Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

This issue seems to have been getting worse over the past few releases. I know that some of what I will mention might be bugs, but I find it hard to believe that all are.
How do you guys feel about changing the code of the vehicles in Forgotten Hope? Here are some examples of it today:

• The very inaccurate cannon on the Panzer III Ausf. J Special.

• The unrealistically slow Crusader Mk. I.

• The lack of a Browning M2 machinegun on the M4A1 76(w).

• The incredible inaccuracy of the KwK 36 on the Tiger I.

• Giving the Russians AP ammo used in 1941 on maps that take place in 1945.

• Giving the Russians the very weak KV-1 for all maps, instead of making a slightly remodeled KV-1S.

• Raising the commander and AA positions on the M-36 to the point where anyone with a firearm can kill him.

• Giving the M4A3E2 Sherman Jumbo the same traction as the M4A3 and M4A1, when it should actually slide around and sink into snow and mud.

• Never adding the Crusader Mk. III, even though the gun barrel and gun code already exist elsewhere in the mod.

Other weapons:

• Adding the 35 round magazine to the PPSh41 in pre 1943 maps when that magazine did not even exist.

• Giving the Germans the Faustpatrone 30 well on maps well after they were replaced by Panzerfausts.

• Making the Suomi M-31 very inaccurate, even though it should be as accurate as a carbine.

• Giving anti-tank rifles unrealistically long reloading times, even with the semi-automatic PTRS.

• Putting the Bazooka on Eastern Front maps, when in truth the Russians hardly got any Bazookas.

• Outright removing grenades from some maps.

• Making anti-tank guns unrealistically inaccurate.

• Coding a three kilogram explosive so that two of them can destroy most tanks, even though in reality they could do nothing to outright blow up all but the lightest of tanks.

• Removing any sort of reloading time on the Bofors 40mm AA gun.

This is not a flame people who support realism over balance, or vice versa, thread. This is a genuine poll created by a rather alarmed member of the community to collect the opinions of those who use this mod.
It also has nothing to do with balancing maps, which even I can see having its place in Forgotten Hope.

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

Fh2?

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

The age old FH question pops up: more realism - less balance; or less realism - more balance

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

More realism and less balance! I voted "No"!

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

I dont even know what to vote for....

Are you implying realism through balance? Or balancing things out with realism?

I dont understand.

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

I think USMA is pointing out things that are totally wrong. Slow crusader and inaccurate Suomi M/31 are just very unrealictic and can't really throw things out of balance. Imo.

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

To me realism is fun. People always say you should balance reaslism and fun but what about those who find realism fun in and of itself. I voted no.

I really want to see a Kv-1S in FH2 because I have a model of it made and it is my favorite tank model I have even though I havn't even weathered it yet.

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

I fully agree with you, this is one of the best summaries of FH oddities i have ever seen. Stuff should not be ballanced, it should stay as good as it was in reality.
Ah and you forgot the DAIMLER taking 2 shots from a pz3.

This is sure worth some reputation bonus!

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

I feelthe devs' pain: If a game isn't reasonably balanced, everyine will overload the side with aparticulalr advantage. But I'm more into the realism than the gameplay. For example, I have no problem whatsover with the Tiger I's gun being as accurate as RL (which would mean ambush deaths at 2000 meters for sloppy Allied tankers). but neither do I have a problem with Allied tanks outnumbering Shermans 6-to-1. Still, just where do you draw the line for realism? Do you have Allied players on western maps outnumber Axis by 2- or 3-to-1? Do you have German arty sometimes completely silent, while Allied shells rain down around the clock? Make Germans transport by horse? Have Tigers breakdown once or twice every game, and early Shermans catch fire if a round barely hits? Russians outnumber Germans 10-to-1? I just don't think it's feasible.

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

You are shooting against the wrong enemy, most of those things are things we had not time to add, things that can't be done in BF42 or plain mistakes from your side. Forget the word nerf and balance over realism, that's not the way we work

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

I must say I'm bit confused about you saying "...the very weak KV-1 for all maps, instead of making a slightly remodeled KV-1S"

You do know the only benefit of the KV-1S was it's armor was reduced so it wouldn't be so slow right? It used the same guns as the other KV-1 models of the same period. So in a way it's faster but weaker than the regular KV.

It would make more sense to have an early KV-1 (max armor around 75mm I believe), and a late KV-1 (max armor 120mm I believe) if you want a stronger tank for midwar maps like the Citadel battles.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the KV-1S, I prefer faster tanks to ones that are slow and have more armor...

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

you are joining the balance liberals now USMA?
the realism thing like the correct tank sights and more accurate guns are for REALISM

but balance is out of the question!
conservative realism > balance liberals


if you want to join the balance liberals, go join the BG42 forum

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

Yeah USMA, I'm with Hydra on this. Even so, what you've provided is a very concise and articulated listing that probably the devs know somewhat about. Time is probably an issue with getting everything done, if in fact all of it is even possbile to do.

That being said, I'm not in favor of stark realism (10 to 1 Russians to Germans for example) just to play out a map. Balance means each side has a relative chance to win and I'm in favor of that or why play?

But I know that is not what you are talking about. You just want items in the game performing in the same manner that reflect your perceptions of reality.

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

Alright then Lobo, they were improperly coded. But how all that crap got through beta testing needs to be explained. As lead developer, you should explain to the community why all of those issues were never even addressed.

Specifically the M36! Nobody liked how the developers screwed it up in .65, with the fully exposed commander poking his head out like a damn Prairie Dog. You could have at least made him sit lower in the turret, but no, then infantrymen couldnt jump on your tank and shoot you with a pistol when you are trying to engage the King Tiger.

These are all issues with coding, not asking for ISU-152s and Easy Eight Shermans. When the hotfix is released, these problems sould be fixed.

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

Read my post again because I think you are the improperly coded

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

This is by far the best poll I've seen in a while (no damn rep though, USMA ;)) and I have noticed all of those examples and most have bothered me also. I always wanted realism. Still do, always will. Its the reason I played this mod back in the days of 0.5. I love .7 currently though, it has a much more .6 feel and is very good.

I voted no to balance and I'm sticking to that to the end. My idea for the best setup is as realistic as possible and have the mappers balance it through good mapping. After playing for so long, its not hard to know what counteracts things best. If your going to include something in the release, you have to include something that can beat it though. An example, KT comes in on a map, then a Su-100, ISU or multiple 85s or JS-2s would be needed to counter it.

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

in other words
if the germans got raped on that battle.. and i was german on that map... i want to be RAPED

btw, a good example where balance meets realism... tobruk

personally, wtf is the thompson doing there?

the aussies were poor and the british SAS couldnt afford an entire platoon of thompson 50s

how did they get there to the poor aussies?

why dont we just for realism sake, replace the thompson with the sten?

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

You didn't have time to make the Panzer III have an accurate and realistic cannon? Or make the Crusader properly fast? Or correct the misaligned Tiger sights? Or make the Suomi M-31 as accurate as it should have been?

.67A was released last March. You had plenty of time to fix it.

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

USMA, you have all the tickets in the raffle to piss me off, lot of devs have worked their asses beyond duty to finish 0.7

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

:Puzzled:

I know they worked very hard to get .7 out, and I respect that. But these issues, if they were text, would be size 72 font, written in bold red text with several underlines.

The code for these problems were all deliberatly made. They can be deliberatly fixed in at leas tthe same amount of time.

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

the devs are happy with this release and are not planning to fix it anytime soon

so learn to aim the xhair of the Jearly to the left and stop the violent rampage trying to fix .7

because the realism thing only concerns the extreme members of the forum, the 90% percent of the FH population dont care about the PPSH on the wrong map

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

that wouldnt be realistic at all... sten didnt start seeing service until itally, and the australians never used it.

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

owen gun than? but it never saw combat in western so :\

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

Guys can you just cool it with your flaming 0.7 and the devs and beta testers?! I joined the beta tester team just in time for the real build up to 0.7 - hotfixes were flying round all the time, different versions of maps kept being made to get the balance and realism so the map was playable and winnable for both teams. We had two testing sessions a week, testers playing maps on their own to check for mistakes etc. and while all this was going on every other person on these forums kept whining "when is 0.7 going to be released" over and over. Basically all I'm trying to say is that a helluva lot of work has gone into making Forgotten Hope what it is today. Go play a game of vanilla Bf42 and you'll see what I mean. Then remember that all the devs and all the testers have done all of this in their SPARE TIME. They aren't paid for it, they have no reason to do it at all except for their love of modding and giving you guys what is easily the best mod out there. I know that towards the end so much work was put in by everybody testing, tweaking, fixing, replacing stuff - it was hard enough being a tester. I can't even imagine what it must have been like for the devs with most of them working on FH2 leaving the rest of them to complete and polish up 0.7 and especially for Lobo just having taken over leadership of the mod with so many loose ends to tie up. So just lay off them for a while, ok? This isn't a professionally-made game - it's bound to have bugs - not that being professionally-made means games don't have bugs... but hey.

FH is not perfect - we all know that, but personally I love it for what it is - even if it is abused and misused in public games. There's nothing that can prevent that save making every player go on a compulsory FH school before being allowed to play online...

<breathes> ok, rant over. Just learn to play it as it is and enjoy the game guys!

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

I think that in life we all expect our work to be critiqued but OMFG. :eek: I for one think that .7 is great. I have not noticed any thing that requires Lobo to be courtmarshalled and shot. I think that it is very polished. If something in game is a certain way I am sure the FH team did it for a reason. I do hate Japan's new Val however. Before it was hard to fly but that made it good. Very unstable which is good for a combat plane. Now it is a real POS. :bawl:

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

so by the process of elimination, the m1928 is realistic.

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

USMA did provide a very concise list, but maybe could have done so in a more, ahem, diplomatic manner (says me, heh.) Lobo & co., don't take it personally, I'd rather see it as an indication of how enthusiastic people are about the mod that they feel this strongly about details.

While I know it was said "no new content until FH2", many of these seem like the sorts of things that could be fixed via a patch to 0.7 (something that's been mentioned several times.)

It doesn't sound like devs/testers are fundamentally opposed to fixing many of the things that are simply errors, and that it's just a question of sheer quantity vs. time available, so, as an idea: if this is possible, why not appoint someone to go through the forums and put together a list of stuff that could be fixed with minor coding changes? There are a lot of fairly knowledgeable people around, who throw out suggestions/changes/whatever like crazy, but I dunno, maybe an organized manner of putting them all together might help.

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

Seriously man those are very minor complaints considering the size of this mod and all the work that was done on it. A tank is to slow, traction on a tank is not perfect, a vehicle/weapon was not modeled, come on, that is really nit picking. And the cannon on the Tiger is inaccurate?!! ya right.

Realism is important in this mod but it is not a WW2 simulator, so many people play this mod because it is so damn fun. If a tank is missing or not represented exactly as the real life version was it does not take away from how fun it is.

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

Neither poll choice represents my feelings. On the one hand I'm all for realistic weapons. On the other hand I want the game to be enjoyable for everyone. Therefore any imbalance in hardware must be made up for in map design. Gameplay musn't groval at the feet of historical realism, both must walk hand in hand.

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

Minor? MINOR?!

You really must not know much about World War Two weaponry then.

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

Im guessing you served in ww2 then.

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

Can we please remain civil? Agree to disagree and don't start to bash eachother heads in with n00bsticks. Thanks.

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

I have done enough endependent research to have reached these conclusions.

If you do not believe my points, just listen to Anlushac11 when he comes in here.

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

I still agree with USMA.
There is just no argument why you couldnt put in the right number for the tiger's gun accuracy, or for the Pz3.
Crusader speed is just another number.
Next number is the current poll result 32:3 for realism.
Now guess how many FH players dont care about realism:naughty:
Last number for now is the ridiculus penetration the Su76 has.
Way to strong.
Ah and guess who said this: Komrad_B from The Red Army *TRA* clan. A RUSSIAN PLAYER!!!!!!!!!!!

And what the hell did you do with Anlushac???? How did you silence him so FH became so unrealistic in these points?

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

Yes there may be issues with historical accuracy but come on guys, FH is great and 100 times better than the original Battlefield 1942. The FH team has done a great job and I think the level of criticism should be toned down, A LOT. Also, the devs would probably take you a lot more seriously if you suggested what you thought needed changing in a polite manner.

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

That is not the point mate.

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

What is the point? To fix the game to the way you and a few other might want? Just be thankful the mod even exists.

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

You dont get the point of this thread and this forums.
These forums exist to complain and to get the mod better.
They arent made for posting thousands of "hurray this ownz" threads, but for hardcore whining and complaining!

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

Some people wanted to see me reply so lets quote from MSN:

Hmm well I'm all for realism untill it hurts gameplay. About the vehicles and items in question: they should have been fixed but the devs have been working their arse of and the list of minor and major bugs was long. They go a lot of them but some slipped trough, they are only human.

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

Hotfix then (or coldfix by all this things to fix)

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

My fault then. Next time i post i'll make sure im crying about something not all that important.

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

tank sights are as they are suppose to be! they are not wrong in anyway!!!!


in other words, the tank sights work exactly as intended. your cam position is placed approx. where the actual viewport on the actual tank would be. this is often some distance from the gunbarrel on the tank.

(see target here)_______(shell lands here)
_____:cya: ___________________X

gunsight here___________gunbarrel here
____(+)_____________________O

so up close too targets, the shell actually hits a bit to the side, from where gunsight is aiming. the gunsight and gunbarrel trajectories merge at about 100m. like this /\

different tanks have different view setups. and must be mastered

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

I am alive and well. If not a little busy lately.

I understand where USMA is coming from but I also see things from the inside. We have doen the best we could with what we had.

PzIIIJ's accuracy was much worse and we spent many painful hours on Aberdeen playtesting it until the majority agreed the gun was accurate enough.

Sherman Jumbo does weigh about 8-10 tons more than a regular Sherman but it also used M81 duckbill track grousers( extenders). These were L shaped brackets that were held on by the track pins and helped disperse the vehicles extra weight. They are basically the same in appearace and function to the German Ostketten.

So in FH the vehicle's extra weight is not that different but it is slower since it still uses the same engine to propel that extra 8-10 tons.

You and I know BF1942 does not support sinking in mud. Yes it does give a slight speed difference depending on the material map ID's but not as much a difference as it should be. I am lobbying for FH2 to have a better speed seperation so that roads will actually be useful.

Crusader III needs a whole new turret, not just the gun. Sure we could ahve used the turret off the 6lbr equipped Staghound but can you honestly tell me it would not have been a criminal act to put that plain looking undetailed turret on that new beautiful Crusader hull? Besides the Staghound and its 6lbr turret have been retired, IIRC they were DaCrappa models and are now obsolete and no longer meet FH's quality standards.

Soviets still use bazooka because we havent had time or manpower to model RPG40 A/T grenade or 1945 late war RPG-1 A/T rocket launcher.

And you still havent said thank you for us finding and fixing the sloped armor bug that made all tanks with sloped armor have less protection.

I hope you know I was almost lynched BY THE FH DEV TEAM for whining constantly til it was looked into. Stranger Than Fiction, CTZ, and Lobo STILL are barely talking to me. Major Hartmann quit talking to me long before that.

In all honesty I complained a bit about the SMG's but I am a tanker and I spent most of my time testing and reporting on tanks and aircraft.

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

Your my number 1.
Continue that way, fh2 can only get better ;)

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

I recall that Desert Combat's cars spin quite a bit. Thats sort of what I would like to see with the Jumbo, difficulty handling the tank's movement.

I have said thank you in many ways. First and foremost, actually saying thank you several times since I have been here. Second, by downloading the mod and playing it to death. Finally, by being a very active member of this community.

I would say that a cannon is accurate enough when the outcomes of confrontations end in a realistic manner. So when a Crusader and a Panzer III Ausf. J special meet head on at a long range, the German should be able to kill the Tommy with one hit. I have had to put three rounds into the front of a Crusader before it gets killed on El Alamein.

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

Also panzerfausts never replaced the faustpatrone 30 klein. It was still in production in 1945. The 35 round mag for the ppsh41 was first used in 1942 not 1943.

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

The 35 round magazine was never nearly as popular, regardless of when it was introduced. Especially true of tank descent infantry, the grunts who ride with the Soviet armor. Their job was to protect the tanks from German anti-tank teams, and for this they used the PPSh41 outfitted with the 71 round magazine.

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

Why would tanks spin? I have seen them do that on ice but not in mud. They mostly sink in and throw up lots of mud clods, which IIRC BF1942 engine will do if you have the right terrain material map underneath.

YOU WONT HAVE SAID THANK YOU TIL YOU GET DOWN ON YOUR KNEES AND BOW YOUR HEAD IN SUBSERVIENCE...Was that over the top? I can never tell. :lol:

In no early North Africa maps should any vehicle get a one shot kill at any range. It seems to take me 3 shots to kill a Crusader and it seems to take Crusaders 2 shots to kill me. I ahve also gotten 2 shot kills but not often.

But the 88mm is the great equalizer..."This is my BOOMSTICK! Shop smart...shop S mart...YA GOT THAT?!"

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

Not spin, but be harder to control I guess.

No one hit kills in any desert maps eh?

Tiger, Desert Rose...

Re: Balancing Vehicles and Weapons
 

I was writing a reply that I would need to report to Donitz to ban me but thanks to Allah I have seen the Propa McGanda beetle's thread and had some laughs, thanks dude