Gaswell

I've been experimenting a bit with how to turn a formation. It seems like the formation has got a center point that is placed a few meters right behind the squad leader. Imagine a line drawn from this point to the squad leader, and then you've got the formation's axis and direction. I've been able to repeatedly turn a line formation exactly 90 degrees by moving left/right about 3-5 meters, then back the same distance (in effect rotating the imaginary line between the formation's center point and the squad leader 90 degrees). In comparison, if I only go left/right I have to go quite a distance to get the formation to rotate approximately 90 degrees. The formation's center point will of course need to be updated at some time, but I don't know when this'll happen. Maybe if you move, then stop for a few seconds. Or maybe I'm way off target with this whole discussion.

It would be interesting if you could control up to 11 AI squad leaders, who in turn controlled up to 11 AI guys. After all, the squad leader AI seem to handle all the micro-management pretty well (go to medic, target this and that, etc.) If you ordered an AI squad leader to move somewhere, you'd in effect give the squad a MOVE waypoint. If you ordered an AI squad leader to attack a target, you'd be giving them a DESTROY waypoint. All behaviour modifiers (stealth, stand up, engage at will, etc.) given to an AI squad leader would filter down to the rest of the squad. Any enemy contacts made by the AI-led squad could be reported to you by the AI squad leader. When the AI squad leaders follow your formation you have a platoon/company formation. That way you could have full control of up to 132 men, 44 tanks, or 66 helos. Just too bad that AI units can't follow (formation) leaders not in their own group. Hmm... what happens if I add more than 12 men to a group by script, then also script that #13, #14, etc. should follow #2? Wouldn't #2 then be acting as formation leader for #13+? I always thought seriously bad stuff would happen if I added more than 12 guys to a group, but now I feel the urge to experiment...

I'm thinking that VBS might possibly include a lot of stuff the average gamer wouldn't neccessarily be interested in, such as post- or in-action analysis/replay, visualisation/classroom tools, umpire tools (insert/kill units during the exercise), or more realistic (that is, inconvenient) radio comms.

While I recognize the importance of MP for a game's community, I think it would be wrong to downplay or ignore the importance of SP. I'm an SP-only gamer by choice, and that's got a lot to do with the maturity levels of people I tend to meet in MP. I agree that makes me irrelevant as far as MP goes. Even so, to suggest that people like me doesn't have a voice in the online community is pretty harsh. I also don't agree that a game's longevity and perspective always have to rely on MP, one example being the Civ series. With all the "pieces 'o crap" being released nowadays you'd think people would appreciate the few good ones that come along.

Rogue, I gotta admire your persistence. If I come across a game I don't like, I've lost interest in both the game and its community (if any) in a matter of hours. There must be something about OFP that keeps dragging you back.

Moving from line or wedge into echelon L/R is not something you want to do while shots are being fired, especially if you've got a couple of trigger-happy machine gunners in your squad. I've seen a 9-man squad reduced to 4 while doing just that, and until the friendly fire fix comes along in the next patch (hopefully) that's gonna be a constant headache. Also, changing from line (or wedge) into echelon L/R means a lot of unneccessary moving about, but that's maybe less of a problem. I do use echelon L/R a lot, just as you describe, and except for the friendly fire I'm pretty OK with it. It's just a tiny bit more impractical than it could be.

Well, no. As Falconer said, </span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Setting the facing of the individual soldiers is clearly not the answer. In the above example, telling your AI team members to `watch direction' - `east' would have them looking east, but the line formation would still be facing north.<span id='postcolor'>

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Only bad thing is that u don't have Bizon in the game. <span id='postcolor'> Haven't seen the Bradley or the BMP-2 either. Pity.

Agree. It would be nice to be able to set a formation's direction without having to move, especially when going into line formation (which I often do on contact).

Right on.

Yep, I noticed that too. Every little thing that adds to the confusion of combat is good.

Why does everyone (and his dog) seem to think that VBS is the devil's doing and the end of OFP? Would you rather have BIS spend their talent developing edutainment software for children ages 8-11?

Well said, Uziyahu IDF.

This I don't understand. Why can VBS possibly be a bad thing? BIS develops OFP, and now looks to make money by developing a military-grade version. That means that BIS is 1) more likely to survive financially, and 2) there's gonna be a lot of new vehicles, weapons, and game engine upgrades made, some of which will probably be released for OFP as well as VBS. That is, unless BIS actually don't want to continue the OFP franchise, and therefore don't see the need to keep the OFP fan base alive until the sequel. But somehow I don't see that happening.

There IS an animation directly from running/walking and hitting the dirt. Just keep pressing the move forward key when you hit the get down key. There's also an animation directly from prone into running; keep pressing move forward while standing up.

Yep, that's one the best tactics discussions I've found yet. I've been looking for more of those, preferably with in-depth discussions of various orders and "behaviour modifiers" (Engage at will, Danger, Stealth, and the like). The strategy guide that came with Red Hammer is a bit lacking in that respect; it's more of a mission walkthrough, unfortunately.

I foresee three problems when firing into an area. One, AI soldiers will happily run into a stream of hot lead, and in my experience I see little or no suppression unless you're concentrating fire on one AI unit. Two, the ammo loadouts of soldiers, especially machine gunners, is too low to allow continued suppressive fire. Three, whenever a soldier fires his weapon he is holding up a pretty large "shoot me" sign. Smoke launchers on tanks would be nice, and I can't imagine it being too hard to implement. A couple of smoke shells popped automatically whenever a tank takes serious hits, and you're set.

You can go back to previous missions in Red Hammer. There's just a problem with the mission list; it always scrolls to the last mission, making the previous missions disappear (at least until you're about halfway through the campaign).

If I remember correctly the "Advance", "Stay back", "Flank left/right" orders makes the selected guy(s) move ahead, back, left/right (respectively) in increments of 50 meters. Two "Advance"s mean 100 meters ahead, and so forth. That is 100 meters ahead relative to the guy(s) exact position in the current formation, mind you.

You don't need a third-party utility to let you save multiple times. There's a keypress sequence for that.

Similar to what Unl33t says, you can also move directly from crawling into running if you're crawling forward (and keep moving forward) while hitting the key to standing up.

I've noticed that if you're leading a two-man team, with the AI guy set to danger/stealth and engage at will, you can do bounding overwatch with the AI guy automatically. Unfortunately, with 12-man teams you'll do a one-eleven bounding overwatch, which is kinda putting a lot of faith in the squad leader...

Hot dang! How to stop my VBS-related drooling?

You download the whole package and that's it. When you run the installer, you only need to send your payment info to aquire a license. It seems that this license is stored on your hard drive (in folder \C_DILLA\SafeCast Product Licenses\) so my guess is that a reinstall checks if you're already a customer.

Yep, I definately hear close hits. I'll usually know pretty fast when someone is firing at me specifically.