Hubert Cater

Yes, they only need a supply value >= 7 in order to re 'Prepare'. You'll notice the 'Prepare' option when you right click on a Paratroops Both if the country has units to offer and for the Theatre campaigns I believe 99% do. When you click on an AF it should highlight its movement range, simply select the new location and it will move there. Note, you can only attack or move with an AF and not both on the same turn. Also, movement may be restricted for some minor AF as well as during snow or frozen weather turns.

Yes, the idea being that even if you conquer the country you originally had a convoy relationship with, the convoys would naturally continue as you now control the country. There are a few such specifications when it comes to convoys and convoy relationships and mostly just to have them make sense in all cases. Yes, there is normally an 8-15% diplomatic hit in your favour with an added bonus, albeit a small much smaller likelyhood, that you could receive an additional 20-30% hit

Agreed as I think the writing/editing team (Bill and Dave) did a fantastic job as well

My poor artist! I mentioned in another thread that even during testing the idea had come up but with everything that needed to get done and with the indicator currently present in the Convoy Map dialog it was sufficient for now. Something I'm working to improve though I think this is one area that I think most gamers will be surprised. Diplomacy is not as inexpensive as it seems, primarily because you have a lot less MPPs available at your disposal as it was in SC1 and the risk of using MPP versus other investments, unit purchases, research etc., seems to have worked out quite nicely. Plus it is not always a one way street as your opponent can always participate in counter diplomacy so you might not ever be sure why your diplomatic chits have yet to fully pay off. But as you say it can always be disabled if that is the preference and/or the values can tweaked. Thanks and I am also looking forward to seeing what others might come up with

Kuniworth, If you play on the default difficulty level which I believe is 'Beginner' it should work as expected. Agreed on the objectives screen idea as this is something I wanted to do for initial release but unfortunately it got pushed back

Currently there are 2 settings to increase AI difficulty. One is the 'Difficulty' setting and the other is the 'Experience Bonus' setting. The 'Difficulty' only affects plunder percentages as well as per turn collected MPP but since there is no plundering or MPP collection for this scenario (D-Day) it has no effect. In theory it could play better once more scripts are added as you could flag scripts to only be applied to a certain difficulty level but at the moment that is not applicable as all scripts are set for the default basic level of play. The 'Experience Bonus' simply gives the AI units more virtual experience and will essentially only make combat tougher, i.e. better AI attack values and better defence values.

While I would still like to incorporate perhaps a Victory Condition screen... for now if you look at the cities on the map, those that have flags on them are considered the *objectives*. For Axis in Normandy your objective is to hold the positions with German flags while the Allies need to capture these positions. The level of victory is determined by essentially how many of these flags you hold and what if any Allied *flagged* positions you capture and vice versa. Specific victory conditions can be seen in the Victory.txt file in the Campaign Events folder for D-Day.

Craig, Currently you can ALT-TAB but as mentioned it does happen on occasion only during AI turns. For the shipped version, since it is already in production the answer would be yes, but of course this does not preclude me from correcting this in a future patch as necessary.

Thanks guys . For the question on mud, this is more or less the formal result and graphical represntation of Rain/Fog like conditions etc. which would in turn hinder overall Air Fleet range.

The basic idea behind this was to exact some sort of penalty when you quickly moved around units from one area of the map to another. For example, in SC1 there was a complaint how it was unrealistic for units on the Eastern front to be shipped off to France and be in top immediate fighting form. Essentially this simulates the necessary loss in Readiness and Morale is used simply due to the way it works in the Readiness formula.

Oops, yes that is a script difficulty level read error, thanks!

There is a timer option included for Network games which can be set from 1 minute up to 60 minutes.

I have a fix in the works that will skip the Video Card rendering option (to mirror units) entirely. This should pretty much guarantee it works universally.

Thanks for the historical info... I'll eventually add a few of these names to the build data but as Blashy mentions these and many more can also be added with the new Editor as well

This is original music composition by Marc Derell and I like it very much as well

Hmmm... very odd as I don't think in this has ever come up in testing... I'd be interested to hear if anyone else can confirm this.

Hats off to Dave here as much of the additional Diplomatic events are his handy work

Essentially this was just an attempt to maximize the map playing area whereas the SC1 buttons were often criticized for taking up too much space. So in the end, as you've pointed out there is a bit of give and take. The "give" here was iconic like buttons for the menu options and the "take" was more map playing area. I do realize it is a bit different but once you get used to it I think most players will appreciate the extra map space versus the larger buttons of SC1. In terms of the look of the buttons it was really no extra effort on my part. Essentially buttons have three states, mouse over (highlight), mouse down, and their neutral position. Here the artist chose to represent the buttons with the dials and while I actually like the new look, it can easily be modded to something more conventional (by simply changing the button graphics) like the previous 'mouse over highlight' 'button down' scheme.

At the moment there is no option to slow down movement... but this may be added in a future enhancement.

Great

Definitely fair enough John and they are good observations as the Battle of the Atlantic was something I was working on to improve. As mentioned to Stalin's Organist it is difficult to paint the entire picture in a 6 month demo but the good thing is that there are quite a few added nuances that should in the worst case make it much more interesting. Items like the various Advanced Subs and ASW levels having an effect on the convoy formulas (on top of their regular combat effects), multiple convoy paths, as well as the ability to control the amount of MPPs transfered between major Allies etc., i.e. if the US is losing too many MPPs due to sub activity they can decrease or eliminate the amount being transferred entirely and keep them all for themselves.

Lol... true you never said the exact words "final assessment" but you have to admit your statement relative to the overall strategic play did come across as pretty final Equally, I have no problems at all with having your own opinion on the game and if it is not your cup of tea I understand there is nothing I can do about that... just saying that I *think* you might not have the full picture, because the demo is only 6 months, just yet. [ April 05, 2006, 05:35 PM: Message edited by: Hubert Cater ]

To be honest it is a little surprising to hear such a final assessment based on the demo especially since the enhancements offer much more strategic depth than SC1 ever did. Granted, this might not so readily apparent based on reviewing the Demo but as mentioned in the other thread, I would strongly encourage you to review the manual and in the worst case wait for the assessment of the full game play (once it is shipping) by the player community. One of the complaints with SC1 was that the interface took up way too much space away from the game map... so in turn we tried to maximize the play area as much as possible. While it would have been nice to include menu button pop ups right from the start, with everything else that needed to be done, we felt that the menu descriptions in the top middle of the screen as well as by using unique buttons that this would be sufficient especially since it was felt this would just be an option most players would disable after a few tries.

Stalin's Organist, One of the problems with the demo is that it does not give the full game play justice... but unfortunately there is no real way around that without giving the entire game away for free. Now I do realize it is one thing for me or any of the testers to say "trust us, it plays very differently and that your overall strategy will require more careful consideration", but I would strongly suggest to take a look at the manual and/or wait until the game ships and you hear back from a few players on how the full game plays... in the end I think we are just saying that the subtle changes/enhancements, like the ones Blashy listed above, should not necessarily be dismissed so quickly... well until at least everyone has access to the big picture and how much they change game play overall.

To be honest this is not something I ever tested for but I can say with certainty that the game does not install taking user rights in mind... i.e. it does not do anything special to specifically limit a user's access to the game. My guess is that it will play under the conditions set by the Administrator if applicable... but this should be easy enough to test on your system to be sure.