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Jul 01

Battlefield 1: Vehicles Of The Great War

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Battlefield 1

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Vehicles Of Battlefield 1

What we have so far:

Light Vehicles:

Armored Cars:

Rolls Royce Armored Car — a widely use light armored vehicle in WW1. One Vickers machine gun in a turret mount, could do 45 mph (72 km/h), which wasn’t all that slow.

Motorcycles:

Motorcycle (with Sidecar for passenger).  Likely a Harley-Davidson or Indian, both of which were widely used by American forces in the war.

 

Tanks:

Heavy Tank:  A7V German Heavy Tank (note that in the war, Germany captured many British tanks, and repainted them, and actually had more of those than their own A7)

Landship Medium Tank:  British Mark IV/V tank – medium tank with asymmetrical gun turrets. The model shown in the game so far is the Mark V, with two side mount cannons, and a front mount driver-seat controlled machine gun.

Renault FT-17 Light Tank (French, but used by other allies, UK and USA). Largest class of tanks, more built than all others combined.

Tanks were completely new vehicle types in WW1, and there simply were not that many different models built.  Each nation naturally tended to use its own designs.  In the game,  however, unless we are going to see tanks only on one side of the battle (which was the case for much of the war), we have to bend history and let both sides have models in each class.

 

Airplanes:

 

German
Scout: Fokker Dr.1 Triplane

Attack: Halberstadt CL.II 2-seat fighter

Bomber: Gotha G.V biplane bomber (could be G.IV, more of those were built, but the in-game model and text say G.V.)

Note that in the Alpha/Livestream, these planes are used by both sides.  The trailers show other airplanes, however, and unlike with tanks, each faction had its own models of planes in use.  In fact, the field of aviation saw an amazing amount of innovation during this period.

The early war saw lighter monoplanes in wide use, and pusher (propellers facing the back) biplanes were also widely used.  It was during this era that armed air combat really game into being, and the “Fokker Scourge” started when the Eindecker Fokker E.III monoplanes were equipped with synchronized machine guns, able to fire through the propellers and thus make air combat a matter of aiming the plane at the target.

 

The next era was the dominance of the new, improved biplanes, where both sides fielded more powerful aircraft and all sides had synchronized machine guns.  The Triplane era was brief, and only two models actually saw serious use –  the Sopwith Triplane, fielded first in 1916, and the Fokker Dr.1, introduced late in 1917.   It lasted only about a year before improvements in engines and designs made better biplanes available, like the Sopwith Camel and the Fokker D.VII.

Only 320 Fokker Dr.1 were built, and 147 Sopwith Triplanes.  Compare this with 5490 Sopwith Camels and 3300 Fokker D.VII, the successors to these, or 1770 Sopwith Pup (Scout) and 1866 Albatros D.III, their predecessors. The triplanes were a short term solution to the problems of insufficient engine power and lack of understanding of aerodynamics.  Too fragile and hard to maintain compared to biplanes, even at the height of their popularity there just weren’t enough of them to make them see wide use.

Will we see aircraft from more than one era in the game?  We miss out on some of the interesting models if we don’t do that.  But will players care about such things, or only want models they can easily recognize in their role?

You can’t emulate Snoopy vs the Red Baron if you don’t have a place for the Sopwith Camel to go up against the Fokker Dr.1.  But how would you go about assigning the aircraft by era to the maps?  Have the aircraft set fixed for each map, to fit the situation?  Or allow the aircraft era to vary, either randomly or by a server/game option?
Other armored cars:
Minerva Armored Car — Belgium, top gun emplacement in back, slower than the Rolls at 25 mph
IAG1 Crossley (or Chevrolet) Armored Car, has domed turret with two machine guns. Its dual wheels in the back could have made it handle better, but it wasn’t a 4 wheel drive.  Didn’t actually see service until after the war.  Its armored turret and door design were intended to go against lightly armed infantry, but it was useless in mud.

Autocar Armored Car — a partially enclosed car with one mounted gun.

Ehrhardt E-V/4:  German armored truck, with a high top turret and more ground clearance than others of the war.  Speed about 35 mph.

All of the armored cars started out as regular automobile chassis with armored components attached to them.

 

Other tanks of WW 1
Medium Mark A Whippet — British Medium tank, tracked with a turret, no heavy gun originally (but that is true of many others as well, not all the Mark series tanks had big cannons).  Faster than the Mark series tanks, not as heavily armed or armored.
Schneider CA1 — early French tank, one larger cannon on right side only (similar with the Mark IV), and two machine guns. In size, I’d guess this to fit the medium tank role.
Saint-Chamond Tank — a heavy tank, one large forward-mounted non-turret cannon, 4 machine guns on sides.  Could also be implemented as French medium tank with two side machine guns.

Tanks were new, and there wasn’t a lot of actual variety. The British Mark series had a lot of models, all fairly similar in appearance, the classic landships.  The late war saw development of larger Mark series, but none saw service which offer much difference compared to the Mark V.

Air Power in WW1: 

There were roughly four eras of aircraft design in WW1, and though I think that the early era has some nice looking planes, I doubt we will see them in Battlefield 1.  For one thing, the early models were not balanced against each other at all, and the German aircraft dominated, requiring greater numbers from their opponents in order to even the odds.  But also, the earlier aircraft didn’t perform nearly as well as the later models, and might be harder for players to effectively use in game.

Bombers are sort of a special case.  They were mid-war to late war innovations themselves, and though there were improvements, I think that one per faction for the entire war will suffice.

British:

Bomber:  Handley Page Type O/400 for 3 seat bomber
Mid

Scout: Sopwith Pup (official name: Sopwith Scout (Scout), single seat counterpart to the 1-1/2 Strutter

Attack: Sopwith Type 9400 1-1/2 Strutter — earlier two seat fighter, first British plane to have synchronized machine gun (so pilot could shoot forward through propellers).

Late

Scout: Sopwith Triplane.  A Canadian UK unit got a special reputation using these, and was known as the Black Flight from their distinctive black paint jobs.

Bristol F.2B – 2 Seat Fighter

End War

Sopwith Camel (shown in trailer video)

Attack: Royal Aircraft Factory R.E.8 — two seat fighter/scout

Scout: Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5 — a competitor to the Sopwith Camel, same role, scout-attack

The S.E.5 was a popular alternative to the Sopwith Camel, and might be used by allied pilots
German

Bomber:

Bomber: Gotha G.V biplane bomber (could be G.IV)

 

Mid-War

Scout: Albatros D.III — this plane preceded the Triplane as the lead attack fighter, while the Fokker D.VII was the later war version.  The plane the Red Baron used the most, despite the going out in the Triplane.

Attack: Albatros C.III

Late-War

Fokker Dr.1 Triplane
Halberstadt CL.II 2-seat fighter

End-War

Scout: Fokker D.VII – biplane fighter, counterpart of Sopwith Camel

Halberstadt CL.IV — improved version of CL.II

or

Hannover CL.III – 2 seat, ground attack

Notes: The Sopwith Triplane was introduced as the first combat triplane, and used by the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) rather than the Royal Air Corps, and it took some time for Germany to respond with its competitor. By that time, the British were well on their way to the development of the superior Sopwith Camel. The German counterpart to that is the Fokker D.VII biplane, which was the premier single seat attack fighter at the end of the war.

Do we get both the Triplane era and its successors? That could be interesting, but it leaves open a lot of questions about how many sorts of aircraft we will see.

French/American

The Americans entered the war in its later stages, but some enlisted with French or other forces in order to fight in the war before that time.  The Lafayette Escadrille is especially noteworthy

Bomber:

Caudron C.23 – good candidate for the bomber role, a large late war twin engine 3 seat craft.  Earlier bombers were two seat aircraft.

Mid

Scout: Nieuport 17 – early single seat fighter, first one with synchronized gun.  Nieuport biplanes were technically  sesquiplane designs, with the lower wing not as wide as the upper.

Attack: SPAD S.XI

Late

Scout:  Nieuport 27

Attack: Salmson 2 – 2-seat

End

Scout:  SPAD.XIII.  Very popular with US pilots.

Attack: Breguet 14

 

The US forces used French and British aircraft. Despite the Wright Brothers success in inventing airplanes, the USA did not keep up with the wartime development and had none of its own to speak of in WW 1. Russia and Italy also used French fighters.  Thus, there were no American models of combat aircraft deployed during WW 1.

Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire used mostly German aircraft designs.
They did of course use their own markings on most, though it wasn’t uncommon to see German crosses on them along with their new paint.
Scout: Phönix D.I — single seat biplane fighter, only one produced specifically for Austria-Hungary. Also known as Hansa-Brandenburg D.I, it is comparable to the early war Albatros D.I, but remained in service with upgrades until the end of the war for Austria.

Italy used mostly French designs

Ansaldo A.1 Balilla – only Italian single seat biplane to see much service in war. They otherwise used mostly French aircraft.  This plane was comparable to the Sopwith Camel, but with a narrower streamlined engine cowling and one of the fastest planes of the war.

Russia

Bomber:

Voisin III.  A French design used early in the war, two engine pusher design with two crew (which means only one machine gun, if we stick to its historical configuration).

Russia’s own innovation was the Sikorsky Ilya Murmomets (S-22/S-23) 4 engine biplane bomber, the first heavy strategic bomber in the world.  But with a crew of five (but only two gunners plus a pilot with combat roles, and an enclosed protected cockpit, it is in a different class from the Gotha G.V and similar bombers.

Fighter:

Sikorsky S-16.  Only a small number of these were built.  Otherwise, used mostly French designs.

Airships:

Zeppelin:  L 30 on the kill feed. (LZ 62, 62nd Zeppelin built,  first of the same super-Zeppelin class as L 32). , used for bombing operations over the UK. About 196 meters long.
Note : No other nation made anything quite like the Zeppelins. The British made a handful of airships, but the Zeppelin companies turned out over one hundred.

Blimps and balloons were made in much larger numbers, but they were harder to steer, more fragile, and less useful as military attack vehicles. As reconnaissance craft, though, they were excellent. So far, we can’t actually shoot any of them, but perhaps that will come later.

Other Aircraft:

Ground attack planes and the first heavy bombers also saw some use.

Heavy Bombers:

There are none of these shown so far in the game, but they played an important role in the war, and also stood out as remarkable innovations for larger aircraft.

Russia’s Sikorsky Ilya Murmomets (S-22/S-23) 4 engine biplane bomber with an enclosed cockpit, could have a crew of 5 or so.  Significant as the first long range 4 engine aircraft of the war, and used to good effect in what was otherwise a losing war for Russia.
German Zeppelin-Staaken R.VI Riesenflugzeug – “giant aircraft” saw a fair bit of service, open cockpit but again a large crew. It had a successor, the Zeppelin-Staaken R.XIV, with a large enclosed cockpit, but saw very limited use at the end of the war.
British Handley Page V/1500 – another 4 engine bomber, was deployed but didn’t see action during WW 1.

Italian Caproni Ca.3 – 3 engine bomber. Italy

Note that all heavy bombers were used largely for night air raids, rather than daytime attacks, just as Zeppelins were. They had guns, but were not maneuverable enough to really dogfight. Russia used them to good effect.

In game use, they could perhaps be comparable to the Airships, a special unit reinforcing the battle.  It would take two or three of these “giant” airplanes to be equal to one Zeppelin.

Night bombers — two seat attack planes with heavier loads — also saw service, but I’d think that these four engine giants would be more interesting for game play. Would they fit for all maps and missions? Probably not, but they were still a major factor in the war, along with airships, creating the whole category of strategic bombing.
Germany pioneered the ground attack plane, with a metal fuselage.  Will we see them in Battlefield 1?  Not all maps would fit their role, a tougher two seat attack craft intended to hit ground targets rather than fight in the air.
Junkers J.I crew of two, notable for being equipped with a radio for its observer/gunner. First of the type.
AEG J.I crew of two, notable for giving the pilot fixed machine guns pointing down, for strafing action, while the rear gunner took care of air threats.
Albatros J.I — a competing craft, used near the end of the war, similar design and role.

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Jun 28

Battlefield 1: The Weapons From The Dawn Of All-Out War

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Battlefield 1

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What weapons will we get in Battlefield 1?

 

We have a bunch of information about the weapons and vehicles of Battlefield 1, but there are still pieces missing. We know that each kit will have seven or so class weapons available at release, with three shown in play so far. The customization screens show 16 weapon slots, with 6 filled, allowing for an additional three to five weapons, depending on the number of variants of each (some will have three, so five is unlikely). The variations can have different characteristics other than just simple handling (like fire rate or damage), so while they are technically the same weapon model, they can actually play like different weapons.

There are eight sidearms, and we’ve seen four of them, two in use in the livestream. For vehicles, the aircraft were all German models, but the trailers and other info show that more models will be in use, serving similar roles. Tanks and armored cars, on the other hand, suffer from the problem of not having that many variants developed and used during the war, so we are stuck with all factions sharing models.

In all cases, the weapons and vehicles were real and almost all saw some actual service in the war, even if it may have only been in the final days.

So what weapons could be still to come in the full game? Let’s look at what has been revealed so far.

http://battlefield.wikia.com/wiki/Battlefield_1

Weapons of Battlefield 1
Submachine Guns
Automatico M1918 · MP18
Shotguns
M1897 · M1912 · Model 10-A
Light Machine Guns
Lewis Gun · Madsen MG · MG 08 · M1909 Benét–Mercié · MG15 n.A.
Sniper rifles
Gewehr 98 · M1903 Springfield · Russian 1895 · SMLE MKIII
Semi-automatic rifles
C96 Carbine · Cei-Rigotti · M1907 SL · Mondragon
Sidearms
M1911 · C96 · P08 Pistol · Webley Mk VI
Other
T-M1918
Battle Pick Up
Kleinflammenwerfer (flamethrower)

One thing to keep in mind about World War 1 is that before the war, all the nations involved traded with each other, and it was common to use weapons built by makers in nations which were now your enemy. This is especially noticeable in the LMG and Sidearm categories. Once the war started, each nation had to equip its troops with weapons it could get within its alliance, and this is most strongly noticed with the most widely issued weapons, the standard bolt action rifles.

Pilot/Tanker Mechanic
Mauser C96 Carbine (semi-auto pistol) . Could use attached stock to act like a short carbine, the C96 itself is a 7.63mm Mauser caliber with a 10 round clip magazine (though 9mm versions were also made for export).

What others might we see?  It is hard to say, I find references to carrying semi-auto rifles as with the Medic kit, but not much on anything as specialized as the C96 Carbine Pistol.

Medic
M1907 SL semi-auto or slow auto, Winchester, a few thousand used by France
Mondragon M1908 — developed by Mexico, Manufactured by SIG, many sold to Germany and used by air crew
Cei-Rigotti — a very early automatic rifle, semi and full auto at possibly 900 rpm (but will overheat before that, but then, so will most automatic rifles).
Prototypes only. Used same ammo as bolt action Carcano M1891. Why include this one? It has a strong claim to being the first automatic rifle, and despite not seeing deployment, that gives it an important place in history.

Note that the relatively small magazine size of all the semi-auto weapons makes full auto fire very limited anyway — you only get a couple of seconds of fire. The fire rate is so slow compared to either SMG or LMG that you aren’t going to win that either, and you have to cope with recoil, so it really is only meant to be used up close.

Assault

MP18 SMG
MP1918 Automatico SMG
M10-A Shotgun Remington (shorter barrel version for war), 6 round magazine.
M1897 Winchester shotgun, external hammer, pump action. Note that the pump could trigger the gun, so you could fire as fast as you could slide it, making it feel more like a semi-auto in hip fire. We’ll have to see how that mechanism plays out. A good example of this sort of use is Ash’s fight at the end of Army Of Darkness, just repeatedly firing the shotgun by using the pump. (Edit:  Ash used a lever action Winchester and a double barrel shotgun, though we did see pump action models in the store.  Still gets the feel of how you use it). 5 round magazine.
M1912 Winchester pump action shotgun, 6 round magazine.  Military followup to the M1897.

Support
M1909 Benet-Mercie LMG (side magazine) Hotchkiss Gun (light machinegun, not the heavy one used on vehicles)
Madsen LMG Danish gun sold widely before the war, used by all sides.  A bit handier than most of the era.
Lewis Gun LMG.  Pan magazine on top gives it a lot of ammo for sustained fire.
Bergmann MG 15nA machine gun – 500 RPM, German counterpart to the Lewis gun, top drum magazine

MG 08 – the lMG 08/15 – a lighter — but still heavy — version of the MG 08, a German machine gun used on aircraft, which had to used aircooling rather than the water cooled mounted machine guns.

Scout
1895 Russian (Winchester) single/lever action (one has no scope by default), in Russian 7.62mm.  Uses a box magazine rather than the tube loading of most lever action rifles.
Lee Enfield SMLE MKIII
Springfield 1903 sniper (trivia note: the US M1903A4 sniper version wasn’t made until WWII, in 1943, the standard issue rifles didn’t have scopes, but could have them added).
Mauser Gewehr 98  with scope (Sniper model)

Sidearms
Colt 1911 Pistol semi-auto ,45
Luger P08 Pistol semi-auto 7.65mm (the 9mm was developed later), 8 round magazine
Webley Revolver MK VI (1915), .455 Webley 6 shot revolver

C96 Mauser semi-auto pistol, 7.63mm Mauser.  Pistol version of the air crew carbine.

Other
Lifebuoy M2 Flamethrower – Note: Found a reference to this, but as it was a British development of the German model and didn’t see service in the war, I don’t know that it will appear.
Rocket Gun, aka Vickers Q.F Mk II – a compact 40mm (1.59 in) caliber artillery piece.  Despite its nickname, it is a shell firing small cannon, not a rocket weapon.
Mauser 1918 T-Gewehr — a bolt action 13mm antitank rifle, the first and only one used in WW1.

So what classic weapons are missing?  What can we expect to see in the game?

Let’s address the standard issue bolt actions first. But first, a general comment on bolt action fire rates. A good shooter can do about 30 rpm on these, with the straight pull bolt models a bit faster to operate. Lever action rifles were no longer favored, though the Russian 1895 Winchester was used, in part because they were harder to operate prone, even though the fire rate could be higher.

Scout Snipers:

Lee Enfield MKIII (sans scope) British standard rifle
Mauser Gewehr 98 — Germany standard issue
Springfield M1903 – American standard issue iron sight bolt action rifle

Mosin-Nagant (called Mosin by most of its users), bolt action rifle widely used, Russia, Austria-Hungary
Carcano M1891 – Italian standard bolt action rifle
Berthier Fusil Mle 1907/15 – French standard bolt action rifle
Mannlicher M1895 Austria-Hungary standard issue bolt action rifle. Used straight pull bolt, unlike most of this era

The above four fill out the likely candidates for bolt action Scout weapons, as it gives each major faction (if we include the Russians) their own standard issue weapon.  The Russian 1895 Winchester was not the standard issue Russian rifle, but was still widely used and is different from all the bolt action weapons.
Ross Rifle MKIII — Canadian bolt action rifle, notable for straight pull bolt and high accuracy. Retained as sniper rifle in service after WW1.
Arisaka Type 38 rifle — Japanese bolt action rifle, 6.5mm, used by Russia, among others

If any Japanese forces are shown, they would use the Arisaka as well.  The Ross Rifle is noted for being especially accurate as a sniper weapon, and may be present simply for that reason.

 

These next two are variants of weapons already present, and could be represented by differences in appearance rather than being distinct weapons.

Mauser Model 1893 – Turkish Mauser.  The predecessor of the 98, used by the Ottoman Empire, which also used the 98 when they could get them. In most elements very much the same, its sight markings were in Arabic.  They didn’t manufacture their own rifles.

M1917 Enfield — US version of the British rifle — they used different ammo, but worked very much the same. Note that most US and British soldiers used one or the other of these.  Correction/.clarification:  This is a version of the 1914 .30-06 Enfield rifle, not the SMLE, and was built as an alternative to the Springfield 1903, sharing ammunition.  It also has the same 5 round magazine size.  In regards to this, a different skin/variant of the Springfield, due to similar performance.

Classic Sidearms:
British Bull Dog revolver — .44 Webley caliber, a big fat tough-looking 5 round revolver
Colt Model 1908 Pocket Hammerless – .38 caliber US, 7 round magazine (the 1903 .32 caliber version has 8 rounds)
Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammer — another .38 ACP 7 round pistol
Colt New Service – .45 caliber US Army revolver, 6 shot
Enfield revolver – .476 caliber 6 round British Army revolver
M1917 revolver – Smith & Wesson 6 round .45 caliber revolver, had a reloader
Webley Self-Loading Pistol – .455 caliber semiauto pistol, 7 round clip, British pilot and cavalry pistol
Webley–Fosbery Automatic Revolver – a .455 caliber semi-auto revolver (similar in concept to BF4’s Unica 6), holding 6 shots. A variant with 8 shots using .38 caliber was also made. Has a very nice look to it, plus holds a unique place in gun history. Never standard issue because of its size and weight, used by British.
Nagant M1895 – 7.62mm 7 shot revolver, has a unique look, widely used, but developed for Russia
Steyr M1912 – 9mm semiauto pistol with 8 round clip, Austria-Hungarian standard army
Beretta M1915 – 9mm semi-auto pistol, 7 round magazine, Italian standard
FN Model 1903 – 9mm Browning semiauto w 7 round box magazine
Modèle 1892 revolver – 8mm 6 round revolver, French officer sidearm. Accurate but lower in power than similar military weapons of the era

Despite the long list, and more which could be added, it comes down to a couple models of each class and caliber — heavy and lighter revolvers, and roughly 3 size ranges of semi-auto pistols, a total of perhaps five which are different in more than just looks and feel.  Guessing which four will be present in the game at the start isn’t easy.

My choices would be the Colt 1908, Webley-Fosbery, Nagant, and Beretta.  It gives use a good selection of types, with interesting looking models.
Others

Medic Semiauto Rifles:

RSC M1917 Fusil Automatique Modèle 1917 closest thing to standard issue semiauto in the war, French, uses 8MM Lebel cartridge.
Fedorov Avtomat M1916 semi-auto/auto rifle. Used the 6.5mm Arisaka cartridge, 350 RPM, Russian.
Mauser M1916 — semiauto with a 25 round magazine, its cost and fragility limited its use to air service by Germany, and it was later replaced by the more reliable Mondragon.

Farquhar-Hill rifle –  semiauto/auto .303 British rifle saw limited use by aviators, but never fielded on the ground. 700 RPM, making it despite its size closer to an SMG or LMG in role, and later developed as an LMG.  20 round drum magazine.  An interesting detail with this weapon is that when you switch magazines, you must press the trigger once to close the bolt and ready it for firing.

Semiautomatic rifles were a recent development, and though all factions tried to field standard issue versions, they were not quite ready for general distribution.

With three weapons already revealed, there is room for another four easily, and not a lot of other likely candidates for this role.

Assault SMG and Shotguns:
Chauchat-Ribeyrolles 1918 submachine gun, a compact development of the RSC M1917, 8mm .  Also called the 1918 carbine, even though it was short and fully automatic.
Thompson Submachine Gun. The 1918 models were only prototypes and never saw service in the war they were designed for. .45, about 600 RPM (later models shot faster and held more ammo)

Submachineguns were a new development, with the very first ones used in this war.

Browning Auto-5 — semi-auto shotgun. Also produced as Remington M11.

Note: Only the USA issued shotguns as standard military weapons.  Any soldier could potentially have obtained one, and common hunting weapons were used during the war by all factions at times.

With five weapons revealed so far, and three having two variants each (three shotguns), will we get all these?  There weren’t a lot of submachineguns in use yet, so I’d expect to see both of the above models.  The semiauto shotgun is another example of innovation during this period.  If each gets two variants, we could see all of these in the game.

Support LMGs:

Chauchat M1915/1918 LMG, USA and French use. Low rate of fire of 250 rpm, but heavy ammo still overheats, 8mm

M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle — LMG, USA, used as a replacement for the M1909 late in the war, .30/7.62mm with 20 round magazine.  Intended as a general purpose automatic rifle, it  was still heavier and served as an LMG instead.

With the five LMGs already listed, this brings us up to seven.  As one of the ways to fill 16 slots is five with two variants and two with three, they may well show up in the game.

 

A Wide But Not Unlimited Selection

In listing weapons which we can expect to see in the game, we run into the problem that despite many innovations, the choices for weapons were not as wide as in modern wars.  Many cool choices remain, however, and the variant configurations will give use more than enough options to equip our soldiers in the game.

 

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Jun 23

Battlefield 1: Will We Have Bolt Action Rifles For Everyone?

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Battlefield 1

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[BF1] Scopeless Bolt Action Rifles Confirmed
byu/Fox8721 inBattlefield

OK, we know that at least the Scout kit will be able to run basic iron sight bolt action rifles.  The Medic may as well, as they wouldn’t really overpower the semi-auto and auto rifles they otherwise get.  What about the other two kits?

First thing, which ones are in the game so far:

 

http://battlefield.wikia.com/wiki/Battlefield_1

Lee Enfield MKIII (sans scope) British standard rifle
Mauser Gewehr 98 — standard issue iron sights – Germany standard issue
Springfield M1903 – American standard issue iron sight bolt action rifle

 

Note that the Russian 1895 is a Winchester lever action rifle, not bolt action, and though it didn’t seem to play that much different from the bolt action rifles in the livestream, the mechanism was different, and they were also not the standard issue infantry rifle.  A lever action rifle doesn’t shoot as fast as a semi-auto, but faster than most bolt action rifles.

That covers three of the six (so far) factions present in the game.  Let’s fill in the rest, and also put in France and Russia.

Mosin-Nagant (called Mosin by most of its users), bolt action rifle widely used, Russia standard issue, also by Austria-Hungary

Carcano M1891 – Italian standard bolt action rifle
Berthier Fusil Mle 1907/15 – French standard bolt action rifle
Mannlicher M1895 Austria-Hungary standard issue bolt action rifle. Used straight pull bolt, unlike most of this era.

Mauser Model 1889/1890/1893 – Turkish Mauser – The predecessor of the 98, used by the Ottoman Empire, which also used the 98 when they could get them. In most elements very much the same, its sight markings were in Arabic.

M1917 Enfield — US version of the British rifle — they used different ammo, but worked very much the same. Note that most US and British soldiers used one or the other of these

The Turkish Mauser and the US Enfield are pretty much just minor visual changes from the base model, but otherwise work exactly the same.

 

So every faction gets its own default national bolt action standard issue rifle. But we can also incorporate the usual Battlefield rule that our heroic soldiers can use any weapon.  Bolt action rifles aren’t all that different from each other, especially in this era, so how would they work in game terms?

 

First thing, if they are all kit weapons, they had better not overshadow the specialized roles that the kit weapons are supposed to have.  So even if these are about the same weapons as the Scout kit with basic iron sights only, they can’t be as good for sniping as the Scout sniper rifles.  How do we justify that?

The Scout weapons are specialized for marksmen, and are not the same as the general issue models.  Not just the scope, but the weapon manufacture and ammunition allow for better accuracy.  For this reason, we don’t have to match the damage output of the Scout weapons, but can set these in their own class.

Do we want the “sweet spot” damage curve on these, where close range shots do less damage than medium range?

A theory behind this is that if they hit too soon, the bullet simply penetrates the target and doesn’t have time to deliver as much damage as it passes through.  Whether that is realistic or not, it does give a Scout sniper a good reason to avoid close combat situations.

Whether the regular infantry bolt action rifles have that sort of curve, or the “traditional” damage dropping curve over distance, they should not get the Scout’s one hit to kill damage.  Two body hits to kill is enough.  Head shots may or may not be one hit kills always either, that is a balance question.

One thing that definitely should apply is lower accuracy.  These standard-issue rifles are nowhere near as precise as the ones made for the Scout sniper marksmen.  The iron sights will make long range shots harder anyway, but that isn’t the point.  These weapons were made for mass volley fire and relatively short range combat, not long range shooting.

 

Would you use an older technology weapon, just because it is traditional and perhaps more cool?

I would.  People use the bow in Battlefield 4, which is certainly not a superior high tech weapon.  Let’s break it down by kit.

Assault:  Do you need to fight at longer range?  You give up your powerful short range option, and still can’t match any of the other kits at range, but at least you have a chance.

Medic:  This is a close call, because your kit weapons are medium range, and are likely to be better at short range than any bolt action weapon (even Scouts).  But it may give you a little edge at longer ranges, and also a possible advantage for well placed aimed shots.

Support:  A similar issue, but you’d give up a lot of medium range firepower for both a little edge in long range combat.  In close combat, probably not ideal.

Scout:  Probably the least likely to go with less accurate iron sight rifles rather than their specialized weapons, but they could be easier to use for hip fire and close combat than the regular Sniper Rifles.

 

Does this mess with class balance?  Adding in a relatively weaker all-kit alternative shouldn’t, no more than everyone having access to the same sidearms.

 

How hard would it be to add these weapons to the game?  In terms of modelling, three are already present as Scout weapons, just need tweaks to represent the standard issue versions.  They all perform similarly, so any differences would be pretty minor.

 

So why have them, if they may not be all that good and wouldn’t really add that much variety?

Historical verisimilitude and national pride, for one thing.  A lot of players will be happy to take on the role of regular infantry soldier, rather than one of those given a specialist’s weapon, and enjoy the challenge.  For another, some players may enjoy playing on servers where these are the default weapon, again for the joy of seeing them in action.

In terms of performance, they use similar ammunition (7.62mm to 8mm), so in most ways, the choice of which one to use would be cosmetic.  They could be tweaked a little for variety, because there were operating differences, but for most game play purposes, it is how they look and the animations they use.  This element also makes balancing them a lot easier, as the goal isn’t to provide a wider variety of function choices so much as to add more visual options.

 

So what do you think?  Should Battlefield 1 have bolt action rifles for everyone?

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Jun 14

Battlefield 1: Livestream Game Play — What We’ve Learned So Far

Categories:

Battlefield 1, Battlefield 4

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Livestream Gameplay And Notes, June 12, 2016

http://www.pcgamer.com/watch-an-hour-of-battlefield-1-gameplay-today/

Destruction, lots of it — I expected that, given the way the trailers look. Overall, part of the effect of using more real physics modelling within the Frostbite engine. Both large and small scale destruction abounds on the map. A really big effect is the destruction, crash, and fiery demise of an airship. Not just at a pre-planned location, but dynamically wherever it happens to be shot down. Aircraft and ground vehicles also now take targeted, located component damage, such as shooting off wings, wheels, or treads. That alone will change up vehicle combat.

Dynamic weather. It isn’t so much a new idea, as it is new to see them try to do it well. BF4 had elements of this, with weather on maps, but this will change up the game play even more. Sunny day, cloudy, rain, fog, and I expect there will be even more than that for variety. It is also not constant or scripted events on certain maps, but truly dynamic and unpredictable.

Weapon physics changes are subtle, so that I really couldn’t be sure of the differences between BF1 and BF4. Except that it did seem like bullet impact was felt more strongly, which could be part of that change. Bullet drag is a very big change, though. BF4 and Hardline (and Battlefront) all use constant bullet velocity. BF1 does not. The bullets will start at a high (realistic) muzzle velocity, and slow down as they travel. This means that all long range shooters will need to relearn how to compensate for motion and bullet drop, and it will feel very different for each kind of weapon. Long shots on moving targets will be harder to pull off, not that they were ever easy. Short range shots will hit faster. All in all, this will make a great leap in realism, especially good for players who have experience with real weapons.

Most guns use iron sights, with only a few having optical scopes. This is to be expected for the time period, but not all iron sights are the same. Without seeing all the options in the game, I can’t say just what will be available, except that I figure that optical scopes will be restricted to sniper (scout) weapons. BF4’s reticle and HUD customization, however, can be retained with no problems.

I like the circular minimap. The HUD and interface as a whole owes a lot to BF2 and BF1943. It is very clean and open, which is a good thing.

The magazine feed for clip fed rifles will be a new thing for many players. We’ve had this with some shotguns, but now, rifle users will face it as well. Instead of just pulling out a new magazine and popping it in, you will need to reload bullets one at a time, Do you reload fully, or do you pop it in short a few rounds? And can you afford the time to reload at all in the heat of battle? Good thing you carry a sidearm, but the melee weapons may be even more essential as backups in close combat.

Pilots and airship crew have parachutes. I expected that — the high command’s resistance to issue parachutes was fading by the end of the war, and the value of keeping a trained pilot alive rather than having them try to land and save their plane became obvious wisdom of war. Airship crew have a tactical role here as airborne reinforcements.

The airship in this conquest game is a special asset. Only one will appear per game, and it shows up for the losing side. That makes it a last ditch tool to try to turn around a losing game, rather than an asset added for the winning side (AC130 on many maps) to enhance dominance. The game pace and length also seems to work well. Private servers may allow longer games and other options, but for many players, a good 10 to 20 minute match is fun and challenging.

Air combat looks fresh and fun. In game play style, this is very much a throwback to BF1942, and I think it will work out excellently. How easy will flying be? I can’t say, but I think that the mix of maneuverability and lower speeds will make it easier for new pilot players than BF4’s jets. The lack of lock on weapons will also make air combat more challenging. The planes themselves look gorgeous, and that combined with the scenery will add another attraction to playing this game.

Player character movement is more fluid and flexible. How much of this is physics engine upgrades, and how much is just enhanced controls and choices, I can’t say yet. But the ability to climb and vault over obstacles will help make ground soldiers much more agile and safer on the battlefield. The charge through a door is a nice addition too — you can crash through a closed door without having to stop and open it first. The bayonet charge — a rushing sprint to attack — also looks and feels cool. Both as an attack, and simply as a way to more quickly advance on the enemy (or run away), it adds another nuance to movement and combat. Coupled with the greater impact effects which seem to come from melee combat (and possibly bullet impacts and explosions, hard to tell from what I’ve seen so far), and close combat action should feel more realistic and intense than ever.

 

Guns: the only class really missing that I noticed was the regular infantry bolt-action rifles. In terms of usage, the biggest class of weapons used in the war, all with iron sights, moderate accuracy, and slow fire rate but with a clip to reload. The Lee-Enfield, Mosin-Nagant, Mauser, Winchester, Springfield. Semi-auto rifles were also made, and used, but not adopted widely yet. The only real trick is how to balance them — they’d be slower to fire than the semi-autos, and not much better. Even the lever-action Winchester 1895 could fire six times as fast as a bolt action (though with what aimed accuracy, it is harder to be sure it would be effective). Still, it would be nice to see them all present in the game, for realism, as a viable choice along with the semiauto rifles.

The various submachineguns and machineguns seemed to work well, shotguns likewise, and the sniper rifles and sidearms seemed good, if a bit harder to use than some of the modern weapons in BF4. All in all, it looks like gun balance is pretty good, and gun game play should be a lot of fun.

Tanker and Pilot classes are a nice addition. You want to operate a vehicle, you get a loadout appropriate to the role. This gives us six classes — the four infantry roles of Medic, Assault, Support, Scout, plus two for vehicles. It sounds like a vehicle crew will need to stop and cease fighting in order to self-repair, which should make for an interesting tactical choice.

 

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May 22

Battlefield 1: The Reboot Of Battlefield 1942?

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Battlefield 4, General Gaming

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Battlefield 1: The Reboot Of Battlefield 1942?

Have you seen the Battlefield 1 trailer? Most likely, it has loads of views and likes. I love the White Stripes music, it not only fits so well, it was best rock song of 2004 (came out in 2003). You know, when Battlefield 1942 was born?

It has been said that the 1918 Armistice was just a 20 year truce before the war resumed. In many ways, the start of World War II was just the Great War, Part II. No, the nature of the governments, nationalism, and alliances was different, but the weapons and tactics used at the start were very much like those used in 1918. Both world wars have far more in common, especially from the standpoint of the soldiers on the ground, than the Cold War and Modern Warfare eras.

Basic rifles with iron sights, no electronics, no smart weapons, relatively slow vehicles and limited heavy weapons for individual soldiers (crew served weapons were more powerful, and those were what largely made Trench Warfare happen). For the typical ground-pounder role that players take in Battlefield, BF1 will look and feel a lot like BF 1942, with nicer graphics.

When I was speculating about the future of Battlefield, I considered a World War II game with the new Frostbite engine as a strong candidate. I honestly thought we’d be more likely to get either a modern warfare sequel to BF4, or an updated, cold-war-ish take for Bad Company 3. The thought that DICE would actually go back to their roots and do a Great War game didn’t occur to me, and I took rumors that it was going to happen with a grain of salt. But hey, they did it.

Did you know that BF 1942 is actually derived from a World War I game? Codename: Eagle, a 1999 FPS game from Refraction Games (who created the Refractor Engine, and were purchased by DICE to become the heart of the team which created Battlefield). I never played it, as I started the series with BF1942, but it was an alternative history take on WW II, where a Russian hero has to save the world from a coup which would lead to a tyrant taking over the world, and restore the lost Tsarina to the throne. A pretty daring story line, I would say.

Battlefield 1? It makes sense as a reboot of the whole series, and there never was a BF 1 before. It does mean that the sequel can’t be BF2 without being confusing. Then again, EA Star Wars Battlefront doesn’t even have a number, and it is a reboot of the game of the same name. Oh well, they do it with movies, I guess it is too late to stop this trend.

The classes also go back to BF 1942 — Assault, Medic, Support, Scout — with a bit of a cross from Battlefield 2 in the roles.  There is no Anti-Tank class as such.  However, vehicle crews get their own classes, so if you spawn in a plane you’re a Pilot, and if you are in a Tank you’re an Engineer.  A whole squad of five can fit in the ground vehicles and work together.  A cool new feature is the ability to form a squad before entering a game, so you can automatically be placed together when you start.

One amazing part of using a historical war is the ability to use historical locations, battles, events, and people, to actually tell a story which educates as well as entertains. The stuff we’ve seen so far is pretty awesome in that regard.

The Harlem Hellfighters. The USA entered WW 1 relatively late (1917), and the long trench-warfare stalemate was coming to a close. Many African-Americans enlisted in the hope of earning greater respect and equality. The US Army leadership didn’t want to mix black soldiers with its white units, so instead, they were sent to help out the French. They were overjoyed to have these aggressive “Yanks” join them, and shared none of the prejudices of their fellow white Americans. They participated in some of the most important, and hellishly intense, fighting along the Western Front.

Lawrence Of Arabia. One of several British diplomatic agents who encouraged the Arabs to rise up against the Ottoman Empire (one of Britain’s enemies in the war), his efforts led to a wave of successful attacks against the Empire from the Arab peninsula all the way up to Damascus. Lightly equipped for the most part, with air support from Britain (and Germany, for the Empire), this is desert warfare at its finest, from 1916-1918.

The Red Baron. The Air War along the Western Front started as small skirmishes, but by 1917 had developed into a new form of warfare. The iconic Fokker Dr.I triplane had a relatively short service life, from September of 1917 to the spring of 1918, but for this short period the power of the dazzlingly maneuverable (but sadly slow and fragile in the long run) triplanes on both sides created legends whose short lives survive as stories to this day. The last few months of the war saw the dawn of the modern air force and air power, though most at the time didn’t recognize just how important this would be.

The aircraft, armored vehicles, and weapons of World War I weren’t quite as powerful as those of its successor. But they weren’t that far off, either. Many weapons and vehicles used in WW II were developed and even used during the Great War. Biplanes remained in service at the start of WW II. Most of the tanks and planes that people think of from WW II were introduced after the war started.

One big difference was the change from bolt-action to semiautomatic for the standard issue rifles used by all sides. They were introduced in WW I, at the very end (only the French used many of them). But that didn’t make bolt action rifles obsolete, and they continue to be used to this day. How this will play out for the soldiers in BF 1 we will need to wait and see. But I would guess that as elite, special soldiers, our characters will have free access to weapons which wouldn’t be standard issue.

Submachine guns and lighter machineguns which a single soldier could carry were developed and deployed in WW 1. The classic Browning Automatic Rifle (an attempt to make a full auto assault rifle, too heavy and awkward to use as such, but a perfectly fine ancestor of the modern Squad Automatic Weapon (like the M249), was immensely successful with more than 50 years of service. The Italian Beretta M1918 was the first SMG which might be classed as standard issue, but a good number saw service during the war. Semi-auto shotguns were introduced, as well as pump action shotguns, for the very intense, short range combat common in the trenches. Hand grenades went from limited, ineffective weapons to the lethal frag grenades of today, and the first anti-vehicle grenades also appeared.

No Bazooka/RPG style rockets, not yet. There were rockets, but they were vehicle mounted weapons, too heavy for a soldier to use.

Optical scopes were rarely used, and not that great in quality yet. Nothing like the modern warfare range of optics. Almost everyone used iron sights. This held true in WW II as well — the best sniper in history avoided using optics, because the scope glint could give him away (and he was just that good of a shot, he didn’t need them).

In BF 1942, we didn’t need all the fancy electronics and gadgets to have a fun game. Star Wars Battlefront shows just how good 15 years of technical improvement can look. Note that Battlefront is a 1st/3rd person shooter, with many weapons not having optics, or not using them in 3rd person anyway, and it still looks and plays great. The spectacular evolution of the graphics (and physics) of the Frostbite engine will make this vision of warfare in the past far more intense and realistic than ever before.

Were you blown away by the BF 1 trailer, and the quality of its graphics? Angry Joe was, to my surprise (he usually looks for negatives in games, but makes exceptions from time to time). How much of what we saw was actual game engine footage? And of that, how much will we get in the multiplayer experience?

I can’t confirm anything, but I would say that none of it was pre-rendered cut scenes, as such. Some might play out as cut scenes, but I believe even those were rendered with the game engine. Most, though, I think were scenes which will play out in 3D action, either in the single or multiplayer game. If DICE has taken the realism levels of Star War Battlefront (mapping from real pictures and objects), and incorporated the awesome destruction technology shown in past Battlefield games (especially Bad Company 2 and BF 3 Close Quarters), and much of the cool effects in BF4, into this upgrade to the Frostbite engine, I believe this is entirely possible. We are also leaving behind the old-gen consoles with this new generation of the game, along with the limitations they imposed on game design.

Don’t think that’s possible? How many of you thought that the Star Wars Battlefront trailers had to be cut scene videos, rather than the game action they turned out to be?

What sort of multiplayer battles can be expect?

Well, Trench Warfare is what many people think of when they talk about WW I. It was by far not the only war fought with static, well fortified lines — sieges are probably as old as warfare itself — but the improvements in automatic weapons and artillery made it extremely costly, if not suicidal, to assault a dug-in enemy. The improvements in weapons, and the use of effective air power and mechanized, armored vehicles, allowed this stalemate to be broken at the end of the war. Though the heavy losses taken earlier also contributed to the situation, and helped mask the power of the new technology, the period where “The Yanks Are Coming, Over There” provide a lot of action which is not just a bloody grindfest.

Still, I expect we will have some of those. Both for historical reasons, and because some players like the intense, non-stop, brutal constant action. The Hellfighters saw enough of that for sure.

They also fought in the forests and fields, away from the trenches. That opens up room for battle maps where the terrain starts out looking almost normal, and ends up in total devastation as the battle progresses.

The Red Baron, and the Air War, offer loads of fun for players who want to enjoy air combat. In the Great War, the primary mission of air units was actually reconnaissance, not offense. An assault of the trenches required good information on the enemy position, but just as important, you had to deny the enemy knowledge of where your troops were advancing. Both sides used balloons and airships, as well as scout planes, to monitor the battleground and direct artillery strikes. The later war, though, added more heavy weapons and powerful aircraft, making it possible to use planes as aerial artillery, not just scouts. This makes for a lot of possible air-based game modes.

First, basic Air Superiority. Fighters duel against each other, with perhaps some objectives to fight over, but mostly to score air kills.

Second, Balloon Busting. The observation balloons weren’t that easy to take out, not with guns both on the ground and on the balloons themselves. As well, fighter aircraft would defend them. With roles for both ground and air forces (perhaps the ground guns could be AI automation), the challenge would be to destroy the enemy balloons, while keeping your own alive. As many balloons (looking more like blimps) used hydrogen, making one explode could be hazardous to planes close to it. Parachutes were developed to save flyers lives in this period.

Third, the Bombing Raid. The bomber team (or both could have them) would try to protect the bombers as they attempt to destroy key targets, perhaps a short of “Rush In The Sky” game. This allows the bigger, multi-crew aircraft a special place to shine.

Of course, general Conquest battles will have lots of aircraft, but these modes would be exclusively geared to flying combat.

The trailer shows a battleship in combat, and an armed train, both of which saw plenty of use in this war. How they will be used in the game, outside of the general conquest role, we will have to wait and see. But there are possibilities.

The Arab Revolt has a lot of action, much of it following the route of the Hejaz railroad through the desert. Horses, camels, but the battles of the Suez and Aqaba also saw ships and planes in good use. Expect a lot of fast moving action here.

We have the Italian front and the Alps campaigns, for mountain fighting, and the Dardanelles and Gallipoli campaign give us actual beachfront assaults. Plus it is called World War I because it was actually fought in many locations all around the world, involving many nations. Africa and Asia offer some interesting choices for battle locations. Plus there is the whole Eastern Front (which collapsed in 1917, and led to the revolution in Russia, but still offered a lot of battles). I think there is room for a lot of variety in combat, from this war which many have almost forgotten, just a century or so past.

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Apr 30

Get Rich, And Die While Trying: Making Money In GTA V Online

Categories:

GTA V

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I’ve mentioned this one before, but Daily Objectives are about the best way to make easy legit money in GTA Online. The catch? You must play the game every single day to get the big bonuses.

 

Chaotic’s math is a little off, but it isn’t his fault. It isn’t obvious until you start tracking the actual amounts awarded. You do get a $100000 pay out after 7 consecutive days, and $500000 after 28, but it is not in addition to the regular $25000 Daily Objective pay — it replaces it on those days. Still, an extra $75000, and after a month, $475000, is pretty good for doing pretty easy stuff — a lot of it the kinds of things you’d do anyway when playing GTA.

http://gta.wikia.com/wiki/Daily_Objectives

Though Sports are listed as possible objectives, I didn’t see them in our last month of objectives. That doesn’t mean they won’t show up, but perhaps the odds have been dropped to get them.

Add in selling two cars (at the start and end of the hour it could take to do the Daily Objectives) will give you $18000 if you use the best common street cars, easily and quickly located for sale (and stored until needed). The jobs themselves offer another $20000 or so, easily, and can be more depending on circumstances.

25000 + 18000 + 20000 = $63000 per hour, every day. But the consecutive bonuses give you an extra 75000+75000+75000+475000, or 700000 after 28 days. Or another $25000 per day, for a nice low total of $88000. Grab a bit more action during your hour of play, or one of the better paying jobs or custom cars, and you will do even better. You can come close to $100K per hour, just by completing your daily objectives, every single day.

So basically, if you can play for less than an hour every day, you can reliably collect about GTA$ 3 million, which is quite enough to pay for the good stuff which keeps coming out in the game.

 

Stuff keeps happening in GTA Online. Rockstar makes new DLC content available on a regular basis. One catch: a lot of the cool stuff costs GTA$. In order to get it, you must have (or make) money.

It is rather easy to make money in GTA, but it can be hard to make a lot of it fast. Barring just finding a pile lying around somewhere — as can happen with mods, despite Rockstar making attempts to curb this, and to ban players when caught with impossible bank accounts — you do have to work some to get money. How much?

About $100K per hour is possible, but it can take some effort to sustain that income. Doing so in easy ways is possible, and I’ll address that more later, but the Daily Objectives remain a reliable way to get consistent income without any special effort (other than never missing daily play). Depending on your available time to play, you can make 2 to 3 million a month easily. Much more, obviously, is possible if you are a very active player.

Or you could buy Shark Cards. The best deal (and most expensive) Megalodon costs about $12.50 per GTA$ 1 Million, or maybe about $35 for the equivalent of a month’s playing payoffs. I personally can’t see spending more than the cost of the game for in-game resources which, if you actually play the game much, will get for free. Especially since there is little point in having game resources for a game you don’t play a lot.

So what do we end up spending money on in this game anyway?

How much money do you actually need?  A bit over $10 million, and I’ll go into that more.

First, weapons. But none of them cost all that much, compared to your income.

Second, properties. Even the current most expensive one still costs less than many cars. You can buy five of them now — a nice upgrade from the three that we started with on PC. There isn’t really a need to have the most expensive ones in order to be useful, and once you’ve bought them, it isn’t like you need to constantly buy more new ones.

The Luxury Yacht falls in between here. It is very expensive, acts like an odd sort of property combined with a Pegasus-type vehicle access, but no garage so you can’t keep cars in it. The GTA$ 6 to 10 Million make it its own class for property purchases, but it works in other ways much like a property.

Third, clothes and other general expenses. I like having them, and they do cost a bit of money, but are a drop in the bucket compared to everything else.

Fourth, and this is the big one: Cars. Yes, in a game called Grand Theft Auto, we actually spend most of our money buying and customizing cars. Sure, we can steal some off the streets and keep them, but the best ones can only be paid for. Actually, I’ll extend this to vehicles, because the Pegasus vehicles, which can’t be kept in your garage, are also fine things to spend a lot of money on.

The expansion to five garages gives us the option to store up to 50 of our own personal cars. Can you really need that many?

Need? Not really. Need implies that you have them for useful purposes in the game. For active player missions, what do you need?

One or two mission cars, depending on what you have unlocked. Two of the best come from the Heists — the Kuruma (Armored) and Insurgent SUV. The new (in Executivies…) Shafter V12 (Armored) is a cheaper alternative for a fast, tough mission vehicle.

A helicopter. The Buzzard is the most flexible, and a solid first purchase when you hit rank 42 and can get it. While you can steal aircraft when you want one, it can be hard to get an armed one quickly when it is needed.

Cruising and race vehicles. While it is likely that these categories will overlap, a cruising car is fast and gets you (and friends) around the map best. Racing cars fill out your custom cars for the races you run. The more kinds of races you regularly play, the more cars you can need.

One of the secrets about speed in GTA is that the game’s internal web sites and other info LIE about them. LegendaryAutoSports is completely untrustworthy in this — the speeds can be higher or lower than the real values, with no obvious way to figure out which it is. But even SouthernSanAndreas isn’t quite real in speed values. It does use the game engine’s Max Speed attribute value for its speeds, but that number isn’t the only thing which determines a vehicles actual top speed. In practice, the only way to reliably measure a car’s top speed in GTA is by driving it in the game itself.

Why is this? It’s complicated. but in short, the game models vehicle mass, engine power, air friction, and critically important for speed, engine power applied to the wheels via traction. So change the car traction (as in with a spoiler or vehicle damage, or rain), and you also change the acceleration and top speed. Add in stuff like boost start and slipstreaming, as well as curb bumps (go over a bump, speed goes up), and we need to start setting rules for how we measure the actual vehicle speeds. Motorcycles add another wrinkle — leaning back and forward, especially popping a wheelie, speeds up the bike, and the ability to sustain these isn’t easily determined from the base stats.

 

Broughy1322 has done a magnificent job of testing and recording vehicle speeds and performance. An important thing to keep in mind for car speed is that there are three different measures of speed which are relevant for racing.

First, straight line maximum road speed. This is how fast you can get the car or bike to move driving on a flat road (like the freeways) if not slowed down by traffic or turns, and without concern for how long it takes to reach that speed. This is useful for long distance drives, such as cruising around the map and long point to point races. It is often irrelevant to most races, and even for driving around in the city, since you lose speed when you brake or turn. The Adder is still the fastest Supercar in the game here — with an actual top speed of 126 mph. The Z-Type is faster, and the new Schafter V12 is as well, surprisingly. Perhaps less surprising is that the fastest cars in most classes come fairly close to this speed. I call this concept “speed scaling,” and I’ll address that more later.
Second, the straight line acceleration speed (and time). Call this the drag racing speed. Tested easily on tracks about 1000 meters long (.62 miles), which is a good distance to evaluate acceleration. Or 400 meters (.248 miles), or 402 meters, for the classic quarter mile dragstrip. You have to use the exact same start method to compare speeds (there are several ways to try to boost speed at the start — the obvious timed boost which is one). It is a fair way to evaluate how fast you can get started in a race, or in a chase in free mode, but won’t tell you which car is faster in the long run or through turns.

For motorcyles, for both of these speeds it is fair to use wheelies to get the maximum speed possible. In actual driving, it can be hard to keep that up, so comparing speeds without leaning or wheelies is also useful.

Third, time to complete a lap in a race course. Broughy1322 uses the Cutting Coroners track as as test, and it is a fairly good one to use with a good mix of sharp and 90 degree corners and straight parts. He runs the race following exactly the same path as well, so the difference in time is only due to the cars, not the driver. A good driver should be able to beat his “testing lines” time by “cutting corners” and pushing the cars to their limits, rather than following a fixed path which all cars can complete. But such times would evaluate more than just the car’s inherent speed — which is why you can’t use world record lap times as reliable comparisons of speed in the game.

For racing, it can be tricky to pick the best car for the track you are playing. In most classes, there are several cars which are fairly close in performance, with one being better on average. As a result, it is tempting and can be beneficial to have more than one kind of car for each class, so you have choices to use for different situations. Specificially, it is worthwhile to have the fastest top speed car for long distance speed runs, but for most races, the best lap time car is likely to be more useful. Especially for a first purchase.

A funny thing, though, when car shopping for racing, is how little your choice of car affects the race outcome in most lobbies. In practice, it is driving skill, and for custom cars, the level of performance upgrades (especially Turbo), which matters most. Two equally matched drivers will definitely find the small differences between the top cars to strongly affect their racing. For most of us, any of the top five (or even ten) fastest cars will do the job just fine.

Still, if you get into racing, the temptation to keep a stable of cars to round out your choices is pretty strong. And for the Sports and Super cars, the coolness factor is also in play. In real life, you’d be happy to have any of them, and they are all fun to drive around.
How much can you spend on racing cars? A lot, but you don’t really need all that much to have one good one for each of the classes. Where you will really end up spending a lot of money is on cars or vehicles for show.

One big catch for me are the seasonal specials. Do I need them? Probably not, I don’t think any are really good race cars so far. The new DLCs do add some good ones, but you can get buy without them. Still, there is the combination of cool looks and “available for a limited time only” to make me want them. Summer got me the Sovereign motorcycle (not too expensive) and the Liberator (pricey, Pegasus vehicle, but fun to drive). Halloween’s two cars are fun — but more money again.

The Lowriders DLC cars are all about $1 Million each, upgraded — a figure which will pop up on a lot of the newer fancy cars. Executives… adds another set of new, expensive cars — but the Shafter V12 (armored) and Baller LE — (armored or not) actually score a position in racing, cruising, and missions. And now Valentine’s Day gives us the Roosevelt (not seen on PC before), with a new upgraded version. I couldn’t resist it, even though I surely could be saving up money for something else useful. Plus we got the Benny’s upgraded Sultan and Banshee versions, which are also (again) about a million each. The Banshee is, at least for now, very fast in a straight line (fastest car in the game), even if it isn’t much better in a race. They both look amazing, with all the racing and other custom modifications they have.

So, a few million dropped on cars, simply to have them before they disappear again. Or just to have them because they are cool. It is amazingly easy to burn through all the money I make getting these things. A little for ammo and medical costs, and it is pretty easy to never build up much in my bank.

I’m trying to keep it above $1 Million now, though. That is the threshold for becoming a VIP. That is not only a cool status to have, but a good way to make extra money in free mode. You get to start VIP jobs, which let you do fun stuff in free mode and get paid. It can be hard to do some of these in a public game, but they work in Friend, Crew, and Invite games as well. Best with a crew of bodyguards, so you can all make money. This and the new free mode events can do a lot to make wandering around in free mode profitable.

OK, I’m back to making money fast. VIP stuff is a nice way to do it, and fairly easy for the money. Same for Daily Objectives, most are easy. Selling cars (every 48 real minutes), don’t forget that for easy money. Contact Missions are pretty good pay for the time spent (they all pay about the same, and pay based on time spent on the missions). Heists aren’t bad, but require a good crew which doesn’t die (and thus blow the missions) — or otherwise mess up. Harder with random people, unlike most of the contact missions, which you can finish solo even if you can’t start them that way (though many can be soloed just fine).

Then there are Races, Deathmatches, and other jobs, all of which do pay pretty much OK for the time spent. Some are better than others, but all make you money.

Or in other words, play the game and you’ll get rich. Some ways are easier and faster than others, but all tend to make over $1000 per real minute, and few do much better than double that, so on average, it doesn’t matter as much what you do, only that you do things that pay money for doing them.

 

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Apr 30

Star Wars Battlefront: Disappointing? Do We Expect Too Much?

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Star Wars Battlefront

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Star Wars Battlefront: Disappointing? Do We Expect Too Much?

Great Expectations! Few games this year generated the kind of fascination and response — and sales — that Star Wars Battlefront created. I could call this “The best of times, the worst of times” — a Tale Of Two Cities, err, Of Two Games, both called Battlefront. The predecessor game from 2005, Star Wars Battlefront II. And 2015’s reboot of the game, called simply Star Wars Battlefront.

Despite solid sales, many active players and fans, and lots of positive reviews and videos, for many players and Star Wars fans, the game is called a disappointment. In fact, the Most Disappointing Game Of 2015. But why?

As the Man In Black says to Inigo in the Princess Bride, when asked for his identity, “Get used to disappointment.”

Are we missing something? Those of us who tried Battlefront and found it lacking, or still play it but somehow feel like something is missing, are we wrong? Do we just have to “get used to it”? Or will it get enough better over time that we will be won over by its ultimate greatness?

Or are those of us who feel disappointed, the players who reject this game, the ones who are missing the good — perhaps even great — qualities of this new reboot of the Star Wars Battlefront franchise?

What do gaming disappointments look like? How about when a game doesn’t even run on release, but crashes so often that it isn’t playable? Or if it runs, but with poor performance and glitches, especially bad things like features just not working, saves being lost or corrupted, or balance so bad that no one can enjoy a fair fight?

Battlefront has none of these problems. Let’s look at the positives.

First thing, this is a working, stable, playable game and pretty well balanced on release. For that matter, the Beta, and even Alpha, worked well, with the Beta both fun and popular, with record players. Unlike many new releases, everything in the game works as advertised.

Second, the game performance is amazing. We get great full 1080 HD video at 60 FPS on console, and very nice performance on PC as well.

Third, and perhaps most important from a quality point of view, the sound and graphics in the game are the best ever for a Star Wars game. In fact, many would call it the best looking game on console period. We get to play in a world which looks, feels, and sounds just like the movie universe it is based on. Certainly the best looking movie-based game ever. With so many games having high quality videos only in cut scenes, and far lower quality in actual game play, this definitely exceeds expectations. In fact, as a Star Wars game, it would be worth getting simply to enjoy the scenery — to move around within the worlds and places seen in the movies, and live out the dream of actually being in the Star Wars universe.

Fourth, the game play itself is also very true to the movie sources. The weapons and vehicles look and work like the do in the movies. We have game modes which let us play out battles based on the events in the movies, living and fighting as a Storm Trooper or Rebel Soldier. Or even one of the classic heroes or villians of the series. Other game modes are smaller in scope, but let us visit other iconic locations and scenes from the movies, and have fun times fighting and playing in them.

For content, the multiplayer side shipped with 13 game maps, with two more available after two to four weeks. While these two could be considered a teaser to get more people to preorder, it still brings the total to 15 maps. The latest patch adds one more multiplayer map — it is one from the single player, but it is still a good new map — which brings our total up to 16 maps. And there are going to be more free maps to come.

A lot of games come with far fewer maps on release. Battlefield 3 and Battlefield Hardline had 9 maps each on release, for example. If you look at most FPS games in recent years, very few came out with 15 or 16 maps to play on, without paying. We’ll get more maps that we must pay for, and the Season Pass does add to the cost of this game. But so many other games use paid DLC and Season Pass or its equivalent, so it isn’t like this is the only popular game which makes you pay extra for more game play.

The way the game maps are divided up is different from many other games. We have 5 big maps for the larger game modes, and 11 smaller maps for the other game modes. Not all game modes will work on all maps, so a given game mode can have a smaller selection for its rotation. The interesting thing is that lets the maps be tailored to the game modes they use, and allows more locations from the movies to be showcased in the game. The game uses a technology called photogrammetry, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photogrammetry , to replicate locations and objects from the movie scenes — often taken from the real world locations where the movie was shot.

If you only play and like the smaller game modes (6v6 or 8v8), there are 11 maps, which is still a respectable number for a game on release. Many games have no large (40 or 64 player, 1000+ meters) maps or game modes at all. Star Wars Battlefront offers a wide variety of locations and game modes to play on, unlike some games.

EA Star Wars has given us information about the future of the game. We will get even more free maps and other content, Jabba’s Palace on Tatooine and the factory on Sullust in the Outer Rim DLC, and maps on Bespin (Cloud City), and the Death Star itself. The patches have done a great job of dealing with some of the frustrations and minor imbalances in the game, which is a great sign that DICE will keep up with supporting the playability of the game. EA and DICE’s support for Battlefield 4 has been amazing as well, another good sign for the future of this game. While many players — like me — would love to have all the new worlds available now, rather than later, and as part of the core game rather than a Season Pass for more money, it isn’t like we don’t pay for — and love — other games which use paid DLC to complete the game content.

So, exciting game play, amazingly awesome sound and graphics, marvelous recreations of movie scenes, and decent balance, as well as good game performance. What’s not to like about this game?

I find three or four areas of disappointment.

First, and simplest, is that for Star Wars fans, the decision to stick to strict Original Trilogy Canon makes a lot of the fun elements of the Prequel Trilogy and Clone Wars unavailable. There are be no Expanded Universe content either. All such possibilities are essentially killed by Canon (pun intended). Whether this is because Disney doesn’t want to see Jar-Jar Binks appear in a game (whether to be killed horribly or not), or other reasons to effectively delete the first three episodes from its history, or because it wants to allow a future game to be based entirely on the Clone Wars era, I can’t tell. But to me, this doesn’t seem to be a major issue as far as game play, and while it removes some potential content, the Original Trilogy and Canon have quite a lot of good material to use.

Second, it isn’t simply a reskin of Battlefield 4 with Star Wars elements. While people unfamiliar with Star Wars Battlefront II can be forgiven for not realizing that it was, in essence, an adaptation of Battlefield 2 to Star Wars itself, it diverged quite a bit from its source. From a game play standpoint, a sci-fi space based themed Battlefield game is rather attractive. But many of the elements of Battlefield don’t really translate well to a Canonical Star Wars game. The Storm Troopers are fairly interchangeable as soldiers, and for that matter, the rebels seem to be pretty flexible in roles as well. The obsession with weapon details and loadouts and stats and such which is a large part of the military-themed Battlefield world don’t fit into Star Wars. A game like this would appeal to Battlefield fans, but not do much to gather in all of the Star Wars fans who are less interested in the all-out warfare aspects of the game play.

Third, and the biggest one of all: it isn’t a sequel to Battlefront II. For fans of that game, this is the biggest negative of all. Never mind that EA and DICE never promised or even suggested that it was a sequel — its name without a number means it is a Reboot instead. If you were a Battlefront II fan, it is hard not to look on that 2005 game as an amazing addition to the Star Wars gaming universe. If you haven’t checked it out, and play on PC, why not? It is cheap on Steam or GoG.com, and the single player elements work easily (multiplayer is harder since the original servers shut down, same with the XBOX version).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Battlefront_II

In terms of content, all I can say is wow! We get about 30 maps across all game modes, though some of the space maps are pretty similar to each other, and some are small fights rather than large. Most also get two eras — Clone Wars and Galactic Civil War — giving you two versions of battle for each map, although clones vs. droids works a lot like Stormtroopers vs. Rebels in many ways. There are only two primary game modes — Conquest and Capture The Flag — for all maps. Of the secondary game modes allowed on some maps, the Hunt modes are fun but, uh, I can’t see a mode where Stormtroopers go after Ewoks as being acceptable (both in rating and tone) for a lot of players and parents. The Hero Assault mode is cool, but was originally only on the Mos Eisley map, and only got a few others later, not all maps.

The bigger variety in maps did keep the limited game modes exciting. But remember, Battlefield 2 was essentially all about Conquest mode as well, and it is a classic modern warfare FPS.

But wait! We have three solid single player elements for this game, in addition to the massive (64 player servers) multiplayer. First, and a simple one, is that, as with Battlefield 2 and many other games of the era, you can start what is essentially a multiplayer game with only one player, as all other slots (63 players) are filled with AI run soldiers. While not the same kind of challenge as playing against other humans, it does offer the full spectacle of the game, and can be challenging.

We also get Galactic Conquest. This is a sort of campaign board game, where you move fleets to attack or defend planets. Each turn, the opposing forces in each contested location fight out a battle — pretty much like the single player ones above. You can earn bonuses to use to improve your odds in the battle (extra soldiers, health, etc.), but it still plays out as a regular battle game. Win, and you get control of the contested location. Lose, and you are forced back. Eventually, either the rebel base at Yavin-4 or the imperial capital at Coruscant will be attacked, and a victory will end the game of conquest.

Last, and rather cool and good, is the single player story campaign. It follows the career of a clone (later stormtrooper) unit, through the clone wars, the rise of the empire, right up to the Battle Of Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. While the clones are, as in the movies, at first on the light side with support of the Jedi, after Order 66, the whole tone of the campaign changes. It is a rare case in a Star Wars game, where the Canon story line follows the Empire as heroes, and looks at their victory on Hoth (although as in the movies, most of the rebels do escape) means an end to their war. The actual game play is a series of single player conquest battles, with some special rules and characters used to keep the storyline (Anakin’s attack on the Jedi Temple on Coruscant is particularly wrenching, as in the movies) going during the game. It isn’t an easy campaign, and the story is done well.

Ultimately, though, all the single player elements are at the heart just multiplayer games with AI running the soldiers on both teams, with the player taking a lead role. This works well, but can’t truly be compared to a true single player RPG shooter story, like Jedi Knight, Jedi Academy, or Knights Of The Old Republic. A game like those using this new Frostbite engine would be awesome though, woudn’t it?

The classes and control point/spawn location system are taken straight from Battlefield. The use of earned points to unlock the use of special characters — leaders, aliens, and eventually the one Hero or Villain available per side, adds a bit of an RPG element, and very strongly brings other elements of the movie universe to life within the game.

The use of the server system means you don’t need to find a lot of other players to start a game. The game can be set to fill in other soldiers with AI run units, which really helps for most maps and game modes, because you need enough to fill up the battlefield. This was true of Battlefield 2 as well.

But was it perfect? Not really. We tend to remember the best things about older games, and forget the issues which bothered us at the time.

One easy thing: by scoring enough kills (that is, playing a lot), you could unlock elite weapons. As they are better than the standard soldier weapons, there is little reason not to use them (the sniper weapon was a tradeoff, and not always superior). In essence, experienced players got a strong, permanent combat advantage over other players. While the new Battlefront does have a lot of unlocked items which do improve player power, it doesn’t take that long to reach the ranks to get them (rank 15 to 25 is enough, you can do that within a month).

The Engineer resupply capability was recursive. That is, in addition to dropping health and supplies for other players, the engineer could drop supplies for himself, to allow him to drop even more health and supplies. In the right circumstances, this could make the Engineer sort of like Wolverine of the X-Men — unlimited healing. Now, this is sort of like Battlefield’s Assault/Medic healing, and that works there, but in Battlefield 4 it was limited and slowed down. In Battlefront II, a good Engineer could keep going and going, as long as he wasn’t killed outright. His only limitation really was the short-ranged weapon he was saddled with, but in close combat battles that was just fine.

64 players sounds pretty good, right? Well, as Battlefield players can attest, on some maps, that is too many for the space available, especially with explosive weapons (the ever-popular thermal detonator grenade, for example) in wide use. Filling them in with AI makes the limitations of the AI behavior a bit more obvious (we can’t have the AI be too good, or they’ll destroy all players with their aimbot-like reflexes, and they aren’t actually thinking like humans). The standard conquest battle mode really needed a full team in order to fill in all the combat positions on the map. Even the boring ones, like guarding the rear area positions, vehicle bases, manning the weapon turrets even in areas with no enemies, repairing defenses, and so on. The AI was actually bad at repairing, which makes a player team able to beat them simply be keeping the fixed defenses and vehicles operating longer.

Space Battles made this issue even more obvious. While flying out of a big rebel starship to attack a Star Destroyer sounds (and is) very cool, the actual game play tended to focus on three elements, none of which really required a lot of classic starfighter dogfighting. Oh, the game did have dogfighting, very much like the Fighter Squadron mode in the new Battlefront. It is just that well over half the battle had nothing to do with it.

First, knock out the defenses. Classically, take the Y-Wings out and hit the defense Frigates (if present, most battles have them). Hammers the shields and defenses of the enemy capital ship, including its main guns (which will weaken your own ship’s shields if not taken out).

Second, disable the enemy ship, by bombing its key (now exposed as the shields are down) systems. The sensors, comms, engines, and weapons.

Third, board and disable the ship’s systems from the inside. This last part required getting a shuttle or fighter into the enemy bay, then getting out and fighting your way into the ship. A shuttle was best, because it established a new spawn point, so you and your team could return immediately there if you died. There were automated defenses which could shoot you, but as they were predictable AI, with good planning you could overcome them. Same goes to a degree for any AI-run troops defending the ship — real humans are smarter and less predictable, and much better at stopping intruders.

A lot of the important roles in the game would be filled by AI-controlled soldiers, in part because the positions were rather boring in many cases. The gun operators inside the ship, sitting at consoles? Not exactly an exciting way to play the game, waiting for an enemy to cross your zone and trying to shoot them. Repair techs to try and fix the ship systems if they get damaged? More like waiting for an enemy force to board and then die, although you might also get a chance to double as a defender. And standing guard on ship systems, while other players are out in space getting glory? An important job, but only really needed once the boarders arrive. Except of course, they always do in good games. While a human could be a much better defender than the AI, standing guard all game until the attack comes just isn’t exciting. While you could spawn in once boarders arrive, a determined, effective enemy could do a lot of damage before that happens. It is much easier to keep the enemy out, than to hunt them down once they get inside the defenses.
–==–

Star Wars Battlefront: Not Enough Content?

A common complaint is that the game has good elements, but not enough things to retain a player’s interest. So what is missing?

Let’s address some of these.

Not enough guns, or gun customization.

We have 11 Blasters, which fill specific roles and seem to do them well, while remaining balanced against each other. No gun is truly overpowered (the DL-44 had its power noticeably reduced in the last patch, but even so wasn’t nearly good enough to dominate all other weapons). The weapons added in the 1st DLC don’t change this.

Given that players can choose any gun at will, having and maintaining this balance is a good thing. The classic games like Star Wars Battlefront II, HALO, Unreal Tournament, etc., all had NO gun customization and limited choices for weapons, and players were pretty much happy with that. Colorful camos are probably not Star Wars Canon. More important, the guns in Battlefront are balanced with the optics and any other performance-enhancing options built into them. Allowing changes would risk messing with the balance. Games with more choices complicate the issue of balance, and make it harder for players to choose which gun — since it isn’t just the gun, but the accessories (which require effort to obtain too) which determine its effectiveness. For games based on modern, real world weapons, the additional variety can add veracity. But this is Star Wars, and we should want it to look and feel true to its movie sources.

Too hard to rank up, so dying to higher ranked players is frustrating. And conversely, not enough stuff to unlock, with rank 50 being easy to get and everything useful unlocked fast.

These are two sides to the same issue — the choice to make weapons and devices unlocked by game activity — a staple of modern games — while trying to keep it accessible and balanced for new and casual players.

You keep dying? Well, get better, noob! Seriously casual players — those who don’t have time to play daily, or play other games and only want to drop into Star Wars for a bit of fun from time to time — are part of the gaming community, and this game does try to support them. All games do have both a learning curve, and if gear is unlocked by playing, advantages for more experienced players beyond just more skill. Battlefront, though, tries to make life a little easier for new players, both in rank and in FPS skills.

The starting blasters are actually very good, accurate weapons, and will suffice for most combat situations. The early ranks unlock some very useful alternative weapons and devices, and it doesn’t take that long to reach them. Because most blasters are effective (if not optimal) at all ranges (the CA-87 and DH-17 are exceptions), you aren’t helplessly overpowered if you are up against someone with a higher ranked weapon.

Power Up pick ups work at any rank, and offer a way to level the playing field in combat. Heroes and vehicles are obtained equally by everyone, and they do not gain power with higher rank. These offer new players tools to be effective even before they get all the good Star Card gadgets.

The Partner Hand gives you access to another set of Star Cards. A higher rank Partner will let you use devices which you aren’t even close to unlocking, and this offers another way to be effective despite the lack of rank. While you can use the Charged Star Card from your partner, you’ll need to find your own charges unless you’ve actually unlocked that card yourself, but even a limited use of them can be a powerful advantage.

On the other side of things, players who do play often will have everything unlocked quickly. Three months after game release, a lot of players have every useful item unlocked, including all the Star Card upgrades. You can have all the items you really need (and rank 25 or 32) within a month of starting play. More items give you more options, but you will quickly pick out favorites and unlock them first, and use them the most. But is unlocking new content the actual goal (and pleasure) of playing the game?

Sure, there is some joy in ranking up and getting new toys to use in the game, but we all know there has to be some limit to the total number of useful weapons and items a game can offer. You will get everything in time. For this Star Wars themed game, is is very important for player enjoyment that all the cool, classic, iconic weapons and items be accessible without needing to spend months (or years) and a lot of special effort to get them. The rank system gives you a little time to try out new items before you go on to others, but doesn’t really restrict you from getting access to your choice of the best items for long. The classic Star Wars Battlefront II didn’t have regular unlocks as such (Award and Legendary status gave you one alternative weapons, but as it was pretty much an upgrade it effectively made an experienced Elite soldier more effective, sort of like a kill streak upgrade. In the new Battlefront, you can, after a relatively short time, have everything unlocked and thus be able to choose anything you feel is needed for your situation.

Not Enough Personalization

After Rank 50 or so, once you upgrade all the Star Cards you want and have unlocked your favorite looks and emotes, what do you use more credits for? You can collect all the other unlocks, or buy and use more Charges for your Star Cards, but you will easily hit a point where you don’t actually need anything, and more XP and credits do nothing for you.

Well, more “bling” can’t hurt, as the looks and emotes are just for fun, but they don’t affect game play. The game can’t stand to have too much new random, useful stuff added to it without risking the game balance, plus your also risk violating Star Wars Canon. DICE shouldn’t have a problem adding more custom looks and other cosmetic items, as long as they can find them in the Star Wars Canon.

That last is an issue, unfortunately, for those who’d like really colorful or exotic looks.  The guard troopers also must be distinctive in look, so you can’t have outfits which look like them either in the customization.  Still, I think there is enough source material to come up with a bunch of good cosmetic looks  to add to the “collect them all” fun of the game.

Is It Fun To Play?

That is the ultimate reason to play a game, and for a lot of people, that is enough.  There is something exciting about just playing in the Star Wars Universe, and a good run in a vehicle or as a hero — I find a good Luke Skywalker rush to be exhilarating — makes it even better.  For Star Wars fans, this a an amazing, ultra-special “ride” to experience, and worth playing even if you aren’t a serious FPS gamer.

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Apr 29

Want To Be A Shipping Magnate? TransOcean Shipping Company Lets You Try

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General Gaming, Strategy

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http://store.steampowered.com/app/289930/

I missed seeing this game when it came out, or I would have gotten it sooner, It is a simple cargo ship company tycoon game, very much like the classic 1986 Ports Of Call, with lovely 3D graphics and overall a nicer art style. For those interested, Ports Of Call XXL is in development (www.portsofcall.de), and you can get versions of the classic game as well.

 

TransOcean has all the nice elements for a trading game — transport cargo from port to port, trying to make the most money and boost your reputations in order to improve your shipping company. Travel to more ports, play the ship driving minigame to get in and out of the docks for more status (and to save money and see the nice scenery), buy more ships, complete company contracts, and get rich. Or go bankrupt if you fail, but the game is overall fairly easy to play.

This is a single player game, with a sequel with multiplayer and more features coming out in May 2016, As such, my recommendation is to get this one on sale, unless you can’t wait to get your ship captain fix now. The polish of this game is a good sign for the future of its replacement, and I expect that you won’t get exactly the same sort of challenges and game play features in the sequel.  This original game does, though, contain the background story and missions which set up the campaign mode of its sequel, and may be a little easier to play (in single player).

There are two basic game modes, the campaign — a mission-driven game with an investor who gives you orders and wants to be paid back, with the ultimate goal to become a tycoon and take control of the company — and the free game, where you just run the shipping company however you want. The campaign can be a challenge to win, but also provides a nice tutorial on how to play.

Much of the joy of the game is making smart choices and watching your company and bank balance grow. You will spend most of your time watching your ships sail around the world, and making decisions when they reach ports. Refuel now, or wait for a cheaper location? Select cargos for the best pay, but take into account the chances of getting new valuable jobs at each destination. Repair or upgrade your ship as needed. Some cargos require upgrades in order to legally carry them — take them without and you risk customs inspections and fines. Time spent sitting in port costs money, so that is another hard choice.

Some jobs have time deadlines. They pay better, increase your status if you are one time, but penalize you if you fail. The company contracts you can take give you a mission to deliver a specific kind of cargo from one specific port to another, with a time limit as well. They add another piece of depth, trading guaranteed work with a good payoff at the end (and more status) for a commitment which makes you miss out on valuable high-paying loads to other locations — or taking them, and risk failing the contract.

All the ships in this game are container cargo ships, and can carry multiple cargo loads as long as they fit on the ship. Sometimes you have enough to fill the ship and go to one destination, but often you must it several destinations in order to travel fully loaded. Each port docked at takes time and money.

Early in the game, you will dock manually and play a simple ship driving game to get into or out of the harbor. It isn’t hard to do being slow and patient, but most of us don’t want to wait too long, and so you take chances and risk damaging your ship. Succeeding boosts your status. Being Famous means you’ll get better deals and cargos than a small, Unknown company and captain.

Later in the game, especially once you’ve seen all the ports in 3D, you’ll just pay the tug costs and skip this part of the game, as long as you have the money in the bank.

There are dangers which can affect your ship’s travel — storms at sea, fires, sickness, reefs, pirates, rescue missions — plus the risk of customs delays if your ship isn’t running legally. Taking the risky illegal goods (counterfeit and questionable merchandise) pays very well, but has much higher fines and delays if you are caught. Plus the illegal goods are confiscated, unlike loads where you aren’t compliant with regulations.

Most trips, though, are uneventful for legal, properly maintained ships. You’ll spend your time making good choices each time a ship hits port, and when you cast off to send it to its next destination. The game proceeds in simulated real time (you can accelerate the clock, and will do so often in the early game). With more ships in play, you will have a lot on your mind, as you try to figure out the best way to make money and complete your missions.
Does this sound like fun? The play style is relaxing, and the real time nature of moving ships and the horn sounding as each one makes its destination and you choose its next operation, makes it easy to just keep playing “just one more turn” style. Pausing the game to buy and outfit new ships, or sell old ones you don’t need, upgrade your existing ships (you will usually decide this when they hit a port), check on ships parked and waiting in a location for cargo, checking new and existing company contracts to make plans, or just looking over the balance sheets and see how much money you are making — lots of stuff to do here.

The game runs well and is fairly bug free, but it isn’t quite perfect. Any feature upgrades will have to wait for the sequel.

The campaign is challenging and has frustrating elements by design. You are surprised with new demands by the investor, and some are very hard to manage. Fail to complete these goals, and your company can fail. Run out of money, and you can go bankrupt. The investor and bank can give you loans, but you had better pay them off quickly. The investor is effectively the villain antagonist of your story, and will demand an unfair share of your money. So when you see the warning that the payment is due soon, make sure you have money in the bank.

Borrowing money from the bank becomes possible once you gain status, but the investor treats loans as if they were gifts or profits. Just a fair warning, if you have bank loans and the investor comes wanting money, the payment will be larger, with the debt not accounted for at all in your assets. It is best done for very short term gains, such as buying new ships to make money faster, and using the new money to pay off the loans (regardless of term, try to pay all off within a year at most, a quarter ideally).

You can amass a huge fleet of ships in the game, but all your orders are done manually. You can’t stack multiple orders. There is no automation, AI managers for the ships, or anything to make it easier to handle dozens of ships and routes. The game is playable and winnable without having more than two dozen ships, and you can sell old ones (and should sell your cheap starting ship once you own better ones, as it isn’t very good), but it is entirely tempting and easy to simply buy more and more until the game bogs down. Solution? Sell off ships until your fleet is a fun size to play, and just let your bank balance grow.

The last is important for the campaign. The investor wants a ridiculous amount of money for you to buy out and win the game, based on your assets at the time you hit the highest rank and complete the terrifically hard Hotel mission. I thought that I was doing well — objectively, a company worth 6 billion is a good thing — but it meant I needed to raise 15 billion in order to win. If I was worth one billion, getting another 2.5 billion wouldn’t be nearly as much work. Plus the investor keeps taking a cut while you do this, so making more money actually makes the end game goal even harder.

Fortunately, a lot of the fun of the game is in the early phases where you have only one or a few ships, and are just expanding your company and your reach in the world. Free play lets you do this over and over, without the hard missions imposed on you. You need to explore — reach new ports — before you can access the whole world and larger ships.

The biggest thing missing is competition.  This is corrected nicely in the sequel, which allows for 8 players — human or AI — to work against each other.  It also adds a lot more details and options to the game play, which should increase its replay value considerably.  The classic Ports Of Call game worked very well for hotseat game play, and TransOcean 2 should deliver the same sort of money-making business challenge.

 

http://store.steampowered.com/app/350110

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Mar 20

Humble Jumbo Bundle 6, And Other Quick News

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General Gaming, GTA V, Star Wars Battlefront, Strategy

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https://www.humblebundle.com/jumbo-bundle-6

 

This big bundle includes a bunch of Shadowrun RPG games, the nice SF RTS Grey Goo (by the people who did the Star Wars Empire At War RTS), and an interesting take on a game type which I enjoyed in the 80’s:

Trans-Ocean: The Shipping Company

 

This is a transport company game, where you run a shipping company and try to turn a profit – or at least, not lose too much money.  Its has its roots in the classic Ports Of Call game.

 

The original classic is still available (http://www.portsofcall.de/), but it is a great to see a modernized take on the original game.  The original had a glaring flaw, in that the costs of ships varied, so you could make more money by buying cheap ships and selling them when the prices went up, but a simple (player-enforced) “house rule” could eliminate that exploit (can’t sell ships unless you buy new ones of equal cost in the same turn).  A nice mix of arcade-like mini-games to deal with navigation hazards (and save money, you can pay to skip most of them) and trading game play made it a highly addictive game.

This newer game offers internet play, and there is an improved sequel coming out this year.  The Humble Bundle offers a coupon for a discount on that as well.

The RTS Grey Goo (http://store.steampowered.com/app/290790/) is the highlighted game in this bundle, and looks like a wonderful choice for fans of classic Starcraft-style SF RTS games.

The deal is only available until March 22, 2016, so there isn’t much time to get it.  But the games included will still be fun to play after that, and worth considering even if you miss this bargain.

 

In other quick news:

 

Star Wars Battlefront will have its first DLC come out this spring:  March 22, 2016 for Season Pass owners, and April 5 for those who buy it stand-alone.  I don’t recommend buying the DLC separately for a game like this, because it isn’t likely to save you money if you just end up getting the rest of them later, and you miss out on the bonus items which come with the Season Pass (or Premium Edition like Battlefield Hardline).  There is also new content, including a new large map on Endor.  Couple the new content with improvements in the patches, and the game is turning out to be quite nice.  If a bit pricey, with its Season Pass for the DLC, but it is by far not the only game not to use paid DLC in order to deliver the best experience in the game.  It remains the best Star Wars based game to date.

 

Battlefield Hardline has its last paid DLC Betrayal come out, and there is a lot of cool stuff in the Hardline DLC packs.  Including the Gun Bench customization feature for Premium owners, which adds a level of customization not scene in any Battlefield game to date — nor in most other FPS games.  The new maps are very good, and this makes Hardline a very nice choice for FPS players who want an urban light-infantry/special ops sort of game to play.

I’ve been enjoying regular play in GTA Online.  Rockstar keeps putting new content for free into the game, and in order to get the most of it, you need to play the game daily in order to earn the money to pay for the new toys.  Now, you don’t really NEED the new fancy cars, weapons, boats, or aircraft, or even the cool clothes, but a big part of the joy of playing this sort of sandbox game is to accumulate cool things to show off and enjoy.  The game play is definitely not getting old, but the frequent new game modes and game play options makes sure that you always have something new and fresh to try out.

 

 

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Jan 23

Dinosaur Island Life In ARK: Survival Evolved

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General Gaming

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What is ARK: Survival Evolved like?

Dinosaurs On A Spaceship.

Ok, not exactly, but there are elements which remind us of this classic Doctor Who episode. There is a mysterious location, dinosaurs, and possibly aliens, and strange technology. The single biggest element, both early on and later, are the creatures.

ARK Survival takes place on an island which is a sort of Jurassic World environment — but with no safe zones for the visitors. It isn’t a natural island, and the mix of exotic creatures and environments is also not natural or historic. Check out the game encyclopedia site – http://ark.gamepedia.com/ARK:_Survival_Evolved_Wiki -, just see all the various creatures which populate this place.

The mysterious nature of the place is obvious when you first start playing, but quickly fades into the background as you struggle for mere survival. The exotic beacons, strange glowing columns of light, are fascinating landmarks which can help you keep oriented as you travel, as well as provide benefits once you learn to use them. But the more immediate threat of hostile creatures and acquiring the basics of food, water, and shelter, in order to stay alive, is the main focus of actual game play.

You appear, practically naked (you do have underwear, but it doesn’t offer much protection), without explanation at a random location on this mysterious island when you enter the game. You must gather resources and learn skills to help you survive, starting with just your bare hands. Over time, you learn more skills to help you build tools and equipment to help your deal with your situation, including some pretty advanced technology once you gain both the necessary experience (leveling up) and materials to make it possible.

As a survival game, this works very well. For something which is still classed as an Early Access game (http://store.steampowered.com/app/346110/), it plays very well and offers a lot of depth and challenges.

The game is due for general release this spring, around June 2016.  But it is quite playable now in Early Access, which is quite nice.

The Jurassic World element: Many classic dinosaurs are present, along with other sorts of prehistoric, exotic creatures from multiple eras. Just watching them can be fascinating. Many are not overtly hostile, and will be safe enough unless provoked. But there are more than enough aggressive carnivores to make it far from just a beautiful tourist trap.

First thing, though, once you get a bit oriented, is gathering the basic resources and putting together tools to help your survive. It doesn’t take too long to pick up the basics, but just because you have your axe and spear, doesn’t mean you can rest. Even when you have better equipment, clothes, weapons, and a nice well-built shelter to live in, it always takes some work to both gather more materials and survive the threats present on the island.

You probably won’t get very far on your first attempt before you die. And you are going to die in this game. Even with the most advanced weapons and other resources in the game, the big, tough dinosaurs remain a threat. If not death from dangerous beasts, there is the environment. Excessive heat, lack of water, food, freezing to death, drowning, poison — a lot of threats, and they are frequently just as hard to manage as the hungry creatures living around you.

When you die, you are reborn quickly. You will reappear on the island at a random location, although you can try to select a region. If you or your tribe owns a Bed (an item constructed in your shelter), you can choose to come back there. You are resurrected, but not with your original body. That body, and all the items you had with you, will still be present whereever you met your demise. If you get back to it soon enough, you can recover your lost items. Get back quickly enough, and you can, in a very macabre fashion, harvest the meat from the bones of your own corpse (or others can do the same).

This resurrection is reminiscent of the Riverworld book series (by Phillip Jose Farmer). You can use your death as a method of travel. It is even built into the game mechanics, as a form of fast travel. Take off and store all your equipment in one shelter, go to a bed, then ask to “fast travel” to another bed. You will, effectively, die and disappear, only to reappear, again practically naked, in your new location.

Death thus isn’t a setback to your character’s progress or direct survival, as you will always come back into the game with the knowlege and abilities you’ve gained. Your equipment, on the other hand, can be lost or destroyed, as can be any structures you have built. As it takes quite a bit of time and effort in the game to build these things, major losses can be a significant set back to your progress in taming the game world.

It is easy to die, though. Even with care, you can run into dangerous predators and fail to escape. While out hunting, you might miss your target and accidentally hit a Brontosaurus, which will proceed to angrily stomp you to death. Fall in the water by accident? You could swim to shore, if it wasn’t for the piranhas and sharks and such. Then there is the dark. Even with a torch, you don’t have great vision at night, and can easily be surprised by things which wouldn’t be as dangerous in the daylight.

You will recover, though, after deaths, and continue to develop. At some point, you will get into building up your base. First just a thatch hut, then wooden walls, stone, bricks, even metal. You can build a fancy house, a castle, fortress, bunker, and whatever else seems to make sense for your mission of survival here.

You get to exercise your creativity here. While basic functionality is of course important, the game offers a lot of nice design choices, and the ability to paint/color/reskin things to make them more personal and artistic. At this point, you are fairly well beyond merely trying to survive. You are trying to be civilized, in a very dangerous world.

ARK offers a rather unique element in your rise to civilization. You can actually tame and domesticate many of the creatures on the island, including things like the Tyrannosaurus Rex. You do have to subdue them first, which becomes much easier once you learn how to make the Tranquilizer Arrows to knock creatures out. Before that, you must try to hit it with less lethal weapons, and hope it doesn’t die from the attack or become too weak to tame. It isn’t easy to convert a wild dinosaur into a tame pet, requiring resources (food and medicine) and time — real time, not just game world time.

Once you have a tamed dinosaur, the game changes a lot. While it can take a while to learn the skills and get the materials to make a saddle for your big pet, once you have that, you can ride them. That can improve your mobility a lot. Even without that, they are great pack animals and let you carry around a lot more equipment and resources, making the task of gathering and crafting items much easier. Many can gather resources themselves, which also can make your life easier.

The best thing is that they can fight for you. While best handled with you as a rider directing them, adding the power of a dinosaur on your side can make a lot of dangerous dinosaurs easier to manage, albeit not risk free. You can still run into something too tough for your mounted pet, and losing it in combat means losing the value of all the time and resources you spent training it.

Tamed dinosaurs level up through experience just as your character does, which makes keeping them alive even more valuable.

Then, there is the one big key element of life in ARK: The clock never stops. The game runs continuously, even if you log out. When you leave the game, your character merely goes to sleep, remaining present and vulnerable. Making sure you are in a secure location before leaving is an important survival skill in the game. You also want to make sure that food and water are stocked up and you are healthy, and if you have animals, a secure place with food and water for them is needed as well.

Building your base is not just to keep your character safe, but also any of the animals you’ve tamed. You also can build lots of equipment to help craft and store resources, and farm plots to help grow crops. Especially the rare ones which are hard to gather in the wild.
But wait! This isn’t just a solo game, but an online server-based multiplayer world. You can join other players, and work cooperatively — PvE, or players vs environmeent — to develop secure civilization and survive in the world. Or you can play antagonistically, and build up your base and resources in order to fight other players. Different worlds may impose their own “rules of war” to limit the sort of tactics which are considered acceptable. Honorable fighting rules may prohibit attacking sleeping characters, or restrict combat to special regions rather than an all-out attack to destroy the enemy base — and thus their civilization.

For PvP, or player vs player, this game is not truly balanced by its nature. Starting characters are pitifully weak, and essentially helpless against experienced players. You can’t take on someone with body armor and an assault rifle, riding on a tough dinosaur like a Tyrannosaurus Rex, with your bare hands. Or even an axe or spear. Heck, even a bow and arrow doesn’t really cut it. Not only that, but the fortified base built by such a character is essentially invulnerable to low level players as well. This is why worlds (game admins) may impose rules to prevent high level characters from simply devastating any new players before they can get established.

When Two Tribes Go To War

One exciting possibility which does deal with the balance between players is essential organized warfare.  Players can join tribes — cooperative groups — on a server, and then engage in competitions between the tribes.  At times agreed on by the players in each tribe, they can form teams who then engage in combat, with whatever rules in place they want.  This avoids the problems of random secret attacks, while allowing players to engage in epic dinosaur-riding warfare.

The game also works perfectly well as a purely cooperative venture.  Or even a solitary survival game, the challenge to make it completely on your own is daunting.  By working with a group, you can always have someone on who can keep guard over your camp, tend the pet dinosaurs, and help maintain your home.

A wonderful, large part of the game is crafting and construction.  It isn’t just about building and making functional things, either.  You can be creative and colorful in your designs, allowing you to express yourself in many ways.  You get to use working mechanisms, and later, electrical devices and electronics (if you progress that far), to build your own version of civilized life among the dinosaurs.

That is the ultimate appeal of this game — living a life as a virtual survival among actual dinosaurs.  It is hard to beat that.

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