not planned De-Slaved / TADS LOS Search - Swap Position

[VampireNZ]

Not to seem uungrateful of the coming changes, but I would love to see the commands for 'De-Slaved' and 'TADS LOS Search' swap positioins on the interface as per attached pic.

This just seems logical to me to have both the instant 'Search' commands be controlled by the short-press positions, and essentially the two 'Disengage' commands that you are more likely to use after engagement be both linked to the long press positions. I mean having 'up-short' for PHS search, and 'down-short' for TADS search seems ideal?

I have also lot count of the number of times I have wanted to quickly re-engage a target group, only to have George de-slave the TADS away entirely, requiring me to try and re-position my cross on the target area again to re-search! This forced me to always have the VID page up with TADS and just hold down till I see the zoom level change (which seems to be 2-3 secs, not 0.5 as per the manual), to know for sure he was going to search again. This will be mitigated of course with the upcoming changes, but my first points stands - it just seems logical.

I would also be interested to hear why the devs decided on the current layout, as there may be a reason I am not thinking of - perhaps keeping to two 'Slave TADS to...' options the same 'short' action, which looks ok on paper but is not really how it operates in practice?

[BIGNEWY]

Hi VampireNZ, 

The Up-Short and Down-Short commands are provided as priority actions. The Up-Short (PHS SEARCH) command is meant for the CPG to stop his current task and immediately search where the Pilot is looking, used to rapidly get the CPG onto a target or enemy position the Pilot has visually spotted.

The Down-Short command orders the CPG to stop tracking his current target and, if he is firing on it, to cease fire. Obviously this is an important priority action to order the CPG to cease fire, regardless of what the CPG is doing. However, more critically, the Up-Short and Down-Short commands must remain available, regardless of what the CPG is doing, to be able to command these priority actions.

There are several conditions in which the Down-Long command contextually changes based on the current task George is performing. Therefore, if these commands were swapped as you ask, this would prevent the player from being able to immediately command George to stop firing on a target with a single command at any time that would be needed, which is not desirable.

And regarding the delay when pressing Down-Long, the command itself is commanded with a long press >0.5 seconds as stated in the manual, but the actions George must perform may take several seconds after the command is issued before a Target List is presented. George emulates a human crewmember, so there are many actions that do not readily or apparently produce an immediate result.

There is a lot more logic and commands that we cannot put into a single Mini-updates forum post, which was meant as a highlight of the key features we are adding. The George AI CPG section of the manual grew from 6 to 22 pages, so there is a lot of logic that we worked very hard to keep intuitive and easy to use, that may not be obvious from that Mini-updates post.

[VampireNZ]

No big deal - cheers for the reply. As you say I am sure there is more 'logic' involved that makes this layout useful for other modes, I guess just not with modes I have ever used in the Apache to date, but as I mentioned these changes coming will make it mostly a moot point anyway.

I realise that George 'emulates' a crew member with regards to taking time to carry out actions etc..

Also - isn't 'not planned' a fairly pointless tag to use on these Wish List posts - if it was planned, why would someone make a Wish List post about it?? 

Edited Friday at 08:52 PM by VampireNZ