Before I buy HTTR i was wondeing if they improved problem in AA

Panther Games' Highway to the Reich revolutionizes wargaming with its pausable, continuous time game play and advanced artificial intelligence. Command like a real General, under real time pressures to achieve real objectives on a real map all within the fog of war. Issue orders to your powerful AI controlled subordinates or take total control of every unit. Fight the world's most advanced AI opponent or match wits against your friends online or over a LAN. Highway to the Reich covers all four battles from Operation Market Garden, including Arnhem, Nijmegen, Eindhoven and the 30th Corps breakout from Neerpelt.

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madmickey
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Before I buy HTTR i was wondeing if they improved problem in AA

Post by madmickey »

Having previously bought airborne assault, I was wondering if they improved the following problems in HTTR.
I loved the concept of AA but some of the mechanics had problems
1) Units move to much in defense
2) Unit retreat very easily even with max losses.
3) Unit size, you go from platoon to artillery and infantry regiment size.
4) In campaign games they drop a whole mech. brigade in a small area of polder
5) In campaign game it takes a while to input orders. I have 512 memory with a 2.4 PIV and window XP.
6) When defending units are under a HQ they seem not to take maximum advantage of terrain and visibility.
7) Difficulty in setting up complex attacks. In addition AA and AT gun move when in an infantry regiment attacking
8) Inability for motorized infantry to dismount and attack in the polder?
9) Intelligence of enemy units with patrols. You should be able somehow to patrol an area without moving the whole unit out of dugout position.
10) Isolated small units with no radio communication are able to forward information to HQ about enemy units.
11) The ability to cutoff enemy supply lines.
12) AI not smart enough to set up continuos defenses lines in non polder terrain or to protect small road and paths in polder terrain.
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Arjuna
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RE: Before I buy HTTR i was wondeing if they improved problem in AA

Post by Arjuna »

ORIGINAL: madmickey
1) Units move to much in defense
Yep
2) Unit retreat very easily even with max losses.
Yep
3) Unit size, you go from platoon to artillery and infantry regiment size.
Yep line units are now company size. Long range artillery units are still Bn sized, though the self propelled versions are battery.
4) In campaign games they drop a whole mech. brigade in a small area of polder
Are you refering to reinforcements here. If so we never di nor do we para dropped mech units.
5) In campaign game it takes a while to input orders. I have 512 memory with a 2.4 PIV and window XP.
That's the first time anyone has reported this. Can you be more specific? Is it selecting units, scrolling the map, setting waypoints, accessing info? We have various test machines ranging from 566 Celerons with 128Mb RAM and have had no problems.
6) When defending units are under a HQ they seem not to take maximum advantage of terrain and visibility.
Yep

7) Difficulty in setting up complex attacks. In addition AA and AT gun move when in an infantry regiment attacking
Yep these will now drop off, deploy and fire during the assault as soon as they are within effective range and can see the enemy.

8) Inability for motorized infantry to dismount and attack in the polder?
Yep
9) Intelligence of enemy units with patrols. You should be able somehow to patrol an area without moving the whole unit out of dugout position.
No. Recon is on the wish list for Game 4, I'm afraid ( HTTR is Game 2 ).
10) Isolated small units with no radio communication are able to forward information to HQ about enemy units.
No. The only way to avoid this would be to maintain separate enemy intel databases for every unit on the map. Apart from the size and RAM blowout this would also slow the game down immensely as even the fastest of todays CPUs wouldn't be able to hack the processing load.
11) The ability to cutoff enemy supply lines.
No. Resupply will be added in Game 3 ( Battles from the Bulge ).
12) AI not smart enough to set up continuos defenses lines in non polder terrain or to protect small road and paths in polder terrain.
We have made improvements to this end, but I will admit we have more to do. See the discussion in the other thread titled "An AI Observation".

But apart from all these fixes we have added a swag of new features and enhanced the AI immensly.
Dave "Arjuna" O'Connor
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madmickey
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RE: Before I buy HTTR i was wondeing if they improved problem in AA

Post by madmickey »

Regarding question 4 in campaign game 30 Corp mech. brigade reinforcement are just placed in a very small area and frequently shoved on the polder it takes a lot more time to move and organize these units than if they were placed on the roads.
Regarding question 5 it involves setting waypoint, choosing losses limit, rate of fire and aggressiveness
In campaign game I find that it takes about 10-20 seconds each time I have to input orders to a units. This does not occur with smaller scenarios. It involves setting waypoint, choosing losses limit, rate of fire and aggressiveness I have reformat my hard drive every 3 months and I have this problem even after a fast refresh.
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RE: Before I buy HTTR i was wondeing if they improved problem in AA

Post by EricGuitarJames »

MM, as regards the 30 Corps units, I think the problem in RDOA was (if I read you right) that they were just too big for the AI to organise properly. I had many frustrating moments finding that, despite my orders to move in road column by the quickest route from A to B they were spread out across the polders inching their war forward. This seems to have been solved in HTTR by breaking the battalions down another level. Although this does lead to a more 'cluttered' battlefield.
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Arjuna
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RE: Before I buy HTTR i was wondeing if they improved problem in AA

Post by Arjuna »

ORIGINAL: madmickey

Regarding question 4 in campaign game 30 Corp mech. brigade reinforcement are just placed in a very small area and frequently shoved on the polder it takes a lot more time to move and organize these units than if they were placed on the roads.

As Eric mentioned we have broken down the larger Bn units into their constituent companies. However, while that may alleviate the problem you describe, it's not really a problem at all if you change your perspective. In reality a Bde arriving would do so along the road in colum. It would be stretching for some six to ten kms and it would probably take at least 30 to 90 minutes for that column to pass through the arrival location. Now while it is on our wish list, we have not yet written any special road arrival code for reinforcements. However, by placing the entire force in a group like that it does take some time for them to shake out, around 30 to 90 minutes if in polder, far less in clear. So in a way it achieves the same effect.
Regarding question 5 it involves setting waypoint, choosing losses limit, rate of fire and aggressiveness
In campaign game I find that it takes about 10-20 seconds each time I have to input orders to a units. This does not occur with smaller scenarios. It involves setting waypoint, choosing losses limit, rate of fire and aggressiveness I have reformat my hard drive every 3 months and I have this problem even after a fast refresh.


I don't regard 10 to 20 seconds as an unacceptable amount of time to issue orders. In fact that's pretty good. I spend far more time thinking about issuing the order than imputing it. Are you micromanaging? By that I mean issuing orders to every unit. Do you use the keyboard shortcuts for the various order tools - eg A to attack, D to defend? Remember that to give an order the minimum you have to do is select the force, hit the shortcut key and click on the objective location. End of story. That only takes a few seconds.

If you are micromanaging and issuing detailed orders to every unit then sure this gets tedious, just like in every other wargame. But you don't have to micromanage. In fact one of HTTRs great strengths is that it frees you up from doing so.

For the larger scenarios I tend to order Brigades around. when the action gets hot I may start ordering a few Bns. I also give direct orders to pickets ( company units assigned to act as a tripwire or road block ), recon company units and my long range artillery units.

As I said to one of my beta testers the other day ( hi Bil [:D] ) maybe its time to live on the wild side and trust your AI controlled subordinates. In general they do a pretty good job - especially with all the new AI code we've been working on. [:)]
Dave "Arjuna" O'Connor
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Golf33
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RE: Before I buy HTTR i was wondeing if they improved problem in AA

Post by Golf33 »

I think madmickey means it's taking a long time for the screen to update when he changes the parameters of his orders. Is that right madmickey?

If so, then I can say we have very similar spec machines to you here at work and HTTR runs very smoothly even in the largest scenarios.

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jcj
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RE: Before I buy HTTR i was wondeing if they improved problem in AA

Post by jcj »

For instance when you change a front size by 1km it takes awhile for the yellow box to change size. But I think this is a game time issue not a real time issue because when I increase the speed of the game these order changes go faster.
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HercMighty
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RE: Before I buy HTTR i was wondeing if they improved problem in AA

Post by HercMighty »

I have also seen this when you setup an attack or any order for that matter. Everything goes quick and easy except when I set the facing myself it takes a while for it to reflect this on screen. All the while the game seems to be playing just fine, battles etc... don't seem to be slowed up.
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Arjuna
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RE: Before I buy HTTR i was wondeing if they improved problem in AA

Post by Arjuna »

Paul,

Can you please check this out re the facing and possible time lag between setting and updating. I must say I haven't noticed it.
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RayWolfe
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RE: Before I buy HTTR i was wondeing if they improved problem in AA

Post by RayWolfe »

Dave
The delay does exist when changing facing whilst the game is running. It takes from around 6-8 real seconds whilst running the game at slowest speed to a couple of real seconds at fastest speed on my relativly fast machine.
I’ve never found this the slightest problem. [;)]
Ray
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HercMighty
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RE: Before I buy HTTR i was wondeing if they improved problem in AA

Post by HercMighty »

I played a short scenerio (1 day game length) last night. At the beggining of the scenerio I did not see the delay problem. By the end of the scenerio it was present. Like the above poster I do not see it as a problem but if the game is doing something it shouldn't it is at least looking into. Problems have a way of snowballing.
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Arjuna
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RE: Before I buy HTTR i was wondeing if they improved problem in AA

Post by Arjuna »

Thanks for ther feedback guys. [:)]
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