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

[Herman Hum]

If you are having some real doubts and concerns, I could arrange for you to try it out on my spare laptop via remote desktop.  Just let me know.

[panzerde]

So besides the ui and such, how is the actual gameplay?  Entertaining?  Is it engaging?  Is it easy to learn?

I'm really enjoying it.  It's been easy to pick up for me, and engaging enough that I spent all of yesterday when I had free time thinking about a better approach to the first tutorial mission.  When I played that evening I replayed the mission and was able to implement what I'd been thinking about without a lot of fumbling around.  Turned out to be a better approach and I did much better than the first time I played.

I then went on to play the second tutorial, in command of a SSN, which I was able to finish in about 45 minutes.  In the third phase of the tutorial I departed from the guided approach in the tutorial and launched a bearing only torpedo attack on a Russian DD, which immediately sent a pair of ASW helicopters after me.  There were a few tense moments as my fish went hunting for the DD and my sub went evasive trying to get away from the torpedoes dropped by the helos!  I really enjoyed that scenario.

What I'm finding is that if you try and micromanage units that are tasked with a mission via the mission editor, you're going to have a bad time.  An F-14 assigned to an AAW patrol mission is not going to RTB when you tell it to as long as it's still assigned to the mission.  If you want it to RTB, remove it from the mission and then tell it to RTB.  If the same aircraft isn't assigned to a mission, you can give it all sorts of orders - in fact, you probably will have to give it very specific orders if you try and perform a manual attack, for example, because the AI won't automatically posture the aircraft at the correct speed and altitude for a weapons release on it's own (it will if you use the automatic attack option).  That approach/behavior may be very frustrating and unclear to some players and I can understand why. It doesn't bug me.

Similarly, when the USS North Carolina was evading torpedoes last night, I couldn't control her.  I had the Evade check box ticked, and her crew was automatically evading.  I could have taken over and done the evasion myself, and a lot of players will want to.  I don't - I'm the CO, or the Admiral sitting in the TOC.  I want to let my well-trained crew handle the evasion while I worry about the mission and strategy. I don't want to see pictures of boats and airplanes, I want symbols on what looks like a radar screen or satellite map.  When playing NWAC or Fleet  Command if I could have completely turned off the 3D view port showing the ship and aircraft models, I would have.

When I play Command Ops, If I'm a regimental commander I give orders to the battalion COs and let them handle deployments except in the rare case where I want to detach a company to guard a flank or reinforce a position.  I'm finding I enjoy playing this the same way.  So, YMMV, what i find engaging might really put you off.  I'm enjoying the hell out of it, but I think I may have different game play expectations and I'm not having the performance issues that others very clearly are having.

[Nefaro]

Hi Nefaro

We didn't do air patrols in the formation editor. Its just meant for ships.

Instead you do air patrols in the mission editor with moving reference points you can anchor to the group or another ship. This is much more flexible.

To do this.

You can drop 4 reference points quickly by cntrl+right clicking and selecting define area. Left click and drag out the area you'd like. This will drop the 4 reference points which are already selected.
Now go to the mission and reference point drop down and pick one of the make selected reference point options and then select the group or unit.  Fixed stays relative to the group position and Rotating stays relative to the groups course. Rotating is what you want to patrol ahead.
Now just create an ASW patrol mission in the editor for the ASW air unit.

Thanks!

Mike

Thanks for the tip Mike!

I had panicked when I didn't see any interface buttons for those in the Formation Editor.  I had checked the manual, but there was no reference in the Form Editor section, so I feared the worst.

I'd like to add some Interface suggestions to JD's, who has some great suggestions. 

1) The right Info Bar needs more readily apparent info.  I'm not really checking the Fuel and ROE readouts over there, and it could certainly use some of the more often checked data pertaining to the selected unit.  JD mentioned current weapons loadout, which is a biggie.  Some more at-a-glance additions would be helpful and save having to constantly open windows. 

a) EMCON Status: Passive/Active.  (text indicator).  I'm regularly having to open the individual unit or group's ROE window, then click on the EMCON tab, to see what it's currently set to.  It'd cut down on the extra busy work if we just had a Passive/Active summary listed here at all times.  I tend to turn quite a few of the on-map sensor indicators off to keep the clutter down as it can be difficult to make out for individual units.  It would be great having this listed on the main info window, without having to open any extra window.

b) Current Weapon Loadout (dropdown list?), as JD mentioned.

c) Current Target, listed for Weapons in flight.  Once again, cutting down on the on-map clutter.  The text boxes over weapons are nice but for keeping the map clear, I'd like to see a Text indicator here instead of words printed over the top of the weapons' NTDS symbols.  Or an option to use this instead of the on-map target listing.  The On-Map labels are very small and often jumbled together.

d) A link to the Mission Editor window entry for the Mission that an individual unit is currently on.  That would save some time opening the Editor and scanning through the list for it.

Those are the first off the top of my head but there may be more.  I think JudgeDredd already mentioned some much-needed ones awhile back, and I may end up repeating some of his so I apologize if that happens.

[bostonmyk]

Nefaro

Thanks for spending time thinking about and writing this. We do appreciate that.

I've added an entry to our bug tracker and it will be discussed.

M

[Nefaro]

What I'm finding is that if you try and micromanage units that are tasked with a mission via the mission editor, you're going to have a bad time.  An F-14 assigned to an AAW patrol mission is not going to RTB when you tell it to as long as it's still assigned to the mission.  If you want it to RTB, remove it from the mission and then tell it to RTB.  If the same aircraft isn't assigned to a mission, you can give it all sorts of orders - in fact, you probably will have to give it very specific orders if you try and perform a manual attack, for example, because the AI won't automatically posture the aircraft at the correct speed and altitude for a weapons release on it's own (it will if you use the automatic attack option).  That approach/behavior may be very frustrating and unclear to some players and I can understand why. It doesn't bug me.

If you're referring to my RTB issues, then you have the situation wrong.  The air units were 'Unassigned' which means they had the proper orders.  But they were regularly stopping their journey home to start loitering in place, even though still having the "Unassigned (RTB)" tag, which I take to mean that it's still under RTB orders and has no Mission assignment. 

It may have been caused by the aircraft going Defensive whenever a SAM was launched, and just reverting to loitering after the all-clear despite still having the overall RTB order.  I had to babysit them the whole way, which surely isn't how that should work.  Probably just a bug with the Assistant AI behavior not re-issuing the RTB command.

The other issue is the refusal of the A-7 SEAD aircraft to drop their CBU cluster bombs because they will not drop down to low enough altitude required by the CBU's launch limits.  This may or may not be a Mission problem (someone suggested the mission flight profile settings for this loadout prevent it from dropping to low altitude, which sounds like a possibility).

I expect some bugs like these on any launch.  I'm just hoping they're rare ones.  I'm really surprised nobody had found them before, being in the first tutorial mission, notably the second one.

But, yes, the sim itself is fun, but I feel it's being hampered by the need for more UI user-friendliness and the performance problems some of us are experiencing.  With regards to the UI, it's mostly about having to click down, or  back-over-and-across, a couple more times to get to something that should be just one click away.  The best UI is one that's efficient and doesn't cause people to notice it, and this one can be some work at times.  It can be improved, and I have faith they can add many of the requests to make it more user-friendly.   

I may be rather verbal about the shortcomings but I'm also making an attempt to give actionable feedback.  I really want this thing to be super-tastic.  It should be for the entry fee required.   :P ;)

[panzerde]

If you're referring to my RTB issues, then you have the situation wrong.  The air units were 'Unassigned' which means they had the proper orders.  But they were regularly stopping their journey home to start loitering in place, even though still having the "Unassigned (RTB)" tag, which I take to mean that it's still under RTB orders and has no Mission assignment. 

Nope, referring to my own attempts to RTB aircraft assigned to a mission, which didn't work.  In other sims, issuing an order to an aircraft tasked with a mission will often abort the mission and begin executing the manual order.  Doesn't look like that happens here, which I think could be a surprising behavior for people.

[spelk]

If you're referring to my RTB issues, then you have the situation wrong.  The air units were 'Unassigned' which means they had the proper orders.  But they were regularly stopping their journey home to start loitering in place, even though still having the "Unassigned (RTB)" tag, which I take to mean that it's still under RTB orders and has no Mission assignment. 

I was sending Tomcats back to base last night, by selecting the aircraft, pressing the 'U' hot key to remove it from an AAW patrol, and then right clicking on the unit and select RTB. That seemed to work for me.

I properly managed about 8-10 missions last night with the Air Tutorial, getting two AAW CAP's , one for base protection, one for neutrilising enemy aircraft, then my tankers for any refuelling, early warning cover in the attack corridor, SEAD patrols to knobble the Air defence threats, Walleye 'poon' strikes on known targets (runway, radar), and finally several Mk82 drops over the hangars. So I went mission creation crazy :)

My biggest problem with the whole management of my mission sets was getting them up in the air from my own base. I must be trying to push too many birds in the air at the same time. I tried to get this to happen logically, by making most of the missions inactive upon creation, and then flicking the switch to active at the time I wanted them launched. But even with this ordered approach, they were coming out slowly and in some odd order. Not sure whether theres any better way to do this. I suppose make a load of loitering patrol missions, just to get them all airbourne, and then swap them all into proper inactive missions, and then flick the active switches to set them off at the desired time.

Co-ordinating the arrival of your combined air strike force, would seem to be the key to hitting the area with minimum losses - but I just found this time dependant co-ordination to be difficult to achieve. Anyway, I scored 1200, which was worse than when I was clueless and I just set a load of them forward! Which was disappointing, I'd thought a structured well thought out mission approach would have netted me better. Could have been my fumbling around and inability to get them all over the area at the same time.  Anyone know of better ways to do this?

I must say though, I'm having a blast with it, despite some of the niggles. Theres something so satisfying about watching your plans play out, and seeing your ordinance hit successfully. :)

[Kushan]

My biggest problem with the whole management of my mission sets was getting them up in the air from my own base. I must be trying to push too many birds in the air at the same time. I tried to get this to happen logically, by making most of the missions inactive upon creation, and then flicking the switch to active at the time I wanted them launched. But even with this ordered approach, they were coming out slowly and in some odd order. Not sure whether theres any better way to do this. I suppose make a load of loitering patrol missions, just to get them all airbourne, and then swap them all into proper inactive missions, and then flick the active switches to set them off at the desired time.

I had the same issue during the tutorial mission. If you click on the aircraft tab of the airbase menu, it will show you whether the aircraft is being readied, waiting for taxi, taking off, etc. Taxing and cluttered runway's seemed to be the bottleneck.

I let the AI manage the AAW phase of the mission. Set up a AAW mission with the 1/3 rule checked. My fighters automatically handled enemy fighters without any intervention from me, and kept the CAP up throughout the entire mission.

The SEAD phase didn't quite go as planned. My Corsairs launched their shrike missiles, but then instead of moving into drop their bombs, they just flew around in circles over the enemy airfield until the next flight arrived. Could just be me not checking something in the mission editor but I don't think so.

The bombing phase went ok, besides me ordering mark 82 armed intruders to attack hardened bunkers. Don't think I made a dent in them. But the rest of the strike that was targeted correctly, went off with only a few losses to SAMs.

I did notice, that the strike aircraft automatically orbited the airbase while waiting for the rest of the strike to take off. The continuous cycling of the CAP fighters, significantly delayed the strike forming up. Not sure how its going to work when fighting with a carrier and have even less taxi/take of space (if that's even modeled).

Dimiitris/bostonmyk: Not sure how hard it would be, but would it be possible to add a toggle in the options menu for a zoom to cursor instead of zoom to center? That way everyone is happy?

More time compression options would be nice as well. I'd like to see 1/2 second (if possible) and 2 and 3 second options.

[JudgeDredd]

...
My point here isn't to dispute or try and minimize JD and Nefaro's issues, just to indicate that YMMV.  It isn't that some of the issues raised don't exist, but rather that depending on your play style, approach to this game, and level of control you demand over individual units, some of these things might not be as bothersome or might not be issues at all to you.

I agree with this. My mentions on issues with the interface are mine (and apparently Nefaros). I have intuitively sought information and I'm left wondering why it's not where it should be - according to me.

It appears these are subjective - because it's only really me and Nefaro who have mentioned them. When I first saw that - I was perhaps under the impression that many people wanted to be "yes men" to justify their £65...who wants to look like a mug, right?

But I am totally willing to concede that it's subjective. Plenty of other people had not had issues with the interface.

The RTB issue I noticed - I don't know what was going on and I am also willing to concede that it may have been my lack of understanding.

For me - myself and purely myself - this game shouldn't have been released at £65. Not currently. The UI features I've mentioned, whilst subjective, annoy me. The lack of a weapons DB annoys me and no images...those alone make me feel a wee bit ripped off. At that price, I'm of the mind it should be feature complete and all little items should've been ironed out.

However - the devs have been active and polite (more than can be said for others) and downright helpful and they have listened - looking at the interface (apparently based on 2 peoples feedback) speaks volumes. The weapon database is coming, they are going to look at the lag. The issues I mentioned are absolutely not insurmountable - and they're looking at it.

I just wish for £65 I was playing and not having to mention these things - that's all.

There are also some great things in the game (which I may not have alluded to because I wanted to give my concerns). They appear to have streamlined some functions (looking at what bostonmk mentioned about the formation and asw) and I have yet to get into the game properly to get into these more. The modability looks amazing - loading your own wee map looks like a great feature and I hope they examine it more to allow you to overlay bigger files (currently recommended to be kept to the size of a small city). Within an seconds of mentioning no images, I was pointed to a user set - unzipped and installed in seconds. It's not complete - but there are some great images in there and I hope it's added to. There are already user scenarios and looking at how fast MikeGer was up and running, there's going to be a plethora of scenarios.

On top of that - as already mentioned, the devs are responsive and listening.

So I will likely get my £65 back and more in gameplay - but on release? I would've expected a bit more polish.

Now carry on  :) And thanks again to bostonmyk and Dimitris for stopping by here - they have their own site and Matrix to deal with.

[Dimitris]

Thanks guys. Your patience with the flaws observed is appreciated. And we are indeed listening.

Part of the challenge in doing UI items "right" prior to release is that, as you noted, these things can be very subjective. If the sim is slow or crashes a lot, or if there are realism WTFs or the stats are wrong, it's obvious to everyone (I think we've done pretty good on all these counts).

OTOH, deciding how to present a given piece of information can be a very tricky call. Do you put everything on the main screen? Guys are swamped with numbers and stats and they hate it. Put everything in separate windows with logical drill-downs? Guys are annoyed that they need more clicks to get to the info they want. Put summaries in front and details behind? You end up annoying everyone :)

So you do things as they seem right to you and you hope that they'll make sense to the majority (dogfooding and a solid beta process both help a lot with this). And because you're pretty certain that you'll have to change at least some of them, you make sure to structure them as flexibly as possible.

Then you launch.

And you listen to feedback.

And you start planning out & implementing changes depending on the consensus of said feedback, trying as much as possible to understand and apply what your customers want.

It's an iterative process, and an imperfect one, but it's one that has been proven to work quite effectively.

[undercovergeek]

is there a 1.1 in the works?

[JudgeDredd]

^ I don't know what they're calling it - but they are definitely on the move according to some posts I've seen

[CptHowdy]

"I was sending Tomcats back to base last night, by selecting the aircraft, pressing the 'U' hot key to remove it from an AAW patrol, and then right clicking on the unit and select RTB. That seemed to work for me."

4 clicks to issue one command?? why cant I right click a unit and issue a command? telling it to RTB should automatically unassign it from a mission. I should be able to right click a unit and get a drop down of commands I can issue. hovering your mouse over a unit should give me info such as weapons loadout, fuel left, weapons left, current mission. as others have stated, the info is available is just needs to be more easily accessed. 4 clicks to issue a RTB, seems silly to me when you might have hundreds of units.

[jomni]

"I was sending Tomcats back to base last night, by selecting the aircraft, pressing the 'U' hot key to remove it from an AAW patrol, and then right clicking on the unit and select RTB. That seemed to work for me."

4 clicks to issue one command?? why cant I right click a unit and issue a command? telling it to RTB should automatically unassign it from a mission. I should be able to right click a unit and get a drop down of commands I can issue. hovering your mouse over a unit should give me info such as weapons loadout, fuel left, weapons left, current mission. as others have stated, the info is available is just needs to be more easily accessed. 4 clicks to issue a RTB, seems silly to me when you might have hundreds of units.

And they should be able to RTB themselves.   Can they?

[Dimitris]

"I was sending Tomcats back to base last night, by selecting the aircraft, pressing the 'U' hot key to remove it from an AAW patrol, and then right clicking on the unit and select RTB. That seemed to work for me."

4 clicks to issue one command?? why cant I right click a unit and issue a command? telling it to RTB should automatically unassign it from a mission. I should be able to right click a unit and get a drop down of commands I can issue. hovering your mouse over a unit should give me info such as weapons loadout, fuel left, weapons left, current mission. as others have stated, the info is available is just needs to be more easily accessed. 4 clicks to issue a RTB, seems silly to me when you might have hundreds of units.

Getting unassigned from a mission when RTBing is not always a good idea. Let's say you have some fighters on AAW sweeps. They go up, dish it out, their winchester or bingo triggers kick in and they RTB. Do you want them pulled off the mission? No, you want them to head back, get turned around and up in the air again ASAP to continue the battle.