I&A 4 Beta Test Feedback

[Admiralbumfluff]

Yeah

would be nice if you would stop locking down EVERYTHING.

why remove the spar from the loadouts ? why lock down equipment based on its color (aka titan launchers)

Also for basic equipment. buying it ?? do you see the army buying the weapons they use themselves ?

I'm not sure why Ahoy has suddenly turned into something run by control freaks but its getting annoying having to change my loadouts every damn week.

 

moreover WHY are you locking down all that stuff ? no reason to and all it is doing is reducing player choice. not exactly a winning strat IMO

[Aegis_RVIR]

So, played a bit and here is my current verdict:

+ Driving to the AO is now viable and the assets to run anything else than AT Titan swarm are present

+ New base with shiny paint, nice and compact with a lack of trees in the surrounding area

+ Ability to buy certain things like recon and resupplies in the field is pretty logical and extremely handy

= Not sure about this, but I fear that trolls would spam buy unarmed prowlers to fill up the area (timer included? IDK)

= Blackfish respawn timer feels too long

- Currently, CAS just rolls over anything and everything if the people in there are half decent leaving little for the people on the ground. Perhaps chance the armament to specifically dealing with armoured targets for CAS (instead of the tactical nuke carpet bombing) and the AA for.... AA.

- Very little choice in regards to uniforms, very disappointing for someone who regularly does dress up with the squad.

- Why exactly does the gear section consist of 75% silencers?

- Panther is just as expensive as a Marshall and 500 points shy of a Cheetah whilst the power/importance of the vehicles are leagues apart (reduce price of Panther or replace with the ultility variant)

This is all I have for now, go ham Ryko

[Stanhope]

I've played for several hours today and yesterday so now might be a good time for me to write a bit of a longer post with suggestions.  But first some bug reports:

• Yesterday the kill HVT sub objective bugged out causing the AO to be hung up and a member of CS had to join to forcefully complete the mission.  After quickly glancing at that sub obj code an idea I have would be to additionally also work with a trigger with an alive check instead of just the eventhandler. 
• The UAV side mission bugged out today, for that I'd suggest to additionally add a trigger to check if the UAV is destroyed and fail the mission then.  I know the damage of the UAV is disabled but the alive command also returns false if the variable passed to it doesn't exist.  So if the UAV failed to spawn the mission will simply fail but the missions will keep spawning. 
• Parachutes are still being removed from paradropping players every so often
• On at least 2 occasions I've seen huron pilots try to life the huron crates at base but fail to do that.  I'm not sure if that's a bug or by design though.
• I saw several unassigned people outside of the spawn area.  Maybe add an additional thing to kill unassigned players if they exit the spawn trigger area? 

That's it for the bugs, now for some requests:

• Could Zeuses have the ability to force mute players for the entire server?  Say if someone keeps talking and talking in a channel he's not supposed to?  I've had at least one occasion in the last two days were such a feature would've been nice to have.  It's not something critical though.
• Could players have the ability to withdraw from a channel?  Like not wanting to be in command or air channel.  If voice alone could be disabled that'd be great but I don't know if that's possible.  It's rather annoying when you're talking in teamspeak and someone in command channel just keeps talking and talking.   Also not something critical.
• Could player choices, related to UI etc, be made persistent?  I'm mostly talking about the compass on top not being there, the crew names on the left, etc.  And this isn't something critical either.
• Could backpacks be locked by default?  Also just a nice to have, not critical.
• Could mortar tubes (not the bipods, only the tubes) be made available to helicopter pilots?  This would enable pilots to bring some tubes (aka ammo for the mortar) to the mortar gunner when he runs out of ammo.
• Could the respawn timer for the blackfish vehicle transport be reduced a bit?  It's not that powerful of an asset for it to have the respawn time it currently has (I believe somewhere north of 45 minutes right?)
• Rather technical but could it be made that as long as a unit has the name "error no unit" he can't actually pick a slot?

And finally some general observations:

• I was flying talon for a good 5 hours today and in that time there were exactly 2 enemy jets, both neoprons.  There were also a handful of orcas, not more than 5 if I recall correctly.  Could that be increased a little bit?  And, if not already the case, could the enemy also spawn shikras, kajmans and xi'ans as close air support for them?  I know the xi'an is already used to deploy enemy reinforcements.
• During this time I spend in talon I only encountered 2 tigris' (tigrisses/tigri/...?).  Meaning that in all other AOs I had free reign to provide CAS as I pleased.  Meaning I could stay in that jet for 5 hours while doing multiple low level flyovers over the AO.  I think it might be best to spawn at least 1 tigris with every AO.  This to make providing cas more difficult and compared to an MBT or an IFV they don't pose about the same danger to infantry. 
• The small diameter bombs are very very powerful.  You only need 1 to kill any vehicle, including MBTs.  They do not require a laser, they will guide themselves to any target you lock them onto.  And there's 4 of them on one pylon, meaning the wasp can carry 8 of them.  Which means the wasp can kill 8 vehicles very very easily without needing any assistance from ground units. 
• I don't mind the suppressors being rewards honestly.  Not a single army issues suppressors to all its infantry.  A bipod by default for ARs, marksmen and snipers would make sense I'd say but I believe at least the ARs already have one by default? 

That's all I can think of right now.  But I would like to end with:  I think this mission is way better than I&A 3 and all the above are minor things that I personally feel could be slightly improved with some of the suggestions I made.  I don't think there's anything game-breakingly bugged/wrong/bad/... in the mission.

[kman]

buying of reward vehicles has one huge flaw: you cant lock it for you in the base after its spawned.

 

I buy vehicle, get in , go to resuplly crate and there while resuplying someone steals it

 

happened to me TWICE in 5 minutes..

 

For some reason, ability to lock the vehicle only appears after some ammout of time, not sure how it works

[Ryko]

Yep, should have thought of that, though I'm not sure of the solution. My intent was to prevent griefing by players, locking assets in base. Your thoughts on this are appreciated, I can think of worse situations. 

1. Player locks vehicle that's sitting on a service pad. 

2. Player locks vehicle parked on runway. 

In both cases, leaving the vehicle results in a griefing situation. 

[kman]

so is it working only when you leave some radius from base?

[Ryko]

13 minutes ago, kman said:

so is it working only when you leave some radius from base?

Yes, this is how it works - the lock option will appear when you are 400m away from the player spawn zone.

[Stanhope]

40 minutes ago, Ryko said:

Yes, this is how it works - the lock option will appear when you are 400m away from the player spawn zone.

(But if you drive back into base it stays locked)

 

More playing and remembered more things I wanted to say but hadn't written down so didn't say:

First some more bug reports:

• AAF helis (spawned by zeus) couldn't be repaired on the service pad.  (Already reported to Ryko I think but I'm putting it here again just to be sure).
• Someone reported that they bought a rifle but that it didn't show up in their arsenal and that he also wasn't able to re-buy it.  I didn't test myself though.
• @MidnightRunner told me that the reinforcement xi'ans sometimes spawn at 0,0
• I joined the gambler group as commander and correctly got the 'TL' assigned to me.  Then a driver joined and I was still considered TL.  But when a gunner joined (who is a corporal, while the commander is a sergeant) the TL role was assigned to him.  This happened twice with different people joining as gunner.

And some general impressions/suggestions

• Today, on multiple occasions, a player in the crossroads slot said "reaper, viper, talon, shelldrake, you're all free to engage any enemy you see (and in shelldrake's case he was allowed to indiscriminatingly fire on the AO).  From what I understand this is technically in accordance to the rules but probably not wanted behaviour.  So when specific rules are made for I&A 4 could the phrasing for cas assets engaging be something along the lines of "as a support asset you have to be called in on a specific target by an infantry man who is in the vicinity, or that has eyes on, said target"?
• Would it be possible to have a laser designator, mounted on any APC or above (that doesn't have one yet), as a purchasable reward?  I'm specifically thinking of the marshall and the panthers that cannot engage enemy armour themselves but would then be able to lase it for CAS.

[Lindi]

2 hours ago, Stanhope said:

• Today, on multiple occasions, a player in the crossroads slot said "reaper, viper, talon, shelldrake, you're all free to engage any enemy you see (and in shelldrake's case he was allowed to indiscriminatingly fire on the AO).  From what I understand this is technically in accordance to the rules but probably not wanted behaviour.  So when specific rules are made for I&A 4 could the phrasing for cas assets engaging be something along the lines of "as a support asset you have to be called in on a specific target by an infantry man who is in the vicinity, or that has eyes on, said target"?

 

I've noticed this as well, technically by the book but will result in situations where the CAS assets and mortar are give a little too much freedom, leaving infantry running doing searching for stray units in an otherwise empty AO. I.e a lot of tedious running with very little actual shooting and action.  I guess the counter argument is, it's called in and could be considered realistic even.

[kman]

It's illusion if you think people in general will respect the "do not fire unless asked".

 

You either have to remove shelldrake completely, or somehow limit their ammunition in such a way, that even loading truck of spare tubes will not let them fire too freely.

 

I never played it so - how much shells does one "tube" give before you need to replace it?

 

[Stanhope]

16 minutes ago, kman said:

It's illusion if you think people in general will respect the "do not fire unless asked".

That's why you have regulars on that remind people to do that.  And that's why you use "!Admin" when there are people engaging without being called in. 

16 minutes ago, kman said:

You either have to remove shelldrake completely, or somehow limit their ammunition in such a way, that even loading truck of spare tubes will not let them fire too freely. 

Shelldrake is far from the biggest issue in the people firing without permission issue. 

17 minutes ago, kman said:

I never played it so - how much shells does one "tube" give before you need to replace it?

3 or 4 8rnd 'mags' iirc

[Aegis_RVIR]

4 hours ago, kman said:

You either have to remove shelldrake completely, or somehow limit their ammunition in such a way, that even loading truck of spare tubes will not let them fire too freely.

 

I never played it so - how much shells does one "tube" give before you need to replace it?

 

Or they grab an HEMMT ammo for infinite ammo

[Ryko]

Well, I do wonder if the role is perhaps a bit too powerful for EU1? There is an artillery reward that's perhaps a bit more reliable and strategic.

 

I see a couple of issues with Shelldrake:

 

1. Players who go into the mortar role with no experience, so you have to talk them through the whole thing of getting the backpacks, etc.

2. Players who take the role, continually ask other groups if they need support and don't get any response because the groups in the field don't want it

3. Players who take the role and launch all their shells into the AO without permission.

 

Much like the UAV role, I believe the Shelldrake role also doesn't generate reward points for kills.

 

I am very on the fence about keeping Shelldrake in general EU1 pub play, I don't think I have really seen a situation where they were used effectively.

[WinterMute]

When reviving people, the animation can cause your point of aim to move over whoever you are reviving. This can result in you triggering other "space bar" events.

 

Which is how I as a grenadier lost my grenade launcher without realising. I was reviving someone who was lying on the (unreviveable) corpse of another player. I saw the rifle-logo while holding space bar and thought "oh!" but after reviving I had a very pressing issue to deal with (a few shooty bois) and got distracted.

 

20 minutes later I went to switch to grenade launcher... doh.

 

Adding to the Shelldrake debate: I have seen them used effectively once. Jin87 had taken on squad lead, there was some amazing teamwork going on, and he was getting Shelldrake to drop smokes to shield us from view, rather than as offensive weapons. I'm not sure if this occasion justifies keeping them - it was the perfect storm that you rarely see on a public server ever.

[Ryko]

5 minutes ago, WinterMute said:

When reviving people, the animation can cause your point of aim to move over whoever you are reviving. This can result in you triggering other "space bar" events.

Unfortunately I have to put this into the "blame Bohemia" category, as that's how they've decided to engineer the holdAction. Technically, I think as long as you're pressing space bar on the "holdAction" you shouldn't trigger any other actions (you'd have to stop reviving, and then hit another action). At least, that's how it's supposed to work.

 

I should add smoke arty shells as a purchasable reward.

[WinterMute]

I might have been struggling desperately to find the exact magic angle to get the "revive" trigger, and done the swap in that process ("I've got it! Oh, I don't have it") rather than during the animation, actually. That sounds more like it, what with the insane hitboxes for certain actions on things like vehicles etc...

[Stanhope]

As I said earlier, shelldrake is a very very minor issue in the problem of people firing without being called in.  The incompetent players can't even get a mortar set up, the competent players usually know the rules.  Which only leaves very few players that can both get their mortar set up and don't know the rules.  And it doesn't take long before one of the regulars will be explaining to that mortar guy that he can't do that.

And if it doesn't give any points, we could just add that to the role description and allow people to chose whether or not they want to play as shelldrake. 

[kman]

 

Your typical early afternoon on EU1

3 infanry (one of them Sniper)

3 vortex

2 VIPER

Reaper, Talon and Shelldrake

 

[kman]

so just to illustrate, we just had TALON destroying most of the enemy in new AO. i tried to notice them, and got bashed back:

 

 

wee, we can put macers on pilons, so why not bomb it all..

 

He is talking from Vortex 3 because 20 second earlier he lost TALON to AA after a gound attack run..

 

PS: this is not solvable by reminding random people who join open server, this must be checked in the way system works in its basic

 

 

[kman]

my god

[Ryko]

Well, I could set it up so that Talon can't mount air-to-ground ordinance, I was kind of hoping to not have to go into that level of detail, but perhaps it's necessary.

But I think the point you're trying to make is correct, it's not about the assets, it's about the players and how they use them.  No amount of code can fix that.

[WinterMute]

Would it be possible to buff enemy AA abilities when the ratio of pilots:infantry gets too high?

 

Either increasing the rate of "Anti-Air (Goalkeeper)" objectives, or spawning a few more AA-infantry/static launchers?

 

It sounds like you don't want to neuter the abilities of Talon etc... but it could encourage them to work with infantry, if they are unable to knock out an AO without significant risk to their (limited availability, iirc?) jet.

[Lindi]

26 minutes ago, WinterMute said:

Would it be possible to buff enemy AA abilities when the ratio of pilots:infantry gets too high?

 

Either increasing the rate of "Anti-Air (Goalkeeper)" objectives, or spawning a few more AA-infantry/static launchers?

 

It sounds like you don't want to neuter the abilities of Talon etc... but it could encourage them to work with infantry, if they are unable to knock out an AO without significant risk to their (limited availability, iirc?) jet.

 

@Ryko - Is the dynamic squad layout still a thing, limiting number and types of squads according to player numbers? I feel for example that Vortex-1 is enough with say ~10 players. Vortex-2 would activate at say ~25 players... CAS/CAP assets would become available somewhere around ~35-40 players?

[Mad Eye Moody]

If you're looking for the awe (eu3) server, it is currently offline. 

I was looking for the I&A EU4 server.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Stanhope]

@kman as you appear so bothered by it, did you submit a player report?  As it's clearly rule breaking. 

 

And I like what Lindi suggested, we had it on stiletto to stop people from taking certain roles even though I'd say that the average player on AWE could be expected to follow the rules better than the average player on EU1.  So it only makes sense that we also have it on EU1.