So the game and demo are out for Men of War. I tried out the demo and I have to say i'm impressed. They fixed most of the AI initiative issues that plagued the previous games. The ballistics and physics model known to the series' fans is around and as impressive as ever.
That being said it doesn't seem like much has changed from Faces of War or Soldiers. Then again what the games always needed was refinement way more than they needed more content. The old, annoying Flashpoint-style inventory system is still around unfortunately. So asking your dudes to do something as trivial as restocking on ammo can be a pain in the ass.
Why is there some forcefield stopping developers of polished games having decent physics and ballistics? It's not just niche genres like Silent Storm, it's everything now. I mean, there's really no reason why even Empire TW doesn't have proper ballistics and penetration aside from CA laziness.
PS, Stormfront = CA. Soon as I saw that... well. It's good they stick to ripping off history, because their idea of 'innovative' and writing is not good.
But you still played it. Did you think CA was magically going to not suck moving from TW to some other game?
I watched the intro for Stormrise too, the pain can't be expressed in words.
Anyway, even backyard Russian developers can afford the time and energy to place awesome physics models in their games and keep pumping them out over and over again with minimal necessary returns to stay in business. How do they do it?
I don't think I'd internalised 'trolling Stromrise fanboys about CA' to 'holy shit whoa I just bought rented from EB a CA game'.
The physics thing is probably management; they figure cut out coding stuff, 'streamline' production. Physics is still fucking hopeless in mainstream games and quite mature in niche games, which doesn't make sense.
It's sad. Men of War's ballistics model is so crazy and detailed but the dudes at Best Way have been making it since 2004. It was awesome then and it's only gotten better. So far, Men/Faces of War/Soldiers are the only games i've played where you can fire an AP round THROUGH an apartment building and have it kill the enemy tank on the other side.
Back in 2004 everyone was celebrating Valve's rediscovery of box bouncing physics.
I have men of war, and so far I think its excellent. It removes quite a bit of the crap from Faces, so the missions feel less massively scripted and you have more room to move and they seem to have optimised it massively both in terms of graphics and AI, so theres a large performance boost as well as looking better and your units have better autonomy.
The increase in scale is impressive, in a couple of missions so far i've been directly simultaneously controling over 150 infantry (stupid russians). A big step on from the days of Soldiers where you would have an absolute maximum of 8 guys. There are still missions where you have small squads though, so it hasnt lost that aspect either. Theres still the joy of 20mm flak autocannon vs infantry too. The weapons ranges have been increased from the laughable (30m for a HMG... so i can actually throw the bullets further?) ones in Faces, but still arent up to the range they were at in Soldiers, although they arent too jarring now.
There are a few things that bug me, like how the enemy light tanks seem to have massive penetration with their pathetic ~17mm guns against my heavy tanks front armour and I sometimes dont take things out with my 88/76mm AT guns. Its still annoying to reequip squads, I was sure I saw something about a new feature where you could tell them to resupply in a zone in this version, but that isnt in. AI is quite a lot less moronic, although still has its little moments occasionally.
Apparently nobody can see you without a signature.
Faces' scripted missions made me single handedly return the game to my friend and it made me very sad. The Soldiers series has had awesome potential since it came out but it's consistently cut itself short through poor balancing and mission design. Soldiers was notorious for pitting your 4 dudes against 8+ DIVISIONS of enemies. Faces improved the players' odds but it came at the cost of ridiculous forced-event scripting and atrociously linear levels. I ended up never finishing either game, just feeling sad for them. So it's awesome to hear Men of War is finally Soldiers V1.0
Despite my love for obscure weird European games with poor production values and horrifying voice acting, this series never caught my attention. Thanks to this demo I'm glad to say that's changed. I picked it up off of the shitty digital distribution service it has and am pulling it down at the blazing-fast super-speed of 150 kb/s... once it finally finishes I'm eager to see what the full game offers.
Agitated asshole | (Ex)40K Nut | Metalhead The vision never dies; life's a never-ending wheel
1337 posts as of 16:34 GMT-7 June 2nd, 2003
"'He or she' is an agenderphobic microaggression, Sharon. You are a bigot." ― Randy Marsh
I've been playing for awhile now. Single player is boring trash, redeemable only in that it somewhat-effectively demos the gameplay itself... which I like. CoH on Crack in a true RTT style a la Blitzkrieg or Sudden Strike. All the inventory micromanagement is neat, but feels a little out of place without RPG elements (even if it's only something like unit experience). Direct control of anything with a gun is very fun and very useful... infantry, not so much.
The multiplayer is definitely where it shines. I'm pretty bad at it overall... if I could figure out the byzantine reinforcement system, maybe I could actually go up against comparable armor instead of futilely trying to take out IS-3s with my PzIII-Js. I style myself a bit of a tank ace, maybe that's my downfall - I call in a tank or TD with maybe an infantry squad for support and just zoom around with the tank blowing stuff up until it dies. Dammit if it isn't fun, though. Playing AT guns and light artillery is likewise a blast, I was tearing it up with a 25 Pdr until 150mm counterbattery fire finally ended it.
Infantry combat is pretty solid. Not exactly CoH and not nearly as intuitive, but it's a vast improvement over similar stuff like Blitzkrieg. Armor combat is the game's strong suit. Best I've ever seen, topping my previous favorite of Forgotten Hope 2 (which is in a different genre anyway). Like its comparable Obscure Weird European WWII RTTs, though, its biggest flaw is that it's too realistic. Inevitably the side with the strongest armor tends to gain an advantage: Soviets, or if they aren't present, Germans. Soviets in particular are pretty ridiculous - while their early-game stuff is pretty trash, as soon as the T34-76s and legions of various heavy tanks roll out, even the Germans have few effective countermeasures. Soviets have a huge pile of relatively-affordable high-end tank destroyers and tanks which just absolutely tear through the expensive German stuff. I watched a Kingtiger (the most expensive German unit) spawn and then just kind of... die.
All in all I'm pretty happy with it. From the demo I was expecting a $40 or $50 title, at only $30 it's a good deal.
Agitated asshole | (Ex)40K Nut | Metalhead The vision never dies; life's a never-ending wheel
1337 posts as of 16:34 GMT-7 June 2nd, 2003
"'He or she' is an agenderphobic microaggression, Sharon. You are a bigot." ― Randy Marsh
Saying RTT and mentioning Sudden Strike = maybe I won't bother, LOL. The inv mclicro was one of the reasons soldiers sucked so bad, and it sounds like the clunkiness is still there. Is there multi bots?
If there are, I haven't found them. The inventory isn't that bad, it's not as if you need to pay any attention to it unless you're down to just a few dudes and need to sneak around picking up machine guns and grenades for that last ditch effort.
I'm actually a little disappointed in that respect; technically logistics do matter with concerns like ammo, fuel, and misc supplies, but in practice it never comes into play in multiplayer.
Agitated asshole | (Ex)40K Nut | Metalhead The vision never dies; life's a never-ending wheel
1337 posts as of 16:34 GMT-7 June 2nd, 2003
"'He or she' is an agenderphobic microaggression, Sharon. You are a bigot." ― Randy Marsh
Jesus, is the Sherman wanked. Relatively spammable, which makes sense, but the M4A1 and M4A2 are just damn near impervious to German AT fire. I was flinging 88mm shit at extreme range at them and it just bounces off every god-damn time... a single shot back from their shitty short-barrel 75mm totally kills my TDs. And that's with the 88mm Nashorn... the cheaper StuGs are beyond useless. Even PzIV-Hs just fall over dead the second I try to get in range. AT guns are even more useless - for some unfathomable reason Germans have only shitty AT guns with shit penetration (no 88s... despite having numerous Tank/TD chassis with 88s ).
It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have to engage at extreme range; even then I still consistently lose every engagement. Trying to move closer is just instant death.
Agitated asshole | (Ex)40K Nut | Metalhead The vision never dies; life's a never-ending wheel
1337 posts as of 16:34 GMT-7 June 2nd, 2003
"'He or she' is an agenderphobic microaggression, Sharon. You are a bigot." ― Randy Marsh
Wow that's shit, from a realism prospective the standard 88 was fully able to do fun things like shoot through houses and kill Shermans on the other side. Now consider a Nashorn which is the 88 Long, it was only useful at extreme ranges but at that range it could engage and kill every single medium normally on the first shot. Sloped or not the solid shot was simply to heavy and going to fast and was to massive for it to matter until you got into IS-2/3 ranges of frontal armor.
And no 88? That's an odd omission, I assume they have the 37mm Pak-36 "Door knocks" the 50mm Pak 38's (Did they model Pz40 rounds or just standards?), the 75mm Pak40. The 88's however were everywhere, you could not go two feet in Africa without running over one because a Matillda or Valentine could laugh off Pak 38 rounds all day long. They had them to deal with KV1's in the eastern theater and they were just over-kill VS Shermans in the Western.
"A cult is a religion with no political power." -Tom Wolfe Pardon me for sounding like a dick, but I'm playing the tiniest violin in the world right now-Dalton
I've used dozens of 88mm AT guns in the SP campaign as the germans. Very handy at taking out the more heavily armoured british tanks at range. They will apparently penetrate every time at maximum range given a decent angle. Not sure why you havent seen them in MP. Overall I do think theres a few strange bits with respect to armour penetration, the german tanks seem to be made out of paper at times, while some crappy allied tanks seem able to shrug off much more than their armour says they can.
As far as RPG elements go, there is (and actually has been since Soldiers) a system of unit skills, so certain troops are better with different weapons. Only now is there any way to tell that in game however, as before there was no indicators. See the little pips on a soldiers weapon (3 diamonds, either empty or gold) I think that is their skill with that particular weapon type. It explains why you can give some soldiers HMGs and see them spray everywhere like useless arseholes.
Apparently nobody can see you without a signature.
SP is a lot more forgiving than MP, especially if you have the difficulty down. MP is pretty hardcore - even armor penetration feedback and vehicle damage feedback are usually disabled.
And yeah, I've seen a few 88s in SP, but they aren't available to Germans under fixed guns in MP. All you can do to compensate is buy (much more expensive) armor that mounts the gun you want - Nashorns, Tigers, etc. They do have the PaK40, but it's just as useless at long range and despite being dug-in and camouflaged still manages to die once those Shermans score a hit (which doesn't take long).
And no, no fancy-schmancy shell types. All ammo is (understandably) genericized, differentiated only by size and with basic HE and AP types (so e.g., your 37mm gun comes with 37mm HE rounds and 37mm AP rounds).
Agitated asshole | (Ex)40K Nut | Metalhead The vision never dies; life's a never-ending wheel
1337 posts as of 16:34 GMT-7 June 2nd, 2003
"'He or she' is an agenderphobic microaggression, Sharon. You are a bigot." ― Randy Marsh
Now, I've played MoW for a few days and I must say that Im impressed. As a side note, the last game from the series I played was Soldiers: Heroes of 2nd WW, so I never experienced the badness of the intermediaries.
Having played three missions from the soviet campaign, I noticed that a "one man army" style of playing is no longer possible. Even on easy, if you go all-out guns blazing the enemy will reduce you to shreds in a few seconds.
In terms of AI, individual units behave like you would expect. They seek cover if under fire, run away or push forward if given ground. However, what's good on the micro scale gets worse on the macro scale. An enemy assault usually means spawning N tanks and N+10 infantry and give the "ONWARDS!" command. They don't coordinate their attack, don't give each other cover... but then again, I can't remember a game which did that.
Physics system is as impressive as ever. There are a few quirks here and there (like a bouncy lamp post) but it doesn't happen very often. I absolutely love how fired munitions bounce off the armor with loads of sparks.
Scale is nice - second soviet mission gives you something like 150-200 troops under your command. And while it isn't that difficult to handle big numbers of units, they could have done better. The group system for example: if you select say 10 soldiers, a group is automatically formed and a commander elected. However, if you don't save that group (the usual shift+1-0 system, which makes it a bit redundant if you have more than 10 squads), the moment you select a single soldier of that group, he is removed from the squad. And you can't select the squad by clicking on the squad icon on the map (there is a small menu with squads listed on the left, but it doesn't help you much).
Graphics is... well, to be honest, apart from higher resolution textures, some more polys on models and additional default lighting stuff that even Mount & Blade has, MoW feels almost exactly like Soldiers: Ho2WW. Which is good, because the game is good looking (at least to me) while running smooth on my obsolete Ahtlon XP2000+. No SSE2 bullshit means people with weaker systems can play it too.
To sum it up, I really liked this game. It has its quirks (micromanaging the inventory in anything bigger than a two man squad can drive you nuts), but its the only game which lets you take direct control of a T-34 and just blow shit up. For fun. If you don't mind it being essentially a patched expansion pack for Soldiers: Ho2WW, then you will be satisfied.
Tolya wrote:Scale is nice - second soviet mission gives you something like 150-200 troops under your command. And while it isn't that difficult to handle big numbers of units, they could have done better. The group system for example: if you select say 10 soldiers, a group is automatically formed and a commander elected. However, if you don't save that group (the usual shift+1-0 system, which makes it a bit redundant if you have more than 10 squads), the moment you select a single soldier of that group, he is removed from the squad. And you can't select the squad by clicking on the squad icon on the map (there is a small menu with squads listed on the left, but it doesn't help you much).
This can be remedied by changing to the alternate selection system in the game options. It has its own irritations, but on the whole I find it less annoying than auto-grouping.
Agitated asshole | (Ex)40K Nut | Metalhead The vision never dies; life's a never-ending wheel
1337 posts as of 16:34 GMT-7 June 2nd, 2003
"'He or she' is an agenderphobic microaggression, Sharon. You are a bigot." ― Randy Marsh
Brother-Captain Gaius wrote:This can be remedied by changing to the alternate selection system in the game options. It has its own irritations, but on th whole I find it less annoying than auto-grouping.
Auto-grouping isnt bad in itself, but it would be nice if there be a way to lock the groups. This way you could assign sections or even platoons and then just click on them instead of having to manually select each soldier, browse through the squad menu, or assign a key number.
I mean, it is useful to select one soldier at a time sometimes, but the cover system is done nicely enough so you can position your squad behind a fence or some other cover with relative ease.
I gave the multiplayer a go, and I find it a bit frustrating in some respects. The combat seems even more deadly than in SP. It basically seems that 80% of tank combat is decided by the first shot, which if it hits, is instantly fatal. So you need to have some expendabl infantry scouting for your expensive tank so you get the first shot in. However infantry are utterly useless against tanks due to the 9 metre range of AT grenades and the fact that one of a tanks typical 3 HMGs can mow down a whole squad before they go even the length of the squad formation, and that the AI reactions of your men are very good so upon spotting they will also be firing. So your scouts will be dead before you can blink. Then AT guns are very easy to conceal, so advancing with a tank is basically a no go if the enemy has any time to set up. In fact AT guns seem to have *better* survivability than most tanks.
The team that gets itself in position and gets its artillery up and running behind a screen of infantry and AT guns is going to paste the other one, as with reasonably arrayed defences any exploratory forces will be decimated before they get a look at the positions, and as artillery is revealed on firing if a team has an initial advantage, then CB fire will take out the weaker teams artillery forces before they can inflict significant casualties.
Or perhaps I've only played badly and with retards. I felt CoH managed to have the bulk properties you wanted (although certainly with less detail) and make the whole experience more flowing and gave you better control over what actually happened. I'll give it more time, as it does have a certain charm in the chaos, which should decrease with a bit more play I suppose.
Apparently nobody can see you without a signature.
AT guns are useful early to mid-game, but at late-game levels they're totally inadequate. The really heavy guns aren't available outside of SPGs, so for simple guns you're limited to 75-76mm or so. Heavy tanks just absolutely roll over them.
The game settings also play a huge factor. They can be customized pretty heavily, so in one game it might be feasible to pop out Tigers and Panthers like candy, whereas in another it can require a lot of waiting and care just to get a PzIII-J. Needless to say, this has a huge effect on the dominant tactics and the flow of the game.
Also, I find armor invaluable. I almost always open with a Stuart or PzIII. Most people open with infantry units, and careful direct command of the tank will destroy them.
Agitated asshole | (Ex)40K Nut | Metalhead The vision never dies; life's a never-ending wheel
1337 posts as of 16:34 GMT-7 June 2nd, 2003
"'He or she' is an agenderphobic microaggression, Sharon. You are a bigot." ― Randy Marsh
I also find that early armour will effortlessly destroy peoples starting infantry. Also getting just one HMG or god forbid a flak autocannon and infantry are basically useless from then on, as either of them can destroy a whole squad at any range before the squad can move. I've been struggling to find a game where I dont get at least 1 person dropping out during loading or being colossally retarded, so having the balance thrown like that will colour my impressions.
I've found that the AT guns can remain effective against all the tanks. Just plonking one in a bush off to the side ensures that you get a shot at the side/rear of the turret, and then 75% of the time they'll disable the tank on their first shot. Costing 1/10 what a heavy tank does helps make it feasible too.
Had a funny game where the other side had managed to get about 8 indirect fire units clustered together behind strong defences and were proceeding paste my side with nothing we could really do about it. Until the Katyusha came unlocked, and then a full salvo pasted their whole tightly packed force. Then came some hilarious whining about how it was unfair to use Katyusha, but of course perfectly reasonable for them to use 8 artillery units we had no hope of otherwise reaching!
Apparently nobody can see you without a signature.
I've sat in a real life T-34 a few times and I noticed that it's not easy to aim with the HMG's. Both at the hull and the coaxial in the turret. You just can't see anything. Plus anyone who has ever fired ANYTHING that recoils from a moving vehicle will know that you are unlikely to hit anything smaller than a barn. And in a offroad environment it would be plain impossible to hit make your target selection more complicated than "sky-ground".
I never operated anything in a moving tank, but I imagine that if all WW2 had to stop to accurately fire (no barrel stabilisation) their main gun, why is the HMG accurate all the time?
Part of this unbalance is also caused by crappy AI. The first natural response (or so I imagine) to an assaulting tank is to 1) get the hell out of it's way 2) find cover. And those idiots just come at you like xenos.
).
