opportunity fire

[waynec]

new to this vesion as matrixgames spwaw8.4 and my graphics card isn't friendly. does this version have opportunity fire?

[Mobhack]

All SP series games have opfire, since SP1.

Cheers
Andy

[Charles22]

He may mean in the SPWAW style, which involves the user possibly taking an active part in the target selection when it's the computer's turn, as opposed to the SPWW2 style of the computer controlling all of it.

[Mobhack]

In which case - no.

That from what I have heard, gives the human player an unfair advatage over the AI (since the AI uses only the normal opfire algorithms), cannot be used in PBEM, and aparently forces you to be "welded" to the PC for the entire AI turn without being able to nip off to make a cup of tea, answer the door etc.

Cheers
Andy

[Charles22]

Oh, it's not necessarily a bad thing, in fact from the human POV it made the game more involved and less boring than SPWW2, or at least so it seemed when for a good many months I was playing that way. I have played both versions quite a bit. I don't think the computer was given any less opportunity fire than the human, but it did make things a bit more interesting in a certain way, and indeed, in my own case, I don't let the turn play in either version whilst I go walking off somewhere.

My memory of SPWAW is a little vague right now, but one flaw seemed to be that a lot of units virtually had unlimited amounts of times it could fire back, but the computer seemed to pick the opportunity fire units at random anyway. It could get definitely tedious at times, but it was more fun than boring.

Contrast that to the SPWW2 style, where I think the SPWAW style was made to solve the problem of people moving useless units, or some such, just to rid AI units of all of their fire, thereby leaving the important units of your own force to have no effective counter-measures during your turn.

I can't say which OP fire I like better, because I don't "cheat" in order to dwindle the primary AI units down to zero ammo for the turn. The SPWW2 system does have one particular outstanding quality however, and that is the ability for some out-of-control drama. For example, I can't recall the precise details just now, but I recall one time where I had a platoon of tanks that had advanced to certain point and met overwhelming numbers. Fortunately most of the enemy were fairly worthless units, but two platoons of deadly tanks were in that mass. Something happened during either my turn or the AI's turn where this situation that looked like I would lose the whole platoon ended up wiping out the enemy with me having at least two tanks left. It was one of those situations where the AI op fires at one of my retreating tanks and then another of my tanks opfires that tank and saves the day. It's the opfire during your own turn, since you don't control it, which are reactions to the AI op attacks that can sometimes be quite dramatic. It's just that most of the time they fire to no seeming useful purpose (though no fire is useless) and it ends up using fire that could have been better spent firing continuously on the same unit instead.

In SPWW2, frankly sometimes it's better just to not fire at all with a vulnerable unit, or the closet unit anyway, and let the more rearward units fire first, thereby putting most of the op fire from the AI onto more difficult targets. In a sense that's sort of like trying to wear out the AI op fire by dancing some useless truck around for example, but at least since fire is being made they are units that are combative types and thereby could be a loss to lose them. I would do the same thing if I had a recon unit (a more useless unit than most) which was the unit that triggered an AI reaction.

With SPWW2, I think there have been times where I had a unit so close to the enemey, in such a vulnerable position during my turn, that if he had any fire left I literally ddin't fire with it that entire turn because the oppostion was so bad. I mean, if you have a Tiger alone that bumps into 10 Firefly's at close range, in the SPWW2 system the Tiger doesn't have a chance if he fires, because he will likely get at least five opfires in return (1 vs 5 [or more]). But if he waits till the AI turn, he will, for a while, match the enemy fire so that possibly the first three shots produce 3 op fire shots in return from the Tiger. A defeated player would fire with the Tiger during the player turn, and to make matters worse not try to route other units into that vicinity before he fired with that Tiger. In SPWAW, in that same situation, that op fire isn't that dramatic, though IIRC it allowed the AI to fire "Three" times for every action, as opposed to the human being restricted to opfiring only twice.

[Smersh]

I really like that same turn (your turn) opfire, it really allows you to carry out good overwatch tactics.