This being the first official map set in Africa, cover felt a little confusing in this map. There are some areas on the road where units clump up into a tiny circle and that somehow counted as yellow cover (insta-wipe potential). Lots of rock cliffs and boulders somehow gave no cover or little cover at all. The best area to go back and see the worst example of this is when the British are counter-attacking through the city. The mission design is to setup the Flak gun in the center and hold those two lanes, but there is absolutely no natural cover for anything else in that area. If you want to setup an MG, those cliffs facing the direction of the incoming convoys don't offer any green/yellow cover nor does that area allow you to build sandbags at the edge. There are no areas near the side of that indicated Flak area where infantry can naturally post up, your best bet is to play it like Starcraft and let the infantry out in the open or build sandbags (not enough time). 

Obviously North Africa is going to be very full of the desert but the cover available in Africa needs to be clearly identifiable and consistent. Just as fences, stone walls, and bushes are easy identifiers for cover in Europe maps, there needs to be consistency with cover. Obviously stone walls and fences are consistently cover in Africa, but many bushes and rocks that should offer some cover don't interact with the cover system at all. 

Objective 1 Support the Italian force:

First I tried to just send my troops in the most stupid ways and put my tank on hold fire to see what would happen if someone really bad would play. I was expecting to get free respawn like mission 1 from CoH1 not THANK YOU FOR PLAYING. I would be super pissed if I was a noob to see that. 

It starts with the guys on the tank. Nice way to introduce us to the new mechanic without putting it in your face like a boring tutorial. We need more of that. The tutorial needs to be intuitive like the Mario Bros video that explain how it introduces you to mechanics. Very important to make the game feel polished and well designed.

Objective 2 Prepare reinforcements:

Choose between repairing the Sturm or the flame tank. I choose Sturm and it let me repair the other one. Meh. I would really have liked a meaningful choice here. This was the thing I disliked the most of the mission. It broke the fun of doing a 2nd run.

Objective3 3 Flank the allied forces:

A powerful 88MM Anti-Tank gun. Now we’re talking! It's awesome. Bring some big tanks because I want to kill something with it. I really like that.

(Fix the pathing Relic, I know I said feedback on the mission only but if there's one thing that has always been the worst in the franchise is the pathing. This unit is so clunky omg. And I attack move with every unit, I'm always wondering why it won't move)

I feel something big is coming!! A stuart...That's it? No wait! A Humber... What a disappointment.

Do I need to help the yellow guys? It's confusing.

Guastatori, units are so cool in this game. Kudos to the guys who designed the units.

I feel like going up that hill is going to be a challenge. I really like that. Nothing up the hill...

Man, this part of the mission could have been really fun.

Objective 4 clear the village:

I just realized I could make a medic truck. When was this unlocked. It would have been fun to know because the base is really far and it takes forever to go back for reinforcements. 

Objective 5 hold the line:

Always the fun part. Sit back and see the enemies get mow down. I hope it last 15 minutes. No just a couple units walking in a straight line.

General Impressions: 

The first mission of CoH1 was the most memorable video game moment I ever experienced. I hope this is not the first mission of CoH3.

It might feel like a negative review but the mission had the potential to be a great mission. Everything is there, the objectives were good, the flow was good. I just felt like you just forgot to put enemies on the map and they did not respawned.  

I hope it's not because of the technical limitations to appease everyone that says the game is not optimized because it did not give me the opportunity to give good feedback.

If every point had been properly defended, ongoing enemies coming at me, big tanks coming at me when I first got the flak, heavily defended hills and a long hold the line finish with enemies coming from everywhere it would have been an 8/10 for a generic middle of the game mission.

Choices: 

This will be the most important thing for me to enjoy the missions. I think the #1 reason I always hated the single player in CoH2 was what it felt like a rollercoaster and my choices did not matter. Every objective should have choices. Attack from the front or flank. Tanks or infantry. Lots of cheap units or one big expensive unit.

It started perfectly with Sturm vs Flame but I was very surprised to see that I could repair the second one also. How cool would it have been to be able to do the mission two separate ways. Sturm and MGs for a slow crawl or flame and assault grenadier for a fast capture. I was really expecting that at first.

There's no incentive to play the mission a second time. Will there be incentive to play the campaign a second time? If you are going to charge the premium price for the game, I expect a lot of replay value so you missed an opportunity to show it just before releasing the pre-order. 

Keep releasing alpha and beta because it works. It feels like I have a voice in the development.

Setting up the flak was kinda confusing for me at first. I did not notice the towing car the first time. Is it noticeable enough on the mini map for you to see?

Not sure if the towing car gave pop as well, but it was kinda useless after dropping off the flak. Maybe give the medic point an option of returning cars/tanks as well for more pop?

Nice mission overal, felt a bit easy... but it's the first mission so that's understandable.

The mission overall was great, but needs some polishing (which is no surprise in it's alpha state). But here is my main critique point: 

The mission is too easy - main problem is the AI, which uses it's units really bad and the infantry of the AI goes back and forth without achieving anything other than getting shot down.

In the last parts of the mission (conquering the town and defending it afterwards) is especially too easy. While it's fine for the other parts of the mission to be on the easy side, the mission lacks of a cool finale. The brits should get a bit more units defending the town and instead of the final 18 units you need to kill, there should be around 30 (coming in waves, not at once). These small number increase at the last parts of the mission plus better AI unit management would provide a fine difficulty. 

I also missed the story around the mission, but we will get that in the final game I guess.

If only in a few missions we already get a built up base like here, then it's totally fine, but I hope for most missions the player is responsible for that.

It was one mission, which was quit entertaining, but therefore I can not say much about it. Taking objectivs with an force is good and all, if it will not be the only objective typ. The theater of war missions from CoH2 are a great example of versatile mission objectives.

CochoSGO wrote:

The british need more AT guns. Currently you can run rampart with your tanks, there is no serious threat to armor.

Some more agressive counterattacks would be intresting. The italians are already around but other than being rescued at the start, there is not much for them to do, the just occupy the places you capture. Maybe if you had them block british advances on your flank it will fill out the map, make it more like a battle and not a series of strongpoints that need to be cleared out

+1

1. Auto-Reinforce was active, with the Panzerpioneer Squad next to the Headquarters, with enough Manpower, but the squad didn't reinforce. I was confused until I saw the ability "Disabled" from the mission parameter. I'm not sure why this limitation is in place, but it could probably be eased up to let the player reinforce. I think this only happens during the first objective segment, that you get the player base with the Headquarters, as later on you can reinforce just fine.

2. The "Restore a wrecked vehicle" objective did not complete when I restored a wrecked vehicle. (It was an M3 Stuart Light Tank).

3. During the mission I had the recovery vehicle killed. I'm not sure if the replacement tow truck was supposed to be different, but it was a Supply Truck Sd.Kfz. 305 instead of the original Famo Recovery Half-Trank Sd.Kfz. 9/1.

4. Pressing backspace twice can sometimes fail to reorient your camera to the original default position. It will reorient to a second not-original position every time. I think this occurs when the "Clear the village" objective becomes activated. Please keep the default camera position for the entirety of a mission, and don't change it for new objectives.

Looney wrote:

Setting up the flak was kinda confusing for me at first. I did not notice the towing car the first time. Is it noticeable enough on the mini map for you to see?

Not sure if the towing car gave pop as well, but it was kinda useless after dropping off the flak. Maybe give the medic point an option of returning cars/tanks as well for more pop?

Nice mission overal, felt a bit easy... but it's the first mission so that's understandable.

I had the same issue. I just didn't understand how to finish that objective until I scrolled all over the map. I assumed I needed to build or capture something.

I enjoyed the mission and overall objectives! I think that the sub objectives should take a little longer and be more difficult to achieve. For ex, after recovering the tanks you go on the cap the victory point, when you have the tanks it was far to easy to steamroll the enemy (there was hardly a need for infantry or the support gun). I mentioned in another thread that the tanks should be much slower, Pz III can be slightly faster because it is a lighter tanks likewise with enemy light tanks and so on (tanks I would really like to see change in this game /slow speed med-high protection and medium to high damage depending on the type of tank). The since this is primarily a "attack the enemy and drive them out" they should be dug in much more and harder to eliminate and allow the player to plan more accordingly. The love the last mission where you defend against the main counterattack, please give more time and an objective to set up defenses and give the enemy a lot more troops and tanks. (should be relatively difficult to stop, of course at higher difficulties) The 88 obj is really cool but the enemy AI at that particular point is off in a way that I set up the 88 and wasn't sure what to do after that (meaning wait or push my tanks up) the first time I played the mission I set up the 88 then pushed my tanks forward and the AI was far enough to where the 88 was well out of range. The after a couple of plays I waited for the AI to come to me so I could use the 88 properly and watch it go to work.