thewood

Steve, That is probably the best you have done explaining where ToW fits. I think the main issue some people had was all the excitement generated by the hints. Most regulars on this forum had off and on seen the hype over the last three years in what became ToW and I for one was little worried when it turned out that is what the hints were about. I personally thought that there is no way BFC would get involved in what appeared from the outside to be a mess of over-hyped realism. The final announcement was actually a little shocking. I then rationalized that there is no way BFC would not drive some pretty good realism into the game. Then I started seeing things like unusable buildings, shortened ranges, etc. and immediately thought the worst. Someone else said it best when they said CM spoiled us. Every WW2 tactical game released is now compared to CM, fairly or unfairly. CM is one of the few games that struck the balance between realism, abstraction, and innovation. Most regular CMer's probably have an expectation that the next WW2 tactical game from BFC will be an evolution to take CM to the next level. ToW comes into the BFC ecosystem in that light, once again, fairly or unfairly. But using the CC frame of reference does make it a little clearer to me than the CM frame of reference. But I must say, from a perspective that most likely covers a large part of BFC's core audience, I come to BFC for CM-like games and to me all the other games are just peripherals to help BFC stay in business to move CM forward. One thing I would like to point out is that you may think the CM comparison is not justified, but in the old ToW forums (called WWII RTS then I think), they themselves compared WWII RTS to CM and talked about how much more realistic WWII RTS would be. That is where my personal perspective came from. I'm still not sure I will purchase ToW because I never felt satisfied by any of the CC games, but I at least understand a little better what niche BFC is trying to fill. Also, my computer is a year old and looks like it may not be able touch this game. But who knows, peer pressure can be a strange thing.

Moon, I thought people at BFC would know enough of what I was saying about a defensive line to understand that I didn't cram all my people into one building. In a rural environment, the building becomes the anchor or a line. Place a screen out front. Have a heavy weapon and observer in the building. Other infantry place as to cover approaches to building. I hope your not saying that it is better to be in the open or behind a wall than in a house during the battle. Where is the first place soldiers run to during a battle...a building. As I said in an earlier post, I have no problem with anyone saying that with a high-end graphics engine, we just couldn't get infantry in buildings. I'm not happy about it and will probably hold off on purchase because it is the kind abstraction I can't play with. On the other hand, I think its kind strange to try to rationalize it as not an important part of any battle, regardless of how infantry handle other terrain.

What happened with SPWAW recently? It had a good scenario and map editor from the beginning. It always lacked an OOB editor until a few years after its release. I really don't care too much about OOB editting as long as I have faith in the developer doing some decent research and giving enough variety to do more than a three month period in a specific region. btw, you're welcome.

Now that is long overdue

And if they didn't give you the ability to create you would be crying that the game has no replay value. Game makers can't win... </font>

Just a comment about sounding negative. I own Squad Assault and POA2, as well as several games recommended by people on this forum. Games with a lot of potential but never really lived up to the "realism" or hype that was claimed. I think that gives me the right to be a little skeptical whenever someone claims the ultimate in realism. I also have the right and motivation to say "the emperor has no clothes" at times. PC (which I bought immediately) and ToW fall into that same category, a lot of potential. I think its very healthy for someone to continue to press for an answer on what easy means when someone else stands up and claims something is "easy" when it comes to modding vs. developer supplied. I also think it is healthy to ask questions about why design decisions were made and point out inconsistencies in how different things were approached. I have always appreciated BFC's answers on issues. They have been pretty simple: 1) Our research says it is or isn't so 2) We had to abstract because we didn't have resources to do it 3) We just don't have the resources to go back and do it or fix it. These are very honest answers. We may not like them, but they are the answers. Even the answer about buildings not being usable was honest. They just didn't have time to do it. I'll argue the points on priorties and hope they fix it. I just hope they stick to that answer instead of claiming that buildings don't play a role in rural combat. What I don't like and I don't think we should stand for is the rationalizing that developers do to justify what they did for other reasons. Saying XML is easy to mod may be relatively true for someone who has just coded an entire game, but for your average gamer, its not. Many developers lose sight of this. Yet even when its pointed out, the "easy XML" answer comes out. But in the end, the developer didn't build an easy to use editor because either they were under time pressure or they are trying milk more money out of the game. We, in the end, do that work for them. For example, the easy XML in PC. First you stated that XML was easy. Then you agree that programming resources may not allow you to build a gui editor due the difficulty in doing it. Then you promote the fact that a mere user actually wrote a good editor in less than three weeks. Now tell me, which way is it. It can be claimed that I am twisting the words, but I am honestly confused. I look at the way to build a mildly complex scenario in PC and couldn't get it to run through XML editing. Even though I know better, I wouldn't mind the "we'll get to it later" response if Matrix didn't have a penchant for abandoning projects.

Sorry didn't realize you had that much vested interest. I'll stop discussing it where you may accidently read it.

Yeah, but if you choose a publisher like BFC, you know the bar is going to be pretty high when you say "realism. They will not be compared to Call of Duty, but to CM.

So for the developers of PC, its really about getting the community to do the work for them. That irks me a little. If developing an XML-based gui editor was so easy, they SHOULD do it before release. Programming resources wouldn't matter.

That was exactly my issue with ToW from its first announcement. The hype was around being as realistic for ground combat as IL-2 was for air combat. I took issue with that immediately. I haven't really paid attention to it in a year. It was a little bitter/sweet when I heard the rumors of it being picked by Battlefront. I am concerned about some of the decisions made for ToW to make it easier to develop and sell. But I am heartened that BFC won't let something out that doesn't meet some pretty strict standards of matching hype to reality.

My question stands, if its so easy why don't the developers have a nice gui editor like the user-created-one for PC? I am not complaining that no one has one. I keep hearing how easy it is, so why wouldn't a developer do one to generate buzz for thier game?

I have to ask; If its so easy, why wouldn't the developer just do it? I always just wondered.

I do know that the last iteration of ToW before this was set to make all gun ranges half of real world to better fit the sub maps. Sounded a lot like CC to me. That, at that time, was a killer for me.

I'm not saying that you can't find good defensive positions. I am just a little taken aback that for all the detail talked about in the game, buildings are severly abstracted. If you told me that clouds, trees, roads, grass, barbed wire, crushing grunts, etc. was abstracted, I would competely understand This has nothing to do with CM. I was referencing history as to what drives battle locations and the misconception that buildings are an urban phenomenon and play little role in battles outside cities.

But I think that you are talking abstraction again. Abstracting the shape of a tank in a flight sim only hurts the immersion factor, not the outcome of a battle. Also, this isn't about urban combat. How many battles from Napolean to Iraq were fought over one small farmhouse. They fought not so they could hide behind it. It was fought because the house was the best terrain to fight from. We are both from Maine and I have to ask you how many times you have walked through the woods and stumbled on an old building that would have been great anchor points to a defensive line. Buildings matter more in the rural environs because they dominate the landscape and are the ususally the best cover around. Think about some of the old farm houses sitting on hills in Dexter. If you were looking for cover, would you take your platoon to the hill and sit in the open even if you couldn't get in to the building? The answer is probably no. While you could hide behind the building, you would probably head for the woods to be in cover. This will cause a lot of unrealistic behavior when it comes to selecting places to set up defences. btw, hills are hard to simulate too, so why do them? The answer is they tend to dominate the terrain and entire battles are fought around them. Why simulate individual trees, grass, clouds, sun, etc, when they are abstracted enough to not matter? Buildings as individual objects are critical to even the most rural battles at the tactical-level.

Maybe it was the vagueness of the news and the constant chatter. I am not saying I expected it. I was just hoping. That is legal in most states. Also, no where did I see it listed as either a rural or urban combat simulator, you are correct.

I would imagine that not having infantry able to enter buildings would not make that a good use of map making skills.

I have to agree here. There are some abstractions that are pretty acceptable to wargamers in general. Not using buildings seems like a HUGE omission for a tactical game. Not representing individual soldiers is an abstarction, not counting infantry bullets is an abstraction, not entering or using buildings in a small unit tactical game is an omission. I hear the reasons, like the difficulty in controlling individual soldiers in a building. But that is why many games have left the squad abstracted. Just look at the issues Squad Assault had with occupying buildings. Many CM players have been rather harsh on Panzer Command for not being able to at least knock a building down, along with other pretty serious omissions. I have to believe ToW will get the same treatment. I have been following the development of what became ToW from when the first announcement was mad years ago. I was pretty critical on the forums about the energy focused on graphics over some of the concessions made to playabiltiy, like shortening gun ranges to meet map sizes. I do have more faith that Battlefront can get these issues resolved than any other publisher in this space. PS: I was kind of hoping the "big news" was upgrading CMBO or expanding CMAK.

Do you think people had these same forum debates about theusefulness of armed forces in 1930? If BFC had been releasing CMX2 in 1930, would it have been called CM: Cruiser Tank and located in Poland?

If you want to see a wargame (simulation) that gets spotting and communications right. Get Point of Attack 2. It's implementation of communication and sighting is something I hope CMSF can do. While POA2 has many faults that have only recently corrected, it gives you a great understanding of what a real life task force commander must go through in looking at SITREPs to get a clear picture of not only the OPFOR forces, but freindly forces as well. You can download the new complete manual at HPS and see for yourselves.

How would you like to looking out that little window. Also, don't both of these modern AC's have a long 105 as an option?

My tech support guy said many games that are TCP enabled are having serious issues with the SP2 from Microsoft. Has anyone here upgarded to XP SP2 with or without problems? It seems Microsoft is fixing the security issues with XP by cutting off access to the internet. I also heard Kazaa and some other P2P systems are shut out.

Are those drawings to scale? How can you read the hatch thickness from these drawings. I used to be a draftsman and I am having a hard time getting a thickness reading out of these.

First off, I know nothing about networking. I have two DSL connections in my house: 1 wired, and another with a wireless connection. These are actual seperate lines with different phone numbers. I can play TCP, but caqn't host. I used to be able to host on the wireless network and connect on the other DSL line. I tried it a couple of times just to test it. Haven't tried a host in a year. Now I can't host on either machine. Can someone walk me through what I need to do to get back to hosting.

Ian Hogg's book on 20th Cent. Firearms had a listing for the G.43. I can't find it right now, but if memory serves me correctly, the G.43 never saw wide spread service due to its weight and tendency to jam. Soldiers found that the extra weight, jams, and maintenance weren't worth the extra firepower. If someone has the book they can validate or correct. Edit: Just found my book. I was thinking of the G.41. The 43 was a smaller version (carbine). It corrected most of the problems, but did not enter production until 1943. The 43 simplified manufacturing and completely changed the gas system. Reading between the lined, it seems economics played a significant role in limiting distribution of the 43 beyond specialist units and snipers. [ July 20, 2004, 04:03 PM: Message edited by: thewood ]