Appogee

Indeed. Sounds much more boring when you say it that way, though.

They are fine as they are. Mantas handle as VTOLs should. Carrying a Walrus does use more fuel and slow you down. And hover-sniping is more interesting than yet another dogfighting/bombing sim.

This is a good point.To those concerned about the consolification of Carrier Command... What specifically is missing or lacking? In what ways would the game be made more strategic to satisfy the needs of PC gamers?

I'm no fan of consolisation either, but your post seems a little harsh. Aside from the radial menu and the auto aim - both of which are optional and which we don't need to use - what specifically about CCGM seems overly constrained by the console platform? This is still a beta, with many unimplemented features. But from what we already see, I suspect our strategy appetites will be served by large maps, a variety of islands and potential attack strategies, tech tree unlocks etc. And from a controls perspective, I can't really see how the vehicles should be controlled or handle all that much differently to how they do now?

A report on this issue has been raised in the Issue Tracker.

I discovered by accident that Tab zooms the view. Was that in the first Beta, or is a feature that was added for the latest Beta. In any case, thought I'd mention it here because it's so useful.

Firstly, thanks again to BI for recreating my favourite game of all time. I signed up for the Play & Contribute Beta within minutes of hearing about its availability. It's been a month since the first P&C Beta was released. I've played it to death, reported the bugs, suggested some enhancements, etc. Will there be a new Beta released soon? I'd love to be able to play a game with a larger number of islands, and perhaps a few of the more serious bugs (especially the save game crashes which so often deny me victory in the current Beta). I realise that coding takes time, and I'm prepared to be patient. Just wondering though whether we could get an update which contains the last month's progress.

Fair enough. Until they get the in-game key remapping done, I recommend a free utility called AutoHotkey. It will remap your keyboard and mouse however you wish.

Options -> Bottom tab on the left. What is it with Beta testers who don't explore menu options ? ;-)

LOL. I haven't received an email about a new version yet. But if so - awesome timing!

Yeah, I too get creamed by the enemy carrier ... whenever its AI is working. A couple of times I've come across it and it has set there doing nothing til I've sunk it.

Javelin10's advice was invaluable to me being able to take islands. In addition to his excellent advice: 1. Try to attack turrets from the rear instead of head on. 2. Think carefully about the attack vector of your mantas. They will ''run on'' over their targets. So pick an attack vector which wont have them pulling up over a bunch of AA turrets or enemy Walruses. 3. After your Mantas have attacked, vector them away from enemy AA over flat terrain. If your Mantas need to climb over mountains to escape, there's much more chance they'll get shot down while they're slowly gaining altitude. 4. If you can destroy the Manta and Walrus production facilities on one of the island's outposts, you can use the repair fuel and ammo dumps in that outpost as a handy on-island base for your Walruses. 5. Bombs are not cost effective. 6. By pitching up the front of your Walrus on a slight incline, you can shell targets like turrets from waaaay further away.

Really? If I recall correctly, the carrier will turn in the direction of the rudder indicator when moving forward, or the opposite when going backwards. Which is similar to my experience with watercraft. That too would be consistent with the way a rudder works...?Anyway, I'll check it out again tonight. Or maybe some kindly developer can drop in and tell us what specific steering mechanisms they're simulating :-)

Well, it is an aircraft carrier, not a speedboat, after all :-)I think it simulates two thrusters and a rudder quite well.

I agree. An alt-weapon would be more usual for the right mouse button. I suggest a user configurable key - possibly the spacebar as default - should be used to toggle between map view and vehicle view.

I spent 5 minutes today trying to get a Manta to drop off a hooked Walrus. While I was stuffing aorund with it, the enemy carrier attacked my island :-(

Is that possible? I haven't found a way to make ''island mantas'' into user-controllable ''carrier mantas''.

I agree that randomised island designs is a very important factor in terms of replayability.

These are all great tips - thanks! I just won my first game (ever) of Carrier Command! Woot!

I have successfully captured resource and production islands. But try as I might, I cannot come up with the right tactics to capture defence islands. They seem to have such overwhelming numbers of Walruses, Mantas and Turrets in each of their compounds. The closest I have come is one island where I managed to hack enough firewalls. But I just can't get into the last heavily-defended compound where the Command Strcuture for the island is located. It has a Walrus producting factory, 10 Walruses hanging around, a Manta launchpad, lots of ground and air turrets at each corner, and walls all the way around. I've spent 8 hours trying to get into that compound, but as careful as I can be, all my Mantas and Walrii get smoked before I manage to even take out the Walrus factory. Where am I going wrong?

I am enjoying the Beta immensely. My input on things to change are: 1. Fix the mouse lag. 2. Fix the vehicle pathing. 3. Make the map zoom levels more granular. 4. Provide a key or tooltips on the map, so that the various symbols are explained. 5. Show the supply barque, and enable us to send it back when we need to. 6. Speed up production, and provide a slider to speed up game time, so there is less waiting for something to be built etc. 7. Enable the main gun to fire downwards (ie. lower than the horizon). 8. Provide a way to lock the carrier engines on, and keep moving forward, even while you're working on the map screen. 9. Make destroyed Mantas explode, rather than just drop from the sky and roll. I'll post separately on many various ideas and potential enhancements beyond the standard game play. Thanks again BI for remaking one of my favourite games of yesteryear. I thought I'd never again have the chance to play Carrier Command again.

This does seem like a good idea.

That is indeed how it was in the original. The limitation of only four land and four terrestrial vehicles forces a very different style of gamplay vs your average RTS - it's one of the key differentiating features in Carrier Command vs other games. Instead of spamming your targets with wave after wave of expendable vehicles, you need to approach each target with a specific strategy which conserves your vehicles. The tech upgrades are more about providing your vehicles with the right equipment options to take out the targets.

One of the useful things about games like Minecraft is that the worlds it creates are procedurally generated. That is, a set of 'world construction rules' are consistently applied, starting from just a single seed number. In this way, two players can recreate the exact same map and game world, simply by inputing the same seed number at the outset. Is Carrier Command also creating its 'random' maps in this procedural way? Ie. are there standard 'world construction rules' which are applied to some random input, to create the original game map? Or is the map, and then contents of each island, always going to be randomly created in a non-replicable way? I think it would add to the Carrier Command game experience is we could recreate the same world over and over. For example, I could post the seed number for a particularly challenging map in the forums, and others could see if they could win on that map, or how quickly, etc. Solo, I could try different strategies on the same map to see which are most effective. (Yes, I guess we could achieve a similar outcome by swapping start game save files. But it's much easier, and I dare say a little 'cooler' technically, with seed numbers, if that's the way the game currently builds worlds.)

I made the somewhat reluctant move to digital download a few years back. But yes, I do remember fondly the days when you'd buy a Microprose game which had a thick manual, and a keyboard overlay to help you quickly get up to speed with the controls, and sometimes even additional 'enemy silhouette' recognition cards and the like. It certainly helped with the feeling of immersion in the game. In fact, even when I ditched the games themselves, I kept the manuals for well-supported games like LucasArt's ''Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe'' because they contained such interesting information. Wouldn't it be great if games developers at least made these kinds of items available as a free digital download? I really it's extra work for no extra sale, but perhaps it could be used as an incentive for people to register their games, and add themselves to the customer direct marketing database.