Cavalry in SPW@W (Full Version)

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grockall -> Cavalry in SPW@W (4/20/2000 4:39:00 PM)

I mainly play SPWW2 but did have a few games of SP squad leader where the cavalry were able to dismount. How will they handle in SPW@W ? If they are dismountable I am wondering how casualties to the horses are calculated.



Paul Vebber -> (4/20/2000 8:28:00 PM)

We tried to make them dismountable, but ran into some difficulties. We hope to add dismountable cavalry, bicyclists, etc. But it proved to be in teh "hard" catory and delayed to make time for other things. Right now they work like they did in SP1 the monting and unmounting is sort of abstracted.



Wild Bill -> (4/24/2000 10:37:00 PM)

Be assured that we are not going to rest until we can have this feature. The coding problems for it were insurmountable at this time. I did see it for awhile and loved it! Imagine dismounting your men and using them as foot soldiers with the horses still there for remounting. I loved it. Also, close combat, hand to hand, is another feature we hope to have in a later patch. We will keep on with it till we get as much as we can in the game. That is a promise! Wild Bill



Larry Holt -> (4/24/2000 10:42:00 PM)

What wonderful detail to be able to do this. Could you not add calvary soldiers as an infantry type then just make horses a vehicular type and modify the carrying values to just cary calvary soldiers? You could set them to be bought as a set just as mech inf is.



Paul Vebber -> (4/25/2000 12:36:00 AM)

Several problems with that approach, biggest being it leaves the "dismounts" free to be a seperate manuever element that the players (or the AI) would use as either extra "fodder" to suck up opfire, expose hidden enemies or run around trying to capture objectives. When we can subtract horsehandleers from the unit, make the dismounts immobile (relatively), and subject to scatter if the enemy finds them before the riders get back, and a few other things, (like telling the AI what to do with them too:-) then we will add them back in. Just turning vehicles into "horses" and nothing else just doesn't work very well. Or has to assume that the players agree to "use them right". SOmething we tried to stay away form. If it couldn't be coded to work right, we left it out. Spotter planes were the same way.



Larry Holt -> (4/25/2000 12:52:00 AM)

OK, I understand that you are trying to do dismounts "right", but I'm not sure what your "right" is. You mention the problems of using dismounts as fodder but in SPWWII, the AI does that with flak units, etc. (I find that once I destroy most of the AI's tanks, it starts to move SP flak forward in a brave/stupid attempt to continue the attack.) So, I'm not sure if the limitations of dismounts are any more limited than what SPWAW will offer with other units. You correctly point out that dismounts should be relatively immobile (they would just not move too far away from their mounts). Could you not give them a very low movement rating or cause them their suppression to soar once they stray too far from their mounts? This would also represent a lessening of combat effectiveness of being away from extra ammo, etc. on the mounts. By the way, my paternal grandfather has passed away but he was in the US Army horse calvary (just for the fun of it) in between wars. He told me that they never fought mounted. They dismounted, had the horses lay down and fired from the prone position. They spent a lot of time getting horses used to the noise of combat and having rifles (carbines?) fired right next to them. ------------------ An old soldier but not yet a faded one.



Paul Vebber -> (4/25/2000 4:16:00 AM)

While the "other things are just as screwed up - so why not" argument is always there, our philosophy has been to try to improve what is there before adding more stuff that, while interesting, is "just as screwed up". That is how we have prioritized our development time. A balance between new ideas and fixes to old problems. We had to draw a line somewhere and stop or we would never release the game! As far as cavalry is concerned I thought I described "right" pretty clearly. The fact that lots of other things are not "right" is why we left it out (for now), not a justification for adding it in. As to the AI doing weird things, it would literally take years to redo the AI to be "sensible". And to do the AI "right" maens designing it in from the ground up as a completely different game.



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