Terrain Game Update Briefing (Coming Soon!)

[Cornered Rats]

Hey everyone, this is SCKING, the QA team lead. We are in the final testing phase of the latest version of World War II Online (1.35.14.0). In this version of World War II Online we have focused on a new first for this team. Finally some terrain fixes and some changes to the map. Merlin51 worked very hard on this terrain over the past 9 months with a lot of discovery on how the terrain engine functions and then actually be able to make fixes and changes that are ready for release. This is a good beginning of things we have planned for terrain. Over the years there have been many bug reports of terrain issues, like bushes and trees into buildings, buildings going missing, berms into FBs and much more. QA team has been collecting many of those bug reports and putting them into our ticketing system to get fixed. And now many of them are.

View the full article on battlegroundeurope.com

[delems]

Fantastic!  What a huge change this going to be!

Great job.

Does terrain include the AI?

 

[PITTPETE]

yes, you'll be happy

[kazee]

Couple questions here: I am using the link provided in original post with new map images

1. Why is Brux (if Allied control) SE sector not capable if Axis own Leuven and Wavre ? Looks like Axis must cap NE sector first ? Seems like this will make defending Brux much easier if Axis must cap NE sector first and if that is also their only option

2. Once NE sector is capped, I guess Axis will be able to spawn in equipment in ab ? Does Axis need to control all depots in NE sector to spawn equipment in ab?

3. Is AF part of the NE sector ? Looks like it on map.

I do like breaking the large 3 ab towns up into sectors, however i am not sure if i am a fan of forcing the attacking force into one sector first move. imho if brux is frontline, any sector should be capable, and once all depots in that sector are capped, spawning armor etc in ab is allowed 

 

Edited July 28, 2018 by kazee

[delems]

ack, almost forgot....  are Kiel and Brest deep water ports now?

 

[Scking]

8 hours ago, kazee said:

Couple questions here: I am using the link provided in original post with new map images

1. Why is Brux (if Allied control) SE sector not capable if Axis own Leuven and Wavre ? Looks like Axis must cap NE sector first ? Seems like this will make defending Brux much easier if Axis must cap NE sector first and if that is also their only option

2. Once NE sector is capped, I guess Axis will be able to spawn in equipment in ab ? Does Axis need to control all depots in NE sector to spawn equipment in ab?

3. Is AF part of the NE sector ? Looks like it on map.

I do like breaking the large 3 ab towns up into sectors, however i am not sure if i am a fan of forcing the attacking force into one sector first move. imho if brux is frontline, any sector should be capable, and once all depots in that sector are capped, spawning armor etc in ab is allowed 

 

 

1. SE sector is not capable by either side unless you own NE or SW sector (its not an allied/axis thing). I will leave the strategy of how either side approaches Brussels up to the high command.  

2. You have to look at Brussels and Antwerp as no longer.. These are 3 or 4 separate towns very close to each other (similar to Roermonds) and they act exactly the same way.

3. Yes. AF is a part of the NE sector in Brussels and AF is a part of South sector in Antwerp.

I posted the links to each town, I will leave it up to your respective HC on the strategy of how to capture/defend the towns.   

1 hour ago, delems said:

ack, almost forgot....  are Kiel and Brest deep water ports now?

 

I don't believe so

[delems]

ok, well, looking forward to our navy terrain update!

Add AB to Den Haag
Add town link between Staven and Brouwer
Move Kiel to correct location
Make Kiel deep water port and add AB
Add deep water port Den Helder with AB
Add deep water port Wilhshaven with AB
Add deep water port Haugesund with AB
Add deep water port Kristiansand with AB
Add deep water port Horten with AB
Make Brest deep water port with AB
Add Cherbourg deep water port with AB

 

I know lots of stuff coming with the Zee update, until then, looking forward to this huge terrain update.

Going to be fun with those new town links and split towns.  Going to make HC fun for a bit moving flags.

 

[Scking]

I noticed that I did not show the breakdown of Antwerp like I did Brussels.. Attached is the breakdown of facilities..

 

 

 

 

[Merlin51]

On 7/28/2018 at 2:56 PM, kazee said:

1. Why is Brux (if Allied control) SE sector not capable if Axis own Leuven and Wavre ? Looks like Axis must cap NE sector first ? Seems like this will make defending Brux much easier if Axis must cap NE sector first and if that is also their only option

SE brux is the fuel depot and the machinery section for the air base.
It has no outbound links, so while you can not attack it from outside in a linked supply sense, it can not attack outwards just the same.
Think of it as the detached industry part of the AF.
You can actually defeat it without attacking it if you want, just take the other parts of brux and it will surrender, and the BDE in it will be routed.

On 7/28/2018 at 2:56 PM, kazee said:

2. Once NE sector is capped, I guess Axis will be able to spawn in equipment in ab ? Does Axis need to control all depots in NE sector to spawn equipment in ab?

NE is like any other town, take the AB and the owner gets bounced, cap the rest and move your BDE in and spawn from the AB and ALL the depots.
Geographically its all Brussels, but in a military tactical sense it is in sectors so you can get some of that split city action that did happen in WWII.
It should also stop the hours/days of no one having fun whack a mole tag, now you can concentrate on: 
Get foot in door
Keep what you fought for
Organize to maintain it
Push out to take the rest or drawn the opponent from other AO's to fight a massive inner city defense
Or whatever else you can think of. 

 

[Merlin51]

22 hours ago, delems said:

Add AB to Den Haag

Sure, at Den Haag.
What you see in game now is not Den Haag no more the Kiel is Kiel and neither will be staying where they are.
They are simply locked place holders So the axis have some naval ports back in their nick of the woods given semi arbitrary names.

22 hours ago, delems said:

Add Cherbourg deep water port with AB

You realize these places are currently a long long distance from the present playing area?
That would be a hell of a drive in a tank or truck and an even longer jog.

They wont be getting any AB's right at the moment though as they are purposely held in stasis and not capturable so that the naval ports remain available
and that is as a concession to the naval players as their portion of the game is admittedly under developed, so that at least they can log in and find
a port available regardless of map state.
When they connect to the rest of the play area and can directly affect it, then they get AB's and AF's and buildings and depots, and become capturable etc.

[madrebel]

I'm pretty excited for the big town breakup of brussels and twerp. Will this .... presuming this works as expected is this trend going to carry over to all major cities? The uh ... stalls at factory areas for me are super boring. What about 2 AB locations like Lille and Metz? Just curious.

[Scking]

It’s not in our current plan to break up every city. We really want to see how this works with Antwerp and Brussels before we decide on what we do in the future. The addition of Garrisons is going to change up the dynamic again so I am sure we will wait until that is implemented before making a final decision.

[Merlin51]

1 hour ago, madrebel said:

I'm pretty excited for the big town breakup of brussels and twerp. Will this .... presuming this works as expected is this trend going to carry over to all major cities? The uh ... stalls at factory areas for me are super boring. What about 2 AB locations like Lille and Metz? Just curious.

There is no trend here, what does and does not happen depends in large to you guys, the playerbase as a whole.

What's been done here is basically my attempt to try and rectify a situation that existed even when the server had over 2000 people logged into the game world
on a friday night.

Those towns were never terribly fun because they are very large, with lots of links, and the attacker could have done very very well and controlled a good portion of the town owned the AB's and Depots and lose all their efforts because an FB went down and on the flip side, defenders could spend hours running back and forth across the hug town chasing a mole who wandered around for days just keeping the town contested until people just became sick of it and said screw it, just give it up.

So i figured out an unsupported way to hack the towns strategic data into pieces and give the pieces to separate entities that represent the different sectors of a town, that work within the existing server mechanics.
It's a long drawn out tedious pain to do on an existing town, lots of trial and error.

We will probably never design a single sector huge mega town as any new content, unless the playerbase demands it for some reason.
they just are not much fun from an attack or defend stand point without a much much MUCH different system of doing troop location and concentration.

If everyone hates it, it's on me, no one else's fault.

edit: submitted too early
Not all multi AB towns would be nor should be sectioned.
Some just do not offer any great gameplay by doing so, and might actually take away or ruin their strategic value

Edited July 30, 2018 by merlin51

[Sudden]

I can't believe they used the dreaded word "soon".

Don't these new guys know what happened the last time is was uttered?

 

[Merlin51]

15 minutes ago, Sudden said:

I can't believe they used the dreaded word "soon".

Don't these new guys know what happened the last time is was uttered?

 

SooN 2.0­®™
 
It's different

 

[delems]

*** They wont be getting any AB's right at the moment though as they are purposely held in stasis and not capturable so that the naval ports remain available

There are many towns on map that have an AB and are not capturable, Horn and Biggin to name 2 offhand.

All towns should have ABs - that doesn't make them able to be captured.

 

 

*** You realize these places are currently a long long distance from the present playing area?

Yes, but these are major ports/locations of WWII and fit perfectly for the ambiance of the game.

 

So, who do I have to send pizza and beer to in order to get that naval patch list implemented ?

And what supervisor do we have to buy off to allow time to get it done?
 

 

PS It's next week now, here patchy patch   Going to be great.

 

Edited July 31, 2018 by delems

[OLDZEKE]

It's not a matter of allowing something done but rather having someone not already tasked on a dozen other projects to do it.

Example:

Neither Xoom or myself are actually DEVs but this evening between the 2 of us we worked out what should be a fix for a rather obnoxious little bug that came in awhile back.

He had access to the part that needed changed and I had (hopefully) the understanding of how it works to help with a fix. 

This was during a short break in testing the pending terrain patch today.

[Merlin51]

13 minutes ago, delems said:

There are many towns on map that have an AB and are not capturable, Horn and Biggin to name 2 offhand.

All towns should have ABs - that doesn't make them able to be captured.

Yes you are right, they do have them BUT, they aren't directly useable, you cant go there and spawn up a bunch of tanks and drive off someplace.
each one of those places is there for a special purpose, and was given some pieces to fulfill the purpose it was meant for along with some backroom voodoo to make them stay in place.

Kiel will be getting a big DELETE button when it's time comes, because probably most importantly, it is not Kiel
as will The Hague because it is not The Hague, they were just placeholders given an approximate name to suit a special outside of normal gameplay function.

26 minutes ago, delems said:

Yes, but these are major ports/locations of WWII and fit perfectly for the ambiance of the game.

They do eventually, but it isn't much fun as a player to have some far off location that is presently very disconnected from the rest of the play area.
Look at the British training grounds present placeholder area.
That is a MAJOR WWII naval facility.
Right this present minute though, it would not be a heck of a lot of fun because nothing is fleshed out in that area yet.
The ride from cherbourg, with nothing going on for a very long ways, would not be terribly fun for most people, hell even Angriff wouldn't
feel like doing it.

[delems]

*** Yes you are right, they do have them BUT, they aren't directly useable, you cant go there and spawn up a bunch of tanks and drive off someplace.

Sure you can - put air flag in, spawn infantry or tanks.

I can spawn out of both Horn and Biggin once a flag is placed there.