This is actually a bug in 0.93. I only recently realized that having the initial bases declared as Villa and East Farm causes all the middle bases to not have anyone present at the start of the match, i.e. all Greys spawn at East Farm and move out from there to occupy the other bases as soon as they can.

So yah, 0.93.1/0.94 should behave more as expected in this regard.

Dang, I thought it was a viable strategy. ;(

Played couple hours all by my self on campaing.

Most frustrating issues on campaing IMO (right now):

- This game relays quite heavily on "team play", but the friendly AI does not have a clue about it. Or ok sometimes there is that one AI guy that goes "DERP there is no "i" in the "team", let my get that shield and be completely useless"

- To be completely honest, I also dont have any means of communicating with the said AI frendlies. That frustrates me quite alot, since team play is half about the communication. But nope, I'm just as useless as the AI in that sense. I find my self fairly often at middle of firefight, while I can see frendlies at oher side of my screen, but they seem to be too busy wanking to help in any way. True I cant either do anything about it like shout: "I FOUND ENEMIES WOULD MIND LIKE SHOOTING WITH YOUR GUN AT THIS DIRECTION?" But hey, after 5 hours of playing I get ability call in a motherfuking tank in 0.3 seconds with no crew in to the battlefield. Nothing says team play more than that!

- Scouting is no team play, since if you manage to find the comms truck friendly AI does not even try to do anything about it. And yeah, not being able to pick up certain items from the ground because you dont have rank for them... "Sir, I found the enemy coms" "Great kid, do you have way to destroy it?" "Well kind of sir, found 17 bazookas from nearby 15 supply crates, but...." "Yes?" "Sir, im only a corpral" "Well thoug shit kid. Should have thought that before you sacrifised your own life for this team. Try to make back to your side and see if you get lucky with one the crates here. Or do the time honored scout thing and expose your location by shooting the enemy men with your loud ass gun to draw their attention to your need for two impact grenades, or shit even 10 of the normal ones.. Kill all the 20 enemies around that area and mayde one of them has something you can use..."
- maybe there could be a mechanism like "behind the enemy lines" like if there is one enemy controlled base between you and friedly base you would get the right to pick up any weaponry found?

-Wake Island. Its 3rd map on the campaing. My KD before that was about 6.4 - 6.5 and at wake it suddently turned to 3.2 - 3.3. Are you sure that it should 3rd and not like 6, 7 or 8? Also, I dont know the "get enemy truck and return it to armory at X" is supposed to work but I did not manage it on wake. I did the dump thing and tried to "run over" the x in front of the armory with the truck, I tried driving it really close to the armory and tried to access inventory, inside the vehicle and outside of it.

- And yes, I had a bad day and a bad week, and I dont even care if it shows up in this message. I'm proud of my manperiods I seem to have at the moment.

SPOILER AND WALL OF TEXT ALERT

Just having finished (0.93.3/0.94) campaign yesterday and having had a huge blast with it (about 2 weeks of time, total playing time about 8 hours, might have played the first maps with 0.93.2), I'm amazed to find you had what seems to have been the complete opposite.


I don't know where you got the relying on team play -part, maybe there's some exaggeration somewhere in the marketing material, but I can assure you the game doesn't rely on team play that much.

If we focus on single player gaming here, the only team play that is happening is in the AI, and it's merely implemented as high level orchestration: commander distributes squad leaders around the map for defense, border support and attack, squad members follow wherever leaders go, then they fight, that's it! Sure, you can boss your squad around a bit but mostly you're then entering a gameplay area that isn't strictly required, they do their job just fine by taking the bullets for you and by providing some more bullets flying in the other direction.

Some spreading happens based on how many troops there are, they do a bit of random flanking getting towards the attack target. That may appear tactical or intentional at times, which is nice.

And probably not a surprise, but the friendly AI and the enemy are following the exact same logic, the friendly side of the campaign is just boosted in capacity by default so that it would be easier for the player. So if the enemy doesn't need much team play, why would you?

Sad that you don't like the shield guy, I like him, funny dude. There's some bug that makes him point the shield in wrong direction at times, but generally the logic is about there where I want it: the guy attempts to create an additional point of cover somewhere where he has determined there are not enough cover to provide a new shooting point for his fellows. I've seen a few loners among them, they think their squad is closer than it is, but generally it has been good enough.


The point is that you only communicate to your own squad, not to other squads. You can at times attract them with noise, but that's more like reaction rather than communication. This is obviously a simplification of how things really work, but hey, it's game that doesn't rely on squad-to-squad communication, if you haven't noticed.

I just finished 0.93.3/0.94 campaign myself, 7.9 hours. This campaign has the changes that first two maps are easier by boosting fellow capacity even more, and 3 last maps are harder by nerfing the capacity, in attempt to counter the increased power the player has when he gets a bigger squad / better calls.

To me, it all felt very good, pretty much like I want it. It wasn't too easy nor too hard on hard difficulty, balance was mostly great. Last map was hard enough, happened to have Sainte-Anne, and I was really getting a feeling I was short on troops because of the completion based nerf. Had to make sure I've got RP for reinforcements to keep certain bases defended, had to make sure I'm not using my 7-man squad to keep the defenders in place, did plenty of backdooring with my medic as I had Vintorez -- got streak of 109 kills there, must've saved myself from dying while wounded at least 4 times by calling in 4-man drops after pushing myself to safe enough place.

Had very nice moments, e.g. in Frostbite, the final attack was directed to the West base that had a radio tower causing jam on our calls, I could see my AI trying to make requests at the entrance to no avail. We were utterly failing at charging so I decided I'm going to sneak in and C4 that tower, which I did after a few attempts, they then got me trying to drive the cargo truck through the front entrance, surprise. On the next charge, our calls are open, me and the fellow AI are bombarding the area with artillery and mortars finally getting through to secure the entrance and to capture the base. Maybe it was a fluke, but stuff went exactly right: the side objective stuff that I pulled off had an impact that allowed my fellow AI to advance.

In general this is how I tend to play RWR. If I am WE ARE hitting an obstacle, I try to observe what is the main thing stopping our advancement, the enemy tank, APC, lack of radio, MG fire, lack of troops, no cover, anything, and I make that into a task for myself to solve.

The game doesn't provide a way to communicate and lead those poor bastards, so why would I sob after that mechanic as the game's not designed to work like that?

In that sense the game is more like a tower defense attack game where you need to clear the obstacles your main AI party is having. Maybe our marketing material should include that message.

And, probably not the best of news to you specifically, that's not going to change. The balance is finally reaching a state that I genuinely felt that things worked, so a drastic change like squad-to-squad communication or player-as-commander would obviously reset a lot of things in balance and in worst case turn people off for having to worry about troop orchestration.


Also remember to call in the 4-man drop, you'll get your squad filled for the tank. Hmm.. never called in the tank in my campaign, tend to forget it exists.


I know the game doesn't provide you a lot of handholding, but I suppose you would've known you need blasts to destroy vehicles. Scouting as such is all fine for some RP farming, but if you were to actually do something about the targets, you need to prepare for it (psst.. I've noticed it's handy to stack your stash with all sorts of stuff for these cases, there are stashes in the enemy territory for you). Normally, I consider MP5SD level, which is 3k XP, the entry to even do any recon/stealth, and by then you can carry a few bazookas or impact nades, so you're a walking arsenal by that time.

Also, you'd then have a squad of your own where someone would have grenades and bazookas. Moreover, you'd even have the access to call backup, the first reinforcement call unlocks at 3k XP. Seeing a pattern here?

To add, you should be somewhere around 2-3k XP when you're done with the first two maps, and the first two maps don't have side objectives where you'd need to destroy something. So unless something is wrong, you shouldn't come across a situation that easily that you'd even want to scout+destroy a comms truck without being able to carry bazookas.

Also notice that side-objectives have been purely designed from lonewolf/combat-pair/coop point of view, your faction AI doesn't really care what you are doing there - for all they know, you should be there helping them survive at the main target area. The technical issue with it is that getting the AI to understand over stealth is beyond our heads, so you're limited to calling paratroopers.

So indeed, the farthest with getting the faction AI involved in what you're doing with side objectives is that you first clear the first phase, e.g. destroy comms truck or radio tower to make calls available, then call reinforcements with radio to capture the area and set up a defense.


Wake island is sometimes super easy and sometimes a bit harder than that. 0.93.3/0.94 makes it easier as fellow capacity is still boosted in second map. I think it's second map in campaign, right?

I've never done cargo truck mission in Wake except as after-match bonus.

***************

TL;DR:
1) don't play with hard difficulty
2) why go stealth before you can use the stuff you need for stealth?

If you have a problem with shield guy then you have a problem with me.

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Actually read the whole post, and ok I was unreasonable on the AI and what the game idea is about. I should have my computer lock posting to forums (in general) when my diastolic bloodpressure goes over 100 mm/hg.

About what you suggested, please be informed that I was playing with "easy" settings. Because I wanted to have fun, not frustrating moments. I played some more today (of the same save) and cleared Wake after 20 minutes with same tactic I was using previously. But after I cleared wake the total time was 90 minutes. And Aeolian coast did not take 20 minutes. I went to Al tabul next (after wake) and that was sort of too easy and was over in under 15 minutes. Stalemate after that took like 60 minutes but that was ok, since that map is clusterfuck by default. And that did feel frustrating.

Also played campaing on hard, Aeolian cost took about 60 minutes, had no big frustrating moments, east beach was only really difficult part of it for me. Docs is bit hard, but not bad. Now at Wake its been 70 minutes and the closest I've gotten is 300 seconds. I got streak of 61 with m16 by camping (I dont like camping + I does not include running) the NE gate and my KD is 5.5-5.6 after 130 minutes of total play at that save. I'm also about 800% more frustrated than with any other part of the game. I'm useally alive even when the base is taken over. Once I was alive from losing the base to taking it over again. I think the map would be better even by modifing the take over timer form 10 secs to 25 seconds. Player would have more time to clear the area a bit.

And about that 2) why go stealth before you can use the stuff you need for stealth?
For fun?

EDIT: Also sorry about that shield guy thing, but to me it seems every time sombody pulls up that shield their team loses from 3-5 guys. Or maybe that applies only to Wake. Grey was pulling that but those are not problematic for me (more like help to me when they do that cause I can gun down 3-4 of them).

For the shield AI, I think it's totally fine. You can't expect it to be used perfectly every time, it's still AI after all. Anyway, for myself I like it a lot.

About the KotH logic, I agree that it can be very frustrating when you get the airfield taken right before you win it and have to do it over and over again. But it will be done differently at some point, so that if the enemy takes it back, then your counter will just be frozen and will resume once you take it back again.

How fun was it?

Kidding aside, good thing you tried easy setting. I can just increase the capacity/accuracy for greens there if it doesn't seem to be enough.

EDIT: I'm taking that back actually, 36 minutes into campaign with easy and I'm done with two first maps in 0.93.3/0.94. Grey never got even close to capturing Airfield in Wake, so it seems it has been already changed, mostly by first maps having capacity boost for friendlies.

Even with higher XP progression I was barely 1k XP when Wake was done, didn't have to do enough killing vs how fast maps were being completed. Gonna increase the XP rate a bit. I had about 3k RP though, so that seems fine.

About the shield AI; Now that I know what it is trying to accomblish, yes it work well enough. Problem that Im seeing is others trying to reach that cover get killed, and are pretty much target practice even when behind the shield guy. The bigger problem about this that I rarely see (real) advancement after or during sheald play, more like pile of dead people. Best success I have seen has been from cover A to cover B. Winning a single building? Nope. Murdering more enemies then losing? Not seen that (exept online).

About KotH logic, what if the timer would not be time based but sort of RP based? Every death, and loss of equipment (tanks, vehicles) would reduce teams total RP (use of "personal" RP would not reduce the total RP, but the loss of whatever you called in would --> no double whammy) Both teams start at 25k RP, deaths -2, trucks, jeeps - 200, tank -500.

No wait, that would be elaborated deathmatch.



About as fun as bad (or good, they allways end the same way) run at roque like. First you have fun and in the end you tend to think "If I only had [boose?] I could possibly win this fight" and then your dead.



Yeah, I dont know what i'm doing wrong at Wake (on any difficulty) but rest of the maps on easy are easy (on 0.93.1).

Also, I have missed the update to 0.93.2.. hmm..

EDIT: Oh lobby, since when you have started to look so nice?