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Hell Let Loose

Started by jomni, April 24, 2018, 09:34:21 AM

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Destraex

Meng. I tried Hell Let Loose a while back in some free period. I simply have too much on my plate with Post Scriptum. So I try to stay away from HLL because it will just be another FPS which I rarely play. I played Post Scriptum last night, had a good commander and really enjoyed it. There are a ridiculous amount of full servers in post scriptum atm (pages). So that's good.
However I just read some of your HLL posts and am curious as to exactly what the differences are.

I'd like to know that I chose the most realistic new ww2 shooter. Red Orchestra 2 and Rising Storm 2 were my previous go tos. Now I try to stick to post Scriptum, which still has another chapter to release on the devs timeline.

Can you advise exactly what it is that HLL does better? It does seem to be more popular than Post Scriptum when their is not a free weekend for PS as there is now.
"They only asked the Light Brigade to do it once"

MengJiao

#31
Quote from: Destraex on January 11, 2020, 05:56:10 PM
Meng. I tried Hell Let Loose a while back in some free period. I simply have too much on my plate with Post Scriptum. So I try to stay away from HLL because it will just be another FPS which I rarely play. I played Post Scriptum last night, had a good commander and really enjoyed it. There are a ridiculous amount of full servers in post scriptum atm (pages). So that's good.
However I just read some of your HLL posts and am curious as to exactly what the differences are.

I'd like to know that I chose the most realistic new ww2 shooter. Red Orchestra 2 and Rising Storm 2 were my previous go tos. Now I try to stick to post Scriptum, which still has another chapter to release on the devs timeline.

Can you advise exactly what it is that HLL does better? It does seem to be more popular than Post Scriptum when their is not a free weekend for PS as there is now.

  I think basically Post Scriptum is a better simulation -- for example, the full ballistics of rifle bullets are done in PS and not in HLL.  PS has mortars and HLL does not.  This even extends into the visual field where in Ps you can see a long, long way, but in HLL you can't.  PS has trucks and HLL does not...the better simulation side of PS is pretty clear no matter how you look at it.  So HLL is definitely in the Arcade direction -- eg, well -- no mortars or trucks.  So what's good about HLL?  It's more atmospheric -- even literally, the air is thick and you can't see far without binoculars or sights.  Which i guess leads one to ask again -- so what's good about HLL?  I think what's good is that it is aimed at a point midway between simulation and arcade.  Maybe a little closer to the simulation end in many superficial ways, but way down deep its has the good things about an arcade approach (relatively fast action. some customization, some "advancement") without most of the bad things about arcade games ( lots of scoring verbiage on the screen, weapons that glow, terrain that makes no sense, scales that are absurd etc. etc.).  HLL is shamelessly gamey in some good ways -- the US is getting the Easy 8 Sherman "for extra fuel points" -- I guess if those turn up in Normandy scenarios that will be pretty shameless. 
Ultimately of course, I just like HLL for a pile of irrational "reasons" -- smaller maps full of tasteful bits of wreckage -- horrible dead bodies -- absurd bombing runs, the good old Thompson SMG which I have liked since battlefield 1942, the M1 (even with hit scan is a convincing weapon), the grenades work better for me etc. etc. -- oh -- tiny "units"  the SL is really a corporal called an "officer" and so on...

So, again, on the face of it, HLL has little to recommend it -- especially versus PS -- as a simulation and even more strangely, HLL is defined more by what it isn't (not PS, not exactly an arcade WWII shooter, slightly blood-thirsty rather than slightly sentimental) but also by what seem to be its gamey ancestors:  Battlefield 42 and Red Orchestra (particularly the Darkest Hour mod).  It might be defined as an attempt to approach the simulation space from a gamey side rather than an attempt to approach a game from the simulation side ( PS).

I guess I should try again to just list the things I like:
1) its got US troops in Normandy
2) Its trying to expand and go on modifying itself (adding maps and map aids and vehicles and loadouts for example)
3) the landscaping is interesting
4) the maps are around half the size of PS maps
5) the graphics are more atmospheric
6) the "squads" (called units) are 6-man fire teams
7) so the SL ("officer" = corporal) role is pretty good
8) there is some attempt at some kind of atmospheric realism (location, weapons etc.)

And I guess that's it!

MengJiao

Quote from: MengJiao on January 11, 2020, 11:57:29 AM


  Another atmospheric shot -- somewhere near Saint-Mere Eglese, a Sherman tank drives past me.  I should say, usually the US tanks are handled well and do a lot toward winning battles.  I see one or two Tigers or Panthers per battle,but they cost a lot of fuel and tend to end up isolated:


MengJiao

Quote from: MengJiao on January 13, 2020, 10:15:05 PM
Quote from: MengJiao on January 11, 2020, 11:57:29 AM


  Another atmospheric shot -- somewhere near Saint-Mere Eglese, a Sherman tank drives past me.  I should say, usually the US tanks are handled well and do a lot toward winning battles.  I see one or two Tigers or Panthers per battle,but they cost a lot of fuel and tend to end up isolated:

  Here I am trying to be a medic looking west from just north of Sainte-Mere-Eglise (the smoke shows a big battle I never got to...got shot trying to rescue somebody at a small cross-roads tank battle a minute or two later):


MengJiao

#34
Quote from: MengJiao on January 18, 2020, 11:35:57 PM

  Here I am trying to be a medic looking west from just north of Sainte-Mere-Eglise (the smoke shows a big battle I never got to...got shot trying to rescue somebody at a small cross-roads tank battle a minute or two later):

  Hell warmed over again ("Hell warmed over" is an "expression" -- at least in Texas 50 years ago -- as in "I feel pretty bad."  "Well, you look like Hell Warmed over" as in worse than Hell)

   Anyway, I was reflecting on last night's gaming session in HLL and one thing that is kind of good about the game is the extreme (though generally constructive) variation in the impact of "leadership" positions.  Good leadership helps a team a lot, but what actually works out -- especially for the officer (ie corporal in charge of six men) role can be interesting and unexpected.  Twice now I've been in "units" (the six-man fire teams commanded by an "officer") where the player in charge was not much use...more of an administrative assistant, setting up outposts, reporting on what HQ wants, warning of generalized objectives and dangers -- yet this worked very well and 3 or 4 members of the "unit" formed a tight killer force and knocked out  3 Tiger tanks, one light tank and one of our tanks that needed to be blown up (cuz stuck tanks can't respawn and HLL has no unsticking functions unlike PS -- in PS you can eventually get any vehicle out of any kind of a sticky situation -- not so in HLL where a sunken lane can trap any tank and then it has to be blown up to respawn  -- so if you find a stuck enemy tank you need to defend it like one of your own since it deprives the enemy of an endless stream of respawns)....anyway, I never quite joined the killer team, but it was a lot of fun anyway.

But this brings up another thing about tanks -- the US never saw any Tigers of any kind in Normandy -- but of course they are extremely common in HLL.  I think the Panthers or the light tanks would be a lot more cost effective, but the Tiger has that iconic thing and so it gets spawned to the limit and drives down the main roads until it gets worried and then it slows down and looks around and gets blown up right away most of the time.  Oddly enough the Tigers don't even last long enough for me to see them burning as I often did in PS.  I'm a lot more worried when I stumble across an unreported light tank or Panther then I have to:
A: avoid getting shot
B: report the tank
C: look out for enemy infantry (since they do try to cover tanks occasionally)
D: try to do something useful like shooting infantry or reviving our people or throwing smoke on the tank

MengJiao

#35
  Last night I was on a really good squad.  I had the bazooka.  I tried hard to keep up with the cutting edge, but stalking tanks can be time consuming and I was trying to wait for medics every time I got "killed" (since I wanted to stay near the action with a bazooka).  At one point I was close to releasing a rocket on a Panther, but the local chatter seemed to suggest that Panther was going out of the battle area so letting it wander was better than shooting it and letting it start over.  I checked with my unit commander and he said, "If its going south leave it alone."  It was going south so I left it alone.

  Weirdly enough, I caught up with my unit and a light tank in the last 30 seconds of the battle.  I just had time to say "Where's that tank?" and then see it firing everything it had at a vacant field I'd just left when the big ole victory screen came up for our side.  No photos about this stuff...things tend to happen too fast for good screenshots in HLL.

MengJiao

Quote from: MengJiao on January 18, 2020, 11:35:57 PM


  Here's my first tank kill.  It's hard to tell, but that is a German Light tank that has just been lit up by 2 37mm AP rounds from my Stuart:


W8taminute

Nice!

I haven't played HLL in a while and when I was playing there were only Shermans and Panthers in the game.  Nice to see they've added light tanks as well now.
"You and I are of a kind. In a different reality, I could have called you friend."

Romulan Commander to Kirk

MengJiao

#38
Quote from: W8taminute on January 24, 2020, 12:30:21 PM
Nice!

I haven't played HLL in a while and when I was playing there were only Shermans and Panthers in the game.  Nice to see they've added light tanks as well now.

  There's a lot to like about the light tanks.  They are fast and can go some places that bigger tanks can't.  I got off Omaha Beach up a very marginal trail in the Stuart.  In HLL any tank can get stuck in a trench or ditch or sunken lane, but the light tanks seem to do significantly better with some of the narrow cart trails. 
  In other news -- as of update 5 they will have the following tanks:

Panther, Tiger I, PzkwII (with 20mm) for the Germans -- and for the Americans -- standard Sherman 75mm, Stuart, Up-armored Sherman 75, And the up Armored Sherman with a 76mm (Easy-8 -- still used in the Korean war I think).

Of course on the US front in Normandy there were no Tigers, no up-armored Shermans and not even very many (if any) 76mm Shermans.  I suspect that getting up-armored, more resource-using tanks for the Americans will actually make the US tanks as dysfunctional as the German tanks seem to be since to survive in a Sherman and knock out some Tigers you have to be pretty in-touch with the dynamics of the battle and if (as it seems the Panthers and Tigers do) you think your superiority will let you wander around -- then so much the worse for the Americans with their now-more-sorta okay tanks.

This reminds me of the words of wisdom I got in High School from the father of a friend.  The father had been in the 4th Armored through Normandy and on -- I said "How did you defeat those superior German tanks?"
He said, "we always knew where they were and we always had gas."  Do so in HLL that's also how the tank war seems to have worked up til now.  Better tanks for the US might change all that.

MengJiao

Quote from: MengJiao on January 24, 2020, 12:47:54 PM


  There's a lot to like about the light tanks.  They are fast and can go some places that bigger tanks can't.  I got off Omaha Beach up a very marginal trail in the Stuart.  In HLL any tank can get stuck in a trench or ditch or sunken lane, but the light tanks seem to do significantly better with some of the narrow cart trails. 


  But even light tanks can get stuck.  Here's a PZKWII stuck on a wall in Normandy:


Rekim

I enlisted over the weekend. 5 hours into HLL I must have died almost 100 times  :o

The 4-5 kills I notched up were rewarding...and have hope that this ratio will improve.

MengJiao

Quote from: Rekim on January 27, 2020, 10:57:00 PM
I enlisted over the weekend. 5 hours into HLL I must have died almost 100 times  :o

The 4-5 kills I notched up were rewarding...and have hope that this ratio will improve.

  Kills are pretty nice in this game.  Sometimes when I suspect an enemy was just wounded, I hang around to finish him off after he stops the minor bleeding himself.  This is because -- if say you nick somebody with a Thompson at 30 meters, you can't finish him off (the rule rewards people who aim better and also gives a better reward for cohesive units where people can recover).  Well maybe you can with a pistol, but I haven't tried that.  I don't aim well in this game for some reason (no real ballistics for basic weapons like the M1) so I've adapted by using grenades more and sometimes waiting for the enemy to recover so I can shoot him better next time.  Of course, if you don't want to waste a grenade and you are tired of nicking the same MG42 person at that nice notch under that tree in the hedegerow, you can just wait until he seems to be feeling better and then empty a clip into him from three feet away.   

   On the other hand, if you are feeling less Zesty (or testy), you can go find a place to put an op for your squad and whilst doing that innocent pastime you often come across enemy spawn points and clean those up -- much better for the team really than looking for enemies to shoot.

   Oh, so one can definitely get killed a lot in HLL.  I guess one learns to adapt.  I'm often a squad leader named Lloyd on the American side, so if you see my squad (really the six-man units of course) you can join me and tell me you'd like to survive and get some kills and I can help you with that to some degree.

Rekim

Quote from: MengJiao on January 28, 2020, 07:42:03 AM
Oh, so one can definitely get killed a lot in HLL.  I guess one learns to adapt.  I'm often a squad leader named Lloyd on the American side, so if you see my squad (really the six-man units of course) you can join me and tell me you'd like to survive and get some kills and I can help you with that to some degree.

I'll keep my eyes open for you Meng. I go by the same handle on HLL.

MengJiao

Quote from: Rekim on January 29, 2020, 01:26:16 AM
Quote from: MengJiao on January 28, 2020, 07:42:03 AM
Oh, so one can definitely get killed a lot in HLL.  I guess one learns to adapt.  I'm often a squad leader named Lloyd on the American side, so if you see my squad (really the six-man units of course) you can join me and tell me you'd like to survive and get some kills and I can help you with that to some degree.

I'll keep my eyes open for you Meng. I go by the same handle on HLL.

  I'm cutting back a little on game time...I might be there roughly every other night from about 10-11 EST.  I'm going to try setting my friendly tags for 500 meters and toggling the interface (t key) when I think I might have a shot at the enemy...or a screenshot or both.  I don't know what loadouts you might like -- I've mostly been an "officer" or a rifleman or a medic...I've tried the BAR, the Bazooka and the MG once and I haven't tried being a German for more than 15 minutes 2 weeks ago, but that might be more of an option for you if you like their tanks or something.

Rekim

I work every night this week except for Thursday. Expect I'll be up for a round or two Thursday evening though. Next week my schedule is much better. I have two gaming nights scheduled but because I am in night shift mode I can come home from gaming and still spend some quality time with HLL  O0

So far I have only tried the rifleman role. Next up I'll probably have a go at being a medic. I want to get a better handle on the basics before taking on trickier roles like assault/recon/engineer/armor etc.