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Everything posted by budgie
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There seems to be a bug on this map. Occasionally I get a graphics breakup with a kaleidescope of colours cutting up the screen and it only ever happens at the warehouses - especially near the old farmouse at the western edge. A high end system helps but I have a feeling its more of a driver/config problem. Anyway since it rarely happens I haven't done anything about it. Download the 'Reality' mod (not 'Realism') and you'll get better weapons. Now all rifles are more accurate and do similar damage. Dunno if it's made the Kalashnikovs wear out more slowly but they certainly are less accurate than say, the SIG 550. Also you can get into the Config folder and play with stuff. I'm playing through again as a pure adventurer trying to get rich off the zone. Because the difference in weapon damage with this mod is not so great, I've brought down the prices of most guns and armour, using the ubiquitous AK74 as a benchmark and basing them on availability, quality and accuracy from there. I've also lowered the price of ammo and grenades to reflect availability. I've raised the price of artifacts (around X3) to make them more tradeable and reduced the weight of food, medkits, bandages and antirad drugs. All this makes more sense to me - why would stalkers risk their lives in the zone for so little profit? Still need a good pair of wire cutters though...
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I have both XP Home and Professional installed but never use Home. However when the computer boots up it chooses Home as the default OS. The only way to stop it is to be there to manually override but that means I can't just switch it on and go make a coffee in the morning. How do I set Professional as the default OS?
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Because the Zone has been ddivided up into small portions separated by fences and loading screens, we don't really need cars. What I'd like to see is the zone opened up (wire cutters please!) and then vehicles would become important to travel the country roads between areas. Looking on the map the eight or ten areas available are only a small portion separated by large tracts of unexplored wildderness. That's where I want to go.
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I'm playing through for the third time (some new mods wiped my saves). Still crazy about the zone. For all its faults, the Stalker world is a deep and involving sandbox. I sure hope some expansions come out that add more adventures and open up more areas to explore. Things I'd like to see: More settlements - proper shanty towns on the fringes with a wider variety of NPC and traders. Inns and taverns please. And chicks... More beasties - Why not? Free roaming between zones would be awesome - Some checkpoints are necessary but I'd like to be able to go cross country from one settlement to the next. Transport - wouldn't it be cool to have jeeps, quadbikes, horses and other cross country vehicles? More factions - a deeper exploration of the lore and ways to play one side off against another. Perhaps even working for the military on some missions. More loot - artifacts, weapons and other tradeable goods. A stalker is in it for the money and the ho's after all. Sensible human AI - why does every bandit fight to the death? Some areas of the map look like massacres have taken place with the bodies I and other stalkers have left piling up for days. I think some faction types should retreat when suitably overwhelmed, i.e when say 70% of their buddies have been killed.
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Hey guys I dunno where to go so I'll throw this one out there. I had the PC shop make an Athlon dual core system for me with two 7800s in SLI mode a year ago. The problem is they don't seem to work together too well: with Oblivion the game tends to CTD quite a lot and in STALKER and COD2 I get a weird green 'health bar' down the left hand side of the screen which detracts from the experience. Brothers in Arms-EIB and some of the recent demos I've played are fine however. Now I get pretty good framerates on both Oblivion and STALKER on max settings when I set the PC to just one card running, but my system is hardly future-proof unless I can either trust both cards or get a new high-ender. Is this because these games may not be optimised for SLI? Should I be worried about graphical beauties such as Two Worlds and Age of Conan or GRAW2 that are on the horizon?
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When you think of the big open spaces and lush environmental graphics in STALKER (not to mention great animations and hi-res mutants) the system you're using is middle-range. I have an Athlon 64x2 and 7800GTS 512MB card (a pair of them if I can get SLI to work) and still get the occasional lag. Try what I suggested - download the ultra graphics mod because that optimises framerates for you, then turn down some of the settings from there: Things like full dynamic lighting and high quality shadows don't add much to the experience but are the biggest system hogs. If you're willing to compromise there you can still get nice textures of the Oblivion variety - that is a slighlty painted, cartoonish look, but still very, very good.
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I didn't have this problem but then I'm running a high-end system. I did however find it doesn't garee with my SLI setup but I can still get good framerates with everything on high when I run it with just one card (GeForce 7800 gts). You may want to check the gamespot STALKER page for the downloadable Ultra Graphics mod: that optimises framerates and adds neat effects like bloom (if you're a fan of bloom - I'm not). You could say, install the mod then turn down some settings and see what you get. Other mods: Reality and Detection. These I found on the UK PCG disk. Reality makes the weapons and damage better and Detection removes some of the ESP the troops seem to have. There's also a Realism mod floating out there that alters a lot of things including the economic model but I found it too challenging to be honest. Good luck with the graphics fix - let me know how it works.
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It is, but remember Bethesda have a decade more experience in this sort of thing and they know how to produce a polished RPG. You could try FEAR but apart from a few graphical features it is still a typocal FPS. STALKER is something different if not quite a modernised Oblivion. And the gritty gameworld beats the tar out of even HL2. Screw the little grey men or whatever - this messed up world is OUR doing. That said, BethSoft are reported to be making a fisrt-person RPG set in the Fallout world (check the latest UK PC Gamer). Post apocalyptic setting in an open-ended RPG? Enough to make me want a leather suit.
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I always write my new game reviews about a third or halfway thru a game because I'm still fresh and high and because I don't want to give away any spoilers by mistake. That said, I've now finished STALKER and I must say for all its merits, the ending kind of rushes up on you. I wasn't aware I was in the final stages of the game when they sent me to the reactor core and then the story was suddenly trying to wrap itself up before I'd even taken much interest in it. Because of this there are a couple of glaring omissions in the questlines: for example, I was unaware that I had to fetch a couple of items that might see me through to one of the multiple endings until it was too late to go back and get them. The last couple of hours in the game seem terribly rushed and for such a hitherto open-ended experience, stricly on the rails: it falls back on some old FPS cliches that were refreshingly absent for most of the game. Disappointing. In that sense it is this year's Far Cry. However if you delay main questlines (and first you have to identify them) until the last possible moment then there is still a lot of open-ended enjoyment to be had. I love the dark gameworld and the interesting little side quests so I've started over and I'm concentrating on those. In future, modders or an expansion may offer better questing as well as more regions to explore (perhaps even removing some of the artificial borders that interrupt the game with loading screens). Till then you may want to hold on to your dollars. I still love it, but no game is perfect.
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A Big Big Game Ever wonder what Oblivion would be like with guns? Wandering the countryside, blasting away at those pesky goblins and boars with your AK, showing everyone who Daddy is. Well, STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl certainly offers a large countryside to play in and plenty of goblins and wild pigs (by any other name) and yes, a vast arsenal of modern assault weapon s, but it is somewhat less than Oblivion with Guns, TM. and often a good deal more. It took over four years to make this game and in many ways it shows. In other ways, you're left wishing they'd waited another six months just to see the vision fully realised. Firstly, what it is not. This game is not a regular shooter although it is classed among shooters for the basest of reasons - the reliance on firearms to solve conflicts. This game is not a Half-Life clone, though the temptation to compare it to the game-geeks’ ultimate shooter has claimed many a a reviewer before me. Unfortunately nor is it the massive free-roaming experience that the developers first promised all those years ago. What we have is a 'fairly free roaming' collection of districts (or levels as the game calls them): interconnected and persistent but requiring loading screens between, you’re free to move about from one to the other in no particular order. But what a sight these zones are to behold. The next nearest competitor in the 'most beautiful world' category, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, is an idealized version of reality, where every sunset is dazzling and forested hills and vales are postcards in themselves. It may not be be as pretty, but STALKER's world is reality - the stark and barren countryside around the Chernobyl nuclear power station, dotted with abandoned towns and rusted railyards, dilapidated playgrounds and empty military bases. The grass is brown and withered, the trees weak and twisted. The sky is bleak and the weather fowl. Below ground the darkened labs and bunkers of the old soviet regime are eerie and dark, with rusty spigots and broken pipes all lovingly crafted and looking like real rusty pipes should. It’s ugly as hell but you'll love it because nothing on the market today looks more authentic. The developers pulled their own snapshots from a tour of the Ukranian wastes and reproduced them for us so we wouldn't have to go and get irradiated just to see it (they have pics on their site). Outdoors the eerie sound of distand ‘wildlife’ makes you pan your rifle around anxiously: in the dark confines of a dilapidated missile silo that clang of a metal item or the heavy breathing noise will make you jump out of your seat. Any kid who's played Star Wars on an abandoned building site or in neglected abbatoir will feel right at home. This game is looks so real you could touch it. The only thing lacking is the ability to move about without the loading screens but this is probably a device to rein in the awesomely competitive ambient AI. Monster’s Ball What's this you say?Ambient AI in a shooter? I've already told you - this is no shooter. What it has are monsters and lots of them. We're all familiar with the terrible accident and the Chernobyl nuclear reactor two decades ago. While the environmental damage to the rest of Europe is mostly over, the area of Ukraine around the plant is still uninhabited. In game lore a second explosion brought on by careless scientists investigating the scene gives rise to a new ecology and causes the military to cordon off thirty square kilometers of countryside around the site. In STALKER's Chernobyl exclusion zone, irradiated anomalies dot the lanscape, causing dangerous boobytraps for the unititiated: fireballs will scorch the unwary wanderer; vortexes will thow you around like a ragdoll; radioactive hotspots will choke you with cancerous fallout. Welcome to the world of Chernobyl - you are not alone. You’ll share this world with a gallery of mutated lifeforms. Hairless blind mutts hunt in packs while competing for turf space with hefty mutant boars and ghastly shades of men: alongside the requisite zombies there are psionic mutants, grovelling scavenger-predators and the terrifying vampiric bloodsuckers. Yet unlike the much maligned wildlife in RPGs such as Morrowind, not every creature is after your blood. Hounds and boars are territorial and won’t bother you if you keep your distance. Not every armed human is a threat and some are just pointing their weapon at you to make you lower yours – don’t be too quick to pull the trigger. Sometimes you’ll run into bandits and soldiers or faction guards fighting one another, sometimes you’ll be at just the right place and time to rescue a wandering stalker from a pack of what can only be described as giant wolverines. Sometimes you’ll see the pigs chasing the dogs around. The developers put a lot of work into a form of self-motivated AI, but like Bethesda, GSC have found it easier said than done. Oblivion’s solution was to tone it down and fall back onto the tried and true method of careful scripting; in STALKER, the loading zones seem to be created to stop the AI wandering off their respective reservations and causing an all out war between NPC factions and creature species. While these species can all be blasted away with a few rounds from the shotgun, don’t expect them to make it easy. The grovelling Snorks leap and dodge around you, lashing out at blind spots with vicious claws, while the bloodsuckers switch to a Predator-like invisible mode as they close in for the kill. Two or three of the pack dogs can be scared away with a stray shot (they literally tuck tail and run!) but half a dozen of them seem to find a bit more courage and force you to fight. Human opponents will duck behind cover and take careful aim; they’ll run if they see a grenade at their feet in time to react. And even though your principal means of dispatching these men and monsters will be with guns and grenades, make no mistake - they are monsters in the traditional sense; the abandoned labs and bunkers they occupy are dungeons in all but name. Sorry 'Leet' kids, you're in an RPG. Frontiers and Factions And what would an RPG be without people? Despite its dangers, the Chernobyl exclusion zone attracts a rogues gallery of, well rogues. Principally are the eponymous ‘Stalkers’ – adventurers who’ve come seeking riches and reward on the fringes of civilisation. Also there are scientists who seek to collect radioactive ‘artifacts’. You’ll often end up fighting off marauding bandits in the earlier levels. But there are organised factions too: the armed forces are trying to keep a lid on the mess that the region has become; the Duty faction, who seek to eradicate mutated beasts from the world; the Freedom faction who aim to contain yet protect the new ecology with the Exclusion Zone and the cult-like Monolith faction who seek answers deep in the most irradiated badlands nearer the site of the reactor meltdown. Which side do you sympathise with? You’ll probably have to create your own motivation to go so far as to favour a faction: I found from the outset the most sensible route is to play them off and maximise my own personal gain. Play them off with what? The prize for most people venturing into the Zone would be the artifacts – radioactive stones, and metals and mutated plant forms that afford various buffs and penalties. These items can be traded for rubles, weapons, antiradiation medecines and even food – yes, you have to eat or you’ll get puffed a lot quicker while trying to outrun those mutant vampires. Cash seems to come as an easy reward for most missions but by the tenth hopur or so you'll have more than you can spend and most goodies will be gotten by looting. While none has a particularly deep back story or fleshed out motivation the way we expect characters in traditional RPGs to, these people provide you with a moral scale against which to judge your actions. You can be friends or enemies with anyone. Some wandering stalker in the wilds could be an excellent source of information after a friendly chat; a trading partner willing to buy some of the junk you’ve found or sell you a spare medkit, the beginning of a new ‘mission’ (read: side-quest) or a hapless victim lying face down on an overgrown path because you wanted his fancy weapon. Kill a man with no witnesses and you’ll get away scott-free; kill a quest giver and the story simply branches out to plan B. Kill a faction member in the presence of others and they’ll come down on you like a ton of bricks but these people non’t have ESP: if nobody sees or hears it, they won’t treat you any differently. That’s no excuse to become a serial killer however. The best RPGs don’t judge you for (im)moral decisions but let you work out your own comfort zone. The RP stands for Role Playing, so you can decide whether to be a sinner or a saint and how much of either and judge yourself by the quality of the gaming experience and the in-game outcomes. You don’t need a chart to tell you whether you are good or evil, lawful or chaotic. Just how much room there is for skullduggery is illustrated by a wonderful little side quest. The PDA map showed a section called Army Warehouses - an excellent source of loot I decided to go and examine. Along the way I encountered a group from one faction about to attack the army base, which was held by a rival faction. The leader offered me money to take out the sniper in the guard tower so his men could commence their attack. As I approached the base I thought ‘screw this, I came here to steal stuff not get inn the middle of a turf war’ so I proceeded to the head of the faction holding the base to see if he had any work for me that could be rewarded with a nice grenade launcher or something. The dialogue box gave me the option of ratting out the guys who were about to attack but I decided I didn’t want such enemies and kept my mouth shut. Just then, the attack started anyway and I heard men running around, shouting over gunfire outside. Sensing opportunity I realised that the guys attacking probably wouldn’t get far since I hadn’t killed the sniper, and I went over to the scene of the fight to loot their dead bodies. Then I returned to rat out the guys that had attacked the base (after all they were already dead) and was rewarded with a couple of jobs and some cash and more loot from the faction holding the base. A profitable little afternoon, no blood spilled (by me) and no enemies made. The only notable absence is of women – there are exactly none in the game. While it makes sense that a dangerous, radiactive frontier is no place for a woman surely there’d be a few plucky ladies locking, loading and seeking their fortunes in a biosuit; and in the safe towns and settlements held by this faction or that it would add colour to have a few wild-west style working girls at the bar or grubby children running about the overgrown streets. Those poor STALKERS must get lonely without any chicks around, perhaps that's why they turn to Vodka. The Hardware Store Of course the one thing most games have in common is conflict and it is here that the line between shooter and RPG gets blurry. It may not be Counter Strike but the arsenal is droolworthy. Yes some weapons are more powerful than others but you’ll find yourself choosing those that best suit your style of play over those that deal out the ost damage every time. A shotgun has shorter range but heavy damage close up, while a sawn-off shotgun handles better and aims faster. You can choose between different ammo types and attachments as well for s slightly different experience but in the end the choice boils down to that old RPG staple – what works best for me and what can I afford? A Red Army surplus AKS74 carbine is your rusty old shortsword: an excellent choice for a beginner but you’ll want something better after the first few quests. In later stages, a G36 with scope and grenade launcher, firing armour-piercing rounds is akin to your Two-Handed Blade of Redemption +5. There’s no licensing so only the ubiquitous Kalashnikovs are aptly named. The Western weapons such as Armalites and H&Ks are easily recognizable but called something else. You can get sniper rifles and rocket launchers and close-range machine pistols but in the end you can only carry so much because you’re affected by the weight in your backpack. Food, ammunition, weapons and medicine will all conspire against you having everything you want. Carry a little too much and you’ll run out of breath after running a few yards. Carry way too much and you cannot move until you offload some of it. I find myself working with a primary assault weapon (hand carried), a shotgun for backup (backstrap?), a silenced pistol (chest rig?), a .45 (leg holster?) and a few grenades (on the belt?) – a lot of gear but not more than one grown man can carry if it’s evenly distributed around the body. Remember you have to make room for all the bullets, food and artifacts . Aaah yes, the artifacts. Another RPG staple – magic items that afford you various bonuses and penalties. There was a time that radiation was harmful to people but I guess recent events at Chernobyl have changed this. Some of these items will lessen the effects of radiation, others will give protection against bullet impacts or melee attacks, others will increase your speed or health for a limited time. If you don’t want them they can be sold for cash. Almost all have some kind of penalty however which makes you careful which you’ll use. One ghastly little type of thorn must be stuck into the body providing radiation protection at earlier levels but causing increased bleeding when wounded. The best solution later in the game is to get effective antiradiation suits and body armour. Armour, like firearms comes in the basic to advanced variety. You’ll start with little more than a leather jacket offering the basest protection from dog bites and pistol fire from out of range and move all the way up to full protective body armour with built in environment suit and respirator. Remember by the end of the game you’ll have to penetrate the doomed reactor itself and you’ll need to wrap up tight. This armour is not just your run of the mill protective buff given by FPS games as you advance through the levels. Your basic leather jacket is a scavenged piece of detritus and the armoured environment suit is the paladin’s magical breastblate. However don’t think you have to pay your dues as you would in a shooter. Again showing its RPG side, STALKER rewards inquistiveness: poking around ruins, completing side quests and looting bodies can net you some pretty cool gear early on in the game. The MacGuffin So how to they tie all this together? With a story and a few cutscenes as usual. You wake up amnesiac, nameless and lost, having survived a truck crash on the fringes of the Zone that killed the military convoy you’d been prisoner to. You only know that you must find a man named Strelok and somehow get to know who you are. You carry a mark, a tattoo that needs some explaining and the answer lies to the north at the heart of the blighted Exclusion Zone where evil is afoot. It’s the usual guff – you’re going to Mordor. Hokey fantasy staples aside there are the usual subplots and side quests (clear the bloodsuckers from this village, fetch the artifact from that lab) and the cutscenes appear as visions when you collapse at crucial moments in the main questline. I haven’t finished it yet and while I’m not wowed by the overall premise I’m at least curious enough to want to know if my suspicions about this Strelok guy will be confirmed. More engaging is the colorful back story based on a series of popular Russian pulp-fiction books. The reactor suffered a second explosion and mutant lifeforms have thrived in the abandoned farms and towns around the region: adventurers, rogues and cults have flocked to the area. The Reactor is at the center of the drama. The title says it all: Shadow of Chernobyl – in this ruined land the feeling that something dark and evil is close is always present and just as in the hearts and minds of people in the region, the doomed reactor looms large over the proceedings like a dark god. It’s this game’s Mount Doom. And like Tolkein’s little heroes you’ll dread going there. Oblivion’s world looks like a nice place to live, this does not. Stalker pulls you in by making you think, “God this place is ghastly, I just want to get the job done and get out of hereâ€. Don’t worry though, that won’t be enough to make you rush through it. STALKER is a big, big game to begin with.
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Can anyone post a quickie review of the SP campaign? Releases are slow here in the UAE. Comments needed on: The 'non-linear' campaign - does it work? The enemy AI - sensible behaviour or uber killer bots? Friendlies - Useful squad members or tank-bait? Graphics - as dated as they look? Weapons - fair and balanced? Overall look and feel - worth the wait/money/my time? Best done from a [GR] gamers' perspective....is it worth it for people weaned on Rogue Spear and [GR]?
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Ooh, ooh, which girl...WHICH GIRL!??!!??
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Rocks my download is coming in corrupt from that link. Stops installation and gives me a message.
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I'm not a big fan of the subject matter to be honest: the first GR was a resurgent Russia - plausible if improbable; the next was a bordder war on the horn of Africa - check the news; the next was an imploding Cuba after Castro's death - again plausible even if the real future of Cuba is an unknown quantity. GR2 went to North Korea. Not an impossible scenario either. But then....Mexico? C'mon the border can be defended by a bunch of unemployed rednecks with shotguns...wait a minute, it is! Mexican insurgents? It's as silly as R63's Neo-Nazis. Give me Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Mindanao, a REAL front in the war on terror. Heck even a fictional (yet plausible) state like the one in Armed Assault. If the reviews state absolutely awesome gameplay I'll give it a go, but without an engaging SP campaign, I'm skeptical when it comes to a tactical sim. Here's hoping the gameplay footage I've seen is as good as it looks...
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I can't seem to get my registration validated at the official forums. Can anyone give me modding help? I'd like to change the squad loadouts in the SP game to make them a little more believable.
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After it's released, when will you be buying GRAW2?
budgie replied to rossiski's topic in GR:AW 2 (PC) - General Discussion
I'll wait for a review from Gamespot/UK PCG/US PCG or PC Zone. These are unbiased and, in the case of most major releases, within a few points of one another. If one of these sources says it's good enough for my money (and other details from the review/synopsis are attracive to me) then I'm on board. But I don't buy anything that hasn't been reviewed. -
LOL. As cold as it may sound the reason I build a lot of engineers in the first few minutes is that they're cheap and expendi[a?]ble. Basically I keep one or two teams for building and another two or three as flamethrower squads to keep taking, building on and holding points until A) they get relieved by proper infantry or MG squads or; B) they get killed. It's worth it for the early resource boost. War is hell....still, never mind eh?
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Guys thanks for all the sage advice. Yeah it's true the Shermans only worked in large numbers and that's how I use them. Also as a mobile field gun to hold defensive positions. Something Rocky said above struck me - that the enemy makes a plan and sticks to it. That helped a lot when I tried the same thing: wsing the small, but technically challening Vire River Valley, I experimented with putting all my eggs into one basket - first to gain an AT defence as soon as possible then an offensive tank capability. 1) After five minutes I held half the map up to the river - with the liberal use of engineer squads to fan out and take control points as soon as possible to give me resources 2) I immediately bypassed weapons support and so on in favour of building mechanised forces. After ten minutes I had a motor pool and four AT guns protecting my forward lines 3) After 14 minutes I had built my first tank and started moving these up to the front lines (So it can be done and I now see how the enemy have managed on so many occasions - you were right Rocky, it wasn't cheating) 4) Switching back to my own favoured tactics I destroyed both bridges before the enemy could use them and concentrated my defences on the ford in the center of the map - using all my AT guns, tanks, and MG nests all zeroed on the ford (and my sniper behind the tree trick) I effectively stopped all enemy assaults. They only took the nearest control point once and I quickly recovered it. At no time were my supply lines threatened - they couldn't get through. 5) Then trying the enemy tactics I decided to harrass the heck out of the enemy to stop them building any capability. Just as I complained they always use pioneers to steal points off me, I dropped several squads of paratroops, stealing this point and that before quickly moving to the next, constantly forcing the enemy to run around in my shadow retaking points and inevitably losing them again. The lack of costantly flowing resources (as opposed to my unbroken territory) must have seriously stumped the Axis capability because the best they could mount were a few infantry squads and the odd solo STUG IV tank - all of which ended up chasing my guys around their side of the river. I also bombed them frequently forcing them to divert resources into rebuilding projects. Within the hour the enemy was reduced to a small corner of the map with no incoming resources. It was an easy mop-up job after that. So, I'm pleased to report that much of my griping was for nothing. It can be done with the allies 'inferior' equipment. Next I'll try playing as Axis to learn more about their capabilities. In the meantime, I'm back in the game.
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Wow guys thanks for so much interest in my posts. Great tips too from you Rocky - maybe instead of grousing about the early tank rush I might watch a replay and learn how to do it myself. Also I didn't know about the axis AT gun's stealth mode - this might explain why they seem to always get the drop on my guns. Is that really fair, since the allies can't do the same? Yeah it was mostly the aesthetics that bugged me. While I'm glad to fortify a fuel or munitions point to maximise its output and defend it, I also find that there are too many generic strategic sectors in the game. Besides, all the enemy has to do is come and change the flags then leave; its a nuisance because when a sector is 'lost' in this way I have to divert resources (men or armor) from the fight to go and 'recover' it. In reality though the enemy haven't broken my supply lines at all because they've moved on and all I have to to is change the flag back. In that sense it seems a waste of time, but I can see how we could drive each other crazy doing this in multiplay. While I am enjoying the game it frustrates me because, again it seems so many of the reasons for its difficulty seem contrived, i.e. difficult for the sake of difficulty. But maybe you're right - over at the Relic forums they could possibly shed some light on the reasons behind the design decisions. Thanks again.
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I'll try a few online games then give you a shout Rocky. Y'know guys, I love this game but I'm having a few misgivings about the single player skirmish mode (andd indeed the Vanilla campaign that serves as a tutorial). 1) Anyone noticed how thethe Axis AT guns can see further than yours and shoot straighter? They also usually soak up more damage. Even when my boys capture an enemy gun and turn it on them they seem to have a limited line of sight. So often I find my gun crews under fire from outside the fog of war and they have to move their weapon closer to the enemy just to get a shot. It seems like a contrived advantage. 2) Ditto for the fact that unlike mortar teams and infantry squads, my gun crews and machine gun squads won't turn to face the nearest threat. A tank or a flamethrower squad flanks them and they just sit there and take it in the side. Why do I have to rush over the map and tell them to turn and engage the damned enemy? By the time I realise there's a problem in a different sector they've usually been wiped out by a two man flamethrower team. 2) And don't get me started on the flamethrower teams. Theirs seem to shoot further and do more damage than mine. Frequently they're able to close on a machine gun position or a rifle squad and engage them in open ground and wipe them out with just one flamer and an MP40. Gimme a break, that rifle squad with carbines, M1s and BARs would maul them before they made it halfway. My flamethrower squads on the other hand are great against those little unmanned observation posts when you need to sieze a point quickly: I wouldn't dare send the incompetent buffoons out against an armed opponent. 4) And while we're on the subject of observation posts, there's another contrivance for you. The whole Idea of these seemingly random points on a map serve to rob the game of sensible tactics and at the same time allow the enemy ample opportunities to harrass my 'supply lines'. I spend far too much time worring about capturing and holding what any commander in the field will tell you is a useless piece of ground. There should be fewer control points and they should make sense. A 'munitions point' should be centered on a factory or ammo dump; a 'fuel point' should be a stack of barrels, a pipeline or some other visible form of supply; those flags that seem to stand in the middle of the forest or an open field waiting to change hands should be an obvious strategic sector, such as a defensible position, high ground, trench, crossroads, bridges and so on. Nor does it make any sense rasing the flag over them or building 'observation posts' - both a waste of resources and crtically, time. Either you hold the ground or the enemy does. You should just have to leave a unit there to prove it. Having so many little spots to capture and hold just gives me a headache - especially when I'm in the middle of making a push forward and my rear lines are getting harrassed by the enemy's weapon of choice, the aforementioned "Invisible Uber Flamerthrower Stealth Pioneer Team". These guys deserved a bigger mention in the manual. 5) What effing use is the M4 Sherman anyway? At best they can be used to scare the "IUFSPT" away from those three squads of Rangers they were about to incinerate. I usually just use them as a mobile field gun to hold a position after those retarded gun crews and machine gunners have been killed by the same IUFSPT that's threatening my infantry. At least the Sherman shoots back. I thought this was the tank that won the war. They're so flimsy I'm reluctant to challenge an enemy armoured car unless I have two of them. 6) Not so for even the lowliest of German Stug IV. These can soak up an incredible amount of damage and destroy an AT gun with a single round (the Sherman takes about five shells by which time it is usually toasted itself). And what's this I read about the 'lightly armoured' Flakpanzer? That thing with it's fast rate of fire and near impenetrable hull is - I kid you not - the weapon I fear most on the battlefield. I crap myself every time I hear its cannon going boomboomboom; once I saw a single Flakpanzer take out two AT guns, a tank and two machine gun nests that I had defending a 'munitions point' (read, 'stack of crates in the middle of nowhere'. 7) So what makes German Stormtroopers and Knights Cross holders so effective against even my Rangers and Paratroopers - arguably the best trained soldiers in the world at that point? I read Band of Brothers: the 101st beat the living snot out of every German infantry unit they faced. My Airborne are great for seizing a lightly defended piece of ground and holding it until the dreaded IUFSPT arrive...not much else. Perhaps I need to experiment with the Rangers more, but they're awfully slow to get where you need them. 8) The Early Axis Tank Rush (EATR) however is the single most glaring cheat commited by the game. By the time I've built barely enough forces to defend against an effective infantry attack (and still woefully inadequate to stop the IUFSPT), they're already rolling into my base camp with Panzers; or Tigers if you're playing on 'normal' diffuclty setting. I like a challenge but seriously, the game is just cheating. Usually the EATR comes about 5-10 minutes in, when I'm still 10 to 20 minutes away from building an effective defense against enemy armor - if a couple of field guns with visually impaired crews and an overly expensive minefield can be called 'effective'. 9) Why don't the infantry lob grenades without you telling them? Should be a standard part of their battle routine and shouldn't cost any resource points. Ditto for sticky bombs and TNT charges. When you tell a squad to attack a vehicle they should just use them automatically. 10) Speaking of which, Notice you pay twice for grenades and sticky bombs? Once to buy them and then a small amount every time you use one. I understand big stuff like artillery barrages or airstrikes costing resources but we don't get charged for every mortar shell or bullet fired so why should we pay for other basic infantry staples? Not fair. Tips for survival against the Nazis: *Go airborne. Your attrition rate will be high but the speed factor in getting men to capture a strategic point or dropping an AT gun to defend a position under attack is worth it's weight in turds, um...gold. Also the bombers and strafers are excellent cards to play when the chips are down: don't waste the bombers on enemy structures, go for tanks. Use teh strafers against ifantry or gun crews. The Armor command option is tempting but it takes far too long to build those Pershing Tanks (the only real reason to choose it) and you might not hold out that long; ditto for the Infantry option: Artillery barrages seem to be only half as effective as Axis strikes and the Rangers take far too long to arrive to be useful. *Destroy all bridges. You can rebuild them. It's a great way to consolidate your territory and stop the enemy sneaking the IUFSPT behind your lines. Usually bridges separate about half to two-thirds of the map and usually you're on the large side. Shell them mercillessly with tanks, AT and mortars. If you can cut off this transport route you will be left to build up your forces in complete peace. Have the engineers rebuild one of the bridges when you're ready to attack. See the war story below. *Don't underestimate mortar teams. They're the smartest guys in the Army. Always have one behind an infantry push or within range of a control point. They'll keep the enemy infantry's head down; can be used against armor and can even scare off the dreaded IUFSPT. They're the only unit you have that can actually hit enemies from out of reach and unlike other ranged units they require no babysitting. They'll act on the nearest threat by themselves. *Snipers are the effective weapon you have against Axis AT guns. Their guns can take out yours and your tanks in a heartbeat but a well placed sniper will kill the crew very quickly. Place him behind a tree near a piont where the enemy often attack you with PAK38s and set him to hide and hold fire. When the gun drew get in range allow him to fire. Stay and make sure you tell him to hold fire again after they've been killed. Dropping airborne on them is also good, but again...attrition. I used a sniper like this once to hold the shallow ford against constant rushes of AT crews in the Vire River Valley map I had tanks and guns guarding the high ground but see the war story below for how effective they are. With careful babysitting, this one guy took out at least half a dozen crews. *Don't skimp on upgrades. Some are dubious such as the M4 mine flail but most are helpful. Your infantry needs those grenades, bazookas and automatic rifles, and that armor piercing shell on the AT gun definitely justifies the cost by speeding up your tank kills. *Scavenge. I dunno if it's just the sound but that MG42 seems mighty effective at suppressing the enemy. I found that if you skip the upgrade on an airborne platoon and instead pick up one fallen bazooka and one of those portable MG42s, you get a very effective little squad. Think about it - rifles, grenades, suppression, light AT and satchel charges with no sacrifice in mobility. It allows an infantry squad to punch way above its weight. *Cheat. In Single player mode at least. Turn off the fog of war, find a way to buff your resources or download a user-made patch to balance the game. The CPU has a distinct advantage - it can multi-task (babysit a sniper on a mission, flank you with tanks, build up defenses) and you can only do one thing at a time. That's always been the case in RTS games but since the game cheats on resources - giving the enemy far better men and equipment far earlier - there's no reason why you can stick it to the developers from time to time. *Master the easy mode before moving up. I can hold it together on the easy level but it turns into a long game of bitter attrition. Some levels take 4 hours, a 'quick one' will run to around 60 minutes. On 'Normal" I get creamed in 15 minutes or less. I'll end my rant with a war story. This is how I learned that all bridges must be destroyed: I was playing a skirmish (easy of course) on the Montherme map - a town divided north to south roughly 70/30 by a river with four bridges. I started in the northwest, and after three hours of hard fighting had secured the larger northern side of the river. Bearing in mind my experience with earlier maps I had blown all the bridges but the easternmost, which I was panning to use to cross after building up my invasion force. I reasoned that after taking 70% of the map (possibly more in terms of strategic sectors) I must have the lion's share of the resources and it would a fairly easy fight once my forces got across the river. Nevertheless I mounted a strong defense of the last bridge; two Shermans (high ground), three AT guns (two low, one high) and two machine gun nests (one low, one high). All of these were trained on that bridge. You'd think nothing could get across. All the enemy had was one Panzer, one AT gun and two pairs of those supermen with the flamethrowers. At first I ignored the noise thinking my defenses were adequate and concentarted on building my invasion force. But within a couple of minutes that Axis tank and the AT gun had crossed the bridge and dusted all defenders. I spent the next thirty minutes doing three things: recapturing the bridge, blowing the bridge because even with all my military might I clearly couldn't hold it against even a small force of Germans, and frantically running around chasing those sneaky pioneer teams (I think 4 pairs made it across before I blew the bridge) as they popped up all over my rear like herpes, capturing 'strategic sectors' and threatening to cost me 'resources'. I was so exhausted after that I saved the game and elected to make my final push the next day after rebuilding my forces and repairing one of the bridges, it still took an hour of hard fighting to take that last third of the map the next day making me wonder where this supposedly under-resourced enemy got all his hardware. I've gotten used to the fact that the AI will have more equipment than it should, but really I felt that with the loss of that bridge that the game had somehow been cheating. After all would you try to take such a well defended position in a frontal assault with only a Sherman, an AT gun and two squads of engineers? You know how that would end up.
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I dunno about the best graphics but the games that interest me the most would have to be STALKER - like Oblivion and Fallout all rolled in to one; and Armed Assault - a timely update of OFP. That was until I saw the video for GRAW2 - now I'm finally excited about a Clancy fanchise again(since Raven Shield and GR2/AW I've been switched off). I know the reviews said R6: Vegas was a good shooter but the name just scared me off: Who would have thought in the heady days of Rogue Spear and GR:1 there would ever have been a title called Rainbow Six:Vegas?
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Y'know what, maybe I'll give online a whirl...
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I'm hopeful for SUPREME COMMANDER
budgie replied to Stalker_Zero's topic in Strategy Games (RTS & TBS)
For me the only RTS games that have mattered have been Total War and Company of Heroes. They've raised the bar over the old Warcraft formula. Supreme Commander? C&C with more giant robots. I don't like giant robots... -
Aaah at last...I wasn't interested in GR:AW from the second I saw the screen shots. However with GR:AW2 we have: Authentic Army uniforms - check Believable mid-east/desert campaign scenario - check No effing rayguns - check I'm back on board guys. After 3 years I like what I see.
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I saw the video for BIA3 on a PC Gamer disc and it was mighty impressive. Didn't really show if the gameplay mechanic of checkpoint attrition has been improved upon however. Unless Gearbox have learned their lesson I fear the road to Berlin is wide open and strewn with unopened Panzerfaust crates...
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