|
Geof Rey Evans, Game Manager for WWIIOL Battleground Europe, does another session of Q&A with the community. This time we have some answers about ground war, some about air and more about the sea. Some questions are rather insignificant, but others are worth a read.
WWIIOL Community Q&A September 29th, 2007
Barracks questions:
1) There are issues with the Flak30 - Slow deploy , Reload time is still longish, Ammo load - was 1000 rounds not the 300 we have, Recoil: The Flak 30 has fierce recoil. This is unrealistic. Sights: The horrible sight, Exchange it to a Bofors-like cartwheel sight. Firing while undeployed.
The trolley of the Flak30/38 is designed to allow firing on the undeployed state, the traverse is just limited to around +-60 degrees.
Would be possible revisit of this weapon?
A: Pretty much all existing weapons that have served the game since the earliest days have and remain unchanged due more to no high priority existing to change them than anything else. Manpower resources at CRS tend to be employed towards that huge category of work still to be done on the game and the features to make it a greater game than they are employed to changing equipment models that function already in a role that they have served for a long time in. This very often means that small, incremental or low priority upgrading to something slightly different ... ususally takes a back seat to equipment, features and work on the game that exists at a much higher priority.
The gunsight could of all these issues you raise probably use a revisit, pending our artist getting the time to do so, as a rainhood was always a bad choice to model in a game where it never rains and it would provide no functional use even if it did rain. So we'll put a ticket in the system for when this can be redone. It won't be getting a cartwheel gunsight though, as this would not be representitive of the weapon in question.
No deployable weapons such as the FlaK.30 represents can be fired undeployed, as this was not the normal mode of operation and we will continue this practice with the FlaK.30 and the others like it as we have until now. Part of the reason for this is also in response to the "recoil" issue, as in experiments to determine the cause of this (we know it isn't the recoil itself as we have test analysed this gun a hundred times in search of the actual issue) ... turns out it is the footprint of the carriage base reacting within the physics modelling of the game engine itself that is the cause. We haven't yet worked out a solution to it that will reduce how much the weapon "kicks" when fired (only at some degrees of traverse it is noted as well) ... but we sure do want to be able to do something about it when a solution is found. If we did allow it to fire undeployed the affect would be magnitudes worse than it is when it is deployed.
So we will revisit the gunsight, and we'll continue to search for a solution to the gun rocking back so far on it's base when fired, but that one will be much more difficult to fix.
2) There's been talk that brigade movements should take a while rather than being instant. Are there any plans to implement that? And would it be possible for the movement times to vary depending on variables like road distance?
A: We're examining and evaluating a range of things that affect movement and configuration of supply and movement of the various armed formations in the game. Instant moves are not ones we favour and certainly you should expect things to change in these areas of the game as we refine the new systems we just created.
3) Resuply timer and tickets are 4:30 hours. With current brig Pool and the people playing at any moment is basicaly impossible to attrite the brigs involved in any place of map. is it possible that CRS will revisit the amount of tanks / ATG's both sides get, so that battles wont be a endless WW1 style at times?
A: Clairvoyent award of the week goes to you. We changed the resupply ticket timer to 7 hours at that start of last week with the lat patch.
4) Given that approx 85% of teh soldiers during this period of time smoked...
When are we getting ciggarettes and matches in-game?
A: Public health authorities are not to be attracted to the work and livlihood of small outfits like ours.
5) Is CRS willing to use RDP to adjust supply numbers mid-campaign?
A: It's been considered before. It already does in small ways you might not notice but the loser of the RDP bombing war does. We may increase this effect but we also can't commit in writing to the manner and ways we might do so. Not yet anyway.
6) I love the work that has been done for the newer buildings, but there hasn't been a new building in at least a couple of patches. When are the rest of the buildings getting replaced? Are the buildings that need replacing too graphically expensive to do right? I can think of a couple that don't seem like they would be that huge of a problem. The gas station and that little brown hut with a ramp that goes up one side.
A: Time, manpower, money. A shortage of all three of those resources, and that's the only reason. Granik is updating some more of them, a little at a time, butv like all of us here he's really, really, really busy.
Hangar questions :
Q: Has the basic concept of how you will implement radar already written or are you still looking for input from the community? I think most in the hangar are very weary about the previously proposed radar A: We're having our design meeting on this issue this coming week. The community is certainly welcome to offer their opinions (as they do daily ) and we here at cRS do have a fair idea of what we need to provide, and what to avoid. Hard to imagine you could be weary of a feature so far never implemented, perhaps it is the forums of which you have grown weary ? (that's a joke son)
Q: Can we have more Blen 1s? For RDP reasons, is it possible to trade some Blen 4s for some Blen 1s? It seems like Blen 1s get taken out before Blen 4s anyway.
A: We can consider that next time around. I believe if you took a poll of the bomber flying community they would largely say the Blen.I sucks like a vacumn cleaner with a supercharger bolted to it however. Blen.IV's are generally favoured I think because they carry 2 x 500 pound bombs, which are useful in ways the 8 x 40 pound bombs on the Blen.If are not. Hard to please everyone but we'll give it a shot.
Q: Can we get an early look at what might be coming in version 1.28? A: Nothing to show you yet.
Q: Is it possible to earn points with transporting para's? A: We don't have a way to score that kind of sortie consequence at the moment, but it's a good idea and one we have thought about previously. I'm sure it will make it in there at some point, as will a bunch of other ways to score non "killing" orientated mission objectives and roles, stuff we've been discussing a lot here at CRS lately.
Q: When can we expect to see Squad Emblems on aircraft and vehicles? A: We released some preliminary design ideas about this a little while ago, and we're continuing to consider it as a feature as soon as we can get the work done that it requires. We never answer when questions with an ETA though.
Q: Any dev news on the ability to select load outs?
A: None at this stage.
Q: Is there any chance of mid-mission spawning or crew-joining exist, sort of along the lines of an MSP, except within a bomber crew position, perhaps? Maybe even for paratroop drops, even.
A: This is called "join in flight" and is a Holy Grail of ours. We can't say when we'll get there though.
Q: TORPEDOES, ZOMG.
A: Indeed.
Q: What is the favorite pizza topping selection for the Rats, on average?
A: We're meat eaters here. Carnivorous, tear them limb from limb meat eaters.
Harbour questions:
Q: Permission to run a poll to see which is preferred by the Harbour; Naval AI RDP Convoys or Motor Torpedo Boats. On the presumption we can only get one of them and not both.?
A: Sure.
Q: What percentage of cut in size to the explosion smoke graphics of our 5" shell hits are you considering now that you agree that they are too large.?
A: Until we think they look better, and still serve their purpose in game terms, or people stop asking for them to change, preferably both. In truth ? We'll go by what it looks like when the work is done, and when it looks right, and everyone is happy (haha I kill myself) that will be about what we end up with.
Q: Should you elect to code Naval AI RDP Convoys for the 1.29 release would you also be including in that a Time-to-Combat mechanic.?
A: We haven't even started that design process yet. Anything we say will be a total guess until we do begin that process. I don't like giving guesses for answers, so this will have to wait until later on to be addressed.
Q: Can we get a status on the difficulty to fix the infantry nets on the Fairmile.?
A: I'll be looking th these AGAIN this week. Don't know what I'll find when I do, as these have been fixed twice before. Difficulty ? Might be insanely easy (I sure hope so) or one of those goddamit bugs that defies any reasonable number of manhours to track down.
Q: With the current engine would it be possible for a spawning player to trade places with a despawning player such that in effect the unit (ship) would not have to be RTB'd without writing zillions of lines of code or does this bring us back to join-in-flight and/or polycrewing principals.?
A: No, not possible at the moment. Join in flight will be just about the same to do and more worthwhile as a feature when it is done. |
Other Games 
