Mousehold

If you're planning to play Steel Beasts or any games that make regular use of the function keys, this will be the most convenient solution.

Unfortunately getting a new gaming computer is not going to solve your problem unless your current computer has some strange software failure, one which I have never heard of before. (If that were the case, a back up and correct, clean reinstall would fix the problem.) In all the cases in which I have helped people get online in Steel Beasts or other games, the problem is always the same: their ports were not forwarded correctly. In all cases where I could not resolve the problem, it was because the ports could not be forwarded. This is usually due to the person being on a connection and/or router which they do not own and therefore do not have control of or physical access to. I've helped plenty of people sort out their problems and although the sample size isn't exactly statistically significant, I'm still going to have to politely suggest to you that your issue is exactly the same as the one everyone else I've met has had: your ports are not open and forwarded to the correct computer in the network. These days I simply insist that people I help use a program like TeamViewer or Join.me so that I can see what they are doing. I've never failed to get someone's ports forwarded this way, excepting that port forwarding was physically impossible (e.g. they do not have control of their connection's router for some reason). Anyway, I'm only saying all this because I'd be happy to help you get Steel Beasts working online. It's always good to have more people around. (Someone, probably dta delta, will now kick me for not having been around for the past few months.) I will be very surprised if I cannot get it working for you. Just private message me here with a date/time (and time zone!) and I'll meet you on the Steel Beasts TeamSpeak server. P.S. Hamachi is the devil. :-x

Run Steel Beasts in windowed mode, then just use Steam to chat on Steam. That's what I do. I find SB is much more friendly in windowed mode anyway.

I told Assassin that I was not qualified to be Blue XO, but that I would do it if he wanted me to. He did a great job easing me into the role and I never felt overwhelmed by it, just understaffed. Please don't take my feedback to mean that I don't know what I'm doing, or use my newness to the community as an excuse to dismiss my feedback. Also, I have no limits. :razz:

I'm sorry. I should probably try to sound less curmudgeonly about it. I really did have fun, but I'm grumpy because I'm really sick right now. Anyway, I just want to give frank feedback about what would make things more fun for me personally.

My misery with no map updates was probably compounded by being task saturated as Blue XO+Bravo CO in a mountainous forest at night for two months. I was able to keep track of my units reasonably well, but overall it made the experience more work and less fun for me. And fighting in a forest for 5 TGIFs in a row wasn't that great either, so there are several things all compounding the issue for me. I believe it was Tacbat that told me they are working on adding some intermediate map update options, and I'll very much look forward to those. Somewhat related to map updates: I think it'd be more fun to disable the F8 view (where possible) than to disable map updates. Something tells me that could cause some problems though, such as when jumping to someone else's tank.

Here is a simplified example: One team's orbat must be determined by the scenario designer. The other will be decided by the bidding process. We'll say 12 M1A1 Abrams are on blue team. Red team gets T-72M1s, but we don't know how many T-72M1s until the COs bid on it. The bidding can be done in different ways. Here's two that I've thought up. 1. The COs bid for the right to play blue team. They bid a number of tanks for the red team, and whoever bids the highest gets to play blue. Each CO is effectively saying, "I can kill X number of T-72M1s with 12 Abrams." 2. The COs bid for the right to play red team. They bid a number of tanks for red team, and whoever bids the lowest gets to play red. Each CO is effectively saying, "I only need X number of T-72M1s to defeat 12 Abrams." You may do a single double-blind bid, or you might get both COs together and have them bid and counter-bid one another in person. But what about all the other vehicles, like PCs? You can easily establish what they'll have by simple ratio (which the COs will need to be made aware of before bidding). In the case of a tie bid (mostly for a single double-blind bid), you can bid something else as a tie breaker, such as bidding for PCs, or moving the location of an objective a certain number of meters in one side's favor along a set axis. I'm just making observations, and I'm sure other people are aware of some of these things. But not everyone is, so hopefully they'll find this thread with lots of consolidated, relevant information. Also, that thread is incorrect and doesn't explain helicopter engagement ranges in detail as I have. In it Tacbat states helicopters won't engage beyond 4000m, but they can and will engage out to 6000m if you set the visibility that far. Even Ssnake implies that 4000m is the limit, but it's not. (He also says it's fixed in the next patch, so yay for that.)

I'm starting this thread because I didn't want to clutter up the OPV3 thread over here: http://www.steelbeasts.com/sbforums/showthread.php?t=17434 I'm going to quote some things from that thread, since they're germane to this one. Okay, so that's enough quoting. We'll see how much of that I end up referring back to in this thread. Anyway, Operation Variable 3 was my first campaign, and Volcano implied in response to me that having the same vehicles on both sides was something central to the Operation Variable series. Personally, I disliked having the same units on both side, but I recognize that balancing two sides with different units is pretty tough. You definitely can't test H2H balance using just AI either. I think people are comfortable with a 1:1 balance between the M1A1 and Leopard 2A4, but that would get boring after a while. We've got lots of other assets to use. So that's a clear problem when designing scenarios. If you can schedule a game well ahead of time, like Operation Variable, and you know who the team captains are, then my suggestion to balancing asymmetrical teams is to use a bidding system. Letting the team COs decide what is fair by bidding means they can't complain (as much :biggrin:) about play balance later on. The weakness is that bad judgement on a COs part could ruin the fun for his team even before the battle begins. They'll need plenty of information about the map and their objectives in order to make fair bids. Now about HELICOPTERS! Helicopters are very shallowly modeled in Steel Beasts, and as of the current version of the game they have some serious issues when it comes to engaging the enemy from long range. That said, they can be very useful in scenario design once you understand how they work. Although Red's Tigers only destroyed a CV90 and an Abrams, Blue team successfully used their Tiger helicopters to wipe out two platoons of tanks during the campaign. Hinds were completely useless in OPV3. According to my personal tests, helicopters in Steel Beasts work as follows: 1. Helicopters with thermal sights (like the Tiger ARH) can see out to twice the visibility distance set in the map editor, up to 4000m. 2. All helicopters can see out to the visibility distance set in the map editor, up to 6000m. Even though the Hellfire missile has a range of 8000m, helicopters will never see or engage a target farther than 6000m with any weapon. (The Hind's AT missiles have a range of 5000m.) 3. AI tank gunners will engage helicopters that come within 4000m of them. They are very accurate! All Tigers lost in OPV3 were killed by enemy tanks, not by Tunguskas. 4. Shilkas are terrible. They have a very short range of 2500m and are very inaccurate. A helicopter hovering steadily within a Shilka's engagement range can still often defeat a Shilka in single combat. Assuming the visibility distance allows them to do so, helicopters will gladly demolish Shilkas by the octet without ever risking themselves to return fire. 5. Tunguskas are magic! If a helicopter is within 7500m of a Tunguska, and the Tunguska has line of sight, then you can expect to lose your helicopter. Although the maximum engagement range of a Hellfire would normally allow it to engage a Tunguska with a sliver of safety, helicopters will not engage anything beyond 6000m no matter what. Tunguskas will happily do so, however. They are effectively a hard counter to helicopters in Steel Beasts. Only solid mountains of earth will save you. 6. The Hind's anti-tank missiles are not very strong. The Hellfire C is better, and the Hellfire K is great. A Tiger ARH in a head-on battle with a platoon of M1A1 Abrams will easily win if it has the Hellfire K and a 5000m+ engagement range, but may run out of missiles before destroying the platoon if using the Hellfire C. The Hellfire C's weakness against the frontal armor of M1A1s and Leo2s is why Blue team in OPV3 split their Tigers and attacked from two directions at the same time. As a rule of thumb, expect 2 Hellfire K's to kill an Abrams from the front, while it will take 3 Hellfire C's. A Tiger carries 8 Hellfire missiles. If you have a Hind, don't bother attacking an Abrams from the front. In Operation Variable, the visibility distance was set to 2000m. That means the Hinds were effectively blind and worthless. The Tigers could see out to 4000m with their thermals, and that let them be somewhat effective. If the visibility were set to 5000 or 6000m, however, both helicopters would have been very useful because they could have employed their weapons at a safe® distance from the enemy. If you plan to use helicopters, and you want them to be effective, consider very carefully what you do with the scenario's visibility. And keep in mind that a well-played Tiger helicopter that can see the enemy at long range will almost certainly wreck someone's day if there isn't a Tunguska around to save them.

It wasn't an oversight, because I asked and that's what he told me. (And also the default is 4000m, I believe.) It's not a complaint, mind, just a question. I want to know if there's some performance reason behind it, if it was supposed to be winter fog, or whatever.

That would be the Ssnake itself, though I see the thread is three years old. Perhaps he feels differently about things now and would be happy to offer an updated opinion. http://www.steelbeasts.com/sbforums/showthread.php?t=14284

I believe the visibility in all missions was set to a meager 2000m in all 6 missions. Why was it set so short?

In addition to what you've already said, Tacbat... 1. I strongly disliked having an identical orbat for both teams. This was made worse by night missions and no map updates. I wouldn't do this again. 2. I disliked the night missions. I know I have read before on these forums from a developer or tester that Steel Beasts is not considered to be very good at simulating night time (mostly with regards to AI spotting), and that the time of day setting is really only there to have missions that begin at dawn or end at dusk. I'd suffer another night mission again if I really ad to. 3. I'm never playing without map updates again until they update the way it works. Blargh! 4. As well as allowing multiple CCPs per team, I would like to see the CCP be dynamic rather than pre-placed. It should a circle centered on the lead vehicle in the supply platoon, and should only function if all other necessary vehicles from the supply platoon are also within that circle. 5. Not only was the map size too big, but there were too many units in general. I don't think there should be more than one platoon of combat vehicles per player. As Blue XO, in command of Bravo Coy, I spent much too much time pushing pieces around the map rather than looking through a GPS. 6. That mountainous forest just off center of the map! I spent every mission wrestling with that thing. It was not fun, and it was made worse by the simulation's lackluster infantry, night time, and no map updates. Ugly terrain features like that make for good tactical choices, but it literally extended from one HQ to another parallel to our advance. 7. Six missions felt too long to me. I think I was 'done' after about the fourth one, but that might be because of my previous point. 8. Helicopters! Well, I actually have some good things to say about using them in a campaign, but I'll do that later. It will take some time to explain and probably deserves a separate thread. 9. I think there's not only a better way to handle objectives, but also reinforcements. It will take some thinking about though, and I've got to get going for now.

It's going to be April 1.

I (Mouse) would be happy to take a section of Brads.

Map updates! You should try them.

Thank you for understanding, Tacbat. Again, it's a really minor thing and I know your goal was to make the objective fair, which it was, by duplicating it on both sides of the highway. And thanks again for running this whole operation.

Yes, it was misleading. I never thought for a moment that you meant to mislead me. I think you made a small mistake, but there's nothing wrong with that. I just want you to be aware of how I felt looking at this in hindsight. It's a minor complaint because the mission was completely fair and I had fun; it's not something I want to make a great fuss over, but I stand by my opinion. Also, I never said you had control over what I though red was going to do, but I believe the mission and briefing need to be designed in such a way that both sides can try to reason out what their enemies might do. (Bad intel is definitely a compelling element in good mission design, but that isn't what's going on here.) Your words earlier in this thread with emphasis added: "In an effort to determine what the situation is on the ground, international forces have launched UAV platforms to survey the battlefield. Reports are that one of these UAV's has crashed somewhere close to the frontline. If recovered by either side, it may be possible to repair it, and use it to their advantage." So: one UAV which either side may recover. That implies a lot of exclusivity. Now to be fair, that is here on the forum and not in the brief. I did take another look at the mission briefing too and it never states that red is also searching for a UAV, let alone in the same area. But I believed official-looking statements from you on the forums were more than just fluff text. I think the underlying issue here is that there are expectations we all bring with us to the game and they are not always the same from person to person, or from player to mission designer. When said expectations are not the same, and someone breaks what someone else thought was one of those unwritten rules, then things like this happen. It's not a big deal (in spite of how much I've written here), and now I understand better what you consider to be fair game when you design missions.

No one is blaming you for making the effort! I'm glad you tried, but there just wasn't anything you could do about it. We'll look forward to seeing you *in game* on the 15th. On an unrelated note, and bear in mind this is a minor complaint, I think the special UAV objective was somewhat duplicitous mission design. I feel that as a player I deserve "honest" intelligence so that I can form a reasonable expectation of enemy behavior. I understand that intelligence can be erroneous, but two downed UAVs with separate tracking beacons being reported as a single downed UAV doesn't seem reasonable to me in this context. We were told that a UAV went down and that both teams would be competing for it. When I saw that it crashed in red territory I tried to make a reasonable judgement of how red team might respond to that. Red didn't respond in the way that I imagined, not because they were clever (those Leopards were sneaky, but that's unrelated) or because my judgement was bad, but because that wasn't the "droid" they were looking for. I was doubly confused when I located and destroyed red's tracker M113 near the highway, well outside of the alleged objective area. I was far too task-saturated at that point to realize that the UAV objective was actually in a different place for red team. Finally, although it didn't happen, I could have imagined further problems had one team accidentally located the enemy's downed UAV, and been confused by its location outside of the objective area and its non-responsiveness to their M113 tracker.

If I heard correctly, you were trying to play through a hotel's wi-fi connection. I'm afraid that's just not going to work for Steel Beasts as you have no way to forward the ports correctly when you're staying at a hotel. Your connection strength was also very poor. With the 25% packet loss you had--25% of the data sent to and from your system is being lost in the ether--games are entirely unplayable anyway. You would certainly have dropped from the game almost immediately after it began had you managed to get connected. Of course we look forward to having you back on blue team with us this Friday. We were understaffed for mission 2 and it hurt a lot.

I don't know if it counts as content, but I would love to see the ability to play sound clips through Events in the mission editor instead of just printed messages. If you have played any of the excellent community missions for DCS, such as , then you ought to know how much value some voice over adds.