Good turnout for multiplayer mission

[Asid]

22 02 15 T.A.N.K.S. mission

Mission: Eagles Claw

16 players

[Cougar11]

Awesome mission with this many people. Was great having this many, and I look forward to having more in the room. Maybe the number might get to a whole company of crewed tanks. 

[Lumituisku]

YAY!  Great!

Im a bit sad that I missed all the fun!


That must have been great time there!

[Yassy]

It was nice to see so many people, but the mission was a disaster in my book.
Lots of weird technical issues / game bugs which killed the mission pretty early on.


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[Lumituisku]

Aww.  Well I guess it would be important to discus of what went wrong and what didn't work. So we could be wiser next time.. if you already didn't?

[Asid]

It was nice to see so many people, but the mission was a disaster in my book.
Lots of weird technical issues / game bugs which killed the mission pretty early on.
.

We are trying to track down the problems. It could have been network related where host and client see different things. Some form of packet loss/corruption?

When issues rear their ugly head then the immersion does suffer.

Regards

[Yassy]

Sure thing, I just found it shocking to see so many issues. Its not like SB Pro has been around for only a few weeks, if you know what I mean.

Sliding vehicles, vehicles getting stuck and detroyed for no reason on bridges, infantry visible but really not there, the old infantry doing pushups when dead, infantry clipping issues.
Just so many issues that made me feel we were playing some beta version. It was ugly.

For something touted as THE definitive mechanised combat sim it was a bad show.

And due to the above, it killed the mission early on. Pretty major, don't you think? Not something we as users can fix, I would assume.

[Lumituisku]

That is really sad to hear that it was this bad. Durhams mission on last time caused some weird problems that were based to map and roads there but this... sounds something unusual and clitchy. I'm starting to wonder as myself if version 3.011 would be solution for gameplay to be a bit more enjoyable for us all.

And what comes to users fixing things. There are some few things we probably could do... or rather things that we could avoid doing in missions.
Also there have been problems with roads, brigges, buildings, and other obstacles. that cause troubles on pathfinding as long as I remember. I assume some of those troubles could be fixed with map editing. Just is it worth of the efford?

But with infantry thing I feel quite helpless. - I might give a look if I find this issue as myself, but I don't feel too hopeful. Any idea when this infantry issue does occur? Have you noticed any clear pattern. On my single player games I have not yet seen any troubles. with it.


And if it is packed loss or  corruption...  uuurgh. >.<      -sighs deeply.-

[BobasEb]

I was somewhat weird but it was super fun with so many people.
Multi-crew I don't  know      I probably irritated my commander "Assassin" if we were in the army I would still be doing push-ups.
 (new joystick with new key layout so I was lasing instead of zooming in and messing up his targeting range)

[Lumituisku]

In kind of way I wish I would been there. I do like so much this multi crew.    would love to do some more multi-crew when ever having change. ^^     

[Beef]

I think the MP mission was an overall success, despite the technical difficulties and glitches, because of what we learned from it--but mostly because of how many people were there. The fact that Asid was able to post a screen capture of the TS channel with so many participants is awesome. There are a lot of take-aways from the mission and we learned a few things about ourselves, each other, and the sim in general. Moreover, we uncovered the need for effective command, control, and communications. Cougar had a good plan, we just had a hard time executing it because we weren't communicating effectively on teamspeak.

For example, in the middle of the battle, as the column moved north towards the main road, those of us at the airfield that quickly lost units switched over to the relief column's channel and we attempted to integrate while they were in the middle of fighting a battle. Some folks were calling out targets while others were saying "anyone have a tank? or need a gunner?". It's going to happen, but perhaps there could be a better way to re-integrate. For example, when there is a lull in the battle, or just typing in the text box that you need a vehicle or unit?

Just my two-cents folks. Don't think we need to throw the baby out with the bath water. The sim has its limitations and quirky behavior that no effort on our part can change or effect--and those things we'll always have to deal with it seems no matter what MP game/sim we are using--at least that is my experience thus far. What's left is the meat and potatoes that we bring to the table as multi-players. That means, having a good working knowledge of the vehicle were in, effective use of the input devices (i.e., mouse, keyboard, joystick), and clear, concise, and effective communications.

-Beef

[Yassy]

I agree with you about the comms. That was indeed part of it, but SB did bot behave either.

Durhams mission is a very nicely done piece of work, Lets put that up front.
But it exposed many issues within SB in terms of roads, AI and Infantry behaviour.

Perhaps it wasn't so bad for the tankers, but for people in the MRAPs or support vehicles the experience was far less positive.
The mission had gone to shit in the first 10mins by the bridge issue.
Then followed a tedious amount of time detaching all vehicles in my platoon to cross the bridges manually to prevent them getting stuck.
Then a quick dash towards main T junction, but by then the losses were so high the mission was effectively ended already.
It wasn't a fun experience and frankly a lot of fiddling was involved giving me the feeling of a waste of time.

That there were so many people on was even worse! It could have been a grand evening!

Better luck next time I suppose, but I am ticked off at SB cause I have never seen so many issues before.
It seems like 023 and 025 were a step back from 011 in this regard.


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[Asid]

Comms procedure:
The regular D.O.W. players have a comms procedure which works well. However the very nature of the Sunday T.A.N.K.S. mission means that the comms can fall/fail. We are open and encourage everybody to play the T.A.N.K.S. mission regardless of skill or ability. The D.O.W. missions on a Saturday are different. They are more "procedural". The comms can and do work well in SB.

We have played quite a few missions with 14-15 players with no issues.

Regarding the SB engine v3.025....jury is still out.

Regards

[Lumituisku]

I personally think that there is probably just a lot wrong in that map / area that Durham uses. I'm interested to run some testing on that map / area. On many other maps and missions there has been lot less trouble. But still some. 

Also could it be that there is for some reason colliding navmesh that is not purged?

And I do personally agree and think same way as Beef does when it comes to Steelbeast as simulation.

It has it's troubles. But I will not quit playing it cause of that. More I'm annoyed constant mocking of simulation, or vehicles in there. All that negative atmosphere and spirit makes me to withdraw to just be. and perhaps play it rather alone than to even ask peoples to play with group.

[Asid]

Hi Lumi

There may be an issue with the map. There was a new navmesh V13 released recently. I believe Durham did purge and reapply the navmesh.

Some issues were:

Bridge crossing. This has been flagged many times as an issue. The players need to take control of the units to be certain of a safe crossing. If you want the AI to do it then you must "march" formation across it.

Unit 1 1/A teleporting. This one I'm not certain about but maybe network connected.

Infantry spawning then dying and repeating. I believe that is a network issue.

Comms procedure or lack of is a human/user issue. When we open the session for "everybody" then there will be some who do not understand the DOW comms procedure. There is no excuse for DOW players though.

Players disconnecting after losing vehicle or for visible no reason at all. This shows a lack of manners. It is even worse when a member of DOW does it.

As for criticism. People will criticise when they see an issue or are disappointed in some way. ity is fair to constructively criticise and show disappointment especially when there is little evidence of improvement. I am sometimes disappointed with the limitations and issues within SB, especially infantry. I continue to play it though. If someone has a criticism then they should discuss not just diss (American slang lol).....