Observations on BA

[THE_bRUCE]

First off, job well done, Slitherine. BA is the only strategy title that I recall keeping my interest past the demo since Close Combat 2. Gameplay and graphics are great! I thought I would offer some observations I've made since starting to play 4-6 weeks ago.

Rare oddities:
I've seen one German AC deployed inside a small building during the Bulge campaign. (Bulge 9, central village)

Infantry can be dumped by exploding vehicles into an adjacent field entirely enclosed by bocage. They can't get out.

Less rare oddities
Mortar units can fire from inside buildings. This seems unrealistic.

During replays of battles against human players, my soldiers go through an annoying dance, stuttering through their animations. I'm not sure if this an issue with my computer/graphics card though.

Design thoughts:
Halftracks ought to have some ability to take on each other and other lightly-armoured vehicles. It seems so odd to have two enemy halftracks adjacent to each other with no ability to inflict damage. Suppression should at least be possible.

AT guns have no ability to take on infantry. At least, their crews should be able to use small arms at close range when being assaulted.

Flamethrowers appear to have little effect on tanks, but I suspect they ought to be able to kill or suppress more often. It is odd that enemy, or even friendly units, do not take punishment when they are between the flame unit and the target tile, though I suspect this is an unavoidable side effect of the tile-based movement and attack system.

Vehicles do not tilt and roll with changing terrain. Vehicles stuck halfway into a hill take away from the polish of the game.

I'd like to see a chance for infantry to take some casualties when they exit a destroyed vehicle. (I've haven't noticed this if it's already in the game.)

I know there has been some discussion of the lack of ability for heavy machine-gun and mortar units to move, but perhaps they could at least have limited mobility. One tile per turn?

88s probably should not be able to switch between the roles of anti-ground and anti-air units. I doubt in reality they were used much against against low-flying targets anyway (guessing here) but to change roles between turns is not so realistic.

Again, great game.

[gollummen]

AT guns have no ability to take on infantry. At least, their crews should be able to use small arms at close range when being assaulted.

I would like to support this. I know they often only had AP ammo, but they should have just a little firepower against infantry.
I cant imagine the infantry when being shelled by AT guns go: "bah, who cares? Its just AP rounds"

[pipfromslitherine]

Thanks for the feedback, and glad you are enjoying the game!

The replay stuttering is probably because we skip frames where nothing happens, but the animations need to stay in sync.

I will take a look at the exit code for exploding vehicles - I think it may have gotten left behind when we updated the logic for deployment which does check for exactly that.

Cheers

Pip

[djddalton]

Design thoughts:
Halftracks ought to have some ability to take on each other and other lightly-armoured vehicles. It seems so odd to have two enemy halftracks adjacent to each other with no ability to inflict damage. Suppression should at least be possible.

AT guns have no ability to take on infantry. At least, their crews should be able to use small arms at close range when being assaulted.

I'd like to see a chance for infantry to take some casualties when they exit a destroyed vehicle. (I've haven't noticed this if it's already in the game.)

I know there has been some discussion of the lack of ability for heavy machine-gun and mortar units to move, but perhaps they could at least have limited mobility. One tile per turn?

Again, great game.

Agree with these - I always wondered about why certain units (such as halftracks) have an AP rating but no capability to destroy or demoralise any armoured vehicle.

As for flamethrowers - I have destroyed many tanks with these! If anything, they are too powerful. Assault is often at 100% (or more?) for vehicles, and infantry suppression or death is almost guaranteed.

I do love this game with all its quirks!

[Obsolete]

I don't have a problem with the 88 changing rolls from air to ground. And believe me, a lot of people will bitch if you take away this capability. The only time I'd have a problem with the current implementation is if it's the same 88 mounted in the Tiger I & Kings.

I also believe that units being carried by a transport should also risk taking casualties/moral due to some randomization algorithm when the transport is destroyed. But looks like this is already being looked at anyway..

[Merr]

Less rare oddities
Mortar units can fire from inside buildings. This seems unrealistic.

That's taking the abstract a little too much, eh? A damaged building (minus the roof) would be a good condition to allow mortar fire.

On the same subject .... What about bazooka's being fired from buildings (enclosed spaces)? Perhaps the team should take a small morale hit for performing a "not recommended" procedure.

AT guns have no ability to take on infantry. At least, their crews should be able to use small arms at close range when being assaulted.

Only AT guns that are smaller than 75mm (BA units) cannot take on infantry.... ie, 2pdr, 6pdr, 57mm.

I know there has been some discussion of the lack of ability for heavy machine-gun and mortar units to move, but perhaps they could at least have limited mobility. One tile per turn?

I beileve the static units were designed mostly for defensive scenarios. Of course, we want to use them offensively. I would have thought that the release of Marget Garden would have given us new "mobile" artillery units (ie, 50cal, mg42, mortar) ... I was surprised when they didn't. Before they release Sea Lion, I'd really like to see them add new mobile units instead of giving their static units a pair of legs.

I have to remind myself everytime a unit get's into a situation where gameplay trumps realism. BA is just like a chess game ... It would be nice to have the pawn leap over other pawns to get to the king, but alas, they cannot. This is somewhat true in other games ... If the AT gun can't defend itself you'd better provide some support for it, otherwise you can just write it off when leg infantry are nearby.

Merr

[Merr]

I will take a look at the exit code for exploding vehicles - I think it may have gotten left behind when we updated the logic for deployment which does check for exactly that.

Pip,

If you need suggestions on a flow that kills two birds with one stone (exit code + casualty/morale hits) ....

Unload passenger to the x/y location 0/0 (out of sight, player won't see it).
Destroy vehicle.
Redeploy passenger to transport tile (solves the jumping hedge trick).
Apply an HE attack to the passenger based on the the attacking unit (me).

I wrote something like that for my "bail-out" code back in the TrackHit mod, except for the bit that unloaded the passenger since the tank really wasn't really carrying a crew along waiting to bail, and I just randomly removed a few men.

[Piglet71]

Hi really enjoying the game coming to the end of the Bulge missions. If I could hi-jack this thread for a while, apologies to original poster. Something I have noticed that does annoy me (only a little I hasten to add) is when your reserves arrive on the field, is there no way we can know before hand where they are to appear. In a game where turns are limited its very annoying to divert troops and resources away from main thrust to attack a VP on say the left flank, only to get within a turn of said VP and reserves arrive virtually on top of the VP (well within a few turns of it). Surely a commander will have an idea of where his reserves are likely to arrive, maybe not when, but at least where abouts on the battle field. Even 200 years ago at Waterloo, Wellington had an idea where Blucher was arriving but not when.

[Merr]

Hi really enjoying the game coming to the end of the Bulge missions. If I could hi-jack this thread for a while, apologies to original poster. Something I have noticed that does annoy me (only a little I hasten to add) is when your reserves arrive on the field, is there no way we can know before hand where they are to appear. In a game where turns are limited its very annoying to divert troops and resources away from main thrust to attack a VP on say the left flank, only to get within a turn of said VP and reserves arrive virtually on top of the VP (well within a few turns of it). Surely a commander will have an idea of where his reserves are likely to arrive, maybe not when, but at least where abouts on the battle field. Even 200 years ago at Waterloo, Wellington had an idea where Blucher was arriving but not when.

They could add a "reinforcement countdown" text to the top left corner of the window ... same logic as a turn countdown.

All the variables for reinforcement are rolled at the beginning of the scenario so replayablity can be maintained.

Someday (I hope), Pip will stop playing with the fruit (Apple code) and get back to feeding us beef for dinner

EDIT .... I don't think you're hijacking the thread ... It's a good place to blow off a little steam.

[Piglet71]

Don't even require a countdown as not knowing when they arrive ads to the overall strategy, but we should know in which direction they are approaching. Then it's up to the commander, does he ignore the VP on the left in the hope that re-inforcements will arrive in time to take the VP or does he attack the VP with his main force. After all most commanders will know the general direction in which his reserves are arriving from, left or right flank, rear etc.

[hank]

I"m one of the first group of players who bought this game when it came out at Matrix. ... and really like it still after a lot of playing

I skimmed through the Manual Additions thread and I've looked at the tweaks.txt and other files for this but did not see anything on: ...

Is there a way to reduce the size of units?

The one primary item is the King Tigers. They are so huge that when they are in an adjacent square to a Sherman the end of that leathal 88 is over the top of its target. I would really like to see the ability to reduce the size some across the board on all units. But, that King Tiger is really annoying ....IMHO of course.

[pipfromslitherine]

Hmmm - not really. We don't scale the units when we render them. It might be something we could add - I will pop it on the task list.

Cheers

Pip