Micromanagement - Thoughts of improvement

[los_miguelos]

Hello,

I have been working in SW engineering for some time. And I love MOW for some time Together it means I have deep respect for how the game is designed and I can see just how much work is behind this. On the other hand I have some ideas of how it could be better and how to move forwards in this genre.

Basically the game gets bigger with more units and more realistic battlefields. That's great and we – players – like it. The problem is, that with complex battlefield the current level of micromanagement is just unbearable. If you deploy hundreds of soldiers in skirmish and nearly a hundred in multi, you can't possibly keep an eye on everybody's ammo. You can do it for 5 of your tanks, and with putting a lot of effort even for machinegunners, snipers and other special units. But not for all your infantry.

Therefore I suggest this natural enhancement of AI:
- Upon spending all ammunition and when the infantry needs to fire (i.e. is not in cease fire mode) the unit will remember it's current location
- Then it will locate the nearest supply truck and go there for ammunition
- It will grab only as much ammo as it was initially carrying / would be nice to get grenades and other stuff as well
- It will return to it's previous position

I think that having a rifleman with no ammo siting anywhere just does no good. And I am sure this will be a major improvement saving some millions of mouse-clicks and help preventing annoying situations like when you attack with troops without ammo.

Others are welcome to post their suggestions / elaborations.

If you feel this is interesting, I can offer my further cooperation. You can find me at www.trueanalysis.eu / info@trueanalysis.eu. I have some more ideas about realistic infantry control in general.

Best regards, Michal

[imatrollmon]

Great idea, would be so useful, its almost stupid how the standard infantry can even run out of ammo, especially on the longer skirmishes, takes away from the realism, realistic soldiers would go get more bullets... not just sit there and get shot at.

[peter10]

We(2) played skirmish coop yesterday. 1. mission [introduction]. So I will share my findings and views here.



1. RESUPPLYing is too much hassle, definitely needs improvements
a, too much work with supplying units
b, ressuply order - SET infantry TO resupply tank FROM supply-truck WHAT ammo HOW MANY TIMES or HOW MUCH .... to set that inf to do it automaticaly back and forth 10-20-30-100times...


2. I dropped 100x mortar rounds on the ground and I had to search for them with max zoom and C*i think* to find them..... a Pile of boxes or mortar rounds would be more "realistic" and easier to find (100 is an amount you should not miss)

3. MEDIC
a, after you loose medic you can't help your bleeding buddies to revive. Are those troops so f.... stupid ? IF not-medic DO revive = 50% life after revive (for example)
b, medic tent would be nice for mass-group healing
c, a function for medic to heal squad-members in a set range (player set range ,mouse scroll -> circle-size) OR for selected units

4. coop unit ordering is bad ! Points sharing between players is OK. But he orders something and it gives it to me... come on ! Especially with inf-squad when it splits the squad.
5. engine performance sucks (there is another thread for this,i will post there)
6. Mortar team is taking turn like a trailer. Many times I found them stuck... lol

Is there a function to set waypoints for units ? I was looking in controls ... sorry if missed it

[Shardur]

I would also like the AI to auto loot ammo off of the fallen in the ((very) close) area. That way if you just took a trench or some other position the squad that moved there will refill it's ammo with the equipment lying around.

I'd also like the ability to split a stack of ammo (maybe this is in and i haven't found it jet?) to make it easier to supply 2 or more tanks with the same supply truck.

[gimmyabreak]

I love the attention to detail in MOW, but sometimes too much detail can get in the way of smooth gameplay. Especially during the age of stupid computers that do only what you explicitely tell it to do and even stupidier AI programming which tries to do too much and ends up doing nothing.

That being said, there's a lot that simple functional user interface will let you get away with in terms of computer generated stupidity.

1) Units which are out of any type of ammo should have a display balloon over them indicating their state of out of ammoness, and possibly even the type of ammo they lack (suggestion; a shell/bullet with a red cross over it? no?).

2) The resupply trucks should have a "resupply troops" button. When you press this, all nearby troops that have less than their standard ration of ammo come running up and collect ammo. This would not work for vehicles of any kind, instead they could be resupplied by parking next to them and hitting the resupply button instead. (I see no reason to manually move shells around other than to say "hey look I'm heavy on the micro management!!")

3) Stop having troops fire at tank operators. No living soldier in the world would do this unless they wanted to die fast and horribly, so knock it off unless explcitely ordered as such!! Note: this would significantly reduce the amount of soldiers that are out of ammo!! Have troops fire at other troops, and nothing else (it's "ok" if they also fire at jeeps, but please no tanks, no apc's, it's just dumb!)

4) Please give troops some kind of situational awareness (i know this is hard). Having a whole squad open up on some entrenched soldier miles away is NOT entertaining while a tank and 2 mg nests are scanning the territory. The notion I'm looking for is "display some kind of interest in self preservation you crazy jap kamikaze monkeys!!". I know there's a hold fire button, but HELLO, there IS a point where micromanagement becomes macro annoyance, and changing the fire stances of dozens of individual units crosses that line. So have them use some common effin sense.

5) Do have medics go around healing troops automatically (no not to the other side of the map, refer to point 4 about common effin sense). Real medics do not wait for order to save wounded soldiers, thus neither should make belief medics. I'm sure I mentioned this, but please do keep in mind the common effin sense bit... medics shouldn't try to revive soldiers that are being shot to micemeat by something menacing... situational awareness...

6) Have soldiers make more of an effort to rearm! They seem to only pick up their OWN weapon if they lose it. As if they have some kind of freaky emotional attachment to the damn thing. Have them pick up any weapon along the way that they are proficient with, and have them loot ammo they find automatically... again micromanagement to this degree is simply ANNOYING, as in NOT FUN. For that matters, have them pick up lost helmets and stuff two. Why do i have to keep telling my guys to equip themselves? What are they? Pining for death?

7) Have tankers STAY INSIDE THE TANK when it's being barraged with bullets. This seems obvious doesn't it? Only have them use whatever offensive weapons they can without leaving the safety of the armoured plating... that's what it's for after all! There's nothing more frustrating than seeing your tankers get nailed one by one because they take turn getting skewered in the top gun position. SH*T! My buddy died, better take his place and get nailed just like he did! War is NOT wack-a-mole!

Keep working on the UI, it's way WAY too tight lipped.

[Trotskygrad]

pfff, people in this thread complain way too much.

As for the medic, anyone with the "morphine bag" can revive a teammate. When my medic goes own, I just have some rifleman pick up the bag, use it to revive him, give the medic a SMG, and send him on his way like a SMG infantry.

As for weapons/ammo resupply, I agree that soldiers should prefer their own weapon over enemy weapons within a reasonable distance. However if it farther, they should prioritize enemy weapons of the same type within a certain distance.

As for ammo? perhaps have a "scavenge order" and hud notifications (like CoH, where things pop up saying "your unit is being attacked", "vehicle taking fire", etc, except with "your unit is low on fuel" and "your unit is low on ammo". Adding those would make the game more noob friendly without decreasing skill. (silenced weapons would not trigger alerts).

Also, when I have an infantry squad selected, I should be able to mouse over an ammo truck and issue a "resupply" command that divides up the ammo in the truck per unit type.

All of these things (except scavenge and weapon picking) have been already done by scripters in skirmish missions, shouldn't be hard for DMS to include these in a future update or MoW2

[Alcatar]

Well, this is a topic I brought up around a year ago, and it's what's kept me from buying and playing games from the series now.
I will not buy/play until resupply is fixed - it's ridiculous. I saw the issue in Faces of War and posted it with Men of War, never is it fixed and ever is it my biggest issue. My respect for the company is spiraling.

[Jarsinio]

So I agree with all the great suggestions above. I have one little suggestion to rectify an annoying problem: The supply truck. The supply truck kills more of my soldiers and destroys more vehicles than the enemy! It is designed to go around stones, but not around my own vehicles and soldiers. If it tows a gun, and turns around, it smashes the gun into other vehicles and destroys the gun. If I try to replenish the mortar, it runs over the soldiers carrying the mortar. It gets stuck in the trees, it bumps into things and turns over. I'm sure there is a simple way to fix all of this.

I also agree that some tanks and other vehicles are overpowered and some are underpowered. Also, if you face a Sherman tank as enemy in one scenario and play the Sherman tank against the Germans in a second scenario, the Sherman tank behaves very differently. It is more powerful as an enemy tank as it is when its your own.

[kane1]

In regards to the ammo problem there are ways to eliminate it (for infantry) or make it so that the unit(Tanks,ATguns,Mortars) will be destroyed before running out. By using the Editor and my way of porting things into your savedgames ammo is a non-issue.
It makes MoWAS PURE FUN and like all the MoW games it just begs to be Tweaked.

http://youtu.be/XuSgwozErO4

[Missguns86]

maybe because im new here and to the game. but i notice infantry stop to fire. which is alright for MG and sniper.
but i think other infantry types like smg. should be able to fire on the move.
and add a radio man to the game. with their own command tab for requesting medical aid, ammunition or Air/Artillery strikes. that would add realism, because the radio was a very important piece of equipment, probably their only means of communication in those days. and i like the idea of solders replenishing ammo from the fallen.