Couriers

[goodwood]

G'day all, I have been fiddling with commanding units by courier. I point I would like to make is, when giving orders there a multitude of choices. The problem I have is when you give the order X move to particular location, from a list places such as Swarz Farm or something similar, it is difficult to know one frm or location to another. The jump map doesn't show all names available and there no names on the game map either, unless I have missed something. Can someone help, or do I need a 3rd party map>
Ron

[PANGI]

i have also similar question/suggestion...it'd be possible to simply allow human players write the messages between them, it take a long time to find proper orders and sometimes im unable to find proper one.

[estabu2]

The jump map was done that way for historical reasons. It might be advantageous to get a 3rd party map that shows you each location.

[Rich Mac]

My biggest beef with the courier system is that there is no option to just use a free text field to type messages. I applaud all of the courier options and it shows that you put a ton of work into it, but a free text field would do wonders for the system and I can't imagine it would be too difficult to code.

As for using location names in the courier system, I'm not sure how historically accurate that is. I doubt that many on-field commanders knew what the place names were. Especially individual farms. For the most part it was "advance on that farm to your immediate east", "take and hold that ridge ahead of you" sort of thing. Place names weren't usually known until after the fact.

[DrMike1997]

I highly doubt that a free form courier system could work for single play games. The AI could not be programmed to recognize the quite literally endless variations that we would think up to write in! However, It would be great for multi-player B) Although, it might not be practical to have two different systems, one for single play and one for multi play.

[MikeCK]

At any rate, does anyone have a link to a good downloadable map with the names we need?

[Tacfire]

I really wish there would just be an option to toggle the place names on and off the game map so we can use the courier system effectively

[Slick Wilhelm]

Tacfire wrote:

I really wish there would just be an option to toggle the place names on and off the game map so we can use the courier system effectively

Agreed! I have a vague awareness of where certain places like McPhereson's farm are, but I don't know if I could pick it out on the map or from within the game. It would be extremely helpful to have a toggle feature for landmark markers on the map, and even within the game.

It might seem gamey to want this, but once acclimated to the surroundings I would probably turns these aids off.

To prevent cheating during MP games, this feature could be toggled on or off as one of the options by the game host.

[IronBMike]

I like the courier system the way it is, it makes for great multiplayer fun. My one complaint would be the inability to form a battle plan.

For instance, at the beginning of the battle, if you want to have a conference of war with your teammate to choose a plan of attack. Currently this isn't possible. You can tell your teammate what you're doing or what he should do, but this doesn't allow for a full plan, only small fragments.

In real life, a commander could say, "Ok, at 11 o clock we're going to attack. I'll go straight up the middle and you skirt around those woods to the right to flank them. Keep a brigade in contact with my left and push the enemy hard. Once he shifts his reserves, I'll charge the center." The player can say this using couriers, but in a roundabout way that isn't very clear. I think there should be a chance to outline a general plan of attack. Just my two cents.

[Amish John]

One thing I like about the new courier system is that you can specify a time the order is to be carried out so you can coordinate attacks from several of your units.