The great trap on the horizon

[Poorlaggedman]

Yeah.... The group would have 1000+ members already but unfortunately Steam (Valve) was having some issue with bots starting steam groups and sending out mass invites. So in order to invite someone to a group you have to be their steam friend now, which is ridiculous. It makes all the sense in the world to invite people in your server to your steam group or just players in the server with you to your steam group but unfortunately steam disagrees now. Also... steam's "Players" menus are horridly bugged and don't show a lot of recent players even if they did allow you to invite them to your steam groups. Steam is a disaster.

[rebeldestroyer]

A fix for the skirmishing dilemma could be to add a unit on each side to every map that has the status of "Skirmisher", (yes I know any unit could deploy skirmishers this is just for the sake of the game), where there isn't already one such as the 42ndPA or the 1stUSSS. This unit and this unit only would receive fewer penalties (suppression or ticket wise or both) for being in skirmish formation. Obviously, if the unit isn't one with sharps rifles or carbines and is already limited to a smaller ammount of people, the unit designated as "skirmisher" would have to have the same limit put in place so it can't be abused. Sorry if someone has already put this idea out there, to tired to read all of this thread right now.

[Bivoj]

I was about to open a new thread about charges and advocate autosurrender here and now I see you did it by the video already. I definitely agree! More on that: any blackpowder era game, that does not recreate proper charge could not be considered realistic. Charge was a key element of battles, it should be a key element of realistic game.

As far as my history books tell, charge rarely resulted in melee - it was rather fight of wills: either the attackers forced the defenders to retreat OR they were pulled back by enemy volley and retreated themselves. A good strategy game (PC, miniatures or board wargame) represent that. For example this one:
https://toofatlardies.co.uk/product/...py-pdf-bundle/

As Poorlaggedman, I have also concluded, that only autosurrender can recreate proper charge effect in FPS. Without autosurrender (or something else forcing players to retreat when outnumbered), the game would not be realistic.

Some suggestion about implementation details:
1) The timer
Like they have it in Verdun (as a feature forcing players to do proper trench warfare) or WoR has it while exiting the map boundary (desertion timer), the timer should pop up (with a message like "You are outnumbered, fall back or surrender in XX") when player enters "danger zone". So players have time to react and fall back or get closer to friends.

2) The current formation system
While Poorlaggedman is suggesting to dramatically change current formation system by more sophisticated one, I like what devs achieved so far and I can live with it. So, my suggestion for triggering the autosurrender timer:
Lonewolf autosurrender when close to any enemy formation (Skirmish or In Formation)
Players in Skirmish formation autosurrender, when close to In Formation enemies.
Opposite In Formation soldiers can coexist (and do melee) regardless of size of their units, the same applies to 2 hostile skirmish sections.

This would make charge challanging, since the attacking formation can be disintegrated by low discipline and enemy firepower - as it should be! And when the formations start to disintegrate by melee, retreats start to happen - as they should.

3) Surrender animation (after the player is send to "wait-for-respawn" as by KIA)
This could be tricky one, since an animation of "hands up" bot marching to enemy spawn would definitely lead into illogical and sometimes ridiculous situations.
At first, I would implement a simple "death animation" as a placeholder. My suggestion of proper solution would be a bot running (retreating) to the closest friendly map edge and disappearing after the "desertion" line.

[Poorlaggedman]

Notifications I think can be a good thing for testing purposes but it should come down to player-learned common sense later on. It should only take a time or two being left behind to realize that you can't do that.

The problem is players in futile situations choose to stay and fight and they're no less effective for it. If it was impossible to resist then their one good option would be to run or stay away.

Charges are very ugly right now and they go into full sprints real far out in a literal race to close in. Many people say "spread out, spread out!" because you want to scatter the defenders fire and it works. If both teams have unloaded muskets you're basically guaranteed to end up with just a few guys standing on one team when it's over.

It should be the opposite. You should mass up and charge so that when you locally outnumber the enemy enough to overrun them. The decision to charge shouldn't be triggered by idle boredom of some officer but a tactical decision to try and seize ground doing so in good enough order to dominate. If your line is broken up like an average WoR charge and the enemy fires a volley in your face then each player should have seriously reduced effectiveness going into meelee and isolated pockets should only last a short time before being autosurrendered.

The line system is pretty generous with what constitutes as 'in line.' There's no real incentive for keeping things closer than the minimum and basically never to keep double ranks unless the terrain is very confined.

[Bivoj]

Notifications I think can be a good thing for testing purposes but it should come down to player-learned common sense later on. It should only take a time or two being left behind to realize that you can't do that.

Here I disagree. Player should be aware what is going on and for what reason he suddenly "died". Otherwise he would think, that someone shot him or being confused. It feel just wrong, that the avatar out of the sudden "dies". In reality, the soldier knows, that he is full of fear and that he is going to rather rout or surrender, than to continue fighting and player should have that information somehow as well. Either by the timer, or by something else.
You are the biggest advocate of public server gaming - without clear knowledge of autosurrender-when-outnumbered it will not work on public with new and unaware players, making the learning curve too steep.

The timer works perfectly in Verdun game: when the attackers fail to defeat enemy trench, the "no man's land" switch sides (attackers become defenders) and former attackers have some time (indicated by the timer) to fall back from no man's land into a friendly trench. It works perfectly and while some players try to fight until run out of time (or being killed in the process), most of them retreat to save a "ticket" and spare themselves from respawn time and long run from respawn area to the trench.
And I believe as this feature made Verdun a good trench warfare experience, forcing defenders to be in the trench and attackers to attack, similar feature could make WoR a true charge-home experience.

[Poorlaggedman]

He'd know because his avatar didn't keel over it dropped it's weapon and raised it's hand and possibly made a sound too.

I hate timers and HUDs and all manner of that clutter. They become invisible to an experienced gamer in games like this because you hardly rely on them. Let noobs be noobs. I really wish the Compass would disappear, it has no place outside of a free roam mode. I'd rather the desertion timer was replaced by physical (invisible or not) barriers.

[CptData]

He'd know because his avatar didn't keel over it dropped it's weapon and raised it's hand and possibly made a sound too.

I hate timers and HUDs and all manner of that clutter. They become invisible to an experienced gamer in games like this because you hardly rely on them. Let noobs be noobs. I really wish the Compass would disappear, it has no place outside of a free roam mode. I'd rather the desertion timer was replaced by physical (invisible or not) barriers.

While I do agree with the general statement "don't need a cluttered HUD", I don't think it'll help to remove the bare essentials as well.

Since you named the Compass: it's optional. Don't hit "t" and you won't be bothered. You also don't see any names and such, as long as you don't hit "t".

In my case, I rconsider those as "essentials". For instance, I need the drawn line on the ground 'cuz it makes it easier for the officer to set up a line as well as for the private to find the proper line. It IS possible to do without it, but then you need a couple of experienced players that know the drill - which won't be always the case later, once the game is released.
Also I need to see the "line formation icon" after respawn so I can find back to my line. I'm not even talking about returning to formation as a lone wolf - it's the same for officers and other players acting together.
Unless the game adds any other option to mark the target location, the icon is also a must have. Of course, if it's a place like "Dunker's Church" where you have to get said building, you won't need that marker. But if the place you need to capture is a plain field ... what now?

And the compass. That's where I disagree the most. The compass isn't used to find the north pole or to walk to a certain direction for a while. It is mostly used to direct your line's soldiers where to look at. Of course, all maps feature a sun and we all know how the sun "moves". If it's in the west, well, it's about to set, if it's in the east, it must be morning etc. But do we really have time to check for the day's time and sun's place?
Coming form a different game, I know how hard it is to direct a unit under your command if you lack a compass (or in my case: a artifical horizon or ecliptic). Without such helpers, it's incredibly difficult to tell WHERE you have to look. If the officer in question says "enemy line, dead ahead" - well. We might find it. If the very same officer says "enemy line at that three o'clock" we might get a full salvo before we even know what a "3 o'clock" means. Did he talk about his "3 o'clock" or did he talk about the line's 3 o'clock? Same story is way easier if the guy says "enemy line at north north west".

I agree on "limit HUD clutter". However, since WoR-Team is aware of that, most HUD elements are hidden and will only be displayed when hitting a certain key.

About timers:
A page ago I wrote what I wanna see: instead of a "death countdown" for officers I just want to see a penalty (like removing 'em from an officer spot if they act on their own and get killed). I'm not sure how to deal with the desertation time for ordinary soldiers when leaving the area, but I think a soldier yelling you're about to desert, turn back, should be sufficient. And once the (now hidden) timer is up, you hear someone fire and you'll be killed. Could be a sniper or something.
Case closed for single soldiers. Not so much for entire lines leaving the area. In that case, one non-immersion-breaking solution is to use a "pseudo-NPC" line that suddenly appears and kills the deserters. They simply ran into an enemy line they didn't notice before and BAM. All dead.

[Sox]

I think that the game definately needs a Skirmisher class, the problem is, how do you prevent it from being abused? Doubtless, organised regiments will want deploy skirmishers, so one way of avoiding possible abuse is to tie the skirmisher class to regiments i.e. if you're not in a regiment, you won't have access to the class.