Artillery spotting rounds

2nd thread on suggestions today. Lets call it May-Day inspiration (I used search, but nothing relevant was revealed).



=========



Suggestion for mortar and artillery (not rockets and naval barrages).



Add a pre-barrage salvo consisting of 1 (to 3?) white smoke pillar(s) centrered on arty marker that remain on map until regular barrage ends.



Increase time between radio call and barrage initiation sufficient to allow time for spotting round pre-barrage.



Support with revevant voice acting (firing spotting rounds / firing for effect).



Compensate by decreasing cooldown time on all maps.



Do not use for wide area rocket fire and naval barrages.



==========



Purpose is to more clearly mark the centre of incoming artillery and both enhance intermersion, and allow players a window to react appropriately (to either avoid or to seek appropriate cover).



I believe it would contribute to a general cleaning up of the community environment in step with changes to the EULA. Given that misplaced artillery without a chance of avoiding it is one of the main griefing triggers in game.



It also enhances more clearly defining arty by type as function variations increase somewhat between low level assets and rocket barrages/naval barrages.



I am assuming this is relatively easy to introduce (use modified existing code for TL objective marking and simply add a delay for the regular arty system). So a low threshold change.



Besides, its realistic. Arty used spotting rounds historically:).

Idea for new class

I just happened to come across this forum again today, and checked the Ideas and found yet another thread for a new clsas which was basically the same as existing classes. This made me think - the only reason to add a new class is that it fills a niche that other classes don't.



Most of the classes are based around dps. A couple are based around tanking. There are none which are based around crowd control (in a way that isn't "kill everything" or leadership.



Just rough ideas - I came up with this a few minutes ago, but a class which on it's own isn't that powerful, but it supplements other classes.



Both zed guns would belong to this class (slowing zeds down to let other classes kill them - support). For a grenade he could have some kind of adrenaline grenade, allowing allies faster reloading/firing speed/lowered recoil/whatever, and making zeds spasm similar to when they're crisping (these are obviously buffing grenades, or delaying grenades. They aren't to be used against zeds in normal circumstances, although as I write this I can see noobs will annoy the hell out of allies with them).

Maybe another gun which deals spike damage, suitable for helping allies out in a pinch but not for long-term damage (although this is getting into the demo's area).

Heck, maybe a medigun which fires adrenaline (as per grenades) rather than healing darts. Or which makes someone take % less damage while they're under the effects.



Maybe as an innate ability he could bolster allies morale, displayed by a small buff to all allies within X metres of him.



For buffs, I'm looking for making everyone a bit better at everything, not at mimicing another classes buffs (commando - reload, sharp - recoil etc).



This is going a bit fantasy/sci-fi, but it's an example of a class which is actually different to existing ones - use your imagination guys :P

And yea, this is more an idea splurge than a balanced class suggestion :P

Dem Bots (behaviour suggestions)

Its a vexing thing, but emulating real life players with AI seems somewhat of a challenge.



But Bots are good. They impact on pings far less than human players and could be a way to break the 64 player cap...



...If only they could act appropriately.



I suggest taking a new look at the tasks bot perform and redefine what they do with the assumption that robots can in fact do many things in an appropriate way. The ideal might be that servers kept 4-8 bots in game even after reaching 64 human players.



Here are a few suggestions as things to do in supplement to current bot actions.



REACH CAP AND HIDE. Or simply go prone behind cover once in cap zone (behind cover defined as cover relative to axis of attack).



REACH CAP, BOOBYTRAP AND HIDE. Note that this suggestion beckons boobytraps for more fractions. But does not require it.



TAKING FIRE OR WOUNDED? GO PRONE. Self-explanatory



TAKING FIRE OR WOUNDED? CHANGE FIREPOSITION. Self-explanatory.



AUTO-MISS FIRST SHOT. Have bots aim off target. For auto weapons its good anyway as (I at least) generally let recoil walk me into target. For bolt action its also good as it removes the laser aim feeling we sometimes get when shot by bots.



AMMUNITION RESUPPLY. Bots should be good at that. If anyone calls out for ammo, then bot delivers (note: preferrably not all the bots as that would look silly).



AMMODUMP RESSUPPLY. Would require a new feature for ammospots that track ammunition at the ammo spots (each player or bot reaching an ammospot hands off random xxxx ammo of yyyy type(s) in addition to automatically resupplying self Timer is removed and ammunition of each type at each dump is tracked). Justified by giving bots an extremely important job to do.



MAN ANY AND ALL STATIC MGSs. Engage in both blind fire towards enemy and at identified targets. Subject to taking cover or leaving MG if fired on heavily. Bots would need to automatically leave MG if a player wants to use it. Note that this function could be useful for mappers. Edge of some maps could have a zone of open ground before actual edge that is covered by static mg way back to rear. Nothing stops players from reaching edge of map except that pesky bot manned MG at the rear with oversight.



USE MORTARS. Bots can theoretically be very good at this. Move to ammospot location outside of active caps. Hide and fire indirectly at targets called out or revealed by arial recon. This is a good role to point of actually reserving a mortar to bot only. Beckons adding 50 and 60 mm mortars to more fractions.



USE MGs IN OVERSIGHT. Bots set up using normal covernodes, but at a minimum distance of 125 m from nearest identified enemy.



USE ANTI-TANK RIFLE IN OVERSIGHT. Same as above. Trick is keeping distance.



FOLLOW SQUADLEADER. Bots move to Squad Leader or where directed by SL. Similar as functions existing today, but bots need to be aware of spacing (stay 5 m away from anyone) and need to follow the 5 first points of these suggestions.



SURRENDER. Bots will under certain circumstances (for example when in spawn protection zone, or in cap that was just lost) drop their weapons, raise their hands and try to surrender. For example by walking directly to nearest enemy with hands raised or behind neck. After that they jog back to closest enemy spawn. Idea is to have a trickle of defeated enemy soldiers being passed by friendlies moving towards front. -1 point for killing surrendered troops. +2 points for accepting a surrendering soldier (you are the guy they walk up to). Perhaps add a ticket for each prisoner captured to team capturing them (defined as each bot reaching enemy spawn area. Dont blow them up though. Let them evaporate). Several achievements based on this.



===========



Thats all for now. But I think the general thought on what bots could be good at is valid. They suck at certain things they do now, so it would be good to de-emphase those roles and emphasise others.



Feel free to pass on to AI guy for his consideration :)

Graphic enhancement mods?

Are there any at all?

RO2 Infinite Mortars

While playing Bridges on 2Fjg Server, Mortars were dropped between A and B very early on in the match. They fell like 4th of July Fireworks from Heaven for several minutes without a break. I wish I could have grabbed a video of it, but did manage to snap a few screen shots. The mortars never ended and everyone's FPS dropped dramatically until most left the server. Maybe this is old news, but I have never witnessed it.

Spoiler!

[How Do I?] Cant hear sound

I am having sound problems in ro2. I just downloaded the game, and when I start it up, I can hear sound when all the logos pop up, but when I get into the in game menus I cannot hear anything. I also cannot hear anything when I join the server. Is there something I can do to fix this, because I would like to communicate teammates but I cannot hear anything.

[Error] Not saving video settings, crash after tutorial

Like the title says, my Steam copy of RO2 is doing just that.



Specifically:



Video settings do not change when I modify them....RO2 says it needs to restart, I click OK...and it never restarts, it just closes.



That, and it crashes after the tutorial, every time.



(Running on windows 7, by the way)



The following is the best I can do as far as a crash report, I'll explain in a moment:



Problem Event Name: APPCRASH

Application Name: rogame.exe

Application Version: 0.0.0.0

Application Timestamp: 51e7ffbc

Fault Module Name: rogame.exe

Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0

Fault Module Timestamp: 51e7ffbc

Exception Code: c0000005

Exception Offset: 0088e311

OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.768.3

Locale ID: 1033

Additional Information 1: 77f5

Additional Information 2: 77f5650febdb0b11982090f0810b4473

Additional Information 3: d616

Additional Information 4: d616ad3de25e36516af9099345066053





Fatal error!



Address = 0xc8e311 (filename not found) [in G:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Red Orchestra 2 - Single Player\binaries\win32\rogame.exe]

Address = 0x4b6868 (filename not found) [in G:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Red Orchestra 2 - Single Player\binaries\win32\rogame.exe]





So here's the thing. I've looked around various forums, and all the solutions to this problem seem to be changing values in a file called ROEngine.ini. Supposedly, this file is supposed to reside in /Documents/My Games/RedOrchestra2/ROGame/Config.



Here's the problem....this path doesn't exist. RO2 does NOT create this directory tree, or the .ini files it's supposed to. Even when I manually created the path AND a blank ROEngine.ini, the game does not find or populate the file.



I'm pretty sure that the reason for this is that, on my system, /Documents and /My Games reside on my E: drive, whereas RO2 is installed to the G: drive.



Here's how my system is set up:



Physical Drive 01:

C: Drive - 1st partition, NTFS, contains Operating System

E: Drive - 2nd partition, FAT32, contains /Documents/My Games



Physical Drive 02:

G: Drive - Contains Steam and games, this is where RO2 is installed



I'm thinking that something is preventing RO2 from properly pointing to and/or finding the /Documents folder. The only reason I have things set up like this, was that Crysis required a FAT32 system to write to. Plenty of my other games have no trouble with it, so this problem is most definitely specific to RO2.



Any tips/help would be very much appreciated. :D