pooroldspike

Call me chicken too, but that's exactly what I do in AA3 if my tank gets hit and I'm still alive.. :) Me and any other surviving crew exit the tank, run fast about 40 yards to get out of the blast zone in case it explodes and dive behind cover, then if no more shells/missiles are clobbering the tank and it's not burning I get back in to check the damage. Sometimes it's hurt but still driveable so I try to pull it back to a repair depot, or do a field repair myself if the server allows it.

Thermal imaging has revolutionised modern warfare, making tanks easily spottable. For example in this AA3 Editor setup I'm eyeballing a tract of landscape and can see zilch enemy units- And even zooming in like this reveals nothing- Even the Titan AT daylight optics at standard zoom spot nothing that screams "Tank!"- But the full zoom view sees something, a Varsuk tank (which I've circled), but even then it's hard to spot as it could be a garden shed or whatever. This is how WW2 doods had to fight wars with eyeballs and binoculars, slowly scanning the landscape hoping to see something- The modern way- a touch of the Titan thermal button on standard zoom makes the tank light up like a neon sign- And it looks huge at full zoom- I lay the crosshairs on him and fire un-locked, and the missile can be seen homing in on the hairs centre- Zappo!- The tank doesn't fireball but must be hurt bad because the crew jump out and leg it. We then have the choice of finishing it off with another missile or two, or leaving it as a useless hulk-

1- I can't speak for other servers but I play on the King of the Hill servers and we usually get a "You are being targetted by an AT weapon" warning message when one locks up our tank, so we have just enough time to hit the 'C' (countermeasures) key to pop smoke, and the smoke cloud makes the missile veer off 99% of the time. If we've run out of smoke grenades and the lock-on warning comes up, we can slam into reverse to get back off the ridgeline, or slam forward to dive behind a house or something. On average it takes a missile about 5 seconds to reach you, so if you're quick off the mark you'll be gone when it arrives. When I'm a Titan AT missileman I prefer to fire UN-locked so the enemy tank gets no warning (hehe), use the thermal sights to make the tank glow hot and hit the zoom key to enlarge it, then simply keep the crosshairs on the tank and the missile will fly down the crosshairs..:) 2- If a tank is shelling your infantry he's a sitting duck so clobber him with a couple of AT missiles, problem solved..:)

I'm a tank nut because tanks were invented to make war more fun..;) Abrams 120mm round- More discussions- https://forums.bistudio.com/topic/189117-are-aa3-players-tank-shy/#entry2996108

Tactically the AI are pretty dumb in the way they move etc, BUT they've got eyes like hawks and will plug you as soon as they see you, so in that respect they're dangerous puppies. The only way to thwart them is to put hard cover between you and them like buildings, rocks, treetrunks, walls, ridgelines and gullies etc because they haven't got x-ray vision and can't kill you if they can't see you. Regarding bushes, I usually find that if you kneel or go prone behind one, AI won't spot you when they arrive on the scene later, but if they see you running behind a bush they'll usually shoot you through the leaves. Taking cover in a gully at Anzio. If they can't see you...

I bought Apex DLC from Steam yesterday for 24.99 GB pounds (33 US dollars) and went straight onto the King of the Hill EU # 5 (Tanoa) server, below are a couple of screenshots. The dense jungle areas are very well done, you can almost smell the rotting vegetation in the still humid air-

Is anybody else getting this annoying "ghosting" effect with fir trees all over the standard map or is it just me? I've been tweaking the ingame graphics settings like crazy to try to make them stay solid with no luck. This is v1.60 but I think it also happened with earlier versions- PIC 1- at a distance the arrowed trees look like ghosts, there's no smoke or fog about- PIC 2- hitting zoom solids them up- PIC 3- and if I motor up to them like this they look fine, it's only the "at a distance" view that ghosts them out-

I posted some screenshots in the AA3 General forum showing the way some trees are ghosted at a distance, maybe I should have posted them here but anyway here's the link to the thread- https://forums.bistudio.com/topic/191614-ghost-trees/

Thanks guys so it seems everybody is getting it on their computers and it's not just me..:) I'll keep trying more ingame graphics permutations to try to make it go away, and if anybody else wants to have a dabble here are some shots I just took so you can zero in on the locations, but ike I said earlier, the glitch happens all over the map,not just here- ALTIS map, Sofia town- Stand on the road outside town looking in the direction of the arrow- And you should see two ghost trees- And when you motor up to them they become solid- This other species of tree is also affected in an orchard in town- They're ghosted at a distance- But solid when you get closer-

But if something is already beautiful-looking like pre-1.60 AA3, does it really NEED tweaking? Reminds me when I dated oldfashioned Barbara a few years ago, she wore hideous victorian clothes and flat shoes and badly needed updating, so I bought her a pair of sexy high heels but she refused pointblank to wear them and we broke up soon after. Drat, I was planning to get her a Wonder Woman outfit later..

Can I ask a stupido question?- the pre-1.60 graphics have been generally fine for years haven't they, so why did BIS decide to try to improve them, were people complaining or what? The only thing I didn't like about the old graphics was the purple horizon haze, so I wish they'd just fixed that and left the rest alone.

Here's how the 4 'Sniper' class doods look in the new 1.60 graphics, with a standard rifleman for comparison, one poor slob seems to be actually glowing! Notice how their weapons are also too bright (including the riflemans) even when in shadow. Needless to say I've been trying all sorts of graphics combinations with the ingame settings and my graphics card settings and my monitor settings to try to get things looking better, with no success (sniffle). For two pins I'd try to revert to the old version graphics but I didn't like the purple horizon haze in them, so I'd like to suggest the devs get rid of the purple haze then we can all revert..:)

Well I'm glad the silly purple horizon haze has gone in the new 1.60 graphics, but overall I don't like them because the contrast scaling is too severe and makes my eyes pop out, here's a screenshot I just took which explains why. The nearby units are much too contrasty and vivid, but the distant scenery is not contrasty and vivid enough! In short the nearby stuff needs to be jazzed down, and the distant stuff needs to be jazzed up. Needless to say I've been going insane trying to improve things by tweaking my ingame settings, graphic card settings and monitor settings without success, so my only option now is to go pout and sulk (sniffle)..

Thanks, first I'll give 1.60 a week or two to see if my eyeballs get accustomed to it, or see if BIS bring out a fix if enough people complain.

The 1.60 graphics are bloody awful on my PC! The only good thing is that they've got rid of that silly purple haze on the horizon, but the rest of them are a backward step because nearby objects and scenery are too contrasty with vivid colours, and distant objects and scenery are not contrasty enough and the colours look dull and washed out. At medium ranges things look fairly okay. In summary there's too steep a contrast/colour gradient between near and far. I've been tweaking my ingame graphics settings and vid card settings and monitor settings like crazy but can't get things looking good like they used to be pre 1.60. I don't suppose I can go back to an earlier game version without having to do a full uninstall/reinstall is there?

I last played multiplayer AA2/Arrowhead fine about 5 years ago, (non-Steam disks) but when I just tried to stage a comeback by clicking 'multiplayer', the list of games is completely empty! I seem to recall multiplayer used to be played with Gamespy, but I think I heard it was replaced by something called 'BattlEye', is that right? If so, shall I grab BattlEye off the net and have a shot at installing it? Is it easy to install? I'm playing AA2 Combined Ops (the merge of AA2 and Arrowhead).

Yes, or even 3 human vs 3 human would be okay, we only need about 6 human tank commanders..:)

UPDATE April 7th 2016- Well the only open armour games I've found so far are the 'Hostile Takeover:King of the Hill' series, about 4 come up when I type 'takeover' into the Filter box, but only one of them has the full range of all AA3 armour including heavy tanks. The other 3 only have a mix of unarmed and armed APC's and light armour but no heavy tanks. PS-But even when playing in the one that has heavies, you have to 'unlock' them by racking up points (by killing enemy units and occupying objective zones etc) which even if playing for several hours a day will take me another couple of months to unlock heavy babies. It's fun but a bit of a hassle. Hey if any of you guys are in one of the games at the same time as me, give me a call in Side chat and we'll team up, I sometimes buy a Marshall 8-wheeler to drive and need a trained 40mm gunner who knows his onions to shoot stuff up as we go on patrol. The gun fires HE and AP, and there's also a co-ax MG, so switch accordingly depending on the target, nobody better mess with us.. :)

Is it possible to adjust the FOV of airborne helos/planes in AA3? The default FOV is too fisheyed for my taste. Ground units FOV can be adjusted fine by tweaking the two 'Top' and 'Left' files in my username profile, but it seems to have no effect on flying units.

AA3 Default gives a '70' field of view and is- fovTop=0.75; fovLeft=1.34; (Don't worry about a string of decimal places that sometimes tag themselves on, you only need the first 3 numbers as shown) See my post on the previous page for different zoom numbers. PS- adjusting those numbers doesn't seem to have any effect on the airborne planes and helos FOV, does anybody know if there are some other numbers somewhere that we need to juggle for that?

My pal who runs the Mission4Today flight sim website has to pay 1500 GB pounds (2100 US dollars) a year for it, but no problem, the members all donate towards it and cover the costs so its no problem. You say you've got 8 pals, so if you each donated towards buying or renting your own server the cost would be spread around easily enough.. :)

Well guys my attempts to find multiplayer games with a realistic mix of Infantry/Tanks/Light armour have fallen flat, so there's definitely a gap in the market for armoured operations as AA3 is currently in danger of getting a reputation as an "infantry only game". So I'm thinking of buying/renting a server out of my own pocket and calling it something like "Infantry/Armour operations" and putting games on it created by me and anybody else. Problem is I'm a total PC dummy and know absolutely zilch about setting up servers and stuff so I'll need your help/advice/opinions/death threats etc to get it going, any takers? Let's give guys like this some juicy targets..:)

Thanks, I joined in a couple of their games but hadn't a clue what was going on so I've asked them to email me a set of rules..:)

BTW, I don't mind being an infantryman sometimes, so is there a tutorial on how to jump straight into "open non-passworded" type multiplayer games without having to formally fill in applic forms to join a clan/group/squad? For example I start AA3 and click 'Multiplayer', and a list of literally hundreds of groups come up, I spent most of yesterday afternoon ploughing through a few dozen but after clicking 'Join' I found I couldn't get in for various reasons because messages came up like "you don't have the required mods", "you are not whitelisted" etc. And when I was able to get into some, I found some were speaking a foreign language, or my player wasn't visible on the map, or I hadn't a clue where my teammates were, or where the objective was, or how the purchase and spawning rules worked etc. I had a crack at juggling the Filter options (which I don't fully understand) to narrow down the list but it was still as long as your arm, hence my need to know how to quickly find english-speaking non-modded, non-passworded games that I can jump straight into any time of day or night. PS- or if anybody cares to send me a password, go ahead..:)

The Iron Front guys are very much into an exciting realistic mix of tanks and infantry, I wrote a bunch of sensational articles here- http://www.ironfront.forumchitchat.com/?forum=290336 But for some reason AA3 players seem to be very infantry-oriented, maybe it's because (among other things) AA3 tanks have a weird habit of suddenly jumping like frogs, a bug that's long overdue to be zapped. I'll pout and sulk for a while, have a cup of tea and a lie down, take in a "When Ghosts Attack" video, then might go back to dear old AA2 or Iron Front to get my fix of extreme psychotic tank violence, it's what I DO.. :) Hirr Leto- "POS is deranged, crazy and full of fight. POS will bring it like no other... tactically sound player and yes, 'very' dangerous with armour.†RocketMan- "POS is great guy to learn tank tactics from with unsurpassed file return times (it is like he is an AI or something with him returning files any time of the night or day).." Wardog- "POS you are a tough little f*cker to play against" Koen- "POS I must admit that you're crazy and something's totally wrong with you but you're honest and straight to the point.."