Catacol Highlander
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Posts posted by Catacol Highlander
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All of this is exactly why I didnt preorder the Steelbox version and posted early doors that the total cost of the preorder game seemed to me to be steep. Download is the only viable option that makes sense, otherwise people are going to be paying a lot of money in the UK when most games off the shelves nowadays are actually cheaper than they used to be.
Not a problem for me - I have no issue with downloading games as, let's face it, boxes and manuals just take up space and gather dust anyway. Having said that I am fortunate enough never to have been hit with a HD meltdown - were that to happen then I may end up with a different view!
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Dragon v Catacol is into 1942 and we are cranking up the turn speed a bit. Dragon, as axis, has most of Africa and all the pacific islands after a very early Pearl. Chinese are hanging on by their fingernails, India is a British rearguard and U boats control the Atlantic. On the other side of the coin the Russians have good early tech and are able to throw some counter attacks at the Nazi horde and the Royal Navy managed to save the majority of its mediterranean and pacific assets.
A long way to go - time in the real world is going to be the big problem. We are taking approx 1 or 2 turns each per day, but that isnt going to be enough. :-(
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Been watching this one carefully and there is still something not right. I have had several more hits on Peking. Some come up as "resistance activity" as you have stated Hubert, but others are definitely "Partisan activity" even though there is a garrison in place.
Is it possible that with partisans or chinese units in occupation of Yenan that it could be triggering the event? I noticed that while I was in possession of Yenan they stopped, but then when partisans retook Yenan they started up again. However I was not in possesson of Yenan for very long so it may only have been coincidence.
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... although long before Germany punches Belgium there should definiitely be an Austrian punch thrown at Serbia!! - - in the WW1 story of course...
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John - is you like film then try this "Battlefields" documentary:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVarOtDZ7aE&feature=related
It's made for a general audience and only covers 1918, but it is not bad. As each 10min clip finishes just click on the link at the bottom to continue it...
Cheers
Al
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Forget the movies - do some real history. If I were you John I would do some reading on any of the events below to give you a feel for the conflict:
- Schlieffen Plan and its failure.
- Abortive western front battles if 1915. Neuve Chappelle is quite a good one as it was Haig's first attempt to break the deadlock
- Gallipolli 1915: a tragic waste of men and a British planning disaster.
- Battles on Tannenburg and Masurian Lakes on the Eastern Front in 1914 followed by "The Great Retreat" of 1915. The destruction of the Russian Army in 1915 was the beginning of the end for Tsarism and it marks the beginning the Bolshevisation of the Russian Army that would lead to the Revolution of 1917 and all the Communist History that would so dominate the globe until 1991. In the UK Russian history has now become the most popular area of study at school level so there are lots of books around about it, but if you want a really top narrative on the collapse of Tsarism, the destruction of the Red Army and the move towards the Civil War in Russia then I would recommend Orlando Figes' "A People's Tragedy" - dont be put off by the size of the book. It is very readable.
- The Great Battles of 1916 - The Somme, Verdun and the Brusilov Offensive in the East. Plenty on Verdun and The Somme if you google them - Verdun put 75% of the French Army through the mill and destroyed its attacking spirit for the rest of the war leading to the muntiy of April 1917. The Somme blooded the British Army and 1st July 1916 was the worst day in all of British Military History, but it paved the way for the British invention of Combined Arms tactics that would defeat Germany in 1918. It is often mistakenly argued that Germany, and Guderian in particular, invented "Blitzkrieg." That is wrong - it was a British development that peaked in 1918 and was subsequently copied by the German Army in time for 1939.
- Battle of Paschendaele (sometimes called 3rd Ypres) in 1917 and how bad weather could wreck a campaign. In my mind this was the worst battle of the war in the west in terms of the conditions for ordinary soldiers and the tragic loss of life for so little ground gained. The Battle of Cambrai in Nov 1917 is also of some interest as it was the first ever use of massed tanks in an effective manner.
- The German switch of tactics for their last gasp "Ludendorff" Offensive starting in March 1918. This is an interesting offensive to study in terms of ways in which static defences could be overcome, but at the same time a salutory lesson in the need for constant fire support on the modern battlefield as German casualties were enormous.
- The victory won by the British Army as they smashed the Hindenburg Line in 1918 at St Quentin in August. This was the battle that won the war and forced the German High Command to inform the Kaiser that defeat was inevitable.
I admit that I have left out everything on the Italian Front and the Balkans plus the War at Sea but, for me, the battles in West and East decided the war and so that is where I would focus my research initially.
No History taught after 1865? Someone over there needs a good kicking. As a historian myself how on earth can American youngsters get a feel for the modern world if history stops in 1865? Bloody crazy that is.
Cheers
Al
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I thought I had partisans cracked - put a garrison on the resource where a partisan attack may strike. However in my current game I have a garrison on Peking and 3 turns in a row got a partisan strike on Peking reducing supply down to 1.
Is this odd or am I misunderstanding how to neutralise partisans?
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... but my Indian units are unable to enter Burma at all!
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Dont know if this is the right place to post something on a mod, but in Nupremal's mod the situation in Burma is odd. It is linked to China rather than Britain which makes it impossible to put allied units in to help defend it, and it is also impossible to build any extra Burmese units at all which means the Japanese player can just walk in an occupy the whole country, facing only the corps that pops up in the capital.
Needs a look?
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Hmm - the preorder for Western Europe including delivery of a hard copy comes in at $80. That strikes me as steep and as a mad CM fan it has caused me to hold fire tonight. Do we have to preorder something that then costs $20 for delivery? Can we not simply preorder a download for $60?
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I have a bit of inside info I think - the game will be released in the next few days, 6 at most.
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Not sure whether this Fun Challenge is something only for players no longer in the Tournament, but if you are talking about setting up a kind of SC league then, like Rambo, I am also game. I suspect I can also speak for Pacestick and suggest he would be up for it too.
Out of interest jsut how many serious pbem SC players do we think are out there? 16 signed up for the tournament - is this pretty much the global hardcore 2 player community? An internally run ladder or league would be a lot of fun.
So a great idea Amadeus, and I'll play if I'm allowed.
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Playing Rambo - as the axis he took Britain in 1940/41. In 1945 I have retaken it, and suddenly the 1941 British navy script has kicked in giving me a bunch of British ships. Surely a bug?
Also now that all of Europe has been retaken (everywhere bar Oslo which will fall next turn) why is European supply set to 5 right across western Europe? Should it not be back at 10?
When Germany fell for some bizarre reason Greece suddenly switched sides from allies to axis despite the fact it had already been liberated. Athens was not garrisoned at the time, but surely this is also a bug?
Finally I jsut seized Persia with American paratroopers only to be told that Persia was now fully part of the USSR. Why would that script be there? At no other point in the game that I have discovered so far does a conquest by one nation by default suddenly switch to a conquest by another...
All food for a busy Hubert perhaps?
Cheers
Al
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You've both convinced me. 'Nuff said - I'll buy it. The ability to mod to ww2 is also a very important marketing tool and I may well even have a go at my own.
Grigsby Pacific War? Blimey - that brings back memories. I was brought into puter gaming by the Amstrad 1640 and 2 games: Kampfgruppe and Western Front, both Grigsby games I think. For the last 10 years I have been an avid CM1 gamer, but the SC series has added a strategic strand to my gaming life that has been missing since the days of Panzer General, another SSI (and probably therefore Grigsby!) game.
Anyway, back to work...
Cheers
Alastair
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Looking forward to this release. In what ways, though, is the engine different to SCGC? I notice from the manual that there is now a National Morale feature, but otherwise it looks rather like a grand mod of GC.
If I am going to buy it what aspects of the new game are a departure from what we have had before?
Thanks
Alastair
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Nup is aware of the problem and I have directed him to this thread. We've been playing and testing and I've had loop problems with the capetown loop that resides off Perth.
Thanks for ironing this thing out CH. Probably be a good idea if you'd join the beta team, I'm sure we'd all benefit.
Happy to join any Beta Team if that would help. I've played wargames a long time and am a 20th century history specialist by profession, so have some knowledge that might be useful.
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Another vote for a pause function - or promotion of the wego function without replay into the first patch. Please?
Loss of replay a shame, but not a biggie if it is possible to pause. I played CMBB and CMAK a lot by TCP for the best part of 10 years and towards the end was enjoying some really very big battles on big maps (even though I acknowledge CM was never designed to be a Battalion+ size game). For me if maps in cmbn are going to be possibly 4k by 4k then a pause in live tcp games is a must - it will be absolutely impossible to manage serveral companies operating at once with artillery and armoured support across a 4x4 map, and it will ruin the game for those of us who like to play it big. We will be forced to play small, and be frustrated.
And reducing the wego game to pbem only makes battles last a very long time - the beauty of a 2 or 3 hour tcp session in the past with the clock on 10mins (for example) was that 2 to 3 sessions got a battle finished. By pbem you are looking at around a month or more - - and that would be a big downgrade I think of the game's attractiveness.
And for the grumpy board addicts who yawn and say this has all been debated before - let's not forget that a good many players do not log into this board on a daily or even weekly basis. I played the CMBO demo from day 1 but missed the previous debate. If you dont want to post this time around then fine - but why sledge those who havent said their piece yet?
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Currently Campaigns can be 2 player if that's what is what the campaign desires, but obviously not with a Human as the second player. I don't think it would be that hard to add, however we have no immediate plans for doing so.
Steve
Not sure I made myself clear - sorry. I mean can 2 players play against each other over a campaign style format where 1 acts as the guy driving his units forward gaining experience and "winning" battles, and the other plays the role of the spoiler trying to derail his campaign? In other words replace the computer AI in a single player campaign with a human player?
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I'm very late into this thread as an avid player of cmbb and cmak... disappointed that operations will not be in, but nae bother: the game will still be great.
My question: will a 2 player campaign be possible, with units from both players developing through a sequence of battles and gaining experience etc? For people like me who never bother with the AI and only play human opponents that would be a very decent replacement for the old operations which were, indeed, flawed but actually worked rather well in a human on human extended contest.
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I dont play at all against the AI, only against human opponents. That is the only possible difference across machines/games that I can think of that may possibly explain problems for some and not for others? An earlier poster says that they work ok against the AI, but in my 2 games against humans so far they didnt.
Anyway in my current game, with failed delays up to 2, every loop so far has worked and our game is very much on. Unfortunately my opponent has not fallen for the sucker invasion of England punch this time around... ah well - never mind.
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A more comprehensive test has shown that upping the Failed Delay by 1 across all loops makes them work. After 10 successful loops I stopped the test - theory proven. I have amended my mod and started a game again, happy in the knowledge that they will work.
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I think I have cracked it. The Failed Delay and Delay values being the same introduces an element of doubt into whether they will work. I emailed Hubert and he confirmed this, and as a result sometimes they work and sometimes not.
I amended the values for the Honolulu to Manila Bay loop to the same relative values as in the shipped scenarios and ran a test - loop to Manila Bay worked first time. I'm out of time to do a bigger style test, but I'm inclined to think that is the problem. I'll do a big test when I get a mo - right now I'm knee deep in marking scripts and owe Rambo a tourney turn from 2 days ago!
Maybe Nups deliberately did it that way, but in my game currently it has ruined any chance of my opponent defending the Philippines and that feels gamey - to sit around waiting for a loop to work that doesnt is a random factor I dont like. Assuming further testing reveals that it is a simple task of spending 10 mins amending one value in the editor across all scripts I'll do it and play the amended Nups mod in future. The map is just awesome!
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I wonder if, at last, I have cracked it. Nups has set all the Failed Delay parameters to 1 in his mod for loops, and the delay parameters are also at 1. I fired up the default game and compared - Hubert seems always to have the failed parameters 1 higher than the delay parameters.
Therefore for these to work properly I think all the Failed numbers need to be upped by 1.
Any editor experts out there care to comment on this? Does this make sense?
Not sure why occasionally loops would then work, but I'm going to give it a go changing all these values and then run some tests if I can.
As an aside I did notice also a couple of loop scripts incorrectly set up in terms of the brackets that have to introduce and end each instruction - the editor was giving me errors when I went to save the file. I altered these and the errors went away. Feels as though these loop scripts may have been done in a hurry.
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No help yet. :-(
Here's an example: as axis I am attacking the phillipines and my opponent wants to use the loop from Peral Harbour down to Manila Bay. He presumably has a US unit at the Pearl Harbour end, and I know he has a phillipine infantry corps on Manila. Turn after turn the loop is failing. Why is that? Is it because he has not put a straight US unit on Manila, or becuase I have Jap troops on the island, or becuase I have Jap navy units very close to the loop exit squares? I cant see it from the editor at all.
Nups - are you out there?
Strange behaviors
in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy
Posted
I've seen some odd arty too - computer player arty hitting areas of the map that I am nowhere near, or in one case shells that looked (from the puffs of smoke I could see) to actually be falling off map? Wont be a problem though - I wont be wasting any time really playing the computer. This game is all about human on human...