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Rory Noonan -> RE: First impressions ... lag issues! (4/6/2016 2:12:00 PM)
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ORIGINAL: venquessa
So now my performance issues are 70% addressed. I still get lag, but it's more consistent. What I can't do however is advance time faster than 60x. If I got to 300x the map freezes. If I slow time back down it unfreezes, but a massive amount of stuff happens all at once. It's like time freezes, then jumps 10, 20, 30 minutes and flights that hadn't even taken off yet are being shot down over the enemy positions already.
With higher rates of time compression and the 'pulsed' time setting, the map is updated once per second or so, and reflects the end state of what has occured in the last pulse (30s, 60s, more depending on which setting you chose).
If you are choosing to have 1 second of real time reflect 30 minutes of game time, then yes indeed you may have a plane take-off and get shot down in the period represented by a single pulse.
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Anyway. As something of a review, the game isn't quite what I had anticipated. Yes it has massive breadth/scope coming form the huge exhaustive database of combat units and having the whole Earth as a theatre, but I'm not entirely sure about the depth.
I'll try and explain. The AI are barely satisfactory and in some cases completely unsatisfactory. If you only use the AI, such as Mission Editor created missions and trust them to do their job the do not reflect the depth the game is aiming for or even come close. They are fairly predictably poor at their job and don't really follow any kind of tactics and when they do show tactical design in their attacks it's usually wrong.
The AI is 2016 game AI, not SkyNet or AlphaGo. Considering the amount of 'intelligent' things it does without any input from the scenario designer or player (AAR, weapons evasion, pathfinding etc), it is actually pretty good IMO. It is the responsibility of the scenario designer to mould the AI into behaving intelligently on an operational and strategic scale. With Lua and the event editor, it is actually possible to make the computer behave unpredictably and react intelligently to events as they unfold.
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So that leaves you to micro-manage the battle which becomes a click fest. It is really only possible if you use "Pause" frequently as well as constantly scan and check on units in case they are doing something stupid.
This becomes less and less the case as experience is gained. Doctrine, WRA and mission settings actually allow the player to stay fairly 'hands-off' if they wish.
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There are quite a few basic concepts missing from the mission editor that are required to correctly form up an air strike for example. The main one is "Coordination features". There should be programmatic "Rendezvous" or "Wait" tasks allowing you to form up complex strikes at reference points and have them push from that reference point once all required units are formed up. There should also be general marshalling commands such as "Wait at waypoint until unit Group_123 pushes from ref point 432"
There are a few things I have still to try to help with this, by using relative reference points on flights with other flights set to patrol those reference points. Works with ships, why not with planes. Still it's micro-management.
The TOT calculator concept for me does not sound like enough. We need a "Package planner" or a "Strike planner" which allows you to coordinate the missions planned in the Mission planner so you can set actions like, "Rendezvous", "Wait until unit passes point", "Wait until unit goes active", "Push at time X", "Return to IP after attack" and so on.
These things would be nice, but they are by no means critical to the enjoyment of the game.
There are in fact options similar to this in the new AAR configuration settings; i.e. you can specify that a strike will not launch until a specified amount of tankers on a specified mission are either available, airborne, or on station. There is also nothing to stop you marshaling your aircraft at a designated point manually or using a support mission, and then assigning them to the strike missions once all assets are in place.
Personally I enjoy the intellectual challenge of organising some of these things myself. I get a sense of achievement when I time the launch times of my missions and fine-tune the waypoint positions and speed settings to have these things synchronised. Often it's not perfect, but perfect isn't realistic.
Clicking a button would make it easier, but there is no button to click to get your forces to work in perfect synchronicity in the real world. Someone, somewhere along the chain is sitting down with a pen and paper (or more likely spreadsheet these days) for a couple of minutes to work all this out.
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I know this sounds childish, but if you look a little into the psychology of games and why people play them you will find the "Reward concept". I see too many games missing this basic concept and CMANO is one of them. You need to reward players for doing well. Even if that is just a popup when an objective is completed or a milestone has been reached. A lot of the scenarios with the game don't even have scoring so it is left completely up to the player what is a win and what isn't. There is no reward, no "Ye ha I did it!" feeling.
This is the responsibility of the scenario designer. I make an effort to do it in my scenarios, but not everyone gets their kicks out of the same things. Personally seeing a well planned and executed strike pan out is the reward for me.
Lack of points/scoring in a scenario don't automatically make the scenario no fun to play.
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All that said I think it's a great game, very addictive, very engaging. However, I believe I can see what the game is aiming for and it's well short of it thus far. That's fine, it seems it is still in very active development. What it currently does not afford is it's price. If it lived up to it's own expectations then yes, £60 would be fine. However it doesn't yet, so it doesn't afford that kind of price... yet. If I was you I would drop the price significantly, to say £30 and split off a bunch of BIG features into an add-on expansion costing £30 once complete (giving existing £60 players a discount coupon). That ultimately splits the revenue but as it makes the game cheaper it should increase up-take and still provide money to develop the big features.
There are pretty frequent Steam sales if price is a problem. The developers have also released a version very much along your suggestion, allowing potential buyers of the full sim to 'dip their toe' and get a taste of the sim at reduced price. Personally I think it's more than worth the money once given a chance.
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