The "Uber" Command: Modern Air/Naval Ops Thread

[JudgeDredd]

^ trouble is - I generally fly Air Hauler - and I can't haul in anything but the Cessna because I choose the difficult career mode. And when I do fire up FSX I need to fly Air Hauler to make the money and get the rep so I can get on to jets and AI aircraft...

So flying the very beautiful B-17 isn't a realistic option for the time being.

I've forgone FTX Global for the moment and got this.

I don't like the pricing policy (yeah - I know they have the data) and nor do I like their "no demo" policy. I think the no demo policy is designed to get people (like me) to buy the game and suck it up that it's not my bag - whereas given a demo, I may well find that out. (again - nothing against this game Dimitris).

The pricing policy seems geared to keep the market niche. And if you are going to provide demos and price your products out of the "I'll take a punt" range, then I can't see how you would significantly increase that niche group - which surely would be ever dwindling.

Anyway...I bought...I paid...and I need to make this pay.

See ya  ;)

[Dimitris]

No offense JD  :D

Let us know if there's anything we can help you with. We understand that the game can be a bit intimidating at first for guys who don't often play this stuff. The plus side is that once you cross the "hump", the game mechanics become second nature; particularly if you are familiar with their RL counterparts, just because they are so much alike.

[JudgeDredd]

Going through the first tutorial now.

One thing that immediately stands out like a sore thumb Dimitris is zooming in on the map - it doesn't seem to zoom in where the mouse is located...you have to right click on the position you want to zoom in on so it's centred in the area and then zoom. A slight niggle...I always like a map to zoom where my mouse is

Also - I would like the game to remember the size of the window I resized...it's a pain to open a window, resize it so you can see all the info (or reduce the size), close it and re-open it and have to again resize the window.

Just a couple of interface things

[Dimitris]

Yes, that's a common request. We actually tried this for a while during our beta, and it turned out that for many folks centering on the "camera point" was actually more natural, so we reverted it.

Since both modes are sought, we'll probably have to add a game option for it. After the whole feet/meter storm this should be cakewalk ;D

[spelk]

I'm excited, and overwhelmed, and my laptop chugs a bit, but I've seen HMS Conquerer in the waters around the Falklands.. plus 800 squadron are readying their Sea Harriers!

Enough for marvelling at the custom 1982 Falklands community scenario, I'm knee deep in the first tutorial - managed to withstand Mig attacks on my patrolling Tomcats, with only one bird down for 8 of theirs.. but to co-ordinate this ground based alpha strike on the airfield, and hangers with the place littered with SAM sites and mobile air defence I'm going to need a Herman Hum Command for Dummies series of vids methinks. :) And that's after I've watched all the video instruction Matrix/Warfaresims could muster!

Very expensive, but it seems to bring the harpoon ethos up to date - a bit. Theres still a lot of hangover from the Harpoon era, like a multitude of databases to consider, along with zero images in the database (as extensive and detailed as it is). You can fill in some of the blanks with a community image pack, but you know £65 of software, should come with some images surely? Probably my biggest gripe so far. Plus the lack of any music, or extensive battle sounds. Lastly, the geoglobe looks very nice zoomed out, but your mainly concerned with action close in, and up close and personal the ground leaves a very artifacted blurry jpeg feel. I'd have provided the option to have a much plainer globespace so that the icons didn't look so out of place sharp and animated over a blurry artifacted landscape.

Anyway, enough enthusing and then griping, back to the job at hand.

[JudgeDredd]

^ Agreed.

Something else doesn't seem right.

When I select Relief Layer from the menu (so there is a tick next to it) nothing happened. I then went back to that menu option and clicked it again (removed the tick from it) and a totally different (and far more informative and pleasing to the eye) map showed...but disappeared when I zoomed out.

Any ideas?

[Dimitris]

Thanks for the compliments!

The only reason we did not ship images for the DB was IP/copyright concerns, it was simply too much of a risk and we didn't have the resources to procure commercial images in quantities to matter. So we did the next best thing, we provided the architecture to add images "after market" at leisure and the already growing Command community roared into action; check the Command downloads page here.

Sounds - our experience from both Harpoon and now Command has been that folks almost invariably play with the sounds turned off :D . however we do recognize that some people do appreciate the presence of sound effects to enhance the action and have provided a number of sounds effects, which are in fact fully customizable (check the \Sound\Effect folder). We have been requested to add hooks for more sound-generating events and we will take this into consideration.

Terrain up close. That's a valid point no doubt but one has to remember that we are covering _the entire planet_ and we're already by far the biggest download Matrix has ever put (I bet their ISP is cursing us ATM ;D). We actually thought about upgrading to ASTER (up to 15m/cell) but that would probably mean having to distribute Command in multiple hard disks rather than DVDs. We are, however, looking at improved tile resolution for future releases but this time probably on a local theater basis (e.g. if we do a Falklands-centered scenario pack we'll include a super-detailed map for the Flaklands).

Again, thanks for the feedback! It is extremely important to us that we are aware of what our customers like and don't like, so we can do more of the former and less (or ideally none) of the latter.

[Dimitris]

^ Agreed.

Something else doesn't seem right.

When I select Relief Layer from the menu (so there is a tick next to it) nothing happened. I then went back to that menu option and clicked it again (removed the tick from it) and a totally different (and far more informative and pleasing to the eye) map showed...but disappeared when I zoomed out.

Any ideas?

The relief layer (which indeed provides a far prettier overland map, and is also vital for exploiting terrain features) takes a few seconds to come up. So, select it on the menu and wiggle the camera a bit (zoom in/out, move a round a bit) and you'll see it appear. This is affected by how fast the game can load the layer tiles from your HDD (one of the reasons we recommend installing Command on your fastest disk, if you have a choice).

Thanks!

[JudgeDredd]

^...mmm...it is installed on my SSD drive - and I've recently built a new i5 system with 3.4GHz processor, 8GB fast DDR3 and 3GB 7950 card. My Windows is a fresh install (everything on my system should be running super sweet at the moment because it's so fresh).

I'm just reporting things as I see em.

I'll give the relief layer a try as you suggest.

[JudgeDredd]

Thanks Dimitris...it doesn't show up unless you actually do something (move the map or zoom) but it does stay there.

But I have to be honest - it is slow Dimitris - and I am surprised given what I read about it being run on low spec machines. This is a pretty high end PC I have here and the game is installed on my SSD drive. And this is the tutorial - there's not a great deal going on here. I've only just put up a few F14s, shot down some Migs and avoiding some missiles.

I will say the game play is fast enough (I had it on 30 seconds and before I knew what was happening my F14s were engaged! But the map zoom, scroll and load is very slow.

[JudgeDredd]

Dimitris

Is there a way to get the "Event" window which displays for the tutorial to show again. I was presented with a window to tell me how to go about setting up the strike, but when you click the Start/Pause button to start the game, it closed and I don't know how to get it back up to see what I have to do.

[Dimitris]

The message displayed on that window is also stored on the message log, so you can find it there.

The message log can be displayed either directly on the map (WoW-style) or on a separate window. You can also print it to a file in order to read/process at leisure.

[JudgeDredd]

No - I know what you mean and I found that window and I know it says it on screen as well as being able to display in the window...

But I'm talking about in the tutorial when an event is fired, a popup window appears explaining what to do next...when I clicked Start/Pause to unpause the game, the window disappeared and now I don't know how to get it back to see what I have to do.

When I look at the message log, it says "09:10:00 - Event: 'Phase 4' has been fired." - but I can't see how to show the popup window for "Phase 4" to see what I have to do...

[spelk]

Judge, you can get to the whole briefing again, by selecting Game >> Side Briefing (although it puts you into an Edit mode box) but you can read the phase information that is presented in the events boxes.

[JudgeDredd]

Ah - I did see that - but I wondered if you could just get the particular Phase briefing window back.