Question on SBF/Defense + UI sugestions

[amrcg]

Dear Captain

Is the Company SBF/Defense formation supposed to move the center of the Company more than one 1000 m relative to the original position? I though that the Company elements would try to occupy advantageous positions in the same area.

Another comment is relative to path planning in ATF, which is in my opinion somewhat cumbersome:

1) The last waypoint in the path should be treated in the same way as the others.
Sugestion: one should be able to move it by left-clicking and dragging. The addition of a new waypoint should involve pressing a key and should also apply to intermediate waypoints.

2) When adding a new waypoint, before droping it in its final position, information should be given about the blocked/unblocked status of the associated path. This would avoid constant deleting in trial and error.

3) When the Path Edit command is selected and no unit is selected, right-clicking anywhere should deselect it. If right-clicking on top of a unit, the context-driven menu should appear as normally. The same should apply to the Firing Order command.

Cheers,
Antonio

[kbluck]

I've always had problems with SBF. It never does what I want.

I generally set the desired formation first to let the AI have its fun and then manually reposition the units where I actually want them. That way, if I ever decide to move out, they'll move into the desired formation automatically as they leave.

If I have no particular formation in mind, I set it to "none" to keep the AI from disorganizing my units by accident.



I agree with your other path comments. I would add:

4) It should be possible to insert new nodes into the middle of an existing path.

5) When units reach the end of a path and stop, they should retain their last facing.

--- Kevin

[amrcg]

Dear Captain

It seems that the enemy SITTEMP graphics disappear in the last two "Zoom In" levels.

Antonio

[kbluck]

If you didn't know, the settings in the 'Options' dialog are potentially unique for each zoom level. Check that dialog first to see if the SITTEMP is simply turned off at those zoom levels, which I expect is most likely.

If you want exactly the same settings at all zoom levels, there is a button to do that in the options dialog.

--- Kevin

[amrcg]

Thanks for the tip, Kevin!

[Deltapooh]

SBF needs understanding at times. The first thing you should do is use it to figure out where the defensive terrain is. Each ATF map has an .aim file attached to it. I've included an example of one of these files I took of a map. (I've been up for more than 24hrs so I don't recall the map. :nuts:)

The blue spots represent SBF positions identified by the map. Once SBF formation is selected, and there are no holes ready, units should snap to the nearest location. The hard part can be keeping them on the edges of these locations.

At a minimum, one should use SBF to identify critical terrain. 9 times out of 10 the bad guy will try to dominate this land. You can then figure out how to kill them.

Also remember that spacing plays an important role in all this. Standard ATF blue hierarchy spacing might be too close for your operation. So you might need to make adjustments yourself. You can change spacing in the scenario editor. Haven't tried it yet in the game itself (I'm more of a builder than player now.)

Hole spacing is also important.

So take this all into consideration. If possible, go to the power tool kit and open one of the maps to study the terrain. You could find out alot without "cheating." You won't see the scenario, just the map.