A respectful request for Don, Andy and Shrapnel

[Artur]

Gentlemen,

I have a respectful request for you. WinSPMBT is a very good game it is the main reason why I still play the SP series. One of the main strengths of this gane is that the developers were open to the (hardcore) players' suggestions. I can prove that as my several suggestions were implemented as well.

In the recent patch, there was a fix which causes the tanks' turrets to turn to the direction of the movement. This is not good as it is now for many reasons.
1. In armor combat there are many times when the turret has to be turned in other direction than the movement direction even if the enemy is not seen. These are shoot and scoot tactics or convoy escort when the armor is covering one side of the road, or just simply moving from cover to cover and the turret is turned towards the suspected threatening units.
2. Even though the "fix" may aid the AI (I am not sure though) it is no good to "teach" the newbies a such an incorrect way of operating the armor.
3. This feature worked the same way since the very first version and nobody complained about it. This was NOT just for aesthetic reasons.
4. I know I am not alone with this and I am sure fixing this problem would measurably increase the players' contentment with WinSPMBT.

Now don't get me wrong nothing is perfect and everybody makes not so good moves during a developement and I am no exception as well. (I am also a software engineer.)

As far as I am able to see without knowing the code, it would not be so much work from the coding aspect. It may take a few minutes only or a few hours the most. Testing is another thing as they may have to run a lot of test cases. However if this problem would be fixed a dilemma would be solved as now people are thinking about which version to play PBEM the 2.0 or 2.5.

There were some good and some not so good examples with other games when a patch contained a bad solution. Once Battlefront issued a patch for Combat Mission Africa Korps. It turned out to have a serious misfunction (too frequent gun hits if I remember right) and they re-issued the patch. Everything got back to normal. And there are some bad examples like the other SP variant which has also a serious bug in the current version and nothing has done with that until now...

My request is the creation of a small patch containing the winSPMBT exe or one of the dlls to fix this turret direction related problem and nothing else. I know there will be a lot of time until a serious patch will come out for WinSPMBT as Don and Andy will be busy with WinSPWW2. Do not let this issue make a quite measurable discontent among the players if it could be resolved with a little effort. I myself installed Wulfir's excellent scenarios included in V2.5 to my V2.0 installation and decided not to play with V2.5. (Except from trying out some scenarios if they work well with 2.5). I know that I am not alone.

My fellow gamers who agrees with this request please "sign" here. Just sign no quarelling please. Don, Andy and Shrapnel have done an excellent job and I am greatful to them for making this wonderful game for us. I am confident that if a lot of gamers will show they agree with this request, Shrapnel Games will take that in comsideration.

Thank you for your attention,
Artúr Székely-Takács.