Yes, the delay before they disappear is exactly 4 seconds. And yes, it could be easily increased. But I still would like to keep the deployables rather close to how they behave in multiplayer, this is the reason why I chose the current short delay. Another, relatively minor reason is that the larger deployables (mortars or German tripods) are still a navigation hazard for AI, so to speak, so the sooner they disappear, the better for bots.

Overall, my position on the deployables is that they are mostly "human only", "special case" or "for fun" weapons, so they are set up in a way which makes them less attractive to bots, compared to their static cousins, and, for example, the deployable mortars don't have raised cameras. That's why I think the short disappearance delay is not a problem, a human player can easily redeploy them where and when needed. Besides, retweaking of AI in 2.5 made deployable weapons less decisive in many cases. For example, Djinn once wanted to deploy mortars against the 88 on PHL, since bots could barely deal with the gun on their own. In 2.5 my estimate for the average "time to live" for the gunner of that 88 at lower bots skills became 30 seconds. As soon as any German enters the gun, a hail of rifle grenades instantly rains on him now.

Thanks for reporting! We will fix this.

Yes, you can.

Hey, guys! I'll try to provide here details on some rather major gameplay changes mentioned in the "The Road to Forgotten Hope 2.5 Part 2" news update.


"Automatic fast bleed at the end of a round"
When one of the teams captures all flags on a map and the losing team has no place to spawn, the "fast bleed" is initiated. The players from the losing team who are still alive have up to 2 minutes to neutralize any flag or the round ends. This is a countermeasure against one lone player from the losing team hiding in a bush while the whole other team is searching for him for several minutes.

The "fast bleed" affects all maps and teams automatically, unless the team has an uncappable main base (obviously) or the map features vehicles players can spawn in (for example, the M3A1 halftracks on Cobra). Custom mappers do not need to activate anything on their maps for this to work.


Artillery
To retell my earlier "Hot spots" blog post, a brief info about the current spot is shown now to every artilleryman in the top-left corner of the screen, among kill messages:


Tip: if you want the info to be repeated (since it may be overwritten by kill messages pretty quickly), just press "NEXT TARGET"/"PREV TARGET" in the commo rose.

The problem of annoying switching "spot - no spot - spot" on the spotter re-spotting, reported by Outlaw and others in that blog post, is fixed too.

The mobile artillery pieces in which the driver seat is combined with the gunner one (the Wespe, the Bishop and the new Renault UE Wurfgerat you can find on Pegasus) got a three camera setup: the driver camera (like in other self-propelled guns, together with turning the head by Ctrl+mouselook), the dials camera (activated by X) and the top-down view on the current spot (activated by right mouse click). We noticed one problem during testing this setup: you can get lost between cameras sometimes. For example, you want to switch to the driver camera but get trapped in a dials - top-down loop. Randomly pressing X and right mouse button few times usually helped in this case, and we got used to it. Please treat this drawback as a price for using tricks the game engine is not accustomed to.

One more improvement affecting all mobile artillery pieces (not only the one mentioned right above) - smoother, less jerky movement of the dials and top-down spot view cameras.


Anti-personnel and anti-tank mines
Here comes the story of taking all the fun out of mines

Prior to FH 2.5 you could plant AP mines on any surface - terrain or static, even absolutely vertical walls, while AT mines only stuck to terrain, falling through statics. Now both classes of mines stick to terrain and statics, but bounce off anything more or less vertical (that is, slopped by more than 45 degrees from horizontal).

We also increased the time it takes to plant a mine, AP or AT, up to 3 seconds, from the previous 1 second. To be honest, that 1 second was a leftover from 2012 internal tests of stand mine deployment, slipping by mistake into releases.

And to further nerf AP mines specifically, we limited the number of AP mines to 1 in each kit.


Deployable mortars and machine guns
First of all, we would like to thank Damaso (old forum goers do remember Damaso, right?) for bringing deployable weapons to our attention and making them a high priority task for us

All the known exploits allowing to deploy more than one weapon from one kit - passing the kit to a teammate, dropping another weapon while the first one is occupied by another player, and so on, do not work any more. The "one kit, one mortar/MG" rule is strictly enforced by the game now.

The physics of the deploy marker (the thing you drop on "firing" the weapon to deploy it) has been reworked too. It does not bounce hundreds meters away now, better interacts with vehicles and does not let deploying through walls, among other things.

Another small improvement for deployables is that a marker now indicates the position where the dropped weapon will soon appear:

Hmm thats probobly why my game crashed on Hurtgen forest....

Yes, Hurtgen Forest was exactly the map where I localized the bug and found its cause. Stupid trees

Are the "bad" maps not working now because of 2.5, or are they just not up to 2.5 standards?  Are they basically exactly as they were before, or did something gamebreaking happen to them?  I feel like I remember some of those maps working when I played them last!

Bastogne is broken from the moment it was released. As for the rest of the "bad" maps, I just don't know their current state, I haven't tested them, to be honest. They may be playable without any terrible bugs, but may be totally not playable, or may just miss some new equipment from the corresponding multiplayer layer. The only thing for sure is that those maps have not got updates supposed to improve AI spawning, AI pathfinding, etc. Let's call it "play at your own risk" maps.

You can read what's new in 2.5 singleplayer here: http://fhpubforum.warumdarum.de/index.php?topic=20627.0

Changes in 2.5

Maps reworked from scratch

• Anctoville
• Gazala (including new navmeshing by Ballard) *
• Hurtgen Forest
• Operation Goodwood
• Operation Totalize
• Vossenack *

* Gazala and Vossenack include reworked layers for 16 players. Please note that these layers do not repeat the multiplayer "single flag in the middle" layout, they can support 24-32 bots and are intended to be a pure infantry vs infantry slaughter.

Maps which got significant gameplay tweaks

• Alam Halfa
• Battle of Brest
• Battle of Keren
• Fall of Tobruk
• Operation Luttich
• Purple Heart Lane
• Ramelle
• The Battle for Sfakia
• Tunis
• Villers Bocage

General fixes and improvements

• Fixed crashes to desktop when an AI tank driver gets stuck in one place for about 5 minutes. Note, this is not related to crashes when a human player exits a vehicle in a narrow place, that bug is still not fixed, sadly.
• Fixed many (all?) static and mounted MGs playing fire sounds constantly, even when reloading, if manned by bots.
• Fixed the dials of the British 3in mortar being completely broken in singleplayer (see here).
• Game performance improvements, especially on the maps heavy with airplanes and artillery. Also first minutes on Omaha Beach are now less FPS-hungry thanks to the removal of one of the two MGs in the LCVP boats.
• Reworked AI for cannons, rockets, MGs and bombs in airplanes, HE shells in tanks and AT guns (especially noticeable in the vehicles which don't have a coaxial MG as a secondary anti-infantry weapon), with the main goal to improve their effectiveness.
• Somewhat improved performance of turret-less self-propelled guns and tanks (for example, StuGs, Marders, Grants) in AI hands by making the driver camera to move with the gun barrel in singleplayer.
• Reworked deployable weapons. They do not disappear instantly after a bot or human player exits them, like in multiplayer. Instead they stay for some seconds. This means that bots can enter deployed weapons without dying now, and no crash to desktop will happen when a human player tries to enter a deployed weapon already occupied by a bot.
• Increased time-to-live for artillery spots in singleplayer up to 5 minutes (from the multiplayer's 2 minutes) as suggested by DJ Barney.
• Every mortar pickup kit got binoculars as suggested by DJ Barney.
• Many-many smaller tweaks and fixes in AI of vehicles and weapons.

Changes in 2.52

First of all, an answer to the question which bothers you most: the new EF maps and Pegasus Bridge still have no official singleplayer support, we are working on providing them with tolerable pathfinding.

General fixes and improvements

• Significant improvement of how the bots drive all tracked vehicles, from universal carriers and halftracks to, obviously, tanks. Bots now often choose better routes and are more confident in dealing with smaller obstacles. Guys, I need feedback on this, since it's virtually impossible to test single-handedly all the tens and tens of tracked vehicles on 40-something maps, so the results are still a bit raw. For example, the behavior of the heavier German tanks, starting with the Panthers, appears to be not as good as of many Allied tanks (but still better than it was before 2.52), which results in situations like the American team capturing all flags on Meuse River in something like 5 minutes while half of the German armor freezing in traffic jams at the bridges on their side of the map.
• Somewhat decreased deadliness of the airplane bombs in the hands of AI (there is still room for improvement here).
• Static AA guns now follow air targets better.
• Improved handling of handheld AT explosives, especially the ones that explode on impact (e.g., the Italian AT grenade).
• Fixed missing AI of the turret MG seats in the Russian tanks. Darman, the Russian mobile AT guns and airplanes are yet to get new AI, so for now keep the one you created in your map pack.

Maps

• Bardia: fixed broken push mode, general gameplay tweaks.
• Operation Hyacinth: fixed flare spamming by the bots with FPS drops accompanying it, better (more steady and continuous) "firing" of the spotlights.
• Operation Totalize: general gameplay tweaks.

Complete lists of "good" and "play at your own risk" singleplayer maps, as of 2.52

The list of "good" maps
These are the maps with up-to-date (as in multiplayer) equipment, more or less balanced gameplay and pathfinding, mostly bug-free, and having the latest code "sweeteners".

The list of "play at your own risk" maps
The following maps have one or more of these issues: outdated/broken gameplay and equipment, bad AI pathfinding, no code "sweeteners":


Sorry, guys, as it often happens, neither of the new 2.5 maps - Arad, Dukla Pass, Pegasus, Seelow, Sammatus, got singleplayer support on release. But the equipment used on these maps is mostly ready for AI, anyone with basic BF2 modding skills can try it on another map with singleplayer support (at least I tested Katjushas and IS-2 on Alam Halfa ).



Previous changelogs for versions 2.46 - 2.48: http://fhpubforum.warumdarum.de/index.php?topic=19546.msg321090#msg321090