Not Quite Up to Par Lacks Immersive features
I also couldn't get over many things that just didn't seem to feel right about the game. Like roads and certain terrain features just breaking off into nothingness as you reached the map edges. The borderline just didn't fuse well with the rest of the game maps. It looked blocky and unpolished.
One of the real weird things I saw was the green smoke clouds for tracer shot; reminded me of an old movie Green Slime. Why use green? Isn't fire like red and black? It was hard to keep track of the tracer fire as well as it just wasn't detailed enough to follow from where it came from to where it went.
Lack of some form of unit elimination animations was a real immersion killer, you can have one unit in the group and the screen will show five that's pretty dumb programming there. It's an either or of you either have all in a group or you have none meaning total group elimination without any animated step losses. What was used as step loss at the bottom of the screen was hardly intuitive.
The 80 second rule doesn't work for me either. I'd just as soon have it like Combat Mission 60 seconds at least my units in CM would continue to fight not keep charging or moving into total death or sit there and do nothing while they get pummeled cause they are in the 40 second reaction phase which doesn't allow you to do much. I lost more units to the stupidity of the game design than I would have with the intelligence of the CM design during the 60 second phase. In reality commanders would be barking orders within seconds if it was required not have to wait 80 seconds.
The tiny infantry graphics is a strain on the eyes unless you are zoomed in at point blank range they look like blobs of green smears clustered together. I don't really have an issue seeing them up close so don't really need those coins over their heads. It's their graphic composition altogether that is rather dull and unsightful.
The sighting rules are a bit funny in nature as when you don't have a unit selected you can borg sight everything you've seen or can be seen on the map. Yet, when you goto individual selection only those sighted by that unit can it see. I saw some strange situations where my units were sitting near point blank range of an enemy unit and couldn't see it. There's a lot of bugs in this game or things not working as they should.
An annoying feature is the way you have to give your units orders. Everything first of all has to go through the HQ, then if you don't want each unit in the group to move as a group order you have to go back an individually move them one at a time to where you actually want them to go. This feature is most annoying and time wasting. Why didn't they just make it an option to use HQ commands and allow you to just individually control each unit from the beginning like CM does it? If you wanted to give HQ commands you double clicked on the HQ unit and then all the other units in the command would light up and follow those commands. Most sensible way to give orders imho.
The random generators are fair enough those worked as described, but, I just don't know there's just something that feels unfinished about this game to me. It's a fair game and to the hard core they will probably pick up on it without question.
It's not mainstream material by any means though imho. RTS fans you'll want to pass on this as it's mostly turn based and you just sit there and watch what happens during the real time elements. I notice several of the more hardcore engines going to this method and for the life of me I don't know why they think players just want to sit there and watch for 80 seconds. It was hard enough in Combat Mission, but, CM offers a lot more in the way of play value and longevity and intuitive design.