Bill101

I think it's all possible, and as it stands there is nothing stopping anyone from making a campaign that covers a very long period using the Global engine, but it would require some thought and a lot of script writing to get it to work properly. It's certainly good to see that the prospect of getting the very best SC2 game and editor yet is getting the creative juices flowing!

Hi Conan It is possible to import data from previous scenarios but there will be some work involved in correcting the scripts and some other things, simply due to all the enhancements that are added on with each release. So, the answer is yes but it will take some time, plus of course given all the new features such as the ability to add, deduct or transfer money using Decision Events, I'm sure that importing a map would also get the creative juices flowing while you implement everything necessary to have the scenario run in the Global game. This game is going to be a modders delight, so keep plenty of free time spare for both playing and designing!

Hi AZGungho Will you be seeing anything of historical interest while you're in Burma? I'm just thinking it would be great to know if you do get to see anything. Bill

Hi JJD One big change that has been introduced is that units no longer get stuck like that, which makes the game a lot more fun in areas of rough terrain and poor supply. Significant changes from my point of view, and I'm bound to have forgotten some, include the ability to easily see where enemy partisans are likely to appear, more pop ups providing more information than before, quicker graphics, and decision events which allow for far more flexibility during the game. The Battle of the Atlantic is much more prominent than in previous games too, meaning that Germany can virtually bring the UK economy to its knees if it chooses to pursue this strategy vigorously, and the UK fails to counter it effectively. As to the Global scenarios themselves, there is so much more strategic scope than in all previous games that I doubt that any two games will be alike. Exhausting the list of possible strategies is going to take a lot of games!

Hi Amadeus I'm glad you like the Manual! With regard to changing the convoy routes, the scripts only require Sweden to be friendly to the Axis (i.e. Axis aligned), rather than actually having joined the Axis. Bill

Big Al is a playtester too!

Hi Geofighter From looking at your list I think that this game ticks pretty much all your boxes, and a 1936 campaign is definitely moddable and shouldn't take you too long to create. The editor is fairly easy to use and very flexible indeed, plus I'm sure that once the game is released you won't be the only one interested in playing a 1936 scenario. As to the release date, I guess it should be pretty soon, keep checking this website or if you preorder the game then you'll receive an email announcement a few hours before it's actually released. Bill

Any of the above should work fine.

All the patches are listed here so that you can check to see whether or not you or your opponents have the most up to date patch: http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_versions&Itemid=221#Strategic%20Command%202%20-%20Weapons%20and%20Warfare

A bit like this perhaps? http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?p=1180537#post1180537

A Brief Guide to using the SC2 Map Generating Tool So, you’d like to design a campaign but want to avoid as much of the work of creating the map as possible? Here’s the solution: the Strategic Command 2 map generating tool, MapGen.exe! The SC2 MapGen.exe was designed some years ago by one Michael Avraamides, and it enables you to create basic tile maps quickly and easily from a bitmap, providing a good starting point for a new scenario. MapGen.exe’s main use is in defining coastlines, so it won’t be of much use in designing a land-locked map, but it will be of great help in designing maps of most parts of the world, and has been used to design a significant number of the campaign maps used in the SC series, including most of those in our Pacific release. The map it produces won’t be perfect and it will need some fine tuning, but overall it should give you a good starting point for designing the scenario, thus hopefully saving you a lot of time in the initial map creation phase. Getting Started In the Extras folder of whichever version of SC2 you are using, you should find a Map Generator folder. Within this folder there are a number of files that are needed for the MapGen.exe, not all of which we need to look at but they do all need to be kept within the same folder for this program to work. The way the MapGen.exe works is that it takes the source.bmp, a full color (24 bit) bmp file, and when the map is generated it converts all areas in that file that are pure blue (0x0000FF, or 0,0,255 in the rgb spectrum) into water, while any other colour will become land. The MapGen.exe converts the colors within the source.bmp into a text file containing data that can, at the click of a button, be turned into an SC2 map. By way of example we are going to create a campaign using the map of Europe and North Africa contained within the source.bmp file that comes with the game (see below for creating new images to help you design maps of other parts of the world, or at different scales). Preliminaries 1) If you already have the editor open, please close it as we will not need it until later in this process. 2) To easily follow the instructions below, please ensure that File Extensions are visible in the Map Generator folder. To do this: Go to Tools Folder Options Untick the box “Hide Extensions for known file types” Click Apply Click OkThe file names should now look like this: Using the MapGen.exe 1) In the Map Generator folder, run MapGen.exe by simply double clicking it. 2) A new file should appear after a few seconds in the Map Generator folder called map.txt. This file contains the information that we are going to need to import the generated data into the SC2 Editor. 3) Open map.txt in notepad. 4) The number on the first line is the number of columns. The second line is the number of rows. Make a note of these numbers as we will need them in a minute. 5) Open the editor and start a new scenario. 6) The editor will now ask you how many columns and rows your map is to be. Input the numbers we made a note of earlier, rounding to the nearest even number. 7) Press F5 on your keyboard. The editor will now open a file browser window. Open the Extras folder and then the Map Generator subfolder, and double click on map.txt. You should now see a new tile map created from the data in map.txt, as in the example below: 8) Now review the map that has been created. The most important thing to consider is whether or not this map is the right size for the scenario you have in mind. Test this by creating a few countries, placing some resources and units on the map, and then judge by how they look whether or not the map looks pretty close to the size you’re after (please see your game Manual for more information on using the Editor). 9) If the map does appear to be the right size, save the file and exit, then open up the game itself and start a Hotseat game of this scenario, just testing out a little combat and movement so that you can gauge whether or not your initial impressions were sound. 10) If you are happy with the map size after your Hotseat test, exit the game and reopen this scenario in the editor. Now is the time to start adding some more detail to the map, and I would strongly recommend testing and retesting the map size at every stage of the scenario’s development. 11) In developing your scenario, you will need to have an Atlas (or web based equivalents) handy as you clean up the coastlines and any inland bodies of water. This can take a while but everything should be in approximately the right place already, and designing and correcting the map really does help you to focus on what are the essential features that need to be included in the map, and what can be excluded. Changing the Map contained within the source.bmp Before making any changes to the source.bmp you are using, I would strongly recommend saving an original copy. That way if you do make a mistake or regret a change you made to it, then you can always start over again. Resizing the Map To amend the size of the map, you will need to use a bitmap editing program such as MS Paint, and the map size can be changed just by resizing the source.bmp. Enlarge it to make the campaign map bigger, or reduce it to make it smaller, it’s as simple as that. Now run through the steps listed above once again. In the example below, I increased the size of the source.bmp by 175% before generating this map. Where the previous one was far too small to create a playable map, this one is significantly closer to being right, and it took only a few minutes to change. If it’s still not quite big enough, experiment some more by resizing the source.bmp and then going through the process above once again. Generally, the detail contained within the campaign map will be more accurate the larger the size of the map you create (i.e. increasing the source.bmp by 250% will give a more accurate map than the one it creates at the default size). Changing the Image used If you don’t want to use the image that is contained within the source map, you can change the image in the source.bmp to a map of whatever area of the world you are interested in. If you want to use the world map that can be found in the Samples folder, rename the source.bmp to something else (e.g. sourceoriginal.bmp), copy the world map file, paste it into the Map Generator folder, and rename it as source.bmp. If neither of the sample maps included with the game are of any use, a quick search of the internet will probably come up with a good number of maps that can be used. Save the image you want to use to your computer, amend it in a graphics program so that all water is changed to pure blue (0x0000FF, or 0,0,255 in the rgb spectrum) and save it as a true color (24 bit) bitmap file with the name source.bmp, and place it in the Extras folder. You are now ready to start creating your own original maps, and hopefully some cracking scenarios too! Note: This is an amended version of the notes Michael Avraamides wrote for the MapGen.exe, and Michael Avraamides’s notes can be found in the Readme.txt file contained within the Map Generator folder. His notes do contain some more technical information than is found above, so they may prove useful if you do encounter any issues. Special thanks to Snowstorm for help with proofreading and testing these instructions out!

Hi Bo It does, because it helps reduce the cost for operating and transporting units. Therefore it's a useful tech for most countries, perhaps less so for the USSR than most of the others. But even there it can help if they need to operate from north to south or vice versa to deal with a German offensive or to launch a surprise one of their own.

One issue with having naval units that can travel for miles and miles in a single turn is that it really changes the dynamics of naval strategy, especially in the Pacific, taking away the need to carefully plan your deployments with a view to future areas of operations. For example, if the Japanese send a large number of ships to operate off Guadalcanal, then it is an opportunity for the US to carry out some landings and naval operations in the Marianas. But this opportunity would not exist if all ships were able to move significantly much faster than they can in the game. Therefore, at the strategic level the options open to the players are pretty realistic, which ultimately is the result we're aiming at.

Hi Paul There is one problem with this suggestion, in that if the railway network has been either cut off or badly damaged then operating the garrison out of the resource won't be possible, and players will find it rather frustrating if they can't replace that weak garrison unit with a fully armed Panzergruppe raring for battle. So we would also need to come up with an idea on how to resolve this issue, and perhaps garrisons will have to have some movement ability? In the Pacific game we did introduce Japanese Corps with weak stats that are mobilized at various points in the game to act as garrisons in the Pacific islands and a few other places such as Hong Kong. Japan also has its Home Guard which is activated when the Allies approach the home islands, the intention here being to achieve some of the effect of garrisons, i.e. key areas are protected, while also avoiding increasing Japan's offensive potential too much early in the game. In the Global game I think there is less need for divisional level garrisons than before, and some countries have Home Guards that mobilize in response to enemy advances, so although we may not have totally removed your desire for such a unit, I think you will probably find there is less call for it than before. But it's an interesting discussion nonetheless!

Hehe, I've been a little busy testing a product that I think you'll all be interested in. But as soon as I get a chance I'll draft something up on the Map Generator.

Snowstorm, I have used this tool quite a few times so please feel free to drop me a line at Bill@furysoftware.com if you do get stuck.

Don't worry Bo, although SeaMonkey has definitely got the right attitude towards planning Japan's war, I've not had to sit there playing Japan with a calculator in one hand! But a little thought is definitely required, perhaps the most long term planning that we've yet seen in the SC series. Yet just keeping in mind that in 2-3 years Japan will find herself at war with the UK and USA will help you significantly in making the right decisions. I cannot really say whether or not Japan will necessarily be stronger in 1941 than historically, because to a significant degree that will be of your own making, and we all have the benefit of hindsight which the Japanese (and everyone else!) lacked in 1939. As a result we probably have significantly more options available to us, so in that respect Japan will be stronger, and the actual outcome will probably vary quite considerably from game to game.

Hubert's comments are spot on, and I just want to add that Japan needs to start planning for Operation Z right from the start. There is a fine line between investing too many resources into offensives in China, and too much in buying too many carriers and carrying out too much research. In fact, it's a good military problem that will undoubtedly bring out some interesting and innovative gameplay.

They can, but you wouldn't really want them to be there in the long run because their defence values are pretty low, unless of course you've fully upgraded them, but even so having engineers holding the line is normally an act of desperation. They also can't start to build any new fortifications if they are adjacent to the enemy.

I agree, because I think of a unit on the map as being a force with combat potential, so its destruction in the game doesn't so much represent its literal destruction, as a reduction in its combat potential to the point where it is unable to conduct any significant operations until it has been rebuilt from the cadres and new recruits in the rear.

To a certain degree the need for garrisons depends on the scale of a scenario, and the length of time covered by a turn in the game. So, for instance where a turn equals just a day or a few days, I would agree that a garrison unit could buy time and might be a worthwhile feature. However, in the Global game a turn equals a fortnight, and it is very unlikely that a small unit would be able to hold off a Corps or Army for that amount of time. Bastogne is of course an exception to the rule, but even here the defending force was both better quality and larger than the garrison equivalent I think is being suggested here. From having played the Global scenarios quite extensively, the situation is that both sides need to prioritise and plan ahead, and providing they plan well they generally have enough for the most important areas. One tip is that leaving London empty is never a good idea, but then that has always been the case since the days of SC1!

It certainly is, and the changed alliances make this a really different, challenging and fun scenario to play! As we know, neither Hitler nor Stalin were trustworthy people, but this campaign follows the idea that they hoped to benefit more from co-operating than from fighting each other. This is our chance to test out that idea on the battlefield, and it does make for a great game!

The Quick Animation (AI/Replays) is one of my favourites among the new features because it speeds up gameplay quite significantly, and faster turns equals more games!

Hi Tom Have you tried the latest patch in PTO? Only in my own experience, pretty much always where I'm playing as Japanese, I can't remember the last time Japan didn't hold out until the end. Multiplayer certainly works for me in that game, and I think that for multiplayer it's one of my favourites, simply because Japan does face a hard struggle and has to keep on her toes throughout. I'm not the best player either, and in one game where I was Allied I embarrassingly managed to lose all bar one of my US carriers to a massive Japanese carrier attack in 1945. It almost pains me to admit it here!