Luckybluemoon

Yeah, that was my bad, I meant what you said.

Luckybluemoon is back after an extended leave of absence. Started new CSA campaign after latest hotfix and update. Points follow: 1. Where are my freaking custom grouping options like we had in UG:G?! This has been a sore point for me since the beta first came out. 2. CTRL+Right Click still does not select multiple units. Bug Reported. 3. Thank you for fixing it so surrounded units surrender more quickly. A month ago I would have had to gun them all down. 4. Cavalry can still run straight through lines without provoking an attack BUG. It like where the cav unit is does not match where their graphical representation is. Bug Reported. 5. AI is much better, more aggressive and responsive. I can see a big improvement. More to follow once I finish the CSA campaign on MG. Keep up the good work!

Another Lucky review incoming! 1. The most annoying bug of losing all your supply wagons on the Union Side with the start of the second day is still there. 2. The enemy is much more cautious now. They tend to line up just out of musket range and then sit there, getting rained on by my artillery the whole time. For hours at time. This was on BG difficulty. 3. Enemy skirmishers are nearly invisible in open fields. Even when I have my own skirmishers out, my brigades cannot see the skirmishers in range to fire. Keep up the good work!

I have noticed this too. I think the low firing is to show low morale making it so soldiers just fire blindly rather than on mass volleys. It does seem rather odd that I can lose control of a unit that is simply standing and fighting. Maybe fright makes them not want to move?

I'm not sure. I set them up at 2nd Manassas blasting away at the 1st row of the Confed Fortification. In the open, clear grass between them. The smaller, less experienced battery did approx. 50-70 hits every volley. The larger, more experienced battery was lucky to hit 30 per volley.

Luckybluemoon's Hotfix Feedback notes V45.1 (or something) 1. Yet again, asking for customizable groups. Making entire divisions out of my Cav units is just a pain. Not to mention trying to select several batteries together. This leads to... 2. Selecting a unit is kinda wonky. Sometimes you click on the units flag and that works, other times you have to select the troops/guns underneath the unit. I can deal with either but please make it either one way or the other. 3. Routed units still have pathing problems when on the edge of the map. The will break then retreat up or down the map edge almost endlessly, half the time ploughing straight through my lines. 4. New system for entrenched positions is much better, thank you. 5. Enemy skirmishers are way OP at later levels. Have you ever seen 5000+ snipers running around? They eat all my units alive before my units can even spot them. Even Cav and my own skirmishers have difficulty because as soon as my units enter melee, all the units around them turn and gain flanking bonuses. 6. The new system for supply is very useful in the larger battles. I just keep my infantry supplied and wait to add ammo to my artillery till the critical point in the battle, then let them rip with their increased loading speed. 7. 20-pnd Parrots still suck, especially when we loot so many. 8. Maybe this is a game mechanic and not a bug, but has anyone lese noticed that a batteries efficiency goes down once it's size gets larger than around 13 guns? Had a 3-star 24-pnd Battery with 24 guns set up next to a 2-star 24-pnd battery. 3-star left with 1200 kills, 2-star with 3600. Huh? This game must be such a grind to work out. So many updates and still only at the Battle of Gettysburg. keep up the good work and know that the community really appreciates it. (BlueMoon)

To get the back on topic, Additional feedback #...whatever. 1. Retreat directions have become an issue when on the edge of a map. Units tend to just retreat right into my lines on the edge of the map. Otherwise they are good. 2. Any word on custom grouping please? I had 5 Cavalry Brigades in Chancellorsville and while they routed anything the Confederates could throw at them, controlling them was a pain. Same thing with Artillery. Once an Army gets beyond 8 divisions it starts to get really hard to manage without custom grouping. Thank again!

v0.74 Hotfix 2 Feedback 1. Retreating problems seem much better. Thank you for that. 2. Skirmishers since v0.74 now no longer remain in HOLD, but remain in HOLD until they fire, then break the HOLD order and retreat. Highly annoying. 3. Broken record time - custom grouping? 4. Selection issue. This started coming up after the first or second major update, whatever one removed the CTRL key from the line drawing process. Sometimes, when I just left click to select one unit, the game will select multiple ones as if I had dragged a tiny box. This creates a headache when trying to grab one unit out of a group of new reinforcements for a cluster of artillery. 5. Cover still seems kind of overpowered. Maybe reduce standing in trees from 100% to like 80%? I personally think you should only get 100% cover bonus in prepared fortifications. 6. Lots of people have discussed wanting to be able to build their own fortifications with their units. My suggestion is to make the cover bonus capped at like 40% in woods, but then it rises as a unit stands in those woods and doesn't move. Of course this increase in bonus would stop if the unit came under infantry fire, and maybe slow if it came under artillery fire. This could simulate the soldiers constructing a patchwork defense and give skirmishers more of a role in battles by delaying attacking units so that the main brigades have time to entrench. Then if a unit rotates its position, it loses that cover bonus as more and more men leave the original line to fire. Just a thought. Thanks for the many updates! I'm so glad there is a game team out there that actively listens to the players.

Additional feedback after latest Update: 1. Thank you for reinstating cover bonuses, but they seem to be back exactly where they were before the change. I still recommend them being 50-75% weaker. Another possibility is that just standing in woods provides 60-755 cover, while the only time you get 100% is in entrenchments, towns, or very very heavy woods. 2. Concerning entrenchments. they seem to have been beefed up quite a bit, especially the Stone walls on Maryes Heights. However, there appears to be no flanking bonuses for Walls now. I had a confederate Brigade of 1000 surrounded by 10 union brigades, on all points of the compass. Yet no matter what direction I came from, the confeds enjoyed their deep fortifications. So I charged them all at once. From every point on the compass. 10 - 1 odds. and all my brigades were fought off entirely in melee. And the enemy brigade only took 200 casualties. Way way overpowered. Thanks for listening! Keep up the good work!

Immediate Feedback: Just played Antietam with new update. 1. AI is better. Units surrendered at proper times rather than letting themselves be shot to hell while surrounded by 5 brigades. No encounters with Brigades falling back behind enemy lines. 2. Changes with cover...I'm mixed on this one. For one, Cover did provide a unrealistic bonus. It just can't work that a 2000 man brigade can volley into a 2500 man brigade that happens to be standing in the woods and only hit 2 or 3 of them. However, that said, I do think it has been toned down too much. I can barely tell any difference between a brigade in the open under fire and a brigade in cover under fire. Maybe 75% of what you did would be my recommendation. 3. On cover... Constructed fortifications have been very underwhelming so far for the entire game. To have one brigade in a fortification facing another out in the open, and have the kills be only 1-2...Brigades just standing in the woods get more cover that a brigade in a fortification. I mean, If I have a brigade standing in woods and firing, that brigade gets a 100% cover bonus right? But if I put them in a fortification in those same woods, they lose the woods cover bonus and only gain a 50% cover bonus. So prepared fortifications are actually worse than just standing in cover. Fortifications help a lot when they are out in the open, like in Fredericksburg, but when in a wooded area or just on the edge of woods, like in 2nd Manassas, they are worse than if I just place my brigades a little further back in the woods and stand in formation. More to come later. And as always, thanks for listening.

Feedback update #...well I can't remember...let go with 5. 1. I really appreciate you making different kinds of craters. My suggestion is to go one step further if the game can handle it. Have different craters depending on what kind of shell. Small craters like we have now for solid shot. Then maybe make those same craters blackened to shot the explosive charges. Then long swaths of torn up ground from canister fire. Could look really cool if the game engine can handle it. Maybe also have forests get torn up as the battle continues. Like instead of a crater appearing inside a forest, one of its trees changes to be all torn up. It would be a great visual I think players would love if as a battle winds down to see the destruction it has wrought on the landscape. I love seeing piles of enemy in front of my line with craters all over the place. 2. Please please please bring back custom unit grouping like in UGG. When I want to move a division, I might not want to necessarily move its artillery, skirmishers, and cavalry too. 3. This was a problem in UGG as well, but what is up with units moving around between days of a different battle? I assume there must be a reason but it is so frustrating to have my line at Shiloh or 2nd Manassas all set up and strong, then the next day comes and my units are all over the freaking place and now the enemy may be attacking my weakest units that I had tucked safely away back behind the line. So frustrating. This is especially true playing the Union in Shiloh because on the 2nd day the Confeds attack Pittsburg landing almost immediately after the second day begins and I have not had time to bring the units that were on the line at the end of the first day back to the line before the enemy routes my weakened brigades. 4. is there a way to lower to volume when in the Camp screen? "SIR YES SIR!" gets really annoying when you hear it 20 times and its louder than 50 guns going off at once. Just saying I have to turn my volume down on the Camp screen so that I don't break my ears while wearing headphones from that stupid private yelling at me. That's all for now. Thanks for listening. 300 hours down so far.

Thanks for the update guys! Recommendations: 1. Any work on assigning our own groups? 2. I miss the Ctrl-right click interface. Maybe I just have to get used to it but I liked the other way better. As part of this, I have noticed that before the update, if I left click I always only select one unit on the map. Now however I select multiple units even though I wasn't holding crtl or anything. This has made C&C of my units a headache sometimes. More later, and keep up the good work.

Greetings Labs! Here for another update. Sustains: The added graphic quality of the craters was nice. thanks! The AI seems to have improved, becoming dramatically more aggressive at point and using the terrain better. having the officers sorted from highest to lowest is nice too. I've also noticed less sounds of "REAL BAD!", so thanks for that too. Improves: Individual unit AI still has some work. Its so frustrating to see one of my routed units run through enemy lines to their rear not mine. Ai does the same thing. I charge, the enemy routes and falls back behind my own lines. This seems to happen more after the last update. Supply wagons are still stupid. Wander out in front of my own lines.

I ran into a bug just now. During the battle of Shiloh, on the first day, my 2 best brigades got combined into a full division. The division at the end of the day had about 5K kills. Then on the second day they only got about 2000 because I kept them in a peaceful area to recuperate. Yet when the battle ended on the second day, each brigade only had about 1,500 kill a piece. Whats up with the math? Did the kills gained while joined as a division not count? Then who gets the XP?

So with 50 hours of gameplay under my belt, here are some additional suggestions. 1. Craters from artillery shells are permanent and stay on the battlefield until the end of the battle. I enjoy this a lot because it really shoots up the land after a large battle like Antietam. However, enemy dead do not do this like in UG:G. Is there a reason why not? Also, maybe make more than one type of crater, just for diversity. 2. Allow players to move officers around as easily as they do brigades in the camp screen. Unless a player has a free officer, they cannot even switch officers of units. If a player can strip a division of units until it has no more units, they should be able to do the same with officers as well. More than once I ended up with a brigade commanded by a LG while its division was commanded by a Col. 3. Increase the max supply amount. Even maxed out at 25,000, I ran out of ammo only half way through most battles. 4. A suggestion for supply. Moving a wagon around while moving brigades is a pain. Not to mention, most armies had a supply base that wagons then ferried to and from during the battle. So my suggestion is allow wagons to 'unlimber' so to speak so that they can now cover a wider area but lose the ability to move. The balance comes in in that they cannot 're-limber' very quickly (as gathering all those supplies back into wagons takes a while). This balance means a commander can decide how much he is going to risk his supply line by placing it close to the front, or keep it mobile but having to be directed around.