| Archive for Rebels A Star Wars Roleplaying Community |
| The Chosen One |
Company of HeroesI doubt this'll get anywhere, or anyone will even know what I'm talking about, but has anyone played this game?No? Well, it's a WW2 themed RTS that has lots of neat features. One of them that is extremely unique, is cover playing a part in your infantry engagements. For example, say there is an Axis troops coming my way, and there is a stone wall nearby. Well, I can place my men behind the stone wall, and viola, they'll be harder to hit. Another thing I love about this game, is the suppression factor. If you have an machine gun set up, and the enemy gets within range, your men can get suppressed. They'll zip to the ground to eat the dirt, and thus move at a slower pace while being more vulnerable to small arms fireThis essentially means you can't just mass produce units and throw them at your enemy. It requires tactics. If you're curious, here's what it looks like in game.
My favorite part of this game, is the attention to detail. Keep in mind, this is a real time strategy game, yet it has graphics on par with most first person shooters. If anyone does have it, what are your usernames online? If you don't have it, what are you waiting for!? |
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| Xander Vos |
ZOMG?!
TCO is back?! Hey. 
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| Lord Vexen |
YAY for TCO...with a weird sig though. | ||
| Jaden Nightsaber |
I've seen it advertised and read about in Game Informer. It looks really innovative and hopefully all RTS's start to put that system in. It's just more realist. | ||
| Rive Caedo |
This one has passed completely under my radar. That's unusual - I usually scope out IGN for any games that they give a score over 9.0 and they gave this a 9.4! I was looking for something to play a bit between now and when Mass Effect comes out for the PC in a couple of weeks - this might as well be it. And, what's more, it came out almost 2 years ago and has dropped in cost to $20? Shiny!
That is mighty impressive looking graphically for a late 2006 game - I didn't expect RTS games to look that impressive until 2010. Although, it also looks like it only shows a couple dozen units onscreen at a time, at most. So it may unfair to compare it to the graphics of other upcoming RTS games like Starcraft 2 that need to show hundreds of Zerglings onscreen at a time. Still, impressive and unique looking. I'll stop in at Best Buy on my way home today and see if they have a copy 
EDIT: They did! Had one left in stock - they also had the expansion (which said it didn't require the original game, so it's not really an expansion) for $30 or a combo box with both for $40 - I decided just to get the original in case it's not my cup of tea. Hopefully it's not too addictive, I still want to finish another chapter of my little fanfic this weekend! 
*Fires 'er up* |
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| Rive Caedo |
Well, I just played through the tutorial after an hour of installation and two hours of troubleshooting.
The trouble was, originally, that none of the units were showing up at all and the game was running at a crawl. 8 frames a second or less. I changed the video settings, and once I bumped up the resolution - units started showing up! Yay! But it was still running at a snail's pace. I thought the issue was that Nvidia doesn't give laptops their latest drivers - you can install them, but you need to hack the installation file. It's what I had to do to get Bioshock to run decently, so I tried that - hacked the latest Nvidia drivers (I say "hacked", but it's really just changing an installation file to include your laptop model as a supported device - quite easy.) It helped. But it was still only running at 15 frames per second at medium quality. So for another hour or so I tried messing around with various things. Finally I switched the shader model from Direct X 10 to Direct X 9. Things looked worse overall due to reduced shader level and water prettiness, but it was hardly noticeable, and I started pulling 35 FPS with everything else on "high/ultra" settings. Oh Direct X 10 - how you vex me *shakes fist* Seems like genuinely awesome fun so far, even though I haven't tried anything besides the most basic stuff they give you in the tutorial. Little things like being able to move and face a position to flank a tank are what boosts it from a 9 to a 9.4, I'm sure. Also, whoever they got to voice the tutorial has an awesome voice. He sounds like a younger Don LaFontaine. I hope he shows up again in the main game. Thanks for the recommendation TCO, hopefully you can smack me around online soon
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| Lord Embeion |
AOE imo, the first the orginal the best. | ||
| Lord Vexen |
*looks at name* I must have had a part in that. |
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| The Chosen One |
Heh. Sounds like you're being spoiled there, Rive. Not wanting to go down to low settings. :p
I hear ya, though, I run it all on high/ultra, anti aliasing at 16x and I pull in 60+ FPS and wouldn't ever think of going lower. DX10 just isn't worth it, for me at least. It's miniscule lighting changes for a huge performance hit in CoH. I don't know your system specs, but I have an nVidia 8800 GS(384 MB), Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.33 Ghz(I overclocked it to 2.8|), and 2 gigs of Ram @ 667 MHz(oc'd to 800 Mhz). If you're willing Rive, you can go through the numerous patches which help performance/overall game balance by a great deal. The patches also allow people with the "expansion" to play those without. Downside, is that total the patches come in at about 1.5GB's. I personally have both the vanilla game & the expansion, though, I play better with Americans as they have a more balanced arsenal and favor an offensive play style. My ingame name is TeaSeeOh, which is a play on how TCO sounds, if you want to play a few games. |
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| Rive Caedo |
When a game gives me the ability to pause any time I want (and issue orders while paused! Glee for my turn-based mind!) and zoom/rotate freely. You're darn right I want that Sherman main gun's blast to look as awesome as possible
Here's a non-photoshoped screenshot (except to crop out some of the display) of me decimating a computer player set to easy as I learn the controls
I'm not sure what FPS I'm pulling in an actual in-game environment. The numbers I was posting were from the "Performance Test" where they're trying to tax you. I *sort of* went through the patching you're talking about. Luckily, the "Game of the Year" DVD-Rom edition of the game I purchased included the 1 gig+ expansion compatibility patch. So I only had to go through about 400 MB of 4 or 5 post-expansion patches. I'm simply "RiveCaedo" as my username - perhaps we'll be able to work out a "let's see how badly we can humiliate Rive and send him back to henceforth he came with his tail between his legs"-fest tomorrow sometime. |
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| The Chosen One |
Hah, yeah. The game really shines in its attention to detail. Just zooming in during a battle to hear your riflemen scream with glee or fright depending on the situation is awesome.
If you're on right now I'm always in the RelicNews chat channel. EDIT: It looked like you were on, but you didn't answer. I sent you a friend invite. Here's a screenshot of me playing with a ventrilo buddy in a comp stomp.
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| Rive Caedo |
Friend request accepted. I tried to reply, but I'm not sure if it got through since I was needing to reverse some keybindings so I could type
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| The Chosen One |
I've got a strong hunch you're one of those people who are always up to learning how something works, so you can use/play it better. If you're ever curious how things work, what the values are, hit points, etc. then this is a great site: http://www.coh-stats.com/
It's lead by a pretty well known CoH community member named Sturmtruppen. You can find loads of thing on that site, from figuring out damage modifiers from each weapon in cover, to the "upkeep" of Riflemen. If you ever get around to the cover tables, you'll start to understand the differences in cover and bonuses of each. For example, heavy(green) cover makes you take .5 damage, and have a bonus received accuracy modifier of .5 as well. However, flame weapons do more damage to units in cover. This usually means that flamethrowers are great weapons for pushing out defensive positions, from the British trenches to buildings. Just keep the basic idea that in general small arms fire are less potent, but flame weapons do more damage to units in cover. ------- If you also didn't know what upkeep was, when I mentioned it earlier, it's a penalty to your manpower per minute income. Riflemen have a 14.4 MPM(manpower a minute) penalty. How did I come to that conclusion? http://www.coh-stats.com/factions/american/units/riflemen.html As you can see here, Riflemen have an upkeep of .005. They also have 6 men in their squad. To figure out upkeep, you multiply those numbers together + 8 & 60. If you're curious where the 8 & 60 come from, you're better off asking Sturm. Anyway, we match everything up, and the equation comes to 6 x .005 x 8 x 60. This equals 14.4, or 2.4 MP per man. When we look at the Wehrmacht Grenadier, the staple of their army, it only comes to a lowly 5.376. This leads to the point that the American faction's weakness is upkeep. They'll initially be penalized for more MPM than Wehrmacht, if they don't get their supply yard upgrades. Anyway, there's a whole host of things to learn on that site, from armor classes each unit has, to critical tables(which can be equated to getting shot in the head) Anyway, just tell me if/when you want a game.
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| Rive Caedo |
See, I'm not so big on actual numbers. But I am big on learning about modifiers - so the cover advantages/disadvantages are interesting.
I also hadn't noticed upkeep at all, but I haven't read any of the manual - I just jumped into the tutorial, the first campaign mission, and three skirmishes against the computer. The first match I did against the computer was on easy and I think I won with 350 out of 500 victory points or so. The second match I bumped up to 1000 victory points because the first match didn't last long enough to even try out tanks. That's the one where I posted the screenshot of me crushing them with about 930 of my points left. Both those matches I used the infantry commander tree. The last match I bumped up to normal difficulty. YIKES! That's a HUGE boost in smartness the AI gets when moving from easy to normal. I was overconfident and got pushed back from controlling all three victory points to controlling none in a matter of seconds due to snipers - which I hadn't seen the AI use or used myself before, neat units. Two or three jeeps were enough to drive the snipers out of play, but I didn't have any forces to actually recapture the nodes. The enemy entrenched the lines with heavy machine gun units that quickly disabled my attempted assault with riflemen squads. The score was 450 me, 750 AI. Things were looking grim. Then I discovered the joys of the Air Forces commander tree
Paratroopers are awesome. I dropped a squad into heavy cover behind the machine gunner lines and quickly dispatched them. Then I flew a scouting plane over the least defended victory point in the far corner of the map and dropped another squad in. In just a few moments I turned the tide from having 0 of the 3 victory points to having 2 of them. The enemy progressed to tanks before I did and pinned down my paratroopers that had taken the central victory point from the machine gunners. Luckily, by then I had enough command points to be able to drop in an Anti-Tank paratrooper squad. Did they really airdrop heavy weapons in World War II? I'm not exactly a World War II buff, but I'd think I'd have heard of that at least once during the few History channel specials I've seen
Anyway, two hits to the critical armor behind the tank and my paratroopers were freed with minimal casualties. I dropped in another Anti-Tank crew and had the only tank-size bridge out of the enemy base well defended. After that it was pretty much all over for the enemy. I think the score ended up 380 me, 120 AI when I killed the last of their forces
All in all, very fun so far! Definitely worth the $20 - and I haven't even tried Tank commander or ANY of the German forces yet. I'll probably end up forking over the extra $30 for the two extra armies, but I'm not sure. From the review I read, British forces are very defense based - and that's usually how I like to play. Although, as I've said, the American adaptive offense paratrooper strategy is fun too. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to play at all today. Hopefully I'll have some time tomorrow after finishing the second chapter of my fanfiction. |
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| Xander Vos |
Yes, about that, finish already!
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| Rive Caedo |
Heheh, I have finished one of the illustrations and about a page (I'm aiming to keep each chapter at 4-5 pages). So I have a ways to go, but - unlike tonight - tomorrow night my schedule is clear. So I can almost guarantee Bakuran goodness sometime in the next 18 hours or so
Oh, and on topic, I forgot to mention that I was pleasantly surprised that the tutorial voice guy I liked does all the in-game narration. Yay! |
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| The Chosen One |
Not entirely sure if the 57mm was airdropped, but other types of Anti Tank Guns were. They weren't exactly in one piece like it is ingame, as they had to assemble it when they landed, but hey, a little unrealism for the sake of gameplay never hurt anyone. :p
As for the modifiers, there are plenty. Penetration differences at certain ranges for tanks, and different types of infantry armor. For example, Paratroopers have a specific type of armor that gives them a .80 received accuracy modifier(at least I think it's that much) while on the move. So if they're constantly moving, they'll be harder to hit. Downside being they'll be less accurate themselves. British are definitely an interesting faction, though. Their trenches are incredibly resistant to small arms fire, requiring numerous uses of flame weaponry to dislodge them. They have tons of emplacements as well which, like you said, favors defensive oriented players. Going back to the Vanilla factions, Wehrmacht is honestly my favorite faction(but I'm better with American, go figure). While Americans focus on larger but weaker squads, Wehrmacht focuses on smaller & stronger troops. For example, 2 Grenadiers have more hp than 3 riflemen. Wehrmacht also feature an interesting take on veterency. They "buy" it(they "call" in veteran troops), instead of earning it through combat like the Allied forces. If you like Paratroopers, I think you'll love the Blitzkrieg tree; in particular, the Stormtrooper call in.
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| Rive Caedo |
Hm... well it looks like they run in from off-screen like the American rangers and reinforcement call-in? I didn't find that nearly as useful as paratroopers because they still needed to cross enemy lines. | ||
| The Chosen One |
They can cloak, though! CLOAK!!!!! :O
Pretty useful in conjunction with their MP44 upgrade. Makes them the ultimate assault troopers. |
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| Rive Caedo |
They can CLOAK?
Now I know I would have heard about that on the History channel special: "Hitler's Ninja Army" or "Invisible Nazis are Watching You Sleep"
Yes yes, game - I know. The best I would have expected though is a unit (like the rangers) that could go prone with heavy camouflage and slowly move through enemy territory off radar - the only way to hit them being the enemy player seeing them and telling a unit manually to attack the ground there. |
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| Scion |
Meh, never liked CoH, but it is great to see you back | ||
| Dakoth |
I'm pretty sure I have a copy of CoH just collecting dust uninstalled in my closet.
Sadface. |
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| The Chosen One |
Seriously? How could you guys not play/like this? It's awesome. With the cover and other numerous features, you'll hardly ever play a battle that's the same.
Sadface. |
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| Rive Caedo |
I nearly lost faith in myself when I seemed to regress to being unable to beat a normal computer - then I realized I was trying to play with my trackpad instead of a mouse
V1 rockets are fun
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| The Chosen One |
I take it no one else has this game, or has even heard of it? | ||
| Rive Caedo |
And mine is temporarily out of service due to my laptop's logic board being fried 
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