Skirmish: Endless war of attrition?

[Mort]

Bounced off the first MoW:AS, but fancied a crack at this one.
So, played a few hours on Skirmish now and I think I have the basics sorted, having some successes here and there.

However, now I'm on a big maps, many VP's, and for hours now it has been an endless slog fighting wave after wave of blindly charging enemy troops and the occasional armor.
It's closer to tower defense than anything else, the map is too narrow to conduct any kind of flanking. So I have a 'frontline' that resembles the Somme. It's exhausting trying to make any headway.
I like the look and feel, and the direct control is excellent (although often leaves me wondering why the AI couldn't have taken a simple shot, instead of me)

Is that it just how it is for singleplayer?
I'm not really into competitive hardcore multiplayer, anywhere I can find casual MP games?

[Malus131]

I enjoy the sp too, but I just prefer the wider variety of tactics that people use online (ie. not bum rushing a town constantly). I play with my two or three mates who have this game, and we go on the same team so whatever the results I always have fun.

[DJSatane]

Malus have you tried the sniper missions such as bastogne that may give you nice change of pace and also allows you to plan things the way you want as far as how to go about advancing or achieving objectives.

[DUSTED]

Most of those big skirmish maps rely on momentum and digging in. If you just sit back, they will overwhelm you. You have to push and keep gaining ground.

They become easier with more people since you don't have to rely on the AI, and more people can coordinate more complex manuvors, like flanking effectivly.

AS2 has a variety of missions though, and loads of custom maps, too!

[Malus131]

Originally posted by DJSatane:

Malus have you tried the sniper missions such as bastogne that may give you nice change of pace and also allows you to plan things the way you want as far as how to go about advancing or achieving objectives.

I've done the first american one a couple of times and you're right, it is a nice change of pace. I shall have to give them another try to break it up!

[Dr. Oz The Great And Powerful]

The SP has decreased in quality since MoW. Play some of the MoW missions and you will get a much better SP experience and i really wish they kept that formula for AS and AS2. But no, they like their capture the flag better.

[DJSatane]

Originally posted by TFM bh5496 (GFL):

The SP has decreased in quality since MoW. Play some of the MoW missions and you will get a much better SP experience and i really wish they kept that formula for AS and AS2. But no, they like their capture the flag better.

Not all missions are capture the flag as I stated above. Further developing as in depth immersed missions as in mow requires more development, thats something that hopefully 1c will decide to do if MoW2 ever happens. AS2 has variety of missions and they are all also designed with coop in mind.

[Dr. Oz The Great And Powerful]

Originally posted by DJSatane:

Not all missions are capture the flag as I stated above. Further developing as in depth immersed missions as in mow requires more development, thats something that hopefully 1c will decide to do if MoW2 ever happens. AS2 has variety of missions and they are all also designed with coop in mind.

I seriously doubt there will be a MoW2 as AS and AS2 are basically the continuations of that game, the only difference being the more linear skirmishes. It's like asking for a Faces of War 2. And no, the missions of AS and AS2 are all basically capture the flag/hold the flag missions. They all go by a similar formula according to their type, i.e. "sniper missions," "defence missions" etc. other than the actual geography of the map, they are all pretty much the same depending on their type. I'm not saying they aren't fun, but often they become boring and monotinous because there is very little variety. There is just no comparison between the Kursk "defence" mission of AS, and Sevastapol, or the Factory Defence, or Moscow defence of MoW. All of those missions had their own unique flavor that made for an engaging, immersive, and varied experience as no 2 missions were alike. This is something that I've been hoping the franchise was going to recapture for a long time without modder help, and as of late, they have yet to deliver.

[DJSatane]

Have you played sevastopol in as2? its not capture the flags at all....

[Dr. Oz The Great And Powerful]

Originally posted by DJSatane:

Have you played sevastopol in as2? its not capture the flags at all....

Ah yes I have, and forgive me as you are right on that note. Yet it still lacks some of the feel as the older missions. For instance, it says be careful if you let the enemy see a dead comrad, they will alert others, but the actual system implemented in that is very flawed. When they do see a dead comrad, they draw their gun, search around for a couple of minutes, then forget the whole thing and go back to patroling; same thing if you get into a firefight with one of them and you break off for long enough. In an American stealth mission from MoW, forget the name, if they saw a dead comrade, they'd raise an alarm and all hell would break loose. They would all go and stay on high alert, making stealth much more difficult. Although missions like this are a step in the right direction, they are few and still lack alot of the heart that made MoW missions stand out.

[JustSomeGuy]

It feels to me as if the AI has an infinite CP and MP hack.

[DJSatane]

Originally posted by TFM bh5496 (GFL):

Originally posted by DJSatane:

Have you played sevastopol in as2? its not capture the flags at all....

Ah yes I have, and forgive me as you are right on that note. Yet it still lacks some of the feel as the older missions. For instance, it says be careful if you let the enemy see a dead comrad, they will alert others, but the actual system implemented in that is very flawed. When they do see a dead comrad, they draw their gun, search around for a couple of minutes, then forget the whole thing and go back to patroling; same thing if you get into a firefight with one of them and you break off for long enough. In an American stealth mission from MoW, forget the name, if they saw a dead comrade, they'd raise an alarm and all hell would break loose. They would all go and stay on high alert, making stealth much more difficult. Although missions like this are a step in the right direction, they are few and still lack alot of the heart that made MoW missions stand out.

Please remember that behind the scenes there is a alert level which every time enemy soldiers see more of you or more of their soldier dead bodies the alert level actually goes up.... slowly you will encounter enemy reinforcements arrive as result and some of them will actually start running and not just walking, later they may actually send few soldiers to run out of their way to some of your locations. While it may not fully look like enemy seeing dead bodies matters behind the scenes in script it does count. The system in those mission is quite complex and hopefully in future I can build on top of it to deliver a bit more immersed mission.

When you refering about old MoW feeling of missions there is a lot of script flaws in old MoW missions which I work hard to iron out, if you actually play some of them its very easy to beat ai or predict as in most of those MoW missions enemies dont actually randomize patrols or locations as much, and they dont actually react in as many different ways. For example in sniper missions like sevastopol in as2 if you crawl near enemy mg very close and the mg becomes aware that you are near he will actually move out and try to get you vs just staying still in his location.

[Vashyo]

The old MoW script is very messy and yes its very straight-forward, reason the missions feel so cinematic is because certain things allways happen exactly the same. For example theres a stuart on one map that just sits still at the back until one tank/soldier moves to certain spot then it goes forward and allways shoots at certain direction. If you dont go to this point u can just kill it easy at the back while it stays still.

MoW bugs tend to happen when you deviate from the planned-path, sometimes even breaking the mission cause for example you did not pick up some item when you were supposed to and have to start over.

DJs script is more complex and universal, it can be brought to another fanmade mission or expanded upon with similar straight-forward scripts as in MoW, Which we actually have done with DJ on some of our old mod missions.

Originally posted by JustSomeGuy:

It feels to me as if the AI has an infinite CP and MP hack.

AI has set limit on how many units it can have on the map at same time, spawns are time-based, but only happen if theres less than the unit-limit on the map otherwise they just queue until you go under the limit. Some missions it does have infinite spawns like a panther tank every 40 minutes, some it do not.