Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
pedro0930
Oct 15, 2012


What is Call to Arms?
Call to Arms is the newest iteration of the Men of War series developed by German based Digitalmindsoft. The game just came out on Steam Early Access a few weeks ago.
You can check out the game here:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/302670/

This time the setting is brought to the modern period with :911: vs GRM (generic bad guys ME edition with Russian gear). The hallmark features of the series include:
-Destructible environment: Most of the walls and buildings can be destroyed. Useful for creating new approach and create kill zone!
-Ballistic sim: Tank round can punch through wall. Angle of impact and distance matters!
-Direct Control: Control your units like a 3rd person shooter. With this feature you can cook grenade and crush through building and do other cool things the AI can't.
-Inventory system: All unit has its own inventory, individual soldier can pickup fallen weapons and supplies.
-Realistic fog of war: Stealth is possible and extremely useful! Have your soldiers hidden and holding fire makes them extremely hard to spot, vehicles in general has poor visibility, so they need infantry to spot targets for them.


How does CtA differ from previous entries of the series?
Since the game is still in EA, things are subjected to change, but as far as I can see:
-Hero unit call-in is gone.
-Maps are much more built up with much more cover, however, soldiers no longer come with sandbags and there is in general less way to create new cover (crater from explosion seems to be gone, granted, most heavy weapons are not in yet)
-The two faction has more pronounce difference (GRM units are cheaper and more numerous when compares to the US)
-Infantry combat is more lethal, since every soldier is loaded with automatic weapon. Additionally, automatic weapon seems to have much smaller spread growth while in direct control.
-Vehicles now uses a new DC system. When you enter DC on a vehicle your view is forced into more of a ground level view like a 3rd person shooter. The dev mentioned they are planning to add another gun cam view that give poor visibility but removes range limit on weapon when you are in this view.
-AT grenade is extremely rare, you have to get engineer (which comes with C4) if you want to do some demolition on the cheap.


What's available in the Early Access version at the moment?
-There is currently 6 maps with more to come.
-Most/all infantry units are in (1-5 tiers) and support squads.
-Only HUMVEE (M240, .50cal, MK.19) and Technical (PKM, Kord, recoiless rifle)
-For crew served weapon, only the mortar is available. Dev is not sure if they wanted to add tri-pod MG this time around.
-If you buy the deluxe version you get access to a few SP and coop mission, there is already a couple user made SP/coop mission in Steamwork shop though.
-Skirmish and replays (very bare bone) are both available.

The game is already pretty fun, and I think the price ($20) is pretty reasonable. As a series veteran, CtA is surprisingly fresh (granted, I didn't play that much AS2). Unfortunately, there isn't that many players so it can take awhile to get your room filled up. There always a couple games going but they are mostly in Europe/Russia.
Protip: Change your lobby filter to worldwide to see more rooms!


This is my first thread, so if I missed anything please let me know :)

pedro0930 fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Aug 18, 2015

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Dandywalken
Feb 11, 2014

I just dont think the MoW engine works for modern combat, solely due to the ranges at which engagements can take place. It was already silly at times with MoW, but now we've got modern MBT's engaging each other at 100 meters?

Its not a slight against the devs and the effort put into it, but it just seems fundamentally impossible. Infantry and stuff, sure. But tanks and ATGM's? Not going to work.

pedro0930
Oct 15, 2012

Dandywalken posted:

I just dont think the MoW engine works for modern combat, solely due to the ranges at which engagements can take place. It was already silly at times with MoW, but now we've got modern MBT's engaging each other at 100 meters?

Its not a slight against the devs and the effort put into it, but it just seems fundamentally impossible. Infantry and stuff, sure. But tanks and ATGM's? Not going to work.

Why can't tank fight each other at 100 meter if that's what the terrain dictates? If the gun cam thing get implemented, then tank will literally be able to shoot as far as you can see (which is, well, not far, because all the new map has fairly limited open area)

At this point I am not even sure if there's going to be functional ATGM.

Dandywalken
Feb 11, 2014

The demo/gameplay vids I've seen had tanks etc limited by normal LoS stuff, ala MoW and engaging at super close ranges. If they can indeed make it so you can see without having the game refuse to let you because its past your gun's "max range", that'd be cool. If thats the case, and the scenarios were just limited by stuff to force close-quarters fighting then I take back what I said, possibly.

This engine would be cool for a SWAT-esque game really. Wonder if any mods have explored that concept.

Dandywalken fucked around with this message at 00:28 on Aug 19, 2015

pedro0930
Oct 15, 2012

Dandywalken posted:

The demo/gameplay vids I've seen had tanks etc limited by normal LoS stuff, ala MoW and engaging at super close ranges. If they can indeed make it so you can see without having the game refuse to let you because its past your gun's "max range", that'd be cool. If thats the case, and the scenarios were just limited by stuff to force close-quarters fighting then I take back what I said, possibly.

This engine would be cool for a SWAT-esque game really. Wonder if any mods have explored that concept.

From what I read that's the plan. They are working new LoD asset so the player's computer wouldn't explode from trying to render everything on high detail when in this gun cam view.

pedro0930
Oct 15, 2012
The game just got an update that added unlimited range in direct control among other things.

This will make SPG9 pretty amazing I think.

Vahakyla
May 3, 2013
I made a somewhat popular mod tor Men of War series, the latest being in MowAss2 workshop under "realism hardcore".

I just made the ranges realistic for the guns and firearms and it did change the game a lot, especially with the ai returning fire at far far ranges. I'll most likely start work on it again for CtA as soon as there is some actual content to mod.

pedro0930
Oct 15, 2012

Vahakyla posted:

I made a somewhat popular mod tor Men of War series, the latest being in MowAss2 workshop under "realism hardcore".

I just made the ranges realistic for the guns and firearms and it did change the game a lot, especially with the ai returning fire at far far ranges. I'll most likely start work on it again for CtA as soon as there is some actual content to mod.

Yeah, I played a mod that does something like that. Really changes up the game.

The problem with the current implementation is that even with max display range setting I can't really see my target with the new direct control camera angle. Fine if firing MK19, but not really optimal for single shot weapon.

Vahakyla
May 3, 2013
My mod suffered from map design in MowAss2. In single player, you get lit as soon as you spawned. In multiplayer, there were firing lanes from one side of the map to the other.

Artillery was also deadly with it, forcing people to keep moving and my sturm tiger could level two city blocks from 1500 meters away.
Ultimately it spoiled me to not really like vanilla anymore. Having tanks say no-no when trying to fire at a target at the end of a street is just frustrating.

Top Hats Monthly
Jun 22, 2011


People are people so why should it be, that you and I should get along so awfully blink blink recall STOP IT YOU POSH LITTLE SHIT
From what I've seen this engine looks excellent for a really small scale thing like a police game

Dandywalken
Feb 11, 2014

Watched a friend stream some gameplay today, and it honestly looks better than I gave it credit for. They oddly dont have tanks in yet, which sucks, but the rest of it seems decent.

Also, campaign only available in the Deluxe Edition is pretty retarded. Its beta access to the Campaign I suppose, since its going to be included with the actual game but yeah.

pedro0930
Oct 15, 2012

Top Hats Monthly posted:

From what I've seen this engine looks excellent for a really small scale thing like a police game

Well, a huge problem with the engine is that the soldiers react really drat slow. You can put a guy next to a door way and he'll literally gun down at least 15 people trying to run through there and there is no way to deal with that in RTS mode relying on the AI because the AI soldier just react too slowly. All the animation/action required just takes too long for CQB stuff. This is after they already doubled all the animation speed so it doesn't take a whole second for a soldier to turn around.

Banano
Jan 10, 2005
Soiled Meat
Like we needed another game set in the modern/near future - if they wanted a change they'd have been better off going the full space lasers route imo. It'd also be worth cleaning up the interface and fixing the stupid, annoying aspects of men of war and having an advertising push or something on steam.


Or a mech game. Some goon made a mech mod for the first men of war and before it got C & D'd it looked loving amazing.

Banano fucked around with this message at 10:54 on Aug 31, 2015

pedro0930
Oct 15, 2012

Banano posted:

Like we needed another game set in the modern/near future - if they wanted a change they'd have been better off going the full space lasers route imo. It'd also be worth cleaning up the interface and fixing the stupid, annoying aspects of men of war and having an advertising push or something on steam.


Or a mech game. Some goon made a mech mod for the first men of war and before it got C & D'd it looked loving amazing.

They are planning on making a new UI somewhere down the line. I think once the game is actually released they'll throw up some ads like they did for AS2.

Mans
Sep 14, 2011

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Banano posted:

Like we needed another game set in the modern/near future - if they wanted a change they'd have been better off going the full space lasers route imo. It'd also be worth cleaning up the interface and fixing the stupid, annoying aspects of men of war and having an advertising push or something on steam.


Or a mech game. Some goon made a mech mod for the first men of war and before it got C & D'd it looked loving amazing.

u are the uber loving goon

Marshal Prolapse
Jun 23, 2012

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Hey the just updated the game to Beta.

I tried finding a more recent thread but this was most recent/only one I could find

Vahakyla
May 3, 2013
This is it.

Vahakyla
May 3, 2013
This game is getting considerably better as we speak. The new patches are pretty good, and the new direct control mode has thermal cams, and looks like an actual tank sight now. I can recommend the game, lots of fun in coop, too. And a lot of new coop missions!
The OP is very out of date, we got M1 tanks, T80s, ICVs, IFVs, all kinds of poo poo nowadays. I think there's like 10 coop missions.

Mans
Sep 14, 2011

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Call to Arms has also become FREE TO PLAY, so yeah, just download the game and check it out to see if you like it (it's what i'm doing as we speak :v:)

Vahakyla
May 3, 2013
That's awesome. So what's the catch?

Top Hats Monthly
Jun 22, 2011


People are people so why should it be, that you and I should get along so awfully blink blink recall STOP IT YOU POSH LITTLE SHIT
It is Free to Play now? How much did I spend?

(I do not care)

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

pedro0930
Oct 15, 2012
The F2P is MP only, and I think you might not be able to play the coop mission except the evacuation mode, which is like the horde mode in this game.

I think the unit unlock system only applies to the F2P version now...maybe? Not sure about that part.

  • Locked thread