The unofficial Distant Guns 'wish list'

[Percopius]

Hi all,

I would like very much;

1. That some part of the 'Tilt Up' and 'Tilt Down' View mouse hot zone be "Raise" and "Lower" View. You could split each or the 4 areas, or you could make the right or left set be 'Raise/Lower'.

2. A hot key, like maybe ctrl or alt, that pops up your OOB on in a window. Each one line entry would have Type, name, speed, orders damage, etc. Mouse wheel scrolls the list while over the list, left click selects, double click zooms map to that selection, shift click adds to selection, right click assigns that entry division leader of the currently selected units and makes them a new division.

3. A hot key (TAB?) that zooms to the lookout tower or some such intresting position on the ship that is currently selected.

4. Allow keyboard hotkey editing, or give us another setup that use a modified First Person Action (W=forward A= turn left D= turn right S=back Q=move left E=move right R= raise F= lower) key group for camera control . Or, better yet, when you depress and hold a key (like ctrl or alt), the mouse and WADS keys act like a shooter camera (Mouse cursor disapears, small target cross at center of screen, mouse steers view, standard WADS keys, left click selects whats in the target cross).

Thanks, P.

 

[Percopius]

P.s.

I also wish the view limit fogging wasn't a straight line, but curved, to give the impression of the curve of the earth. When you zoom out it is apparent the world is perfectly flat. Not a big deal, but I remember enjoying that effect in EF2000 (was not faked, the game world was rendered on a sphere).

 

[Bullethead]

My list so far (maybe these are in there already but not having a paper manual to look at during play makes RTFMing difficult...):

1. Filter for News/Events Scrolling Text
I'm talking about the text in the upper left where it says which ship shot at what, who got hit, etc. I'd like filters on that so I can select what I want to see. For starters, I'd love to be able to cull all the firning messages and just see hits, major damage announcements, reinforcement arrival, etc. The really important stuff gets lost in the storm of firing messages.

2. Some Way to Scroll the News/Events Text to see stuff that got pushed off before you could read it in the heat of battle.

3. Keep the News/Events Text from fading while the game is paused, and rebrighten what's already faded when you pause. One of the reasons for pausing is to read all this stuff, and it's annoying when the lines fade out before you can read them all.

3A. In the News/Events Text scroll, abbreviate the ship type. IOW, "BB Mikasa" instead of "Battleship Mikasa".

4. Show ship speed capability anywhere appropriate, as in all info display panels and task force editing screens.

5. I second the motion for an in-game OOB screen. It would be REALLY cool if you could click on ships on this screen and have the camera go right to them. Also have the ability to sort the OOB list by division, name, speed, damage level, type (BB, AC, DD, etc.).

6. Some way of keeping score by individual ships, such as how many hits it took and gave to each target it engaged, plus hit percentages, etc. Just to put a face on things.

7. Some sort of wreckage on the water where ships sink, to mark their graves. It would be nice to have this wreckage pop up with the ship info panel so you could see the damage that caused the sinking.

 

[Dogbert]

Perhaps some way of ordering ships to only fire torpedoes. Kinda spoils the surprise in night attacks when destroyers open up with their guns before the torpedoes have finished their run.

 

[joblue]

Oob

I would like to second the request for some sort of OOB screen

 

[FJ88]

I would like the ability to hold the fire of certain weapons in order to save their ammo.
That may be getting a little too tactical but it would be helpful.

 

[Hinchinbrooke]

Mission/Map Editor would work for me.

 

[FJ88]

Alot more flexibility in the random scenario generator would be nice

Weather
Date
Type of engagement
etc

 

[Percopius]

Also like to see...

...that when you have a unit(s) selected, in the Follow camera mode, that the rotate keys and mouse hot spots for rotate, rotated the view with the selected ship, or center of a group selection, locked as the center of rotation. Currently if you zoom in on a ship, then rotate the view, the center of rotation is the camera.

 

[pad152]

Wish List.

1. Better Pan and Zoom controls.

2. Tropedo only attack - Ability to order a torpedo only attack, its a waste of ammo to sink a badly damaged ship when all is needed is a couple of torpedoes.

3. Damage Control - give the player some level of control over damage control, should I put available resources on flooding, putting out the fires, or fix damaged guns. I would also like to get some sort of est on repairs.

4. Ship Status - when in the ship status screen add a next, previous button to allow you click to get the status of all of your ships. Right now you have to select each ship individually to get a detailed status.

5. Additional Ship damage types - I haven't see a bridge hit/ bridge damage message, ship captain killed/wounded or magazine explosion.

6. Range circles for weapons, it's hard to tell how close you have to get to be able to bring all weapons of different calibure to bear. Maybe a hotkey that would show the range circle for each of a selected ship weapons.

7. More things to do in the campaign, more mission types like bombardment missions.

 

[Bullethead]

5. Additional Ship damage types - I haven't see a bridge hit/ bridge damage message, ship captain killed/wounded or magazine explosion.

Command and control does get hit already. In the scrolling text in the upper left, I have seen 1 message each for an officer dying and a signal mast being damaged. However, with all the spam in that text, I fail to see many important messages. Maybe these things have happened in my battles more often and I've just not noticed.

 

[Bullethead]

Oh yeah, I'd like to cast my vote for the in-game screenshot saver to be turned back on .

 

[Mike Cox]

I would like to see more/better targeting options. Rather than closest leader or free (which often ends up targeting the lead) how about

Free
Closest Division Lead
Closest (in Ulsan, I would have loved to have dealt with the lone Japanese AC before turning on my pursuers. Instead of the AC at 2500 yds, I am lobbing shells 8500 yards)
Line of Battle (My lead ship fires at your lead, my no 2 fires at your no 2, etc)
Reverse Line of Battle (My lead fires at your tail ship, my no 2 fires at the next rearmost, etc.)

 

[Bullethead]

I would like to see more/better targeting options. Rather than closest leader or free (which often ends up targeting the lead) how about ....

There' a hotkey-only command (as in you'll never see it on the pop-up menue) to make a ship fire at a specific other ship. Using that command, you can do all the things you listed, at the cost of micromanagement and frequent game pauses. It would be nice if instead of having to do all this by hand, you could just make 1 click on a menu of fire distribution options.

HOWEVER.... I can understand why it's like it is. Any additional menu commands would force the AI to make choices if there are more than 1 target that meets the description of a proposed menu item. This wouldn't be much of a problem in a small battle with like 1 squadron per side. Then there's no question about which group of enemy ships you're talking about. But what would happen if your squadron had was faced with 2 enemy squadrons and you say "engage opposite number"? The AI would have to try to decide which enemy squadron you were talking about. In the absence of further input from you, the AI could well pick the one you don't want to shoot at. Then you'd be less happy than you are now.

Anyway, I figure that the only way to avoid such problems using menu items would be to make the menu very complex and multi-layered, so you could tell the AI exactly what you want. And even this might not cover all the bases for every situation. However, even if it could be made to work, I'm sure using such a system would take just as much time and effort as just using the existing hotkey to target specific ships. So why bother?

 

[Silencer]

Wish List.

1. Better Pan and Zoom controls.

2. Tropedo only attack - Ability to order a torpedo only attack, its a waste of ammo to sink a badly damaged ship when all is needed is a couple of torpedoes.

3. Damage Control - give the player some level of control over damage control, should I put available resources on flooding, putting out the fires, or fix damaged guns. I would also like to get some sort of est on repairs.

4. Ship Status - when in the ship status screen add a next, previous button to allow you click to get the status of all of your ships. Right now you have to select each ship individually to get a detailed status.

5. Additional Ship damage types - I haven't see a bridge hit/ bridge damage message, ship captain killed/wounded or magazine explosion.

6. Range circles for weapons, it's hard to tell how close you have to get to be able to bring all weapons of different calibure to bear. Maybe a hotkey that would show the range circle for each of a selected ship weapons.

7. More things to do in the campaign, more mission types like bombardment missions.

same here. especially with night torpedo attacks.

 

[mbv]

All of the above and the ability to add multiple waypoints to a ships course. At the moment, unless I am doing something wrong, we appear to have just one course line that we can plot per ship/division/task force. In a large battle I often set a course for a division/ship and then move across the map to another division/ship and occasionally forget to go back. When I do go back the original course is still being maintained and the division is heading for the horizon while the enemy have moved elsewhere. It would be useful to have a multiple waypoint option to carry out complex manoeuvres. We would also need the ability to remove and re-assign waypoints as the battle plan changes.

 

[pad152]

I would like to see more/better targeting options. Rather than closest leader or free (which often ends up targeting the lead) how about

I too would like this, but I'm not sure how much control if any ships of this era had in targeting specific areas of a ship. In future naval battle WWI, WWII the game will need targeting options and different ammo types.

 

[Mike Cox]

Thanks for the tip Bullet. Pad, I was not talking about targeting specific areas of a ship. Just specific ships. (WW1 and WW2 ships did not have control of what they were firing at either.)

I would also amend my suggestion to:

Free
Closest Division Lead
Closest
Closest Division, Line of Battle (My lead ship fires at your closest lead, my no 2 fires at your no 2, etc)
Closest Division, Reverse Line of Battle (My lead fires at your closest tail ship, my no 2 fires at the next rearmost, etc.)

Which would solve the AI crises of multiple enemy divisions. (Of course the hot key solves a lot.)

 

[Bullethead]

Don't Add Micromanagement

It looks to me like this game is intended for you to be the admiral, with little direct control over the detail aspects of what your individual ships are doing. I figured that going in, and that's a kind of game I enjoy. I prefer to make a plan, give general orders, and watch my troops struggle on to victory, only intervening myself at decisive moments with a few key orders. Plus, as a geek, I enjoy watching a good AI being able to do this sort of thing autonomously. Even better is when the AI reacts on its own accord to changes in the situation I haven't noticed. That makes for more FOW and "friction" for me, more realism overall, and it's just damn cool to watch. That's one of the reasons I like the Combat Mission games so much--you can only have so much influence as commander, and the guys on the ground make the ultimate decisions. DG seems much the same.

So, with that in mind, I really don't want features that increase the player's level of detail control over what his ships and squadrons do. I'm quite happy with the level of control, with the sole exception of not being able to order squadrons to execute torp attacks, which was a real-world signal of the day. And if god-like powers for players to "possess" all their captains and issue a bunch of detail orders come into the game, PLEASE make them optional, and leave the AI intact enough to do without such direct player involvement.

 

[WallysWorld]

I agree 100% with Bullethead.

I'd rather be a taskforce commander than have to micromanage ships. The way it is right way is perfect for me. I can concentrate on manoeuvring battle lines.

As for torpedo attacks, I just order my boats in as fast as they can go and watch them make torpedo attacks while firing guns.