Question: ATF: Deployment Issues

[Grandpa Kim]

After puzzling things out with the demo and deciding I like this game, I now am running into some odd problems with the full game.

I am playing Bihac 1, the first scenario in the list.

1. As I deploy my hierarchies defensively I find that new path nodes have been added. I checked this because I didn't like the facing and quickly saw the additional nodes. In one case, I actually had to zoom out to see the whole path. It was pretty damn random. It seems a node is added if I left click on the company icon or exit pathing mode (could be some other clicks do this too) and then the whole structure moves to new locations in the area. Since these new path nodes invariably give me a new facing, the commander must change to positions favorable to that new facing. At least that's my guess.

2. Units are not finding good cover on their own. Even if I have holes placed, only a lucky one or two will use them. Most of the team stays in the default SBF/Defense line oriented in a random direction (see above). Yes, I'm using the right kind of holes.

3. To me it looks like a company in SBF/Defense is spread over too wide an area. Typically over a distance of 3 km. and terribly unevenly. In one case, all units were together in line except one PL. He was way forward. My thought was "Whoa! Leave that job to the scouts!" Platoons alone deploy more appropriately.

Placing units individually works fine but that kind of defeats the top down command feature. As well placing a hundred or so units one at a time is a PITA.

I did do a lot of checking in the manual to see if I was making a silly mistake. Looks like I wasn't. I did make some small procedural changes but they didn't seem to help. I bit the bullet after quitting the game and changed to 16 bit color depth from 32 bit. Then I started a new game. That didn't help.

I see nothing about this in the forums so I am at a loss. Any ideas?

[Grandpa Kim]

I've played a few games now and surprise, surprise, this game is just as glitchy as any new game these days. From what I can figure ATF is just one of a series of games which seems to culminate in AATF. Is that correct?

So, the question is, is AATF a little more user friendly and with fewer bugs? ATF does seem realistic despite the bugs and I might like to purchase AATF if it's an all round better game.