your base then your surrendering not rushing out infantry a few at a time to die in a hail of machinegun fire.

In real life you have reconnaissance elements, pickets, units set in defensive positions around the clock. In ww2ol, we have unintelligent EWS, little impetus to perform recon and instaspawn armies. So what can we do?

Well a more perfect solution would have ww2ol combat take place between two prepared enemies that have 80 percent of the forces already spawned into the battlefield but this is simply to unrealistic a goal.

Intelligent EWS would be nice but it completely removes the player from the equation and makes them lazy.

So we come back to my post title 'How would you score a recon mission' or more importantly how do you make it so that players WANT to go on recon missions?

Jumping to conclusions.

2005-02-01T11:05:00.000-05:00

As the title of this post suggests I'm going to jump to a few conclusions here based on very little evidence (ie the last day of ww2ol). It'll be almost like a Playschool post.

Last night (US Prime) we saw the numbers pendulum swing away from the Allies, it may have even ended up being on the Axis side though I cannot be sure. The Allies were, for the whole, on the defensive most of the night. When I checked this morning we had lost Diest, Willemstad, Haybes and at least one town in the deep south.

Why the big turnaround? Well as I noted in my last post, the BEF's re-awakening seemed to coincide with the introduction of the Spit IX. At the time I didn't believe the introduction of a fighter plane could have such an effect on ground numbers. Now I'm not so sure.

What did the Axis get last night? The FW-190. Coincedence? Well this is where I'm jumping to conclusions and saying maybe it isn't. Are more people logging on to play with the new toy and sticking around to contribute in other facets of the war? Or am I missing other factors like a planned Axis op or the like? It would seem unlikely given the state of Axis moral.

The other conclusion we can jump to here is that the French have made a large mistake by not researching any new toys this RDP round. More Shermans? Who cares? I think the French army proved quite capably in the last 4 or so days that we had more than enough Shermans to do the job. What you really need is the new toys to keep the players interested and logging in. Right now the French are still 2 RDP cycles away from the Lightning. This may get ugly.

All that being said I'm jumping to all these wonderful hypothesis based on the evidence of one night. This pretty much guarentees that I will be wrong, so I'll make a prediction too: With last night's effort and the French RDP situation the Axis will win this map possibly even before the Lightning can be introduced.

Enjoy.

Quick note.

2005-01-31T15:22:00.000-05:00

My last note was Thursday talking about the capture of Stekene.

Last night I participated in the fall of Willemstad (if you consider participating running around the castle while 20 tanks camped the AB). So far this is a fairly spectacular collapse on behalf of the Axis. I, for one, am fairly mystified at its causes.

Lets look at the timeline: (my memory is a little rough, be kind).

- Axis have stormed west, crushing the BEF, Gent is Axis. Germans also threaten Mauberge.
- Allies launch counterattack taking several towns back up to Brussels and including the recapture of Gent. Namur is also allied.
- Axis recapture towns around Brussels. Front is somewhat stagnant for a cpl of days, then the Werchmact begins to push East again (IVg arrives on battlefield). Upper Meuse , including Namur, Dinant etc is Axis. All towns up to Gent are Axis. Axis push out from Brussels to Soignes and take Charleroi. Also sometime during this Axis take Mountfacoun and Sedan area. Later in this period the Sherman is introduced but the front remains stagnant with a slight push by the Axis.
- The Spit IX is introduced. BEF goes mad, captures towns E and SE of Gent. A few days later the German front north completely collapses. In the course of Fri/Sat night, Brussels and Antwerp fall + several of their buffer towns. South front remains stationary.

The triggering factor 'appears' to be the Spit IX but I don't get it/believe it. Why would a plane have such an influence on numbers, espcially ground numbers? And don't kid yourselves for a second that it was anything else but numbers. On Friday night (US EST) we had ridicolous numbers and were simply steamrolling towns. Brussels fell in approx 30 mins with barely a whimper from the Axis forces.

The French had the Sherman, which is usually a big numbers getter, for several days before the German collapse. In fact the Germans were a plus in towns captured for the first days of the Sherman arrival.

Are we seeing the beginnings of a of a true 'dinner/weekend club'?. The Allies have at most times enjoyed a slight numbers advantage in the evening hours (US) and weekends but it now appears to becoming even more pronounced.

This is not good for the game. It's not good for the Axis OR the Allies. To be truely a game I believe side numbers have to avoid these large differentials in all timezones. The problem that the Allies have always had with the 'breakfast club' is not that the Axis have a numbers advantage, it's that the difference is so large at those times. Now it appears that the Allies are enjoying an imbalance of such proportion but in US prime time, a much bigger recipe for disaster in terms of game balance.

I hope I'm wrong.

(That was a quick note wasn't it? :P)

Notes

2005-01-27T15:35:00.000-05:00

Reading all the old posts on this blog is at once embarassing as well as illuminating. As usual all my predictions in regards to how certain things would affect the game were pretty much wrong.And some of the writing, well, lets just not mention it again ok?

A few notes of interest:

- I did finally achieve LT rank in the FAF, of course now that I have the rank I barely use it.

- CRS has decided to actually realistically model fuel levels for the Spit IX. This is something I discovered last night while loitering over Evere Airfield (Brussels), not exactly the best location for such a revelation.

- It's quite amazing how quickly you can begin to take something for granted. Can anyone remember what it was like to play without mobile spawning? It's only been in game for a month and it seems like it has been here forever. Either that or my mind is trying to block the memory of all those endless truck rides.

- The BEF's capture of Stekene last night was a bit unexpected to say the least. At one stage we had almost zero cutoff, they had several artillery pieces and tanks in and around town (including 4Gs)and our own armour was almost non-existant. Certain people were organising a huge para drop on town. Given the state of the battle a para drop at this time is the sign of the incompentently desperate. You just can't tell people that.
However we got a MSP up extremely close to town (thanks Bigass) and the paratroopers who had all just died began to spawn into it enmasse. A few minutes later KC23 reported we had a friendly tank in the AB.
Where the hell did it come from?
I personally was above the battlefield in aforementioned spit IX and was noticing that the LW had gone completely absent. I flew to both Brussels and Antwerp and couldn't russle up anything more than a Stuka.
It just goes to show that sometimes you can never tell whats going to happen. I would guess that a drop in Axis numbers combined with some sheer BEF pigheadness/fortutious placement of MSP turned a lost cause into a succesful capture.

Well I'm sure we'll have lost it by this afternoon.

Apologies to Killer I guess..

2005-01-27T15:25:00.000-05:00

On September 29th I wrote:

'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?!'

Whoops.

The comeback post.

2005-01-27T11:11:00.000-05:00

I'm back. Yes I've been extremely lazy but I've decided to have a go at resurrecting this blog. First off I changed the crappy title of it.

The other important aim here is to improve my writing. The fact that Im 28 years old and write like a 13 yr old on a sugar high is embarassing to say the least.

Looking at my last post to this blog is certainly an eye opener. The Red Sox were losing the ALCS (we know how that ended.) , I was unsubscribed from ww2ol and my computer had blown up.

Well I bought a new motherboard, and resubscribed during the World Series. So much for financial restraint.

Blah!

2004-10-15T14:07:00.000-04:00

Red Sox down 2-0 and Schilling is out for the series. You have to laugh, its the only way to survive. I've promised a workmate that if the Red Sox win the ALCS I'll eat a cardboard cereal box.

Ive currently unsubscribed from ww2ol due to financial restraints. Bummer. Of course it became moot when I blew up my computer a cpl of nights ago.:(

Well I think its blown up, Im really hoping its the PS not the motherboard. Not that I can afford either right now.

Yay is me.

More civ3, redsox and ww2ol ramblings.

2004-10-12T15:14:00.000-04:00

Red Sox in 5. Schill closes it out with a win in Game 5 at Fenway. YEAH BABY!
I maybe the only Red Sox fan who didnt like the way the Sox won on Friday night. Trust me to find issues in a series win...I wish they'd won it 6-1 with Arroyo getting the win, he pitched damn well...in fact gave up less earned runs than Schilling or Pedro..woot. He's matched up against K Brown in Game 3.
Its kinda amazing how into this I get, right now Im an absolute bundle of nerves before Game 1 and 5 1/2 years ago I couldn't name a SINGLE player on the Red Sox...probably couldnt even tell you what town they played in. Now, well Ive become your typical crazy Red Sox fan. woot.

Civ 3 stuff - Going to finish my game. Persia and Rome have a mutual protection pact and are at war against Greece and Babylon. Doesnt concern me except for the large armies of Rome constantly tracking across my empire.bah.
So Ive decided screw it, Im going to war with Rome and Persia. This way it'll be more fun.
So here is the war strategy -
- Next 10-15 turns going to pump out mech inf, bombers and a few naval units for behind the lines invasions.
- Extend depth of fortress wall along Persian border and stock up with some more infantry with some arty/bomber support.
- Possible tactic - Sign Freedom of Passage with Rome and position armys next to important towns and resources (cut off his iron and rubber!). This is kinda cheesy though. Id rather go with seaborne invasions along his coast supported by carriers and BBs.
- Revolt government to Communism for war time.
- Hold off Persia while striking at Rome. I share a short border with Persia that I have fortressed off so Im confident that I can hold em at that line indefinately. I share a bigass border with Rome running roughly W to E (he is to my South) that cant really be defended passively. I will move out at least 5-6 army groups, using armies where I have them to strike for his bigger cities. I will also have at least 3 naval invasions take place along his border aiming for critical resources to his production of units (espcially inf).

It'll be long and bloody but I'll win. In my 10-15 turns of buildup hopefully Persia-rme will take a large chunk out of Greece-Babylonian so I can roll them up easy enough later.

Anyway onto ww2ol ramblings -

Still no rank gain in FAF, had one sortie and I got done by a 109...even with 6 other FAF fighters on his tail..thanks guys! no really thanks! blah.

For some reason I've lost ALL ability to hit planes with a CMLE. Dunno whats wrong cause everyone else is hitting them fine...and I mean not even damages Im talking despawning with NOTHING listed as hit. Still there's nothing prettier than watching a JU lose a wing overhead and plow into the ground...fun fun.

6pdrs have HE, man the Axis must hate that. Ive already advanced the idea that we should now let the Axis get the 3H just so that we can pwn it and make them cry.

Another RDP prod update. Hey Gophur?! WE DONT CARE! Enough with the FRICKIN BORING RDP UPDATES give us some real news..please.

Killer's still rambling on about mobile truck spawning. Interesting. The one thing that was interesting was that he was talking more about having ppl spawn all their equipment in ...attack/defend then battle over...not spawn in attack, respawn respawn respawn...A move to the more set piece battles that I'd like to see.
The bad news is that he thought that vehicle numbers would have to be raised to accomadate this.

'NOnonononoNOnNONONNONONON' We dont need more vehicles really, let them play infantry. pleASE.

And thats it.

ww2ol, civ3 and the Redsox

2004-10-07T13:44:00.000-04:00

ok its been a while and Ive barely played ww2ol. In fact I may have only spawned in once for this campaign.

Supposdly this is a seasonally low time for player numbers and boy does it show. Logging on at around 10pm EST and your lucky to find one town contested. I tried playing some last night to get my mind off the red sox (more on this later) and took a Dewo from Vliss to meet up with some squadies over Roos (still looking for that elusive FAF rank). I just start to dive down to investigate when the wife calls me. I cannot BEGIN TO TELL YOU how many planes Ive lost that way having to go afk because of her..So I get annoyed, still no action and quit. Tried playing some OFP , got bored, saw the Red Sox tied and ended up watching the rest of the game.

WOOT RED SOX! Seriously its gonna give me an ulcer and the only reason I ended up watching the game was because we took the lead. WHOS GOT THE F'ING BETTER BULLPEN NOW HUH?? HOWS YOUR PRECIOUS K-ROD?!? haha. Sorry. Bring on game 3 , pleeeeaaase let them sweep.

Ok so now lets talk about my latest Civ 3 game for something different. I simply cant play anything but egyptian...industrius + religious is just too good. Great worker bonuses and no ridicolously long disorders while changing governments. I have a nice big empire with a large powerful Romans to my south..who are starting to get annoyed at me...they also have a heap of troops in my territory moving to kill the Greeks or something. Greeks , Persians, Babys are on the E side of the continent with the two halfs connected by a smallish land bridge. Which btw I dominate and have a wall of fortresses with each square garrisoned...theres one space open to let the Romans GET THE F OFF MY LAND.

So anyway I finally gained the tech lead around 'Steel' and got a golden age shortly after WOOT!...Theres a smaller island off the main continent inhabited by the Germans and Zulus who are way back in tech...So I invaded for something to do.
I originally established a foothold in a short war I had with the Babylonians. They declared war on me for some stupid reason and I just drafted a bunch of infantry and protected all my cities. They never launched any serious attacks and I built a bunch of cavalry and arty and took the 3-4 cities they had behind my territory (I always like to shore up my lines) and those cities on the other continent. No elite victoires though..:( (Damn those are hard!).

Anyway built a decent transport fleet and shipped some Cav over and attacked the German cities...finished easily and I got my Leader..woot! Was in the Golden Age so I got tanks pretty quickly and started mass producing veteran tanks. Germans were dispatched and I took a quick 10 cities off the Zulu...they start mass producing all those idiots unit which annoy the crap out of you...impis, cavalry, muskeeters/rifleman..Is there anything more annoying than losing a tank to a f'ing IMPI?? I MEAN GIVE ME A BREAK!?!. Eventually my populace got restless and I declared a truce..and then at the same time lost my golden age before I got computers...

M^(@!#$!!!(#$C#@$@K#$ER##!!

This is usually where I give up on my Civ games. Attacking cities stocked to the gills with infantry is simply too annoying. I thinking maybe I'll research nukes and bomb the rest of the world into submission. Really Im starting to get bored already and Id like to finish a game for once. I asked the Romans to move their forces out of my territory and they declared war so Im going to have to redo that (all my tanks are on the other continent). And the Romans will FLOOD me with shitty units anyway..which wont be fun. And the border is to big to try and garrison the whole thing...

Hrrm note to self does motorized inf have ZOC? Still thats a f'ing lot of territory to cover. I wish the AI wasnt so retarded.

And I wish naval units moved quicker, they really are useless due to their lack of MP's (espcially consider how quick rail moves over land and its NOT Realistic).

Well anyway I really really should finish one game of it. Maybe, like Im supposed to finish BG II and KOTOR...yeah whatever.:P~

Slacking..

2004-09-29T13:01:00.000-04:00

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.

2004-09-20T13:51:00.000-04:00

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.

2004-09-20T13:32:00.000-04:00

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

2004-09-17T09:14:00.000-04:00

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!

2004-09-14T13:06:00.000-04:00

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

2004-09-13T17:18:00.000-04:00

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.

2004-09-10T12:02:00.000-04:00

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.

2004-09-10T11:54:00.000-04:00

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.

2004-09-09T10:37:00.000-04:00

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.

2004-09-08T13:44:00.001-04:00

stupid blogger

Initial 1.16 impressions.

2004-09-08T13:44:00.000-04:00

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.

2004-09-08T13:33:00.000-04:00

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.

2004-09-07T10:07:00.000-04:00

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

2004-09-07T10:05:00.000-04:00

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.

2004-09-07T09:47:00.000-04:00

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!

2004-09-03T16:10:00.000-04:00

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.

2004-09-02T15:17:00.000-04:00

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.

2004-09-02T15:00:00.000-04:00

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!

2004-09-01T13:24:00.000-04:00

Classic just classic

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

Chat channels

2004-09-01T11:22:00.000-04:00

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.

The power, the power!!

2004-08-31T16:52:00.000-04:00

Im now 7 IC of 4bdge 2nd Division BEF.

Bow down before me puny mortals.....or not.

Not sure what its gonna do but the head rush is enjoyable...........

Rules for Paratrooping in WW2OL.

2004-08-31T15:26:00.000-04:00

Heres my shot at the rules paras would have to be implemented with in ww2ol.

1. Para infantry is only spawnable at AF AB's.

2. When dropping from transport plane ALL para's are released. It must either be all or nothing. (This is to prevent someone dropping 1 para over a dozen cities for moling gimpery) Credit to Sres for this idea.

3. Para Infantry, and ONLY para infantry may cap flags that are not in front line towns. However they can only cap flags in towns that have a LINK to a frontline town. Why? This is to stop paras being dropped willy nilly over the map to creating moling nightmares for defending troops. I believe that it also reflects the fact that RL commanders would not commit Paras to be dropped deep in the middle of enemy territory when they faced certain death or capture. Consider if you will the major airborne drops of ww2 in ww2ol towns. Crete wouldve had frontline towns (Germany controlled Greece), Normandy was essiantially one town back (English SE coast to Norman coast being the frontline), Eben Emmel(sp) maybe one town back. The Arnhem drops may have been a bit further but still falls within the spirit of the rule.

4. Per 3, Paras can cap flags and can capture towns however they will not get any supply if they have no link to a friendly town, they will either have to have reinforcements dropped by air or be relieved by land.

5. If an AF is a frontline town Paras cannot be spawned at it (to prevent hardcore moling)

6. Para infantry will be a deployed group like a bomber squadron. (Actually I dont know if this will work, will it be part of a brigade? If so how can it be seperate from the rest. Paras infantry shouldnt be enough to be its own brigade)

Still sounds like fun no?

Carpet Bombing.

2004-08-31T09:51:00.000-04:00

I love the bomb effects in game...drone as they drop, the large BANG as they hit , bit of screen shake etc...I find it somewhat immersive.

However there never seem to be many, notice how whenever you see a HE111 over a town theres only 1. Challenge for an Axis squad, bring like 6 HE111s and carpet bomb a town, personally I think that'd be damn cool to be in...who cares how many kills you get as long as it looks cool!

ahhhh visual damage

2004-08-31T09:50:00.000-04:00

Ahh theres nothing like seeing the tail pop off a 110 under a hail of 20mm.

Another cool thing is the exploding plane effect, espcially when two planes collide. However it aint cool if your one of those planes..doh!

The FAF.

2004-08-30T14:05:00.000-04:00

Man is it any wonder the French suffer for players? Your two fighters are the H75 and the Dewo...and your RDP fighters require at least LT rank to fly. If your a 109 pilot and cant, wth some patience, handle either of those planes you should be fired from the LW.
The RAAF on the other hand gets the hurri and Spit and the Hurri2C can be flown at Cpl or Sgt (at least Sgt).

Mind you I like the H75, turns on a dime. Great for hunting Stukas or if your feeling particularly mean , strafing opels.

So anyway Ive gone back to ranking up in the FAF so I can fly H81s and Bells (Cavalier somehow manages to get my physced up to fly a plane thats most likely way above my capabilities ..oh well....of course he also likes Dewos so maybe I shouldnt listen to him..)

Found a Stuka loiterning over St. Quentin two nights ago ...he didnt find me...I LOVE 20mm. Makes up for all those times youve sat on the 6 of a Stuka with a hurri until you've run outa ammo and its still flying. Made Sgt and was disgusted that I still cant get Bells or H81s.....muttermutterbitchbitch.

Last night took a Dewo outa Lille (remember boys and girls look in the non mission spawn list)...flew to Korjiek(sp) the southernmost BEF frontline town. No EA when I got there but SgtMajor (fellow ANZAC) was on the ground and I asked him to keep a look out. Few minutes later he reports 109 and Im thinking 'uh oh'....

Well anyway I first spot him diving underneath me to strafe (WTF is he BLIND??) going from my right to left...so I dip my nose and squirt off an oppurtnity of 20mm....I think I missed.

So I fly around a bit thinking hes getting on my 6...Im a cpl of klicks west of town and I turn around...no 109...(its a F). Truely this pilot has less SA than a dead squirrel.
Come back to town to find him pulling out of a strafing run and climbing and banking slowly....wow hes stupid too. Lucky me. Close in ...1 second of 20mm (did I mention I love 20mm?) and he nosedives.

Only 12 rank points for that. Rest of the night disolves into getting bounced and pilot killed in dogfights. Used all my karma up I guess.

A woot for the FAF. (Btw chan 90 is always way more active than the RAF chans, 55, 56 etc.)

Patch Schedule

2004-08-30T13:39:00.000-04:00

For no other reason than its a fun exercise lets try and pick out when the next major patches will be coming out and some of the features we should be seeing. whee.

CRS says they plan to release a patch approx every 6 weeks, they are trying to release patches on a schedule rather than per content. Not a bad idea as any good ww2ol player lives for patch day.....

So 1.15 came out on 7/22/04 (yeah thanks CRS one day before I go on hols with no ww2ol access...waaaah...though I got to play at Ret's house in Sydney). 6 weeks later is week ending Sept 3 (auspicious date for ww2 game) however thats this week and they just locked features for 1.16 and so we wont see it this week. Next week , Sept 9 or so would be nice though I wouldnt be surprised if its the week after , week starting Sept 13.

1.15 has a few things...the introduction of Attack Objectives on bridges. whee, personally I think no one will use them and defenders will run around a lot blowing bridges like crazy. Attack Obj are not going to be used until they are actually required to capture flags.

Again I could be completely wrong , I predicted that people would use the mission spawn timer introduced in 1.6...hahahahahahahah (your sitting there thinking what timer aren't you?).

Oh yeah ATG goodness to - 6pdrs are gonna make Axis players cry.
So...1.15 mid September.

1.16 later October, Early november. Will this be the patch? Will CRS finally bite the bullet and introduce the brigade Orbat? The HCs have been given the orbats they have to work with, (6 army brigades for BEF..ugh) so its coming. God I hope so. 6 brigades for 8 towns supposdly...gonna be fun watching everyone try and pick the town with no defences...:P.
New tanks should arrive: pz IV, Crusader 6pdr and the Sherman (woot)..Will we be seeing new grass tech? More buildings too.

1.17 for Santa! Mid-Late December. Now im just guessing.:)
Different TOEs for brigades?
Tier 2 plane set? FW-190, Spix IX irrc and P-38 for French...French are starting to look almightly US in their equipment set...christ give em Garands already!..
Grass tech?
More buildings.

Well who knows but I think CRS has run out of excuses :) for putting deployment in. The first 6 months of 2005 will be very interesting imho.

First

2004-08-30T11:49:00.000-04:00

Great, another crappy blog to clog up the already steaming pile that is the internet.

Yeah well so be it.