vikingbjorn

The US West server was attacked by a hacker 2 a.m. pacific standard time and apparently crashed. Everyone just kept dying. FYI.

More redux testing: Issues: 1. The opposing opfor team of 14 or so, could not reset sector voting 2. Blackwasp and CAS do not reload at all 3. Blackfoots countermeasures do not reload still 4. Tank countermeasures show no smoke when deployed. Makes the sound, number of cm decrement but no smoke deployed. Works in regular warlords so dont think its a graphics card issue. 5. AT and AA static defenses fall over much easier than the previous version. And if they do, cannot set them back up. Not sure if these are bugs: 1. My single slammer with a crew of four could capture sectors even though there were 10 AI in them 2. Sometimes you can't capture a sector unless you have another player or own AI with you 3. Was able to recapture a sector from opfor even though they had more players in it and all I had to do was to fast travel back to the sector in order to stop it from being captured. 4. With large numbers, the sector scan rate make capturing a large sector extremely difficult if not impossible especially if you have no vehicles

Another issue I noticed on redux is that the blackfoot's laser guided dagrs tend to be off target. Not sure what conditions create this as I've seen them accurate before:

I have yet to find a private server that has a group of consistent people whom play on a daily basis. And, even the modded servers that are available to the public are largely empty. So, one is left with the default public ones. The issue is not that there is lasers, it is that the AI just keep targeting them no matter what. If we have planes overhead doing bomb runs, one can expect lasers to be active. If there is a Rhino with a darter drone lasing targets, that would be another case. Not sure if it is default sandbox behavior.

Here is an issue in warlords that has provided me a huge amount of frustration: If you are piloting a gunship and have an AI gunner and there is a laser within view targeting the same area, the AI gunner will not target anything else but that laser. Manual fire, cancelling that target, telling to target other targets do not work. It is like a cat fascinated by a laser pointer. And, makes helos completely inneffective unless you get so close to the ground that the laser isn't in view anymore.

Yet at the same time, there is a consistency in where you can find certain vehicles. Airports almost always spawn 2 nyxs, mora, gorgon etc.

Capturing an enemy vehicle can be an extremely valid tactic. Jump starting ones ability to capture sectors. And, if they use the same ammo types as the side you are on, not sure why one wouldn't be able to reload them. Also, you can repair a captured vehicle with the repair AI.

Played a little bit of Redux today. Didn't have much time to test but looked like the reload was working much better (countermeasures and commander guns reloaded on my tank). Only caveat to that was that I captured an AA Nyx and could not reload or repair it from repair/ammo trucks. Don't think captured vehicles have been fixed yet for that. Verified that the defensive gear cp prices appeared to be working (at least for raised gmg's). Noticed that all gmg's and hmg's that could be assembled from the arsenal are no longer there. Not sure why that is,... rarely see anyone use those in game as is albeit it can be an effective tool. Starting out multiplayer games on the public servers solo, it takes a couple hours just to work one's way up to their first tank. After that, sector capture is fairly easy if one does a couple cycles of HE bombardment from 1.5 to 3km out before going into to capture. I'm finding that fast traveling to contested sector is often a good way to die quickly as the initial wave of AI (before it's reduced) is highly aggressive and quickly surrounds you. One shot deaths also seem to happen more often when coming around corners from unseen enemy AI. Own player's AI tend to die quickly no matter how one positions them or operates within a contested sector. Can't count the number of times a single enemy AI took out all three of them. Still wondering how a single enemy AT soldier took out an autorifleman, marksman and grenadier. Still noticing, even on the redux server, alot of new players coming in whom don't know the simplest commands. I.E. hold down 'i', select strategy to fast travel. Played this weekend where the server was almost full yet almost no one knew how to fast travel or what they were supposed to do. Given only a few spoke english, could not instruct most. There needs to be either a help command quick menu or tool tips that popup in the players language to help them start the game. Most games have that when loading in or beginning. Otherwise think we will see as we do (those whom play multiplayer daily) a fairly large turnover of players from day to day.

Out of curiosity, have you considered putting more vehicles (artillery) and mortars into warlords redux. Given the reload restrictions, spawn changes and slower beginning cp rate, they might be an interesting addition. Also, any thoughts to possibly adding a sector on the island connecting the east/west sides of the map? Might be an interesting back door that can be used. Can we get more AI troops as well? It's limiting the number to 3 which just seems too little. Here are some vids of some existing issues that don't think have been fixed yet: Edessa vehicle spawn bug, where vehicles parachute down onto bridge and explode: AI or self sometimes appear to report wrong headings of enemy and/or distance. Doesn't happen all of the time: Cannot enter pilot position of newly spawned helicopter. Only seen this with the blackfoot so far. Doesn't happen all the time but once it does, need to reboot in order to fix:

Testing today's redux build had a bunch of reload issues. Was playing with Kullwarrior and we noticed the following: 1. Captured kuma cannot reload at all 2. Blackfish right door gunner and countermeasures do not reload 3. Tank commander guns and smoke screens do not reload (tested with slammer up) 4. Blackfoot countermeasures do not reload. 5. Could not find an angle in which I could reload the Wipeout 6. Cheetahs smokescreens do not reload 7. Pretty sure that anything that includes a commander's position will not reload for that position 8. Sometimes it becomes painfully difficult to find the right angle to position the ammo truck in order to reload things. In addition: 1. Vehicle ammo crates appear to count as vehicles, if you leave one behind in each sector, once you get around 10, you cannot spawn any vehicle or aircraft related item and must go back and delete them. Need a repair/ammo truck, you won't be able to spawn them. **Edit: just noticed that there is a covenient alt shift click map function for deleting things. But, it does not fix things as the counter remains the same. So, need to remove in person. 2. Vehicles are left on the map even though the player that spawned them has left. Not sure if they then get associated as your number of vehicles 3. When clearing a sector, if you just shot an enemy then die, their bodies will often not be there to loot when respawning back in 2. Own AI and character reports of enemy heading and direction are still wrong. If it says that an AT soldier is 700m south, they are mostly likely less than 100m north. This tends to get one blown up as you head in the wrong direction with your tail facing a missile.

This was my first time using the reset sector feature with other players. Worked fine when doing it solo but we had maybe 6-8 players on my team at the time we tried it and it didn't give any indication that anyone including myself had voted (i.e. number of needed players to vote yes didn't decrement). Not sure if that number is supposed to but would be useful. Lol, np, I've written many software problem reports in my day. I'd record the sessions and post videos of issues but the game sessions last so long. The free video editing software I use doesn't handle gigs of video files very well. The fact that you can't see the enemy sectors is interesting. Ended up mining anthrakia (just in case) and sneeking around while they were trying to capture what sounded like telos. Before they knew it, was on their doorstep.

Also, clicking abort to go to the lobby and switching sides resulted in me spawning with this view and unable to move. After rebooting my client, I got a switching teams is disable message.

Redux bug: Upon capturing base next to opfor main base, enemy targeted us (that or someone selected our own sector but I don't recall getting a sector selection). We did not get a sector selection option and when trying to reset the sector, all players hit left cntrl y and sector did not reset. Game is now stuck where we cannot select a sector: Unfortunately, most of the players got frustrated and left the game. Waiting to see if they recapture the sector if we can then capture it back and we get sector selection again. **Note: with no players on the other team and 2 on ours it finally allowed a sector reset and only briefly showed the sector voting with noone having to vote for the reset. Also, only get 4 cp for destroying a gorgon.

Tested a little bit more with redux today: 1. For someone reason when I first targeted the enemies (blufor main) base, I lost the ability to fast travel anywhere from any location. Didn't happen the second time but had to reboot the client in order to fix it. 2. The sector edessa often spawns vehicles on top of the bridge in the center. Some go through the bridge, most explode on contact. 3. If you place AT/AA defensive placements and they fall over, you cannot reset them. 4. Could not repair kajman that spawned as damaged. Placed repair truck at all sorts of locations and the repair option was available but did nothing. 5. Helicoptor and AI spawn appear to have the possibility of being much more damaged when spawning. Had one AI die just landing on airport tarmac and a helicoptor that was totally inoperable. Perhaps because they now spawn near player location? 6. Enjoyed the locked sectors. Can you explain more that dynamic? Can you only recapture sectors that are directly attached to one of your own? 7. My character would constantly inacurratedly detect other AI positions. i.e. Saying 700 meters away when they were less than 100 or even wrong headings. 8. Spawned a kajman at airbase. I'm still waiting for it to land. It headed over to charkia, pyrgos, over the ocean and back to charkia again. Its still flying around..... 9. While I can see other vehicles on radar over 1.5 km away. atgms on my kajman would absolutely not lock on target unless they were 1.5km or less away. In a CAS, the sensor would not pick up unless the vehicle was less that 1.5 km away. 10. Had one AI end up under the map in the sector between main power plant and anthrakia. He was litterally at the top of the hill underneath the map according to sector scans. 11. Personally don't like the sector scan cool down time. Unless something else has changed, enemies can still spawn into a sector approx 15 seconds after death. Given a committed enemy in a large multiplayer game or even 1 or 2 enemies, sector capture might never happened. Constant sector scans have been one of the only means to progress in capturing a sector against a small group of elite players whom are constantly on the move running around with veronas in their underwear. Yes, this does happen and can result in all tanks getting taken out. This would absolutely happen with the sector cool down. 10. Damage status and weapon empty status often still remain after healing or repairing. Tank gets hit by a round and AI and tank shows damage. Have AI treat themselves and then repair tank. AI will still complain of critical damage. Put an AI in a AT/AA static launcher. Once they have fired all missiles, place new static launcher and remove the old one. AI will complain that they are empty even if launcher is full. This happens in regular warlords as well. 11. Random opfor and blufor bases can lead to some pretty unbalanced games. Current game has blufor at neri and opfor at orino. To cut blufor off, all one has to do is go neri -> agios dionysus -> zaros or agios dionysus -> kore -> factory-> negades or agios dionysus -> kore -> topolia ->aggelchori. 12. Most game sessions appear to develop a lot of fog that can lower the view distance to less than 200 meters (even in tanks). Only thermal appears to see beyond that and not by too far. Once you shoot at an AI that cannot be seen except by thermal vision, they can accurately fire back no matter what scope they have equipped. 13. The dense fog also makes flying any aircraft a true fly by instrument experience as one can become quickly disoriented and fly into the ground. 14. Short range missile max lock distance for the shikra were 1.5 km. Not sure if that has changed. Medium range ones had plenty of space. Found my errant helicopter hovering at 5km and finally shot it down.

I played with Redux a bit last night (think with Dawson) and some today. Here are some of thoughts (mostly from a multiplayer perspective): 1. Strategy: As far as I can tell, there is no way to tell which sectors or when the enemy has captured them. Flying over what must of been captured sectors did not reveal that they were a part of the enemy teams. This removes a major aspect of game strategy. The ability to find out what the enemy is doing, prepare and potentially counter it. An enemy that captures sectors fast tends to require a different response then one that does so slower. And, knowing in advance which sectors are captured allows one to formulate strategies. This lack of situational awareness or some means of gaining it just seems a bit too blind. Say one takes the shortest sector path to the enemy base. Even if you have enemy captured sectors to your left and right, you have no way of knowing so on the map. Which means that the enemy could continually interrupt your sector chain if they have previously captured a base and you wouldn't know which sector they are spawning from unless you attacked it first. 2. Game difficulty: The game seems more difficult early on and then much easier as you get tanks and certain types of aircraft. I'm not sure how this would be attractive to a novice in single player mode as one would get killed over and over again for many hours before being able to even try tanks or aircraft. Perhaps this is also related to view distance, but I did not get fired at from AT/AA when using tanks from 1-1.5 km and never got fired at when using a Blackfish. 3. Reward system,.. i.e. cp per kill varies based upon whom or what you kill. I like it but,.... This will tend to reward the more expert players allowing them to earliest get into vehicles and get even more kills while newer players will tend to be left on the sidelines as infantry. This could be said for regular warlords, as well, except for this version it is now more. It does certainly seem to take longer to get into a 'first vehicle' in redux. And, given this slower start, losing a vehicle early on could take a while to recover from. Which adds to game difficulty. 2. View distance. Change it back to 4k please. You have to fly at extremely slow speeds in order to just get a cameras eye for CAS. Not even sure if blackwasp or shikras can be used to engage ground targets with this view distance. Targets don't show up on plane sensors unless they are 1.5 km away. And, if radars are working right (didn't have enemy planes to test with), all aircraft will get shot down before they even know a target is there. Also, just about every defensive position that is used in regular warlords is no longer tenable as you can't see or lock targets anymore with tanks or even verona/AT missiles. 3. View distance and radar. I put up both a cronus radar and a tigris. And, was not seeing any targets presented on the TDL in my T140k. In fact, even with a strider or those new AA/AT tanks 50 feet away, the T140k didn't show anything on it's radar. Not sure why I was experiencing that. 4. Could not use pilot position in blackfoot helicopters. Could get into gunners seat but not pilot. 5. When I put down a cronus radar I had over 10k cp. Radar price was 8500. After placing radar, had over negative 1000 cp. Could not fast travel etc until the cp per minute got that back into the positive. 6. Was able to get the vehicles and airplanes I used to rearm but it was a bit counterintuitive as it only rearmed when I was looking at the vehicle and if I looked at the ammo crate/vehicle, I still had the option to rearm but it would not do anything. Also, could not rearm a plane at it's rear. Had to place ammo truck near the cockpit in order to rearm it. 7. Player's AI. They seem just as they were in the regular version of warlords. Which means that there is no improvement. And, they need a lot of improvement. It just gets so ridiculous. Please allow us to command AI to do things that the game supports but this game mode doesn't. It would be nice if something like the UAV terminal map was available for instructing AI to do things. Multiple waypoints, loiter commands, ability to get AI to patrol vs just standing there or even to properly use aircraft. I would like my AI to patrol a pre defined path in a sector of my choosing, independently do search and destroy missions in helicopters or blackfish along a predefined path or just work properly in the vehicle of my choice. 8. Arsenal: Most complaints I have heard about arsenal in warlords is not that it exists but that it is easily exploitable. If there is no arsenal in this game, then long live the days of thermal vision. Because, it just makes it easier to find and kill targets. If no arsenal, then one should be able to spawn as one of the classes of AI that are available instead of having to exchange weapons and clothing with them. Otherwise, expect tanks to capture a sector or two before one can either fit or prepare defenses against them. 9: Player, Vehicle and Aircraft spawns: Fast travel to seized sector spawns tended to be at the edge of sector often times when I wanted something that was on the other side. This might be useful when being attacked but was more of an annoyance when just traveling to get something from a sector. Contested sector spawns sometimes spawn in same spot no matter the angle. Needs more testing to get how it is supposed to work. Vehicle spawns appear to be close to players location. This was ideal. Cas planes did not land but spawned in a spot outside of the sector. This would be the first spot in enemy territory I would thoroughly mine in any multiplayer game. 10: Overall Impression: Same deck of cards, different rules. At this point and time, I wouldn't think that regular warlords player would be drawn to Redux as a better version of warlords unless it offered more capabilities. Which it doesn't seem to do. Sure the game play is different and some ways harder but also simpler and more restricted. It is a reduction of the original,... thus Redux? It seems much more geared towards fast twitch tank battles once the the sides start shooting at each other. But, since the economy seems more kill based, perhaps very brief tank battles as one might not be able to spawn as many. Besides that, the strategy seems simpler as well. What you can see, you can kill. Whether you are infantry or in a tank or an aircraft. Albeit, the situational awareness black hole where you do not know where enemies are coming from could lead to protracted multiplayer games. And lastly, please add something like a quick command list for new players! Multiplayer games almost always include 1 or more players that do not know the simplest commands like hold down 'i' to get to the menu. Let alone how to tell their AI to shoot. These are the same folks whom most likely leave the game out of frustration because there is nothing intuitive in the initial presentation of the game on what to do.