Brian Smith

Yep, I paid, but pre-ordered and got the discount. Well worth it in my view.

The new version is brilliant. Great new sounds, some lovely new vehicle skins (including some really beautiful M1 and Leos), the new time of day feature makes a real difference and people are having a lot of fun playing around with the UAV. There's a neat video on Youtube showing it being used to identify enemy armour and technicals and call in arty and airstrikes. smith

Yes, very cool link. Damn that is a big boat. It looks a little scruffy up top but down below it looks pretty shipshape. The Russkies definitely have a more old-fashioned style for their technical equipment don't they, compared to the Yanks? I remember seeing inside a Soyuz capsule - looked like a steam locomotive cabin!

Here you go - it looks like it was never uploaded to their general scenario download area. Let me know if the link's not working and I'll send it to you. http://forums.gamesquad.com/showthread.php?t=81400&highlight=broad+fourteens smith

Glad you like it mate. Castles of Steel is the other classic book of the era (though covers a lot more than Jutland). cheers

Hey Thomm - I'm sure you'll enjoy the book. The Jutland battle's so big (and had quite defined stages) that the game simulates different time periods during the overall battle with several scenarios. I've never been brave enough to play the Jutland scenarios because I find it difficult to manage large fleets yet (and I find myself enjoying the light force fights more - light cruisers and destroyers). There's a couple of nice larger third-party scenarios that I've enjoyed, including one called Broad Fourteens and I often think about different strategies for dealing with the scenarios I have played before, so there's plenty to keep me going.

I recently finished reading a great book called Jutland 1916: Death in the Grey Wastes. It has detailed info on the fight as well as lots of first-person observations and reports (though mostly from the British side). Fascinating and horrifying stuff. I can recommend that book for sure. Re the game, it's a pity that the DRM and the support shenanigans detract attention from the game itself - it's very satisfying to play.

Some folk probably shouldn't interact with customers....

I'd agree with thewood. It appears their DRM is still a work in progress, but it's unlikely it'll mess with you if you download and play the demo.

This is a lovely demo! Just played the tutorials and the Brandywine fight. Top stuff!

Hehe. Plus several characters to make the limit...

You're right in that it has no capture flags and it's pretty different to CMSF for example, though the campaign (which I've tinkered with but haven't yet properly tried due to lack of time) has objectives related to interrupting supply and suchlike to France during 1916. Individual battles (like the Death of the Pommern scenario I made the Youtube video of) have points balances and at the end of the scenario your success or failure is determined based on points for and against, I believe from ships sunk and damaged, though not all scenarios have objectives based on sinking ships. Some require ships to escape others, or to protect convoyed ships etc. I'm enjoying this game a lot and it's awakened an interest in that period for me, so partly I like playing with and learning about the ships and tactics of the period. Some of the scenarios (most, probably) recreate historical battles or encounters (like Death of the Pommern which simulates a chance meeting between a Brit destroyer flotilla and some German BBs which happened near dawn after the Jutland Battle) and include the ships of the time. From my experience (and I have no knowledge of the programming under the bonnet) the game does a great job simulating the kind of poor accuracy, dodgy shells and human frailties and mistakes of the time. The history of the Jutland era, I've found, is littered with idiot moments where commanders were either rigidly stupid and unimaginative, fearful, incompetent, resourceful and hasty, resulting in disasters or inexplicable occurences. It has, in common with CMSF, that wonderful uncertainty of the Tac AI in the sense that you can put them in the right spot and give the fire order, but once the shells start flying, the responses of your ships (and of your men in CMSF) can be unpredictable and undesirable and the challenge is overcoming the unintended behaviour to get a victory. Things like a ship blowing up, or falling out of line, or colliding with another are all great challenges with this game, as well as the historically-accurate approximately 3-5% accuracy of the gunfire at long ranges because of the basic gunnery control and rangefinding. But when things come together, it's a very satisfying sim and the graphics make it better. I have always struggled a bit with getting into abstracted wargames - I like seeing the ships as real ships. I made the video that Thomm linked to because the early morning setting looked really great with the gunflashes and explosions. I played one scenario with the British Third Battle Squadron's obsolete battleships against the tough German Battlecruisers that really illustrated for me how satisfying Jutland can be. I crossed the German T as they approached and my BBs hammered the German column, particularly the second in line, Derflinger. As the Germans got closer and turned to go broadside to broadside with my line, I turned into them at 90 degrees, meaning my whole line could then sail along and hammer half the German line broadside-on, while the German van (the front half) had turned and was now blocked from firing at me effectively. I felt very pleased that I'd out-manoeuvred the German BCs and my old BBs gave them a hell of a pounding, causing one of them to fall out of line out of control, drifting closer to my line and getting even more comprehensively hit before they got things back under control. However, as the scenario continued it became clear that while my ships had hit the German BCs much more, the fragile British AP shells had failed to penetrate the better German armour and damage was relatively minor. The Germans' stronger construction and faster speed meant that I couldn't win - they eventually sank my BBs for the loss of no BCs. Even though I lost I had a great time. thewood is right about company PR and support. I have had no troubles, but they are not a polished "the customer is always right" outfit and I think I can see where the strong views about the company around the net have originated. However, I disagree about the DRM. I don't think it's draconian - it doesn't install anything nasty on your PC, it just wants you to be connected to the net when you start it up. I personally don't have a problem with that, but if others do, then I respect their views. I think the 7-day license expiry thing is poorly understood and explained, but in practice, for me, it was no problem. I was away from the game for 2 weeks and it started normally the next time I played it. If you want to play it while you're not connected to the net, or, like Speedy, regularly travel in the boondocks where you can't connect, then it's not the game for you. In any case, I'd still encourage people to at least try the demo. The demo is basically the full game, but with most scenarios limited to 10 minutes. In a game like this 10 minutes isn't enough time for anything much to happen for most scenarios, but there are a couple of unlimited scenarios to try in the demo. smith

Just an update about the DRM and, leaving aside the philosophy of it (the "rent versus buy" argument), focusing instead on the practicality of the "no license after 7 days" thing. I just got back from a fortnight's holiday on the south coast of Oz, no internet connection. Didn't bother to transfer the game's licence from my home PC to a laptop (to try to play while away), or hand the licence back using the in-game mechanism. I just got back today after 14 days of not logging on or playing, fired the game up, it connected to the server, downloaded an update and was ready to play. No dramas, no having to re-register or anything like that, so in that sense the DRM gave me no problems at all. smith

This is where an SB dongle or similar would be the better option. I can understand your frustration. Bummer, because it's a great game. Perhaps they'll be persuaded to change the DRM by market forces (though i can't believe there's a huge market for this sort of sim...). Pity. smith

Probably only this one -dev doesn't seem to run their own forums: http://forums.gamesquad.com/forumdisplay.php?f=245

I actually bought it - the DRM is unusual but I figured I could live with it. Thewood's experience with the driver upgrade is worrying (and there's some others i think who have reported similar issues now I think) and I guess they may need to do some tweaking if it's stuffing up with driver upgrades. I haven't had any issues (touch wood) with it. There's a lot of confusion about the DRM and I think most people who are considering buying it have a faulty understanding of how it works (it doesn't phone home every 7 days and you don't have to re-register it if you haven't played for a week - as long as you are connected to the internet, it will contact its home server to verify your licence at the same time it checks for updates, when you start it up. Only if it hasn't been able to verify your licence for 7 days will it stop working. If the next time you fire it up, you're connected to the net, it'll start as normal I believe). It's a pretty cool game - very deep and immersive and complex. I'm enjoying it. smith

I've seen reports on World News tonight that US forces also took back captives - any workd on that? A week before the election - a good time to give Syria a friendly bloody nose. I mean, who are they going to complain to?

Brian O'Nolan (also known as Flann O'Brien), in the guise of Myles na gCopaleen, used to write hilarious fictional reporting for the Irish Times, of this ilk, around WW2. You can find his stuff gathered together in a book called Further Cuttings from Cruiskeen Lawn (the name of the column in the Irish Times). He did some funny courtroom stuff too if I recall - the line in Other Means' post about "sensation in court" immediately reminded me of Myles. smith smith

Your thighs will be incredibly sore afterwards.

Nice buy Affentitten! Was that the 2MBS book fair?

Back at you in a manly way old chap. Or as we say over here, in a completely non-racist or threatening way "you f**ing monkey"! smith

Thank God you're back!

Bump - any new chapters in the pipeline?

Yeah, but that wouldn't be fair and would make all those other posts that referred to it, seem out of context...

A few general things about the series that I think are really compelling have been the real-life orders/terminology approach (references to jockeying included)- the real armour officer effects. About this specific edition, the mix between the soldier-level focus (finding the bodies of the ATGM crew - chilling - the infantry realisng they are the targets of the last ATGM launch, the knife fight between the M2 and the BMP and the suspense after the first shot has only disabled the engine and there's a real chance the BMP might get it's gun into action) and the broader strategy aspects (seeing the stages of the assault). Keep it up mate! smith