Scourge of War Boards

Little Powell wrote:

If a unit is armed with muskets that have an "open fire" range of 160 yards, will I have the ability to order that unit to open fire at longer range as the situation dictates? Maybe as a commander I want to expend extra ammunition to inflict a few more casualties before the enemy unit gets into the normal open fire range of 160 yards. I'm talking more about a button on the menu bar rather than a mod to adjust the open fire range in the tables. Likewise, will there be a "hold fire" button if I want an enemy unit to get closer than 160 yards before I open fire on it?

These features aren't currently available, but might be in a future release or patch. Sorry for the crappy answer.. Right now it's setup similar to TC2M where the unit will fire when a target is in range of it's weapon (the enemy unit gets a red target displayed over them)

In a similar vein, is it possible to have a unit continue to "lay down" until an opposing unit is in the preferred range?

Preferred range as in, a range that the player specifies? I would have to test this to make sure (Norb or Jim might already know the answer) but I believe that if an enemy unit comes within a certain distance, they will rise up. This also goes for moving in column. Units will automatically switch to line formation if an enemy is within a certain distance.

Yep, you got it...allow the player to fire at a range (or to cause his troops to rise) he prefer or, in other words, suppress "automatic" firings, rising, target selection and/or troop alignments. I know that is a lot to ask, but it you don't ask, you don't know!

Jack Hanger
Fremont, NE

Preferred range as in, a range that the player specifies? I would have to test this to make sure (Norb or Jim might already know the answer) but I believe that if an enemy unit comes within a certain distance, they will rise up. This also goes for moving in column. Units will automatically switch to line formation if an enemy is within a certain distance.[/quote]

Yep, you got it...allow the player to fire at a range (or to cause his troops to rise) he prefer or, in other words, suppress "automatic" firings, rising, target selection and/or troop alignments. I know that is a lot to ask, but it you don't ask, you don't know!

Jack Hanger
Fremont, NE[/quote]


It would be great to be able to hold your troops fire until the enemy was within 20 yards... Then unleash a devastating volley!

Dave

I suspect that we're going to ship the game, let people play it, then find out what features are the most desired. Then follow it up quickly with a "patch" that adds those features.

We like to do things right, meaning that we will cut a feature before we do it half a$$ed. The game just would never ship if we didn't make these hard choices. With a game like this, there are just too many features that are possible. There is no way to ever finish. So we get a feature set, ship, get another one. If you've never worked on an indie dev team, you might not understand why this is necessary. Our hope is that the features we do include, are done right. We'll have to create a poll after we ship to find out the most requested features.

....and there's that ballancing act as well with some features.
You could have so many of them that the game is vertually unplayable by the average person without a month's training course for the non-grog. :laugh:
Don't want an out of the box bummer.

norb wrote:

I suspect that we're going to ship the game, let people play it, then find out what features are the most desired. Then follow it up quickly with a "patch" that adds those features.

We like to do things right, meaning that we will cut a feature before we do it half a$$ed. The game just would never ship if we didn't make these hard choices. With a game like this, there are just too many features that are possible. There is no way to ever finish. So we get a feature set, ship, get another one. If you've never worked on an indie dev team, you might not understand why this is necessary. Our hope is that the features we do include, are done right. We'll have to create a poll after we ship to find out the most requested features.

I can't speak for others, but the point of my asking if "this or that" is in the game is just to make sure it's at least been considered. I'm sure we all understand there is a limit to the amount of features that can be included and how detailed the game can and should be.

bedbug wrote:

....and there's that ballancing act as well with some features.
You could have so many of them that the game is vertually unplayable by the average person without a month's training course for the non-grog. :laugh:
Don't want an out of the box bummer.

On the contrary; there are the features that make things easier for the average person. Like having buttons for your commanders on the toolbar, or at least being able to assign shortcut keys for commanders or units. For example, assign your first brigade to the number 1 key, second brigade to 2 key, etc. etc.. These are the kinds of features that would make it easier for the average player, and I hope make it in the game eventually.

Little Powell wrote:

Ephrum wrote:

I have to ask...

For those who've played the game, at what range does the infantry open fire at?
Is it 160yrds like in TC2M, or is it more?

If I understand your question correctly; it depends on the range of the gun. The Sharp Shooters can shoot from a really long range (sorry don't have the numbers in front of me) and of course there are other models of guns that all shoot different ranges.

Sorry Little Powell, my question wasn't well thought out, to be clear enough.

What I was interested in was the Range for Springfields and Enfields. In the TC2M game, regiments with Springfields will open up at a range of 160-170yrds, and Enfields at 160yrds, which in the game, I considered to be an average range.

My question, in regards to this New Game is, are the ranges the same for those two weapons?

I understand the different ranges for different weapons as far as that goes, but I'm glad you pointed that out because I hadn't even considered it when posting the question.

And I'm still curious if you guys won over potential new players to the New Game while at the Gettysburg Tour?
Were there any people there, that didn't know about the game, and were left speechless when they saw it?

Ephrum wrote:

Little Powell wrote:

Ephrum wrote:

I have to ask...

For those who've played the game, at what range does the infantry open fire at?
Is it 160yrds like in TC2M, or is it more?

If I understand your question correctly; it depends on the range of the gun. The Sharp Shooters can shoot from a really long range (sorry don't have the numbers in front of me) and of course there are other models of guns that all shoot different ranges.

Sorry Little Powell, my question wasn't well thought out, to be clear enough.

What I was interested in was the Range for Springfields and Enfields. In the TC2M game, regiments with Springfields will open up at a range of 160-170yrds, and Enfields at 160yrds, which in the game, I considered to be an average range.

My question, in regards to this New Game is, are the ranges the same for those two weapons?

I understand the different ranges for different weapons as far as that goes, but I'm glad you pointed that out because I hadn't even considered it when posting the question.

And I'm still curious if you guys won over potential new players to the New Game while at the Gettysburg Tour?
Were there any people there, that didn't know about the game, and were left speechless when they saw it?

Yes, as far as I know the ranges for the Springfields and Enfields are the same.

To answer your second question, Chris (the nice guy that gave us the Pender tour) was seeing the game for the first time, and absolutely loved it! He especially loved the detail of the maps.

From playing some more TC2M, I would also like to see less melee. With an automatic melee range of 30 yards, fights in woods because melee bloodbaths. This especially happens when the AI starts leapfrogging units over each other to get rid of a blocked target so they just keep marching closer and closer to the enemy.

Realisitcially, hand to hand combat just didn't happen that often. And there have been firefights at less than 30 yards where neither side charged. I would argue for 15 yards as the automatic, or 20.

IronBMike wrote:

From playing some more TC2M, I would also like to see less melee. With an automatic melee range of 30 yards, fights in woods because melee bloodbaths. This especially happens when the AI starts leapfrogging units over each other to get rid of a blocked target so they just keep marching closer and closer to the enemy.

Realisitcially, hand to hand combat just didn't happen that often. And there have been firefights at less than 30 yards where neither side charged. I would argue for 15 yards as the automatic, or 20.

Based on some of these recent discussions regarding open fire ranges of the weapons and melee distance, it would be nice at some point to have in the options section of the game a place where we could adjust these for ourselves and then have a button for each setting that would return it to the default value. Of course this would be in addition to the "open fire" and "hold your fire" buttons on the menu bar. :cheer:

In conjunction with the "open fire" button, you could have a new color for the identified target information. Yellow could be "sighted", green could be "in effective range", and red could be the normal "open fire" range. Your "open fire" button would only work if the enemy was within effective range of your weapons.

Speaking of the options page if there are still adjustable options for things like tree draw distance, will we be be able to just type in the value rather than scroll to the value. I think in TC2M you had to scroll, i.e. hold down the "up" or "down" button to get to the desired value.