First of, for the rest of this post, please keep in mind that I really like this mod. Ever since I made the short lived Pre-Setup Armies mod for Dawn of War, I've been of the firm opinion that this format is what strategy games should play like.
Into the breach...
Launcher:
* For post battle management, I'd love to have a "ghost" unit icon leftover for destroyed units. That way it'd be easy to remember what unit I had in there. It'd be even better if I could re-buy the unit directly through that icon, along with any equipment. I tend to forget important units and it sucks if i rebuy my def officer but forget the arty barrage ability. Or realize after spending the munitions *somewhere* else and then I have to change it all back again.
* can the lists listen to mousewheel events and become scrollable with the mousewheel? Or at least make the up and down arrows larger?
* if you're the last person in a match that has not yet readied for X you should get a message
* the launcher stability is ... not so good. Is there any logging I can do to help pinpoint a cause of my crashes? I'll expect about 4-5 crashes per evening (3-4 hours)
Newbie bliss:
* the games learning curve is pretty steep. The new units are hardly described anywhere
in the launcher, changes to units from vCoH are not documented, what the different doctrine choices do is pretty much a mystery to a newbie.
* Each unit should have a list of at least the following: general blurb about what the unit can do well and what it can't do well. List Available abilities along with a short text of what the ability generall does. If an ability is only available through doctrine unlock it should be explained in the text of that doctrine unlock. Specifically list things like cooldown, where the ability can be used and what it doesn't affect if not obvious.
* Same for each doctrine unlock.
* Same for each doctrine.
* As long as a company is not deployed, all doctrine choices should be fully reversible (same effect as having infinite actions to change the company) to allow the new player to mix and match and experiment.
* a player rating system. Yes, yes, stats whores, good players don't get to stomp, yada yada ya. Fact is: it is really frustrating to loose against one of the very good players (a fact you're not aware of as a new player) and not know if you just sucked so badly or why you just got whiped off the map. If it's only games played it would be an ok start. Stats should of course be account wide, NOT company wide
* player names should be their forum names, not their company/relic names. Since knowing the relic names is important for newbie troubleshooting, they could be displayed where the forum names are displayed now. Or at the very least show the forum names in the game setup window the same way you show them in the chatroom list.
* a skirmish mode to goof around, look at the maps, deploy your company, etc.
balance
* Frankly, I think balance is very much OK for but one thing: spamming units. There is no one unit you can't deal with. Personally, I'd like a system where you have an account wide finite supply of each unit type and get some more after each battle. Many replacements for basic units, few (or parts of a single unit) for expensive or complicated units. The specifics of this should IMO have their own tread, however.
* I fully recognize that there might be balance problems that only become apparent above my play level.
random thoughts
* any kind of reminder about the battle you're about to engage in would be great. If the launcher would not minimize itself upon launching (and crash if I try to bring it back up
) that would make it easier to look up who's supposed to be in your battle. Most of the time not a big issue.[/li][/list]
* Is it possible to keep CoH open in the background? Or does that lead to problems replacing the battle file / CoH not reading a new battle file (I think I remember something like this with Dawn of War when I tried to shove new battle files under it's behind) Or is the CoH process ending the trigger to read the battle results?[/li][/list]
If you made it this far, I'd like to say once more that I find the mod very entertaining, that I love to be able to play the format and please don't take my critisism the wrong way: if I didn't think this mod so great, I'd not have taken the time to write this up. I've kept on playing even though I was so close to quitting about 4 times, it's simply good.
