Patrick Ward wrote: ↑Fri Jan 31, 2020 2:37 am
Weather is always shown in the top right, current weather and the next days. Weather type is indicated by the icon, sunny, cloudy, raining, snowing, stormy. And the colour suggests the ground state - green = clear, brown=muddy, white=thick snow, blue=thick snow and frozen lakes/rivers.
City names in the press build and current beta are early implementation. They've already changed.
All graphics are designed to work at 4K so don't look their best when highly compressed on Youtube at just 1080.
Cloudy days are cloudy, sunny days aren't. Its pretty clear from the lighting. Rainy days have rain splashes all over the map and units, if you zoom in, and the ground is waterlogged. Youtube compression kills that also. It can be more obvious if you spin the lights round. Once the soundFX are finished that should also be clearer.
Pat
Glad to hear about the city names, they looked awful in the press review build. Honestly I'd point to them as one of my most disliked elements!
A press review build that isn't youtube friendly seems a curious choice given that all the press reviewers posted their gameplays on youtube. Even your own first party streams come out on twitch and youtube! You might want to consider changing that in the future given how many people are introduced to games via streams and LPs and other video formats these days. I'm also seriously confused why the units look absolutely gorgeous at full zoom, but then revert to plastic looking blobs at standard play levels of zoom. Steel Division 2 also has this problem, but operates at a totally different and much greater level of scale for units on the field (real time to boot!). I know this seems like a silly complaint for an operational wargame, but look at how much effort Unity of Command 2 spent on making gorgeous units.
I actually JUST noticed the weather icons on the top right. Could you make them more visible? I disagree on the lighting communicating the weather effectively. That system requires a good memory of the baseline "sunny day" lighting to work. If you are just starting a mission and the first turn is "cloudy", you won't have an appropriate baseline and won't realize what the weather is, which is why I asked about a secondary system like the PzC1 briefing portholes.
Can you make the rules on encirclement more clear? I was pretty surprised to see units retreating out of encirclement and am not sure how to make a larger encircled area. The system seems very opaque and could use a visibility pass. The OOB system isn't great, but it does communicate what is going on and even silly suicide cutoffs at least have an insane logic to them. Strategic Command radiates supply from the HQs and other supply sources and that works pretty well overall. Unity of Command 2 has a complex supply system that is also utterly invisible on the primary map mode, but communicates it with a detailed secondary mode and some nice icons. Maybe a second map mode showing pseudo-supply would be helpful for communicating what is going on?
BTW I'm totally focused on criticism, but I actually have a lot of positive things to say too:
Trait system looks like a great way to diversify play
I like the changes to the ruleset (specifically the effort to make AT worthwhile outside of US TDs in US Corps) and the emphasis on greater casualty count
The prototype and captured kit system seem pretty cool (haven't noticed captured artillery? is that a thing b/c it really should be)
The cities look gorgeous and are best in class for an operational wargame
The 2D operational map is phenomenal (and I'm one of five people who will regularly use it)