Ssnake

Fair point ... though "real time strategy" has rarely been "realistic continuous time" in computer games since the days of Dune --- and pretty much never been about strategy, but tactics.

Well, we have "superfast" and "ridiculously superfast" options as scenario settings for building vehicle emplacements. If we keep that logic, it might make certain trench building efforts viable even in a 90 min scenario (acknowledging that it would be unrealistic). Sometimes, higher degrees of realism are detrimental to having fun, or to teaching a principle. And sometimes you need the full pain in order to teach other aspects.

#10046, thanks.

The Luchs, well, it was supposed to be amphibious. Turned out that not for all vehicles the PU foamed compartments were welded entirely watertight, so some of the vehicles drew an unknown amount of water during early exercises, which went fine until it didn't and people died, at which point all exercises involving swimming were stopped and the vehicle was cleared for amphibious water crossings "only in wartime". Somehow trhe reason for this wasn't clearly communicated so all kinds of urban myths began to circulate, that the introduction of the thermal imager had made it top heavy, that the new run flat tires no longer provided the necessary buoyancy, that there had been additional armor plates mounted. But it was simply that full buoyancy from all foamed compartments could no longer be guaranteed - and it could not be adequately inspected and fixed either. So, in Steel Beasts we err on the optimistic side, assuming that most vehicles were still capable of doing it. At the end of the day I'm somewhat skeptical about the whole amphibious thing for armored vehicles. Reconciling buoyancy and armor protection is difficult enough, and then you haven't even answered the main question, how to get out of the water once that you're in. Suitable spots to get out of the water are rare. They usually need to be created by engineers, at which point the question must be asked if building a bridge really is that much more time consuming. With large streams requiring the assembly of pontoon bridges amphibious/underwater driving capability may have some merit in selected spots but still the question is if it worth it, given the serious other compromises that need to be made at least with amphibious tanks. The many dozen Sherman tanks that were supposed to swim to the shore on D Day that were located on the sea floor were all found to be oriented towards a certain church belltower, suggesting that they actually swam relatively well with their canvas boards, but were pulled into rough seas by sea drift, until the waves became so rough that they filled the inside. So, up to a point the design worked, but the drift wasn't taken into account by the release points, so my conclusion is that the compromises involved are so severe that you need very good reasons to seriously consider it. Experiments with the Elbe-Seitenkanal in 1984 showed that there simply was no way how armored vehicles, swimming or driving under the water, could climb out of the canal again. Video in German:

Something boring, I no longer remember in detail.

Interesting... Is now #10044.

Your mousepads shall be delivered by courier.

It was a good opportunity to have the section in the manual rewritten (and I learned a thing or two in the process). We'll probably use it as a basis for yet another youtube tutorial video. After all the other topics...

Yeah... a fair bit has accumulated over the decades.

It depends on personal settings carried over between upgrades since the days of version 3, when the pathfinding was less convenient to use. Long time users may have disabled it then, and grown so accustomed to its absence that they might not actively think of reenabling it.

If you find a way, please let me know.

I can but emphasize to check your default settings with respect to pathfinding. both in the Mission Editor and in the Planning Phase. Many have the default mode set to disable off-road pathfinding unless you hold the Alt key. I would always recommend to have it just the other way, to hold the Alt key when you don't want pathfinding involved (e.g. when plotting a route for a helicopter).

Ah, no. The "Preset Groups" have been replaced by the "Task Force" concept. You can Shift-Click multiple units in the map view and then group them into a task force through the Right-Click Context menu. Much simpler.

There's a retracting menu bar at the top of the 3D view, if you mean that?