Feedback, suggestion and bug thread

[Dane49]

This is a bug!
Played a Quick Battle tonight where my Iranian M-60 tank had its tread shot off.
The crew eventually got out of the tank to fix it with their sledge hammers and I saw an enemy soldier nearby directly shoot at them but the crew didn't notice even though the sparks from the automatic rifle fire where bouncing off of the tank and not one of the crew got hit though they should have all been casualties from this direct fire from less than 15 meters.

To make matters worse the tank was hit moments later by a RPG and caught fire the crew still continued to fix the tank tread while the tank is burning, then later the tank started exploding and the sledge hammers then disappeared and the crew now had rifles but continued to hit the treads with the rifles as the tank was still exploding.
One of the crew was eventually gunned down and the other crew member then started beating the ground with his rifle as the tank continued to explode next to him without injuring him.

Normally I can somewhat rationally explain away what I think may be a bug and discount my initial thoughts but this defies a rational explanation.
I'm positive this is a bug.

[Tac Error]

I've had that problem too some time ago with an Olifant crew.

[Santini]

In the Pieper campaign, some of the Grenadier command units have too many soldiers to fit back in to their halftracks

[Dane49]

This should have been addressed with the new c4 patch

114) Fixed incorrect headgear placing for the RPG soldiers in the new DLC.
115) Fixed a bug with the additional soldier in Panzergrenadier commander squads.
116) Added an armor maps for a new plants (poplar, corn and reeds).
117) Fixed bug that leads to problems with savegames in the tactical battle.
118) Fixed bug with wrong platoon color in the quick battle editor, when changing sides.
119) Fixed bug with incorrect modifier settings after loading the savegame.

[Santini]

Yup, and I have that installed, but it is still happening to at least one unit

[Lemonade]

I've noticed this too. The patch didn't fix it.
If there are spare 251s or trucks available, I assign them to PzGrd command platoons to give command squads some means of transportation. That's the only workaround I can think of.

[Santini]

Dude... you are a genius.

And you have saved me so much pain and effort... how do you command the guys from the one unit into the other 251?

[Dane49]

how do you command the guys from the one unit into the other 251?

Move them close to one another then left mouse click and draw a box around the two units then press the load button.

[RedC]

In option 5 (Tactical Orders):
-"Abandon vehicle" [5.12] "Occupy vehicle" [5.13] is misleading (like you can force crew to exit or take vehicles), and should be "Mount" "Dismount".
-"Put a smoke screen" [5.25] command, what is it for? (tried it with random units, commanders, tanks..., what am I missing)

Suggestions that you are probably aware of, but I'm more interested on (planned) progress on them:

1) Order crew to get in a vehicle (especially useful when transport truck driver exits the truck and never comes back), or force crew without an equipment (i.e. gun) to use the equipment without a crew, seems fairly logical.

1b) Now the opposite, order crew to save themselves and get out of the vehicle/equipment.

2) Make truck being able to tow the guns (at least make them be towed at the beginning of the battle, if its complicated to make it work during the battle)

3) AA battle seems very undeveloped. (I had separate AA battery group in which NO equipment is able to target air targets, Tanks with AA guns can't use them -no enemy land troops around-, infantry is very lethargic even if no enemy is around and have very good visibility of the planes and plane angle of attack is good...etc) While I've seen rear gunners of other planes attacking passing enemy planes, thats pretty interesting!


Question:
From what I have seen when air support comes down, it comes down hard and seems like its a bit cheating. Note this, in quick battle, 1 infantry group (with 1 air support platoon in) per side. During the battle, planes were targeting like maniacs, killing of platoon officers with sniper precision without even spotter support! Now interesting fact:
-1 platoon I left away from the battle on hold fire (invisible from the enemy ground forces), and during my several tests, enemy planes come down ALWAYS killing my officer of the group with sniper precision.
-Same thing with a tick of battle, enemy planes sniping officers like crazy, and in each run they need to gun down at least 1 soldier, 33% officer.
-My planes can't hit anything, seriously, only kills that they made were 2 officer far behind frontline battle.
-Enemy spotter was far behind a woods and had 0 visibility on the battlefield, my spotters were right behind the front overlooking.

Did anyone had crazy experiences with planes like me, or I'm doing something terribly wrong...

[Flashburn]

oN THE AA thing.... YOU have no idea how much I have wanted to tackle that on the end user front.  It is missing element.  Making destroyable aircraft, aa guns like 2cm Flak 38, 37mm aa guns, vehicles like sd.kfz10/5..etc etc.  But as soon as you do one plane that can BLOW UP, now you need to all planes that blow up.  You do one sides aaa assets now you need to all sides.  Oddly enough I made an su2 that is modeled but not textured yet.  But there lies the rub.  Now you have 1 plane that can blow up but now you need the il-2, stuka, fw190, po2 (or whatever that is) to blow up as well. Although to be frank the stuka, il-2 and fw190 need to just be redone anyways.  Showing there age.  Currently toying with idea to make an sd.kfz10/5...have been for awhile.  Neat vehicle.  But that damned rub again.  Once you have 1, you need them all.  But not really planning to bring into GTOS if I do.  Just something different to go make.  That damned rub again. 

With aircraft I think is 2 part issue.  One they where honestly not that great attacking stuff in tactical environment.  (but then again there where assets shooting at them too).  So you dont want to make them to OVERLY powerful and keep in line with historical fact.  The second bit is there is nothing to really shoot em down with.  SO if powerful asset could just go around for 5 minutes killing everything.  Also the ai controlled air spotters are not so great at keeping themselves alive....same for command guys, arty spotters etc. 


I was intending to sneak this in with my LONGSTOP project....the aa thing.  That is going to be AWHILE do to job issues.  But hmmmmmm. 

[Flashburn]

I beleave it was said that someday they would like to do towable guns.  Although really not so sure if it is worth the hassle.  Usually the battle areas are pretty bloody close to starting locations.  Now if larger 2km squares where you might need to move guys up to 4km in a hurry those neato trucks make ALOT more sence. 

[RedC]

Well having a basic placeholder explosion for all airplanes with a simplest model is ok too, all end up with complete explosion. (If planes going down aren't implemented, then why the hell are my units even firing at the planes?    )

I think Air combat isn't primary to this game experience, I agree, it would be nice if its done, but I guess the factor of effort to make it look right and balancing things would make it far too time/resources consuming.

Basically Air is just for you to call it, control its for few min with spotters, end of story. Seems basic, its generally realistic, and easily manageable. I think with adding AA cannons etc, they would have to completely rebalance air, from algorithms of movement (evading, attacking other planes...etc etc) to its management. I hope some day when the engine gets to that point, they will tackle this fully!

About towing guns: I think quick relocation of cannons, in defence and attack, especially in smaller more fluid battles could give you the edge you need. Imagine internal concentration of forces, rush for unclaimed land/attack, or trying to escape the battle, I could count forever (but you are right, in certain categories trucks are useless, but at least they would be worthy of having them around, now they are just waste of time invested in their creation). I see they went to the great extent to incorporate separate transport units, trucks etc... They have the placeholder, only thing they need is to sum it all up.
I dont understand the fuss about it, just make the truck come closer to a cannon, crew pushing it to the truck, some countdown till they dismount it/prepare it/connect it (make all crew in a loop animation crouch-standup ), management of unit being tightly behind it like its towed is fairly easy to implement, same process backwards for the rest. No special animations, no special models, not even a special button Just colossal reprogramming of the AI

[Flashburn]

For the aircraft going poof thing.........  All the code is in place now.  Just the destroyable aircraft are missing.  If modeled from the beginning making planes blow up/take battle damage is not so hard.  Trying to do it in reversve after you have 3 LOD and phyisical model complete........well that is asking for PAIN.  But really is MASSIVE missing element.  In some battles ground forces where harassed by air power on there way to the fight and in the fight.  But having a battery or 2 of aaa fighting off air craft.......well just epic screen shots.    Would also like to see light twin engined bombers in fast low level bomb runs with door gunners lighting up what they see from the air.  But that is probably just me. 


Oh and despite air craft not being BLOW UPable, ground fire can cause the air craft to fly off map early.  Which is why ground guys shoot at them.  This in honestly the most common sort of thing anyways. Plane takes light damage and buggers off.  BUT I remember air craft getting shot down in K43 as well.........unless I was drunk.

[RedC]

Oh and despite air craft not being BLOW UPable, ground fire can cause the air craft to fly off map early.  Which is why ground guys shoot at them.  This in honestly the most common sort of thing anyways. Plane takes light damage and buggers off.  BUT I remember air craft getting shot down in K43 as well.........unless I was drunk.

I thought as much! And yes, I could swear too that I've seen in in Kharkov 

Added:
That reminds me (modeling with 3 LOD levels and physical boundary boxes) to the Total War serials. But yea, you are right its missing, and you know, maybe the can be balance made from it?

AA detachment will use up one of the empty spaces in the region (that you could use to bring more troops/tanks), and they would protect good certain distances ("protection dome over the battlefield"). Plus their presence in bordering regions could even put additional pressure to the aircrafts in present... thats for low-height AA defence... And maybe they can add reference to the mid-high level AA defence, where you better conserve equipement (85mm, 88mm...etc) so that they can put pressure over enemy aviation so unexpected events like, reinforcement delayed 1 turn more because of air action in the close-rear...etc It just opens more dynamic in the operational mode!

[RedC]

P.P.S.
You know whats the most missing element?
River barges and boats! (Both as lines of supply, gunships, transport... whatever) I miss that element so much.

[lavish]

The very rare deployment bug is still alive: While playing Shield of Prophet the enemy AI deployed mechanized infantry behind my defensive lines on neutral territory and attacked my rear.

[Lemonade]

Ah, so that's why I was attacked from the rear right after one of my quick battles started?

By the way, can something be done with unit rotation during deployment phase? Units almost never rotate where I want them to and I have to click bazillion of times before they finally face the correct point on the map.

[Dane49]

This is a bug I just noticed after applying the latest patch.

On the Taranovka map in town near the RR tracks and 2 storey buildings is a knocked out Russian tank and 3 destroyed Russian AT guns.

My troops walked through the middle of the tank and levitated in mid air over the rear of the tank.

The tank probably needs to show on the map that it is about 1 meter north of where it is presently projecting itself.

[lavish]

Problem relating to command points:
- To make units stop it's more cost-effective to issue a defend or movement order near their position than give actual order "Stop".

Suggestion:
- Order "Stop" should NOT tax more command points (if any) than movement orders (e.g. "Stop" icon should not have dark blue circle).

Justification:
- Removes "cheating" described above
- The order "Stop" is much more simple than "Move" so it shouldn't tax more command points

[Flashburn]

Problem relating to command points:
- To make units stop it's more cost-effective to issue a defend or movement order near their position than give actual order "Stop".

Suggestion:
- Order "Stop" should NOT tax more command points (if any) than movement orders (e.g. "Stop" icon should not have dark blue circle).

Justification:
- Removes "cheating" described above
- The order "Stop" is much more simple than "Move" so it shouldn't tax more command points

YEs agree on the stop command.  That should be the cheapest if not free of charge on the command point.