Anyone playing WiC demo?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I just wish that I could customise the weapon loadout of my Bradleys... last I checked some could be fitted out with AMRAAMs.. the land based version.

[ray245]

I just wish that I could customise the weapon loadout of my Bradleys... last I checked some could be fitted out with AMRAAMs.. the land based version.

I was hoping they will do something like that...earn ranks so that you can customised your weapons. Like BF2 and 2142.

[Vympel]

I am unaware of any plans to fit Bradleys with ground launched versions of the AIM-120, furthermore, if it wasn't around in 1989, it shouldn't be in the game, and ground launched AMRAAM wasn't even a glint in the eye of some engineer back then.

Same goes with the Bradley fitted with Stinger.

[Stark]

With half-competent air or support players choppers really aren't that much of a problem anymore. The infantry missile fires much faster and the ZSU/m163 is far more accurate (and of course the heavy AA utterly rapes choppers). Since choppers take so damn long to kill infantry, even two or three regular squads is enough to a) convince the chopper player it's not worth it and drive them off or b) kill them. Honestly, if their chopper guys are spending all their time gunning down infantry that's a victory, as they're wasting their damn time. I think even the ground transports can engage choppers half-decently now. Not that I'd use the filthy things.

Really if you've got no air defence and you've wandered off on your own, getting wasted by choppers is your own fucking fault. I often end up wasting my time flying back and forth saving idiots from gunships instead of actually achieving anything.

[Alexandrov]

With half-competent air or support players choppers really aren't that much of a problem anymore. The infantry missile fires much faster and the ZSU/m163 is far more accurate (and of course the heavy AA utterly rapes choppers). Since choppers take so damn long to kill infantry, even two or three regular squads is enough to a) convince the chopper player it's not worth it and drive them off or b) kill them. Honestly, if their chopper guys are spending all their time gunning down infantry that's a victory, as they're wasting their damn time. I think even the ground transports can engage choppers half-decently now. Not that I'd use the filthy things.

Really if you've got no air defence and you've wandered off on your own, getting wasted by choppers is your own fucking fault. I often end up wasting my time flying back and forth saving idiots from gunships instead of actually achieving anything.

Anyone who shoots infantry with the heavy chopper gun is a moron. Firing the rocket pods on the ground (targeting like artillery) effectively eliminates infantry and is guaranteed to kill the MANPAD soldier in the platoon.

[Stark]

Hey, I didn't know 'attack ground' force-fired the rocket pods! Nobody I've played seems to know either: I consistently see idiots just hang around using the cannon, and they either get killed by MANPADs or an A2A strike because it takes so long.

[Alexandrov]

Now that I have enlightened you, do so and "pwnz0r t3h n00bz."

And sorry, I thought more people knew about the force-firing.

Edit: Stark, what is your WiC name?

[Rightous Fist Of Heaven]

Rear Area Security seems to be a completely lost concept to most players on public servers. I was doing some fine killin' yesterday with my Soviet Heavy Arty pieces and was well prepared to take care of any foolish endeavors any US Air players might try. However I was mildly surprised when somehow an enemy Infantry commander managed to get his entire infantry force to our rear and wreak havoc. Suffice to say, no one in our team seemed to really care that the enemy infantry in our rear annihilated our indirect fire support and couple of waves of reinforcements in short order. I paid the bugger back with a FAE on the next round, blowing him and some unfortunate US support player to hell.

One thing that bugs the hell out of me is the fact that somehow all AFV's seem to have lost their machine guns. Propably sold them to the Midget Fairy of Arms Dealers. Seriously though, its somewhat annoying that the only working way for an Armor Commander to deal with Infantry is to buy Medium Tanks and use the White Phosphorous round only they have to kill softies.

Infantry is nice though. Not much short of those white phosphorous rounds, well placed Arty or Gas can kill them quickly enough. Still, I was kind of disappointed to see that the developers in their infinite wisdom figured that Modern Mechanized Infantry shouldnt get IFV's for some unfathomable reason.

I hope the dev's throw in a bit more spit and polish on some points and a bit of balancing on others before the release. Nevertheless, my pre-order for the Collector's Edition went in fifteen minutes after I tried the Demo multiplayer.

[Stark]

Now that I have enlightened you, do so and "pwnz0r t3h n00bz."

And sorry, I thought more people knew about the force-firing.

I probably should have, but I'm pretty bad with it - even as arty I usually forget to, so when contact is lost with the target they trundle over trying to spot it...

Edit: Stark, what is your WiC name?

It is Stark. I'm both unimaginative and I have a pre-order so I got in first.

What's wierd about the MGs is they all HAVE MGs. They just fucking suck - you can zoom in and see your tanks firing them at choppers, to pretty much zero effect. It's pretty sad that the WP is basically the only effective attack tanks have against infantry beyond 'run the fuckers over'.

[Rightous Fist Of Heaven]

What the hell? They have MG's? In that case I was mistaken, they have switched their ammo with the fucking Arms Dealer Fairies to blanks. The dev's must have been high on some serious shit to make this kind of über nerf on the AFV MG's.

[Lonestar]

Alright, I just got finished playing MP on the game for the first time, and my impression is this is awesome. I'm loving it, big time. My handle is BaronBucher, incidentally.

It's late(early?) so I'm going to hit the pit, I'll elaborate more tomorrow.

[Stark]

What's your specialty? And what do you score best as? For instance, I prefer playing infantry because it's fun, but I usually end up scoring highest as air defence (since no motherfucker seems to have a clue about air defence in most pub servers). Killing swarms of heavy choppers racks up the points a lot faster than sneaking around with infantry.

[Instant Sunrise]

I'm InstantSunris on there, I don't play online that often.

Incidentally, I hate the character limits for names in this game.

[Alexandrov]

What's your specialty? And what do you score best as? For instance, I prefer playing infantry because it's fun, but I usually end up scoring highest as air defence (since no motherfucker seems to have a clue about air defence in most pub servers). Killing swarms of heavy choppers racks up the points a lot faster than sneaking around with infantry.

Medium-AA spamming and rushing their lines is a really effective way to bring in the points. You get them off of the heavy choppers, and off of the artillery units.

[2000AD]

Played the demo at my friends house and now I'm going to pre-order it.

There's something immensely satisfying about perfectly timing a napalm strike or an A-10 run perfectly and just devastating your opponent.

[Lonestar]

What's your specialty? And what do you score best as? For instance, I prefer playing infantry because it's fun, but I usually end up scoring highest as air defence (since no motherfucker seems to have a clue about air defence in most pub servers). Killing swarms of heavy choppers racks up the points a lot faster than sneaking around with infantry.

I seem to do better with armor than any other...I was playing Anti-air and there was a player who knew just the right range to put his helos so they can pull in, blast the AAA vehicles while dropping flares, and pull out of range quickly.

Very annoying.

[ray245]

Well...if you know how to pair up well with heavy armor...your heavy helicopters can do tons of damage.

The armor will take out the anti-air since there a quite a few games where people love to start AA spaming...and if there is one guy who is clever enough, he will stick close to the air units, clearing the AA. Then I can get the chance of stop the enemy entire adavance.

A good coordination by your side can make the game REALLY fun.


Anyway, is anyone going to form a clan?

[Stark]

Ray I see a *lot* of guys with heavy chopper groups flying around (which is probably why the pub servers are full of AA trucks) but medium choppers aren't as common as they were in the beta. I usually take one heavy and stock the rest with mediums - I play air defence with choppers. Solid packs of heavies get raped, and a heavy gives me enough firepower to ice a heavy AA if I get in shit.

Amusingly, most heavy chopper players don't even retreat. Even with five mediums, I can't kill four or five heavies before they can retreat behind their AA trucks... but hardly anyone does that. Just like nobody seems to bother killing my scout chopper, which reveals the entire enemy spawn to our arty. Or bothers noticing the airborne infantry that got dropped with giant parachutes into the woods next to their artillery.

Lonestar, I'll have to track you down and see how well you do with competent air cover. Just remember the little tricks - like smoke being launched by type, so if you've got a mixed unit you can pop heavy tank smoke, then as it clears change 'special bar' and pop medium tank smoke, etc. Many chopper players are so stupid they'll sit there waiting for the smoke to clear and get wiped out by your A2A strike. Doing that can also pop smoke to cover medium AA, even though they don't have any of their own: med AA can shoot through the smoke just fine.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I'm getting the demo now. I was afraid my machine would die, but since I could run HL2 and the Masstech engine is good at scaling, I thought I'd give it a whirl. I was dying to play this game after seeing the trailers and expected a meaty new PC just to do so.

Bleh. Gig of demo. Ninety minutes to go...

[ray245]

Ray I see a *lot* of guys with heavy chopper groups flying around (which is probably why the pub servers are full of AA trucks) but medium choppers aren't as common as they were in the beta. I usually take one heavy and stock the rest with mediums - I play air defence with choppers. Solid packs of heavies get raped, and a heavy gives me enough firepower to ice a heavy AA if I get in shit.

Amusingly, most heavy chopper players don't even retreat. Even with five mediums, I can't kill four or five heavies before they can retreat behind their AA trucks... but hardly anyone does that. Just like nobody seems to bother killing my scout chopper, which reveals the entire enemy spawn to our arty. Or bothers noticing the airborne infantry that got dropped with giant parachutes into the woods next to their artillery.

Lonestar, I'll have to track you down and see how well you do with competent air cover. Just remember the little tricks - like smoke being launched by type, so if you've got a mixed unit you can pop heavy tank smoke, then as it clears change 'special bar' and pop medium tank smoke, etc. Many chopper players are so stupid they'll sit there waiting for the smoke to clear and get wiped out by your A2A strike. Doing that can also pop smoke to cover medium AA, even though they don't have any of their own: med AA can shoot through the smoke just fine.

Usually, I would just focus on using one type of unit, to ensure a better control.

And sometime it'll depends on my team as well. I f the other guy is well good or ok enough with heavy choppers, then I will concentrate on medium choppers.

Medium choppers are much better in hunting down choppers than the ground units, due to the fact that most ground units travel rather slowly. If there is too many AA, an enemy armored assault can easily push past your forces.

If there is too little AA, the choppers can run away in time...at least leave much of his units intact.

And since there is so many heavy now...you can do quite well with medium choppers and prevent enemy choppers from killing your allies.

And playing with a good friend that concentrates on heavy choppers, he can easily help you with air support.


Sometimes, I prefer to sacrifice my units for the sake of my team, like sending my heavy choppers to take out enemy artillery which is protected by dozens of heavy AA.

As long my team’s wins, I don't care much about the score.

[Stark]

I find the special system can be exploited with different unit types. It works with flares as well as smoke, so you can drop half your flares and then drop the other half later. They seem to work better than in the beta, where they were pretty useless unless you were moving... and they seem to 'cover' your choppers for quite some time, even after they've hit the ground.

[Laughing Mechanicus]

One thing I especially like in multiplayer is the ambience. I find I often spend most of each map fighting for certain points, unless I'm something very mobile like AA or Choppers. Seeing the war rage all around you're little part of the battlefield, with constant air strikes and artillery, is great stuff.

One gripe I have with the interface is the special weapons selection. For a start most of the specials could be very easily automated, for example how often are your helicopters being shot at with missiles and you don't want them to launch flares? A toggle to have them automatically deploy flares would have been nice. I know 'automation' and 'intelligent units' are verboten in RTS games currently, but considering this game breaks the usual conventions in so many ways it would have been nice.

Secondly, why do they only show the special abilities for one unit at a time? If they had a small grid (say 2*4) in the interface they could show all the commands for at least 4 different types of unit, which is probably at the high end of what you will have selected at any one time. If you happen to have more than that selected, you could have a couple of different 'pages' for the grid to show more, as they do for each unit now.

That said it's still leaps and bounds ahead of most RTS games, where until very recently the standard way of handling multiple different units special abilities when they were selected was just to disable access to the abilites altogether.

[Stark]

I've said it since the beta: they have the real estate to just drop the whole group's specials. They have only two for quick-keys, so either change it to a MMO-style or have the grid with a big 'current special set' bracket.

[Lonestar]

Lonestar, I'll have to track you down and see how well you do with competent air cover. Just remember the little tricks - like smoke being launched by type, so if you've got a mixed unit you can pop heavy tank smoke, then as it clears change 'special bar' and pop medium tank smoke, etc. Many chopper players are so stupid they'll sit there waiting for the smoke to clear and get wiped out by your A2A strike. Doing that can also pop smoke to cover medium AA, even though they don't have any of their own: med AA can shoot through the smoke just fine.

To repeat what's already been said, rear-sector security seems to be nonexistent for most folks(beyond AAA). I've been able to play Infantry, and load up three squads of AT Infantry onto three AAVs(or BTRs) and drive across the water to sneak up behind they place support always places, without fail their artillery. Chaos often ensues.

[Chris OFarrell]

One time I played with an armor player, he used his fleet of brads to drop a half dozen of my anti tank and infantry squads into their rear. He ran around through one side of their rear and out the other blowing everything up, then when all the bad guys re-spawned, I ambushed them, destroyed them, then ducked out to a new bit of cover, laughing as they called down rain on my last position, ambushing their next convoy, often I'd just hold fire and use VOIP to call in the rain from my own support guys on THEIR support guys, God they HATED that.

By the end of the round they had systematically napped and artied every tree, every house, every cover of ANY kind.

And I still had 3/4 my force left.