hoolaman

I think adding "classic empire" in there would be a good idea, as well as adding "empires of steel" as a link in the forums of the classic empire game site that is still on the webs for free download.

I can only find 110deg left/right. ie total 220deg rotation, which makes sense with the antennae attached at the rear corners. Anything less would be useless and silly really, 55deg left right is more like the range of a turretless afv like a stug and I don't think Germany has fielded one of those in a while.

Wasn't there something in one of the patches about firing HE at BMP's?

From a PBEM red on red slugfest. I had a few of these firing on hull-down vehicles.

Sounds like the precursor of the history channel.

Its all very well to say that the individual can set it that way, but there is some valid argument that the "official" rules should be the gold standard, and if they need some tweaking then maybe that should be done. Every player playing some subtle variation on the official ruleset makes for a dilution of effort that means nobody is on the same page. Just IMHO, though I love the rule editor!

A few things I've been thinking of: * Have "No resources" able to be saved in the ruleset rather than an optional adjustment to a ruleset. * An option to have no resources appear in the sea. The food balance on land is a bit different so a land heavy map will see shortage of food. Also it is tactically interesting and kind of realistic to have oceans as transport routes but have no intrinsic value. * Persistent PBEM games posted and open on the server for anyone to join. I'm not sure of the security implications of this, but it would be the best to use the MP lobby as a place to post and host PBEM games that anyone could join whether the host is online or not.

I've uploaded a new tidied up version of these rules. Unit descriptions are redone. Fighter functions as a fighter bomber multi purpose air units and can attack all units and cities. Production costs are slightly increased. (They are meant to be very fast, like an army every turn or two and nothing takes longer than 10 turns to build.) Tweaks to Battleships, Cruisers, Destroyers, Subs for cost, defense and attack. There won't be repairs, turn replay speed of x5 is purely a suggestion, any map size will work but maybe a larger one will be better, the AI hits pretty hard with quickly built units and transports in this game and you need to be on the ball to avoid getting flogged.

Hi Plugger I agee about the pricepoint, $30 tops is appropriate I reckon. The price would be a barrier to sales as any economics textbook will tell you. I also agree about the multiplayer. Persistent PBEM games freely available to join on the server might help here. I don't agree about battlefront marketing only complex sims though. Strategic Command is happy here and games like down in flames are simple fun too.

So I finally bought the game... I've uploaded a ruleset that is intended to capture the simplicity of the original empire game. It currently is a stripped back version of the WW2 ruleset included with the game. Available as a share in the game menu. Please note I never played empire until I downloaded the original DOS version today! I think the original plays a lot more like civilisation 1 than EoS, but EoS captures the total war spirit of the original I think, and I know the game is versatile enough with its editor to play almost any combat style. I haven't done a great deal of testing of these rules, so feedback is strongly encouraged. The ruleset should be played with no resources, and I'd strongly suggest increasing the replay speed to x5 to crank out those turns, and play on a default smallish map. Features: * Minimal unit types as in the old DOS "empire" - The only ground unit is "Army", the only air unit is "fighter". (I'm tossing up whether to add an armour unit). * Several types of ships including subs and carriers. * No tech Tree * No buildings * All unit production costs reduced to ~1/3 of original. * Fighter movement ranges increased significantly. PS. I post this in the main forum, the modding forum has 1 post?! Kill it!

Ok so I did it. I bought the game. I was meaning to buy, I have money, I got authorisation from my finance minister and so here it is. My first task was to make a beer and pretzels ruleset. It is uploaded as a beta version on the share server in the game.

I don't really know if anyone would use it, but it might have some appeal for casual players. A couple of promotional ideas is to latch onto the empire classic heritage of the game. Maybe putting a link in the wiki entry for empire or posting on the www.classicempire.com website? Also maybe a basic "empire remake" ruleset might get some interest. I'm thinking one class of army, battleship, fighter etc. etc.

I really intended to buy EoS but still haven't for some reason. I did flog the beta demo pretty hard and ended up a little tired of playing. I think the problem might be the "quick game's a good game" issue. Playing a game just takes too damn long, really long! I have a one year old child and a long commute, though EoS is beer & pretzels on one hand, it is slow and complex on the other. Building ships takes too long, moving ships takes too long. I find my games end in stalemates of ships slowly dribbling out of the factories. No way I will ever sit there and finish an online multiplayer game at 4 hours + in game play time. PBEM is definately a must have for me, and the implementation seems to be a good one. An alternative quick-play ruleset might be a good idea? Can you turn off FoW? As far as marketing goes, has the game been reviewed anywhere? Shouldn't battlefront be fighting that good fight for you?

So do you mean identical forces in a single game, or different forces played twice and switching sides? I guess you mean identical forces, if so it becomes something different, a wargame that really plays like chess, abandoning all pretence at a realistic simulation. There is something to be said for this in a tournament situation, I vaguely remember reading about CMBO tourneys where ther was some elaborate weighted average mathematical equation of scenario scores to get a winner. That is never going to be perfect, people may scrape into the finals by having better forces in battle X, so mirrored forces and sacrificing FOW is the only way to show who is the better player. You do run the risk of people gaming the engine for a win if they are more experienced players. For a bit of fun I think it is better to go the "vastly-ahistorical" route to create a mission that plays balanced. In CMSF terms think green US Marines VS crack Republican guards or something.

I played a scenario off the repository that came from ostfront, El Incidente. The briefing was in spanish which was a bit unhelpful because it is difficult to extract the text to translate it, but it was a very good balanced PBEM. In fact I got flogged as Blue which is rare. (Not me getting flogged, but blue getting flogged).

or "Hey man, I need the inside skinny, is your book good or is it sh1t?"

That first turn artillery barrage is a real gamey pain in the butt. The times a first turn no-delay barrage on a known setup zone is realistic would be few and far between. Is this a quick battle?

Completely OT, but nor were the white guys at that time. They were British subjects one and all, then citizens one and all in 1948.

Cool man happy playing.

It does look a lot like one guy has an RPG and one has an AK47 that they are trying to conceal, actually if I had to bet my life on it, I would be pulling the triger too. So it's not like they just imagined it. The moronic radio chatter doesn't really bother me, they really believed they were looking at baddies there. But the picture they gave across the radio to get permission to fire was not really what was there on the ground. 5-6 guys with AK-47s? Really? And the other "weapons" were cameras. Shooting the van is another thing entirely, they were just itching to blow it up, but where was the threat? It reminds me of the condition dubbed "scenario fulfillment" which was often mentioned in the shooting down of the Iranian ariliner by the US missile boat in 1988. The crew got so focussed on going through an air attack drill that they ignored or didn't look for contrary evidence that the aircraft on their screens was an enemy fighter. The sad thing is this probably happened once a week in Iraq around that time, but only when journalists or white people are involved do we hear about it at all.

Well I took it to be an approximation for the sake of illustration, but since you asked: If you are talking about a chemical solution by volume which is a slightly different real world situation, for dilute solutions the solute is considered completely integral within the volume of water, so to double the concentration you'd go from 1g/1000mL to 1g/500mL and evaporate half the water volume.

It took me about 5 minutes to work out the answer as stated, but most of that time was spent wondering what was wrong. I think the unintuitiveness of the problem is because the wording leads you to assume the more believable proposition that the berries lost 1% of their water weight. You want to think that the berries have gone from 99:1 to 98:1 and the other 1% water is gone. Instead the definition of the berries on day two is not related at all to the berries on day one. If you want to be picky you could also argue that it isn't made clear that it is a mass/mass ratio. Yes I find that a very good explanation, though I am a chemist, so maybe thats just me.

Now if there was a dedicated WWII game forum, we wouldn't have to wonder whether somebody is talking about 1944 or 2004.

I've got the right email in my store account, but the wrong email in my helpdesk account. I can't see an option to change my email or account details within the helpdesk, so AFAICT I am stuck with a wrong email? Anything I am missing?

Well the solution of not using a feature because it so bad is not exactly a solution, but I agree with you. They perhaps should have just left qbs out completely.