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Fintilgin

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Everything posted by Fintilgin

  1. I have played countless hours of SC and I never knew about forced march. Shocked and stunned. As an aside, I've always found the supply model in SC to be... strange and unintuitive. Pocketed units are always much stronger then I expect and a pocketed unit in a city with HQ support might as well not be pocketed at all.
  2. Or, maybe, if adding a new USB device to your computer could potentially require you to relicense your games, you guys could, oh I dunno, come into the 21st century with your digital distribution and drop the draconian DRM? Just saying! This BS turns off a lot of customers, and discourages old ones from buying new games.
  3. Been pretty busy/distracted, but I'll try to whip something up this weekend.
  4. I'm not sure the naval situation can ever feel right in the SC2 engine, because the 'heart' of the game was built around the original European scenario, which was entirely land focused, and the naval 'simulation' was very basic. It works, and I don't want to say naval units are a 'hack', but they're pretty much ground units that move on water in the game. I hope SC3 redesigns the naval system from the ground up with an eye to making it more distinct then just flinging around destroyer and battleship 'units' like they were tanks racing around the Ukraine. What that design would involve, I don't know. Sea zones? Assembling multiple ships into actual 'fleets'?
  5. Yeah, I noticed the same thing. I'm going to mod the NATO symbols myself before I start another game. Haven't decided quite what colors yet. I'm thinking the smallest infantry gets a black background like artillery units, the middle size is the same color as the base counter, and the biggest size retains the white infantry box. Something like the attached image, which is a little crude, but close to what I had in mind
  6. I knew it was probably too much to hope for a major engine change like that, but I'm glad to hear it will be in SC3.
  7. Honestly, it seems to me if you were going to do something like this, it would be best to decide to make a 'final' SC2 product, like Strategic Command II Ultimate Edition, and include the latest greatest engine and the very best of all the scenarios from the whole series, from Patton Drives Est, to WW1, to the Pacific, to the new Global Campaigns. Ideally, for SC3 you'd take something like the approach Paradox has taken with Crusader Kings 2. If you buy the base game you always can patch up to the latest greatest version of the engine, but the scenario packs are sold as DLC/expansions that 'slot in' to the base game. That would be way better then having 12 different games with incompatible scenarios and features like the current situation, which is a bit messy.
  8. It looks good, but why so much ice in the north? You could probably cut off the top 20% of the map with absolutely no loss to gameplay whatsoever. Especially because the distortion of the map projection means there are way more squares up there then there 'should' be. Wouldn't cutting off some of that wasteland speed pathfinding and such? I know in earlier versions larger maps could cause speed issues. Also, does the map finally scroll 'loop' like Civilization, or are we stuck with the (kinda kludgy) teleportation arrows?
  9. It would be nice if you could select certain players on your side to be played by the AI. This was a nice feature in Clash of Steel, you could play just the Western Allies or just the Soviets, or both as you pleased. It would also be fun and 'realistic' to be able to turn Italy over to the AI (if you wanted) and have to tear your hair out in frustration as the AI bungles things and you have to send in your own units to try to save the day.
  10. If you do this, it would be nice to have the option of playing back the turn as normal or have 'forward action' & 'back action' buttons so you could go back and forth through the replay 'step by step' manually or just stop and think about something a bit before moving on. It's always frustrating to me to see something happen and then be snatched away to another part of the map while I'm still thinking about a particular attack or situation. Although I wouldn't want to lose the ability to just sit and watch the turn unfold like it normally does, either.
  11. Yeah, I agree. I think in the designer notes for the boardgame Totaler Krieg, Alan Emrich said something I thought had a lot of truth to it. Namely, that too many WW2 games represent Germany as the Borg. The more they capture the more they can build. Which is pretty unrealistic. Personally, I'd put a pretty harsh penalty on utilizing captured resources. Like you only get 10% of the MPPs or something. Actually, at the scale these games are built at, I'd probably just go ahead and abstract it down to 0%. Any benefit is expended in occupying the territory. Maybe you could just say you get 0% from captured cities, but 100% from captured resources/oil? The primary benefit to the Axis of capturing large areas of the enemy should be denying the production to them. Germany MMPs shouldn't really go up much over the course of the game.
  12. Yeah, in grand strategic WW2 games I've always felt the war is won or lost in Russia. So, as the Germans I don't usually 'waste' my units in North Africa - instead trying to throw everything at the Soviets, and as the Western Allies I tend to play very aggressively (maybe too much so) during the critical phases of the campaigns in Russia to try to pull German strength west.
  13. I would also love to see a 'Days of Decision' style addition to a game of this scale that could generate 'alternate' WW2s. Ideally you'd go all the way back to who won WW1 and play through 'Political' turns of 2 years or so before going down to 3 or 4 months in the mid thirties and finally launching into the game proper. I suppose the biggest problem would be AI and balancing. Even if that's too ambitious for the base game it would make a FANTASTIC expansion pack. Realistically though the biggest thing I'd like to see for a proper SC3 is having it start as a global scale game. I'd also like to see hexes return, and maybe you guys could get the artist (if he's a freelancer) who did Panzer Corps. Now that's a lovely looking game!
  14. When the manual says: How near is 'near'? One square, two, fifteen? Thanks!
  15. Played Brute Force for the first time yesterday. Amazing map. Some small issues, playing on +0.5xp for AI: Shouldn't the AI keep a garrison or something in Chunking at all times? Is there a way to force it? I seized it with paratroopers and forced an easy Chinese surrender. Not sure about the Soviet AI/setup. Attacked with Japan and Germany on a clear turn in April 1941. Had a couple mud turns following. Was two squares from Moscow by the end of June 1941. Took Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad by first snowfall. Pretty much game over at that point. Tried a 1940 attack on Soviets. Held the west wall against France and focused army north of the Pripyat. Took Leningrad and Moscow by late summer 1940. Otherwise enjoyed it. Going to try as allies, and I kinda hope the AI goes for Sealion. I think it would be fun.
  16. You might ask Nupremal if you could crop and modify North America from his global WWII scenario and use it as a base. It's not huge but it's pretty good sized.
  17. Er.... yeah.... This speaks volumes. I've said my piece, and nitpicking details or the definition of DRM aside, I stand by it. Gonna go enjoy the game.
  18. No offense, but it's amazing that you can say this with a straight face. Pretty much every other digital distribution site of any consequence has better customer rights/experience. I can buy a game from Steam, or Gamersgate, or Impulse, or GoG and download and install it whenever I want, however many times I want. I don't have to scribble down serial numbers or backup installers. I never have to go, hat in hand, to some third-party DRM provider and say "Please sir, can I have another installation?" Even Matrix Games is (finally) getting with the times and allowing things like unlimited downloads and modifying their DRM to be a little more 21st century. Even 'Knights of the Chalice' (look it up, great game) which is way more indie and niche then anything Battlefront publishes, allows me to redownload long after I bought it! I just checked, and I can still log in 18 months after my purchase and can still download it. No serial number, no activations. Just download and play. Sure, it's your product, and you can do whatever you want with your DRM, but don't try to pretend you guys don't have draconian DRM. Pointlessly draconian, in my opinion. The only people inconvienced by this stuff are paying customers. I'm willing to bet any pirated copies floating around out there have the DRM stripped out and the pirates can cheerfully do whatever they please with them. Now, shortly after I hit submit reply, I'm going to go buy a copy of this game. But I'll be holding my nose when I do it. I'm another customer who detests being treated like a criminal who has only the what minimal rights to my purchase you deign to grant at any given time (oh, and thanks for the money). I like this series enough to overcome my annoyance with harsh DRM and old fashioned distribution (you can only download once, hurry!) but I bet a lot casual customers take their money elsewhere. You can wring your hands about how all we're really purchasing is a 'license' and you can set whatever terms you want, but nowadays when people get online and buy a game they expect to get the hassle-free right to play and access that game whenever they want in perpetuity. You can deny that right for your product and throw up whatever barriers you want, but you're costing yourself sales every time you do. The whole thing just has an actively unfriendly aura to the purchaser. Personally, I suspect you guys spend more money setting up fancy DRM: a fair amount I'd guess, and lose more money from turned off customers: a lot, then you gain in preventing piracy: probably next to nothing, as I'm sure all your games, like every other game ever made, have been cracked to hell and back. I look forward to the day, in the far and misty future, when Battlefront joins the rest of the civilized world of digital distribution and we can download and install our games whenever we please, even years down the line. When paying customers aren't treated with fear and suspicion. Alright! Rant over! It's the principle of the thing, dammit. Off to buy SC:WW1. I looks like a good game.
  19. I'm curious how you change which countries are defined as majors and which as minors in the editor. I've tried digging through the help files and the manual and can't figure it out. It's probably something really obvious I'm missing, but I'd like a little help on this one!
  20. If we do get some new screen shots could we please get more with counters? Counters are nice and clean and easy to read. Tangled masses of 'toy soldiers'.... aren't.
  21. Yeah, it's a nice map, but it's completely unusable on my computer, which admittedly with XP and only 2 gig of ram is getting a bit long in the tooth. I'm still trying to hold off on upgrading my box until next year or so. With my 8800 I can still play stuff like Fallout 3 maxed out, so it's kinda amusing to have Strategic Command bring my machine to its knees.
  22. I'm enjoying it, but I do sort of understand where you're coming from. It does have the feel of an expansion pack/scenario pack rather then a full priced game. Things like the fact that it's a global game that uses loop arrow 'hacks' instead of a real looping map, or the Antarctic oil resources with a printed on-map note to ignore them. It feels more like a really well polished and balanced fan mod then an actual new game. I do feel like the series has really hit the limit of what the current engine can really do and that the last few versions we've been paying full price for what amounts to the 'same game' with a few small new features like carriers or the supply map mode. That being said, I'm willing to cut Battlefront an awful lot of slack because it really is a niche series made by a 'one-man-band' sort of company. I've enjoyed the games and don't regret purchasing them, but I do hope that whatever project comes next is either an entirely new game or a SC3 built completely fresh from the ground up. (With hexes. Dang, even Civilization 5 is moving to hexes.) As to the manual, it is tiny to the point of being not very useful. Much more pleasant to alt-tab out and read it on the screen. But it was a freebie, and a nice thought so I don't really have any strong feelings about it one way or another.
  23. One thing you might do to help the Japanese AI in regards to the Dutch East Indies is have them be completely conquered and annexed by Japan the way Poland is by Germany. Also give the AI free understrength garrison corps in the DEI cities like Germany gets in Norway. This would mean that the Allies just can't retake Batavia and instantly liberate a lightly garrisoned DEI. They'd need a major campaign to retake the cities one by one, probably more historical and helps protect the Japanese AI from 'gamey' strategies. EDIT: Also, I think it's a great map.
  24. Personally, I don't think so. When I play the scenario I'm just going to pretend that Germany fell to communists in the early 30's instead of fascists, and the alliance of evil comes from that instead.
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