Questions and suggestions (Full Version)

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Adam106 -> Questions and suggestions (9/26/2013 1:21:15 PM)

Well done on what looks like to be an impressive release. I've been tinkering with a few scenarios and first impressions are good.

Questions:
1. How can you tell a unit to 'return to station' for a assigned mission? Let's stay I've given a jet a manual course - how do I tell him to return to the CAP area?
2. Is there any way to assign a group to a mission before they launch? At the moment I make a strike mission with say two 4 aircraft flights and they all take off separately... Looks messy and confusing, and stretches the package across a vast amount of sky.
3. Why does every single aircraft type use a default of 40000ft cruise altitude right off the bat. This needs to be adjusted for loadout, but more simply it could just be a stat in the database to use optimum cruise alt - strangely the database doesn't tell us (or use?) that info?

Suggestions, if I may:
1. Change all altitudes to feet in the GUI, if you've selected 'feet for altitude'. The loadout screen still has release altitudes etc in metres.
2. Making a strike mission needs more options (I'm aware something might be in the works) - but options for simple waypoints, and altitude / speed are fundamental and could be done pretty easily? Currently we have to make our mission, let the aircraft launch, group them together manually, manually adjust alt and speed, and double check all that meets weapon release criteria - It's a pain. Time on Target would be a lovely addition as well.
3. Add an ETA to the end of course plotting, or the side info bar.
4. Improve performance - lagging zoom and scrolling...

Really enjoying command so far..



Der Zeitgeist -> RE: Questions and suggestions (9/26/2013 6:06:47 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Adam106
Questions:
1. How can you tell a unit to 'return to station' for a assigned mission? Let's stay I've given a jet a manual course - how do I tell him to return to the CAP area?


I think I can answer at least one of your questions, just tried it out in the editor. [:)]

You can manually plot a course for a unit that's on a mission, to fly them out of a CAP, for example. When they reach the end of the plotted course, the mission AI takes over again, and automatically plots the course back to the patrol area.



ComDev -> RE: Questions and suggestions (9/27/2013 1:55:55 PM)

Hi Adam, thank you for your feedback. Great to hear you enjoy the sim [8D]

Answers:
1: The planes turn around and proceed to their station when they reach the end of the plotted course.
2: More strike planning functionality is being studied atm. Personally I handle strike packages 100% manually atm.
3: The aircraft prefer to fly as high as possible for best fuel economics. We're looking into a different way to do this.

Suggestions:
1: That's on the way!
2: Yeah I'm a strike warfare nut too, and need more functionality too. It is being worked on.
3: Great idea, added this as a new ticket and assigned to me. Thanks! [8D]
4: Coming soon.



CoffeeMug -> RE: Questions and suggestions (9/27/2013 4:01:57 PM)

Good news!

BTW: Is there a 98% probabilty roadmap of features for the next release? Yeah, I know you just released three day before, but .... have ... to .... know .... roadmap. ;)

Cheers!



juanchopancho -> RE: Questions and suggestions (9/27/2013 4:40:05 PM)

Yeah good suggestions.

Maybe for missions you could setup an IP/EP or ingress/egress points where the mission is planned to enter/exit hostile areas. So one could set the mission as HI-NOE-HI,HI-LO-HI,HI-MED-HI

Definitely need some time of calculator or times for ETA or TOT - time on target so one can setup coordinated strike packages. A reverse calculator would be great where one could say what time one needs to hit the target and it would tell you what time the strike group needs to takeoff. I suppose one could do all of this manually but more tools in game would be great.



Primarchx -> RE: Questions and suggestions (9/27/2013 4:42:44 PM)

I like how you think! [8D]

quote:

ORIGINAL: juancho

Yeah good suggestions.

Maybe for missions you could setup an IP/EP or ingress/egress points where the mission is planned to enter/exit hostile areas. So one could set the mission as HI-NOE-HI,HI-LO-HI,HI-MED-HI

Definitely need some time of calculator or times for ETA or TOT - time on target so one can setup coordinated strike packages. A reverse calculator would be great where one could say what time one needs to hit the target and it would tell you what time the strike group needs to takeoff. I suppose one could do all of this manually but more tools in game would be great.




ComDev -> RE: Questions and suggestions (1/30/2014 7:01:54 PM)

ETA info added to units and waypoints in the Speed/Altitude dialog window (F2 hotkey).

Thanks! [8D]



ther19 -> RE: Questions and suggestions (4/4/2020 3:52:33 AM)

I have been waiting for a time on target calculator for YEARS!! I was a very early C-Mano player and all the various iterations of Harpoon before that. Once CMano added all this complexity, for me the math-in-your-head required to play the game properly sucked all the joy out of it for me. It always seemed sort of lame that there wasn't one to begin with since I know that in real command scenarios, the CO/planner not only has such a calculator but also at least one staff person to operate it and double check all of that. Yet the game asks us to do all this math in our heads on the fly. Well CMO people - I FRIGGING HATE MATH. I understand it's importance but this is why the Gods inspired the computer. You say that I'm to act as a fleet commander, please give me the tools that a fleet commander has. This would have been way more important than Tacview to me. I've seen a few CICs in my time and none of them had Tacview. From what I understand, they all had mission planning software that includes ToT.
I know that people have been clamoring for this for years. Please, fer cryin out loud, get on with it.
Thanks for another cool game in this genealogy leading out from Harpoon. Now just help us play it without it seeming like math homework. I'm pretty sure you'd sell more copies of it if you did.
Thanks for getting on this.



thewood1 -> RE: Questions and suggestions (4/4/2020 3:57:33 AM)

While the ToT feature would be cool, I'm highly skeptical it would bring in many new users. Most of the hardcore operational naval and air demographic probably already have CMO.



JPFisher55 -> RE: Questions and suggestions (4/4/2020 2:31:17 PM)

Great suggestions by Adam, but I am hoping that the developers fix all the bugs first. I don't like my Hawkeye's on support mission deciding to attack the enemy.



Dimitris -> RE: Questions and suggestions (4/4/2020 4:42:57 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: JPFisher55
I don't like my Hawkeye's on support mission deciding to attack the enemy.


Is there a report for this?



Dimitris -> RE: Questions and suggestions (4/4/2020 4:50:04 PM)

Also:

quote:

ORIGINAL: JPFisher55
Great suggestions by Adam, but I am hoping that the developers fix all the bugs first.


Fix every single bug (or "bug") before adding new features?

Masters of the trade have commented on this philosophy: https://m.signalvnoise.com/software-has-bugs-this-is-normal/

quote:


The only reliable, widely used way to ensure impeccable software quality is to write less software that does less stuff, and then spend eons honing that tiny lot. Such an approach, however, is very rarely compatible with commercial success or even programmer motivations (despite what many may claim).

How do you think the market would receive the [next iPhone], if its headline improvement was cutting 1/3 of the features to shrink the code base so it’d have fewer bugs? Yeah, I thought so. While people may get excited in concept by “stop the train, we need to fix the tracks” directives for software development, it’s not what they would buy.





JPFisher55 -> RE: Questions and suggestions (4/4/2020 6:11:22 PM)

Yes, it is on page 5 of the tech support forum. I posted it on 2/21/2020. I, and other posters, have unresolved bugs on older pages than page 5.



JPFisher55 -> RE: Questions and suggestions (4/4/2020 6:13:52 PM)

True, but CMO a lot of bugs dating back to January. IMO, these need to be fixed before adding new features. This is why I suggested fixing the bugs starting with the oldest reported ones. It seems that the developers may have overlooked some of the older reported bugs.



Dimitris -> RE: Questions and suggestions (4/4/2020 6:18:43 PM)

The developers have overlooked nothing. They are simply very busy, fixing other issues that have higher priority (we don't sort issues by age), and also serving other customers that have higher priority. We are sorry that this reality does not match your expectations.



Dimitris -> RE: Questions and suggestions (4/4/2020 6:32:19 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: JPFisher55
True, but CMO a lot of bugs dating back to January. IMO, these need to be fixed before adding new features.


There are bugs originating in _Windows 95_ still being fixed nowadays in Windows 8 & 10. There are acknowledged bugs in MS Office (discovered in the 90s and 00s) that have _yet_ to be resolved. That does not diminish their quality, or their usefulness.

Development and long-term support of complex, multiple-generation software is often like that.



JPFisher55 -> RE: Questions and suggestions (4/4/2020 10:51:19 PM)

Ok, in the past, the developers have been excellent in fixing bugs and adding features. So, I trust that they have a plan to make CMO a great game.



kevinkins -> RE: Questions and suggestions (4/4/2020 11:40:40 PM)

JPFisher55

You are not going to get a lot of positive attention being snarky like you have been. Many of us have their bugs [Logged] and they want something specific fixed. But many bugs are just considered minor non-game changing issues. In software, they are called corner cases. Some are rather important to avid players like the wing man fuel issue. But they are either not possible to fix or are not considered that important by the programers spend any time on fixing them. Suggest staying on top of your Hawkeye report. But I would also suggest the programers update players on the status of their logged reports. Don't want to give players the idea their contributions and hours of game time are crumbled and ending up in the trash bin of CMO history. It's a two way street when feedback is asked for and apparently valued.

Kevin



thewood1 -> RE: Questions and suggestions (4/4/2020 11:41:47 PM)

Might be easier tom just stop playing until all the bugs are fixed.



ultradave -> RE: Questions and suggestions (4/4/2020 11:56:36 PM)

One of our now long retired engineers used to gleefully say, "Well, I've fixed the last bug in GRAD-1" (our radiation shielding design software). And we would all laugh. Because Tom was the original author of the program back in the 60s. It had to fit in 64K of main memory of an old IBM mainframe. It has grown to a suite of 4 programs with 3d visualization and 150,000 lines of code. I've (with his help) added new features to it that required parsing variables that were stored 3 to a variable to save memory space. (number A, multiply by 100,000, number B muliply by 1000 and add, number C, add to the previous). You had to unpack them the same way. It was almost like writing in Assembler (which Ive done and you DON"T want to, believe me).

Anyway, the last bug will NEVER be found. Some day, some bright young engineer will execute a combination that hadn't been exercised before and <clunk> Oh, look. There's a bug.

Best thing in that program was an error message our group leader put in. Only 3 of us ever came across it, because you had to do something particularly brain dead to get there:

"FATAL ERROR: Are you trying to solve a problem or be one?"



exsonic01 -> RE: Questions and suggestions (4/5/2020 3:22:43 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: JPFisher55
Ok, in the past, the developers have been excellent in fixing bugs and adding features. So, I trust that they have a plan to make CMO a great game.

I'm not game programmer neither a full time programmer, but a part of my career requires little bit of knowledge on C++ and Python and Fortran so I can tell something.

As a level of complexity and features increases in any software, bugs and optimization issues exponentially increase.

To solve such issues, major game studios just use brute force - they put a lot of budget and manpower to the project. Even then, think about how many game titles and franchises gone wrong from those "major Studios". So many trash level games are there, even from "top-tier" game makers and publishers with tons of manpower and budget investment. I don't even need to mention about EA. I still feel I'm straight robbed by Fallout 76. That was really a disaster and close to scam level. How about Mass Effect 3 and Mass Effect Andromeda? I still remember so many angry people towards early phase of No man's sky (but now NMS is good enough to enjoy) How about "never-ending" Star-citizen? Well, SC is not major game studio's work but context is the same. Game making is very difficult job which requires ton of budget and manpower.

As PC spec / console spec increases and will increase, more issues of bugs and resource optimization will become much more difficult to solve. As level of 3D engines and difficulty level of customer needs increases, required manpower and budget will greatly increase. Comparing old and new environment is easy, but if you closely look into it, you will figure out that is unfair.

Now, look at a lot of wargame "studios" working with Matrix and Slitherine or others. Some wargames begun as hobby project. Some are still one man project. Some begun as a project of group of friends or close grogheads, with great interest in military and wargames and have some coding skills, then made 3~5 ppl studio to develop their wargame. Manpower and budget of those wargame studios cannot be compared to that of "major games" we are seeing from Steam. While I agree there are bugs, but regarding quality, we cannot ask the level of major studio games to most of wargames we are playing. Of course they are not creating their game buggy - but just because there is not enough money and time and programmer to solve all those issues. It is very sad, but it is true. I also suggested somethings to CMO but I don't even expect that will be fixed next week. (Of course I will happy if they take my suggestion) I respect their priority, they should know about their code the most and I expect they are properly spending their time and manpower to priority issues in their standard.

Some people complains, how they put such high price to such buggy game. I understand. But if you don't like it then you can pass it. We are living in the society with freedom of choice and it is free market. No one force you to buy those. If you don't like it, you can just pass it.

But when I see some posts of very old PC wargamers saying, I really wish to enjoy full game before my last day on the Earth, I feel really sorry for them and devs both...

I'm curious if wargame devs can open Patreon or any social funding account or not. If it is possible, I have some games which I gladly invest to.



stilesw -> RE: Questions and suggestions (4/5/2020 3:44:25 PM)

quote:

o solve such issues, major game studios just use brute force - they put a lot of budget and manpower to the project.


Excellent point! Check out the “The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering” (Fred Brooks, 1975).

The essential thesis, which is still missed by many in and out of the software development world, is one woman having a baby in nine months does not equate to nine women can have a baby in one month.

-WS



stilesw -> RE: Questions and suggestions (4/5/2020 3:47:06 PM)

Addendum:
I almost wrote a bug free program once: "HELLO WORLD". But I spelled it "HELLO WORLDE". Had to fix that bug!



michaelm75au -> RE: Questions and suggestions (4/6/2020 10:58:46 AM)

"I always write 'bug-free' code.
It's not more fault if the user does something unexpected and crashes it. Tell the user to stop doing that and it won't crash."
I once worked with someone a long time ago who had that philosophy.
[:D]



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