Bill101

Resources not connected by rail to the capital do not operate at their peak efficiency, therefore it is not so much the case that you don't get any MPPs from them, just that you don't get as many as you would if they had been connected by rail. Typically the difference will be between 50% efficiency without a rail connection, up to a maximum of 100% with. Ground troops move operationally by railway, therefore the place they board the train and where you want them to move to must be connected by rail. Otherwise they've got a long march ahead of them! Road movement is simply quicker than off-road movement, plus supply is better on roads too. I hope this helps. Bill

It's a great feature and makes campaign design a lot easier, but you will have to double check the map it creates and clean it up afterwards. It's still much easier than creating everything from scratch!

Once per turn I believe. At least I don't recall ever having better results in the winter than in the summer.

Oil is abstracted in the usual way (i.e. as per previous games in the SC series) but it will be even more important to hold the oil wells than before because they are going to be worth significantly more than they were in the European scenarios. So I think we'll get the result that we are aiming for: if you don't hold many oil wells then you won't be likely to win the game.

Funnily enough I always judge a general book on WWII by how they treat the Polish campaign, and if I see this comment I am also inclined to return it straight back to the shelf. Is this a book on France 1940 or have I got it confused with a different one? If so I have read part of it but got distracted by other things. Could you do a brief summary?

We'll definitely be posting some more screen shots in due course, but at the moment I'm busy making some amendments to the scenario so I think that posting some more right now could be a little premature. I'm a little up to my ears in work at the moment so when things have settled down a bit we'll see what we can do!

It will vary a little depending on country and time, and how successful some of those countries are at preventing Japanese invasions, but it has the potential to be massive, especially the USA's. I can't really be any more specific than that at the moment. You'll have to wait and see!

You will definitely be able to try out different tactics in some of the scenarios that come with the game - including of course Peleliu and Iwo Jima.

Don't worry, I didn't take it negatively at all, far from it!

If we take the convoy route from the USA to the UK as an example, once the convoy is operating the allied player can decide what proportion of US income they would like to give to the UK. In the game, go to the convoy map during an allied turn and click on the US flag. You can then, using the up and down icons, amend the number of MPPs the US gives the UK every turn.

Thanks for the suggestions SeaMonkey. I'll review the islands, particularly those east of Kwajalein as there is something in what you're saying. I actually do welcome comments because I like things to be as accurate as possible, though unfortunately something often has to give in the search for playability. If we can keep those sacrifices to the minimum then all the better. Some parts of the map, especially Japan, have already changed quite significantly since the screenshots were released.

It's a bit hard to say really... you've just got to consider the options and go with what seems best. It will take a while to get units from the USA to Iran, so Europe might be better, but sending them to the Middle East might be more exciting and open up opportunities to hit Soviet income (i.e. their oil wells) which you wouldn't have otherwise. As to opening up a new front, whether in Finland or elsewhere, that requires quite a few resources being available to do so, but if you've got the troops then give it a go.

Thanks Xwormwood, I'm really glad you've enjoyed playing it. Matthew deserves all the credit for designing it, and we had great fun playtesting this one too!

A convoy route can be set up to work once a country has surrendered. It's exactly the same as setting up a "normal" convoy route, but you just need to set the #TRANSFER_ID= the country you want to receive the convoy. Once they have conquered the country where the convoy originates, they will receive the convoy and its MPPs. I'm sure that A234 is right about Norway having this as I've definitely seen a convoy route from Norway to Britain in some of my games.

John, I'm not being hostile, far from it (admittedly it's hard to tell on a bulletin board which is so different from discussion face to face in real life, and my post could seem like that) but I'm not. The point is that SC3 (if there is one) might be tile based or it might be hex based, but the main thing is that whatever it is, a lot of the features that you'll see in SC2 are going to be in there, and that's the reason why SC2 should be the starting point of discussion. That's it, plain and simple, and I certainly don't want to put anyone off posting.

JJ, do you really think that Hubert's going to throw away four years of work on SC2 to start off with SC1 as his baseplate again? There are so, so, so many features in SC2 that weren't in SC1 that it's improving SC2 that needs to be discussed. For these ideas to really be of any relevance they need to take SC2 in all its incarnations as the starting point, otherwise a lot of the discussion is a waste of time because it's discussing issues that have already been rectified since the days of SC1, and also because those of us who have kept up with the times find it very hard to see the wood from the trees in this thread (or should I say the relevant from the irrelevant?). Should SC3 be an improved version of SC2 but with hexes would be a far more relevant topic of discussion than some of those I've seen in this thread, or a question of how to improve upon SC2's modelling of strategic bombing, the re-building of destroyed units, sub attacks on convoy routes, or the game's diplomatic model etc., etc. That said, there's still plenty of room for improvement in SC2, of course there is, and perhaps a little of the spirit of SC1 is a good thing, but don't overdo it. It's all a question of the right, and fairly easy to implement, ideas coming up. I'm not saying that there aren't any good ideas in this thread, but I'm not going back to SC1. What some people seem to forget is that part of the reason for the massive buzz with SC1 was that it was something many of us had been hoping for for years. It came, we played and had great fun. Much as I love SC2 it is hard to recapture that original excitement we felt at discovering something new, but everytime I open up SC1 (I do still play it) I am reminded of why SC2 is so much better.

I'm perfectly happy with tiles, prefer them in fact as they look better than a map covered with hexes.

I said no once and lived to regret it. Perhaps if there could be a chance of some of the component parts of the Vichy territories surrendering off their own backs to the Germans then this could work, i.e. they follow the lead of Paris surrendering and do so too, without the need for an invasion. But this would have to be a % chance, not a certainty. On the other hand, what if saying no gave the Germans Rommel and the Afrika Korps in North Africa? Would this work and does it seem reasonable enough?

This might make me a heretic Kuni, but I also like the tiles and before you say anything, I've been wargaming for what feels like thousands of years... There are many other factors which determine whether or not something works, and the question of tiles or hexes is certainly not the most important factor. You've really said as much above: it wasn't the hexes alone that made SC1 so addictive, we'd all have been hooked whatever it had used!

It might be a good idea to say which platform you're using, as that might help Hubert to solve your problem when he sees your post.

Fred, do you mean that the whole of Poland was annexed, or just the eastern half? John, did you really mean to put those words in the square brackets in your post. Had me in stitches, but hopefully that's not what you really meant to say?

I've generally found that when the winter strikes I'm hard pushed to reinforce all the Axis units affected, so that a canny Soviet player should be able to take advantage somewhere. Plus there's the loss in readiness and morale to take into account.

Actually it was a different Bill, Bill Macon who deserves all the credit for the A3R mod. I can only suggest spending a little time browsing the web for OOBs - Wikipedia might have something? As long as you start a new file in the editor, nothing can go wrong! I found that most things came very easily, and you can always post any specific questions here.

I would suggest just having a good play with the editor first to familiarise yourself with lots of its features. After that, you can start creating a real map. I don't know enough about the war to comment on how big it should be, but really the map will need to focus on the areas to be fought over. That means that US, British etc bases will probably have to be part of South Korea. Yes, you can import a map - in the extras folder there should be a map generator exe. This is a really useful tool but the map it creates will have to be cleaned up afterwards, and is only really useful for coastal outlines anyway. If you have a good map to use as your guide, an idea of scale and a ruler to hand, it is fairly easy to just draw the map straight into the editor. It'll take a few hours either way! I'd like to see this!

It would be good, I just hadn't noticed this thread before! It probably won't interest people as much as WWII, but I for one like the variety and also a chance to learn something about new wars that I wasn't very familiar with before - and the Korean War is one of them. Are you thinking of making a Korean War mod for PDE, or just hoping that one will be done?