Hi all,

the German user Hasta opened a thread in the German board with some questions about the Plan & Go system. Please find his questions and our answers below.

Best,

Your bitComposer Team


Hello Hasta,
Thank you for opening the thread. We have enjoyed answering your questions as best as we can at the present time.
Development is an ongoing process, which means that nothing here is set in stone and there can, and surely will be changes in the future.

First Question: what automatic options can I set to interrupt the real time?

- Enemy spotted?
- Out of ammo?
- Mercenary wounded?

This has not yet been finalized in detail, and the options will only be fixed at a relatively late stage in development. In any case, we want to avoid constant, automatic interruptions in the game, and to ensure the player doesn

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Seventh Question: Can I make unsighted enemies also

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Hi all,

Please find the answers on the questions of 7h30n as far as it's possible to date.

1. Will the system allow for combat without pausing at all or will it be like a system in most recent similiar game: Frozen Synapse?
In theory it might be possible to win encounters without pausing but to use the full depth of the system you will have to use the command mode which pauses the game.
Reloaded is not supposed to be a RTS or Action oriented game. The core of the game is centered around tactical decision making without time pressure.

2. If there is no Fog of War how will we know that our merc has spotted an enemy and vice verse?
Roughly about the same way as in the original JA2: The merc will notify you via Voice Over and we might also add other pointers when necessary, e.g. something like the numbers on the merc

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It just seems to me they have a very sketchy view of what the hell the end product will look like.

Well after reading this im not quite sure what to expect from the system.
The thing that baffles me is, when you want to move away from TBS and go to quasi-RTS with pause why not use the smart pause system(SPM) Brigade 7,62 had? I felt this to be the perfect alternative to TBS from a strategic point of view.
You could specify a lot of instances which would make the game auto-pause, just hit pause yourself and set a chain of like 20 actions for each MERC if you wanted so. Also everything was calculated in real time seconds/milliseconds which made it very realistic.

I've never played at 7.62 (only wandering in the first location of the game, without any battle), so I don't know how the system fits to the crowded battles. How many mercs you can have in team? How many team you can have simultaneously?
I think that managing more than three mercs against more than five enemies at the same time, spread all along the map is very difficult and relies to reflexes more than to one's tactical abilities.

that sounds to me, as they want to make some kind of automated bots of our mercs ...

... and that does not make any sense at all

It just seems to me they have a very sketchy view of what the hell the end product will look like.

But you also pointed at its weak spot.
A lot of people complained that they cant manage six guys at the same time, more or less.
Thats why a lot of people choose to play with smaller groups like 3-4 mercs.
But i say those guys didnt used the tactical features of the system enough.

Example:
You enter a random djungle map.
While paused you survey the map, no FOW but also no infos about the enemy.
You issue movement orders to each of your guys, or set some to aim and cover.
Un-pause.
Your guys do their thing and lets say someone spots an enemy.
Game goes auto pause and you can issue orders again, make order chains(go there, aim gun, shoot guy, move again, etc.) or flip the fuck out.
Its important to set the pause triggers right(like enemy defeated, grenade thrown, contact lost, taking fire, injured, etc.) then the whole things is pretty smooth.
I fail to see the over complexity in it.

I
The "benefit" of real time with pause (RTWP) is *not* the planning ability, where you can "memorize" a set of actions in a "buffer".

The benefit of RTWP - in my very humble opinion (which is irrelevant, ask my wife) - is that actions of the player and the enemy happen simultaneously.

In an extreme example of turn based (TB) *all* of the player's actors (soldiers) may spend all their action points (APs) before the enemy gets a chance to react. In JA2 it is possible to utilize this (cheating in a sense) to deprive the enemy AI from *ever* being able to hit you (assuming you have enough soldiers with enough APs).

For example night heli drop. Night has limited visibility. Player uses night vision gear to have a vision range advantage (possible in 1.13, not so much in Vanilla). AI can only "target" what they can see. You kill all enemies around you every round, you never get hurt (as long as you have APs to spend and get interrupts). Enemies who come into the player's vision range get eliminated (through interrupt), *no* enemies on the map can *ever* target you.

There are other example, many of them, with doors, corners etc.

In RTWP the enemy will eventually be able to react to you shooting them, albeit there may be an additional delay as they need to recover from bullet impact (assuming you are using a faster gun than they do). From my experience this is more "realistic" (this is a game, not a simulation) in the sense that the game mechanics cannot be "abused".

I wouldn't blame this "exploit" on TB as a concept. In this case it's more that the original designers decided to give the player some advantage over the AI in terms of interrupts. If it wasn't for the unbalanced chance of getting an interrupt, this "trick" would work for the AI as well, and even better, since there sure are a lot more of them. And imagine what it would be like in the later game on higher difficulties of 1.13, when sectors tend to be swarmed with blackshirts wielding DSR-1s, Gepards, AIWs and Ermas. If someone would "tell" them, that they can actually lie down and shoot far beyond their own range of sight, delightfully popping heads as long as another teammate spots the enemy, the scale might tip quite the other way.

Hi Baconblitz,

please find below the answers on your questions.

1. Since Plan and Go in other games relies on more stealth kill techniques to avoid being overpowered by numerous enemies, does having Plan and Go obviate the need for having a trainable militia (a huge part of JA2 gameplay) since being able to see LOS cones or sneaking around won't matter if a militia is bum rushing tangos?

The system we have in mind does not rely more on stealth kill techniques. It just implements some of the features that other similar games introduced for stealth like sight cones and as a result may make using a stealthy approach more attractive for new players. Otherwise stealth simply is an option the player has.

Therefore stealth also doesn

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to me it sounds like its gone be ja2 meets brigade e5 or 7.62 high caliber. hmmm