mcaryf1

Hi Cantona That sounds very interesting. However, I am a bit new to this and I see in your zip download file various directories that I presume are alternates to the standard game. Do I have to be careful about downloading these into my standard game folder if I want to be able to carry on using the standard scenarios? Regards Mike

I notice in both standard 1.07 and Gold that China is reported to have some oil wells in the status report as is Japan at the start of the 1939 scenario.. I presume this is something to do with convoys or aid but is there any specific way to interpret the information? Regards Mike

It seems to me that the game designers recognise the value of half strength units for use as garrisons but have not given the in game player any opportunity to create them except as a result of combat. One example of this is the Axis High Tide scenario where Japan starts with a number of such units holding down areas in Manchuria. One way to provide this option for players is by means of minor country allies who can be given the ability to build ranges of lower price, lower ability units. This could represent the use by the Germans of various nationalities in some of the troops manning the Atlantic Wall. The difficulty with this approach is that some of the major countries in the standard game and more so the Gold expansion, do not have minor allies of their own. However, if we examine history it is possible to argue the case for some allies to exist. I do hope I will not upset any nationals from the countries I am going to use but history is not always clear cut. Thus in the case of Italy she had occupied and colonised Libya since the beginning of the 20th Century and some of the units she deployed in the North African campaign were locally raised in Libya. In the standard game (Axis High Tide scenario)Thailand is indicated as being Allied but occupied by Japan but in reality there was a secret protocol with Japan that Japan would assist the Thais to regain the provinces that the UK had taken from them. Thus you could argue at this stage that Thailand was an Axis ally. The Soviet Union is another major that has no minor ally but in this case it should be relatively easy to identify one of the many entities in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to be given status as a minor ally. Once minor allies have been identified for all countries then the unit characteristics can be fine tuned in other areas as well as garrisons to allow a new range of unit types such as convoy escort sloops ( e.g. from Canada), fighter bomber aircraft (the Finnish Fokker), light cruisers (New Zealand), older style BBs with less mobility (no obvious nation but the opportunity exists). I have not examined many of the modded scenarios so I would be interested to know if anybody has already used this approach to add further variety to the units in the game. Regards Mike

I guess that there must have been a previous version or versions of the Strategic Command forum. I used to post on it in relation to the early version of SC and the forum s/w will not let me use my usual name of mcaryf so I am probably still registered as an old user but with a defunct email address so I cannot check my old password. The reason for this preamble is because you might have had discussions before about the design decisions in the standard map I am raising in this post if so I apologise for revisiting an old topic. I waited to comment until I had downloaded the demo version of the Gold map to see if it has the same map design approach and it appears that it does. My concern with the map design is that it appears as if it is trying to engineer the historic outcome in some situations. An example of this is the representation of Midway, which in reality is little more than a speck in the ocean, but is given three hexes so it can potentially accommodate 3 units which makes it harder for the Axis to approach by sea and capture it. On the other hand Malta, which in reality covers many times the area of Midway, is given a single hex thus limiting the ability of the Axis to mount an airborne operation. Giving Malta two hexes (e.g. hex 80,27 acting as Gozo with a notional road link as used for the Solomons) would have the additional benefit of allowing air battles to be fought there as well as leaving room for a garrison and the Axis would still need to devote attacks to reducing the strength of Malta before attempting to land. Were these two different approaches to real geography taken deliberately with the historic outcomes for these islands in mind? Regards Mike

My general experience of wargame AI has not been that it is always too aggressive. AI faults have often been a failure to protect key positions. I like the way that SC seems to use its events mechanism related to the proximity of opposing forces to get homeguard type units to activate. Regards Mike

Hi Bill I agree it is possible but the probability of 3 x 20% chances happening in succession is 1 in 125. However, I have actually modded my game so that it is 1 in 10 thus reducing the odds of 3 successful evasions in sequence to 1 in a 1,000. My thought was that the evasion routines might somehow get hooked into registering a second and third success if the first attack was evaded. Regards Mike

Hi Big Al I guess there are various approaches but for the time being I am only really looking at ways in which I can use the editor to add to the realism because mods to the game engine itself are much less likely to happen. Another realism type edit is to give DDs some chance of evasion when defending against naval attack. They did resort to smoke screens and the like when confronted with bad odds such as when the Italian BBs attacked a British Malta convoy. Also they were typically faster over short distances than for example a WW2 BB so should be able to run away. In the standard game there seems to be a confusion of speed versus range thus DDs are given longer ranges than for example a CV but this is really quite wrong as they needed refuelling at sea to stay the course with a CV and this was not always possible in some weather conditions. It is also possible to look at individual country edits as the Italian Navy concentrated on faster Cruisers because they knew they might face a much stronger British Navy. Thus it might be sensible to give Italian cruisers some level of defensive evasion to simulate the sort of tactical withdrawals that they actually mounted. I have tried giving DDs a defensive evasion possibility of 20% but, when the situation arose in a game I am playing against the AI, one DD evaded 3 attacks from BBs in succession. Unless I am misunderstanding how evasion is calculated that should be less than a 1 in a 100 chance. Regards Mike

Hi Bill and Hubert I tried it again in a more controlled way and it did work with a reduced cost and build time. I think it makes sense as a game option because being sunk in port but then raised again was quite a common fate for Battleships in WW2. Regards Mike

Hi Hubert Thanks for trying it, I had set rebuild at 70% so perhaps that defaulted upwards for some reason as I could ONLY rebuild the sunk ships at full price. I have modded my test game to 50% and will try again. One more question about BBs but actually more general. I am experimenting with giving BBs two strikes. This is not unreasonable as of course they had secondary guns pretty well as powerful as those of a CA. So far it is working rather well and helping BBs to punch their real weight against lesser ships such as CAs and DDs. I have seen that the AI does make use of the two strikes but in general does it consider the real capability of a modified unit so for example would it know that a BB unit could take on 2 x DD or CA? On a similar basis if I make the Japanese bombers more effective against ships (think of Betty's and Nells carrying torpedoes and sinking POW) but less useful against strategic targets would the AI realise that it should use the unit differently? To be honest I am expecting you to say "no" because it would be a very impressive piece of artificial intelligence if it did! Following up a suggestion I made in the Decision Events thread about the possibility of using Events to create real Artic convoys for the Allies, I have now simulated this. I made Iceland a Soviet minor country and gave it the opportunity to build very low cost Tank Groups (40 MPP) and Corps (30 MPP) modded to have higher mobility to simulate lendlease lorries for infantry. I then stuck some of these at half strength in the production queue at monthly intervals and placed one already loaded into a transport off the coast of Iceland. I made the AV for Iceland a poor option by reducing its AP to 1 so these units should not be useful for invasions. This should work fine to allow a human player to try real convoys and could give rise to interesting battles with Tirpitz, some subs and extra aircraft which I based in Norway. The Axis player can force a battle if they wish by blocking the one sea square path to Murmansk/Archangel to ensure the convoy cannot just flash by. Unfortunately when I set the AI to play the Allies it just unloaded the transport unit in the UK where I presume it would be marooned with no supply. I guess it does not fully understand about non-cooperating Allies! As you may have gathered I am really enjoying the opportunities provided by the editor (Japanese Rocket units modified to be Kamikaze planes next!). Regards Mike

I may be a bit premature in making suggestions as I have only recently started with SCGC although I played SC a good few years ago. I have also only been playing Axis High Tide. However, please feel free to tell me if the idea could not work. I hope it is also relevant to all those of you already switched to Gold. My immediate impression is that the Arctic Convoy System is not very involving for the Allied player when in reality there were life and death decisions to be made. There is also not enough impact or realism as a relatively small number of MPPs get moved and they take a while to produce units and could even be used to make bog standard infantry rather than the tanks or planes or lorries that were typically shipped. Just as an example the destruction of convoy PQ17 resulted in the loss of the equivalent of most of an SC tank group and an SC fighter group as well as a lot of other materiel and ships. Thus an impact in game terms of at least 400 MPPs. My proposal to address this is that the British and/or US player should be given a monthly decision event that would create a Soviet tank group or motorised infantry loaded on a transport somewhere in the vicinity of Iceland (game mechanics might need a notional Soviet owned port to be available in Iceland). I guess that plane units do not go on transports so unfortunately it could not be one of those. The player then has the task to form up a genuine convoy escort to try to get this unit or several of them if the player waits for subsequent months either to Archangel/Murmansk or by a very long but maybe safer route to the Persian Gulf or even Vladivostok. The risks are high for the player to attempt the transit so perhaps the purchase price of the units should be made very attractive e.g. 30 MPPs for a half strength unit. If the player opts to try the unit convoy then the normal convoy route could be suspended (not essential if difficult to implement) and this would help free up MPPs to pay for the unit. Actual Lend Lease shipments to the Arctic were deployed in the Northern battles for Moscow and Leningrad and those via the Persian Gulf were used heavily at Stalingrad (especially the US trucks to help position the Soviet units that achieved the encirclement). Thus this proposal adds more than one element of extra realism. I am not sure whether the AI could cope with this event when playing as the Allies but I presume events can be structured so that the AI never selects those that it could not handle. The addition of real convoys for the Allies would also make a difference to the Axis player as they would need to retain warships and planes in Norway to attempt interdiction. regards Mike

Hi Bill f4 does work so many thanks for that. Hi Big Al Sorry for diverting your thread I will post any other stuff in a new one. Regards Mike

Hi Hubert Yes it does it whatever the recent state of loading the system. Unfortunately I have just had a report that that particular PC has been infected with a sasser virus. I am dealing with that at the moment and I suppose the behaviour may change after that. Unfortunately I have 3 hard drives on that PC so it is going to take many hours to run the Microsoft Malicious S/W removal tool. The failure to close is just annoying rather than serious - a bit like the Sasser virus. Thank you for your sympathy. Do you have any comments on the idea of making it possible to rebuild BBs sunk in harbour? Regards Mike

Hi Big Al I am relatively new to modern SC having last played the original game some 5 or 6 years ago. Thus I regret it will take me a while to familiarise myself with the mechanics of the new standard games before trying your mod (by the way does it work only with Gold or with 1.07 of SC GC WW2?). However I did notice in your post a mention of making the AI play itself. Is that possible in the pre-gold versions and if so how do you do it? Regards Mike

Dear All I have newly acquired the Excalibur (UK) version of SC GF modded to 1.07 and am having a minor difficulty in that the Exit button will not fully terminate the program. I get the Exit credits but then the program lingers in my system until I use Task Manager to delete it. I have Win XP SP3 - any suggestions? On a more game related topic I am really enjoying the Editor feature and I have been trying to make it possible to rebuild BBs and other ships sunk in port. After all the Italians rebuilt most of the BBs sunk at Taranto as did the USN for Pearl Harbor and the Brits for the BBs sunk by Italian frogmen. I set the rebuild marker in the editor and made the build cost 70% and time 50%. I have found that the BBs do now reappear in my build list but without any reduction in price. Has anybody else tried this approach with better success? Regards Mike