Hubert Cater

Ok, I haven't seen this, as usually the RN only chases subs that are active in the convoy lanes (unless spotted) but I'll take a look.

Liam, thanks for your thoughts. Keep in mind that the full 1939 campaign plays a bit differently than it did in SC1 and that the economic curves can play out quite differently as well, especially for the Allies. I think you'll find, especially in head to head competition a much more balanced game without the need for bids. I could expand a bit more but I'd rather leave the few extra surprises, especially the added diplomatic checks and balances, to self discovery (for now) until after the game fully ships. Can you be a bit more specific? I only ask as this term is often used loosely to describe disagreeable design decisions etc., and not necessarily something that is working incorrectly in game. This way I can know for sure. Thanks!

Bombers are generally identified by a different unit icon and will have a different properties. If you go into the purchase unit screen and select a bomber for purchase and then compare to an Air Fleet you will see what I mean here. Depending on your current Heavy Tank Research level you can purchase a different tank type from research level 1-5. Each tank type will have its attack/defense values adjusted for the applicable Heavy Tank Research level and will be shown with a new unit icon, such as the PzII, Panther, Tiger etc.

True that a 2-D game can be decieving in terms of overall system requirements but these types of games, and especially with added graphics and increased map size can unfortuantely be quite demanding (relative to the games of old) on system resources and CPU speed. Path finding algoritims along with image rendering for a game of this type unfortunately require these types of minimum specs. For another example and point of reference, take a look at the minimum and recommended system specs for GGWAW and you'll see that SC2 is not bad at all. I would strongly suggest taking a look at the provided User Manual as the game does offer a lot more depth over the original and truly is much more than *added* eye-candy.

Was this under FoW? I only ask as running silent has no effect in terms of an enemy naval unit chasing after you when FoW is disabled.

Difficult to say... it may have been spotted if the RCAF was there or it could have just been coincidental that the RN ship ran into it on its way back to the nearest port.

Let's call it the possible enhancement list

Of course, just giving you some of the background on the current setup and potential issues if the research types are not well thought out... just my designer hat talking For surface ships, currently they cannot raid convoy routes.

Thanks I'll take a look

1. It does although I'm not sure if it made the final cut of the manual or is included in the User Manual errata. Bill can probably let us know for sure. Essentially Sub tech increases will increase MPP losses while ASW acts to counter the MPP losses in the formulas. This is on top of the regular effects that these tech advances have wrt combat 2. The general idea is that the Tank Groups are not made up of only tanks but infantry support units as well. Thus along the lines of the weakest link theory, motorization helps improve the mobility of these infantry support units and in turn the overall mobility of the entire Tank Group. 3. Interesting idea and something to think about for sure... off hand though and one of the reasons there is a cap for some unit types in terms of applicable research is that the current interface and design etc., has three maximum slots for research per unit type so it would require a bit of an overhaul to add even an extra item. This does not appear to be the case for AF but you get the idea. Also there is the idea of counter tech needed for each new tech otherwise we get imbalances as we did in SC1. Currently each tech has a counter balance and this makes game play much more predictable and less skewed over the long term.

John, Edwin may have just found a current method into baiting the Allied AI navy but I can certainly make an adjustment for that as necessary. Agreed with Sombra though that a human player is not likely to make the same mistakes as an AI and from what the multiplayer testing has shown, and we've had multiplayer testing for well over a year now, while not necessarily every time, and depending on player style and doctrine, the battle of the Atlantic can certainly be a long drawn out affair.

Lars, I've seen the white box effect once on my laptop and apparently a quick reboot resolved the issue. Can you confirm this?

1. This is actually an enhancement I'll be looking into as it is a good idea and one that came up during testing as well... and while the question did come up if it would be too easy for subs I think it'll probably see the light of day... but understandably with a very long list of items to accomplish it unfortuantely had been pushed back since the Convoy Map showed the sub positions in relation to the current convoy paths. Not the optimal solution but it was felt that it was handy enough for the time being. 2. Agreed, good idea

My guess is that some of the cluttered feel is just with the inital setup of the German army... keep in mind this is optimized for the best possible invasion of Benelux, i.e. takes into account weather and AF range etc. But, as Blashy mentions, this changes as soon as you start moving units around and espeically once you get to Barbarossa etc., as you can see the USSR is much bigger and deeper than it was in SC1.

Perhaps you are running at the minimum resolution of 1024x768? If your system supports a higher resolution such as 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 much more of the game map will be shown. The game setting can be manually edited in the SC2.ini file but probably the best way to do this is to re-install the demo and select a higher resolution if supported.

This is something I will be adding as a future enhancement

While I wanted to add a popup description for the button functions on the right hand side button menu bar it unfortunately got pushed to the bottom of my list with everything else that needed to be done. In the mean time, and although it has not immediately stood out, the button function name actually appears in the middle section of information bar at the top of the screen whenever you move the mouse over a button. Unfortunately manually editing the scripts will have no effect as the scripts need the Editor to recompile and store them within the campaign file. The actual script text was more or less left in with the Demo just for everyone to see what is going on under the hood. Hubert

Sorry to hear about the trouble and like Blashy all the tests that I have run on several PCs have all been at 32bit resolution and it ran without issue. While it may not have any effect, perhaps try downloading the latest video card driver and DirectX if applicable to see if it resolves the issue. Hopefully that will help, Hubert

Unfortunately if it is unsupported by your Video Card technically there is not much I can do to change that. There may be a workaround on my end to completely skip unit mirroring and just have a second set of 3d units available that are already mirrored for rendering which I will investigate shortly... as another option, if you prefer the look of the 3-D units over the 2-D block icons you could simply swap the names of the unit bitmap files. To do this, navigate to your installation folder, typically this is usually something like: %root%\Program Files\Battlefront\Strategic Command 2 Demo From here open up the Bitmaps folder and find the following files: unit_silhouettes_sprites_3d.bmp unit_silhouettes_sprites_military.bmp unit_sprites_3d.bmp unit_sprites_military.bmp Essentially all you have to do is swap the names for these files, i.e. all the files that end with _3d should end with _military and all the files that end with _military should end with _3d. You might need to use a temporary location to rename these files and then place them back into the 'Bitmaps' folder. Now if you select to play with the non 3-D unit icons the game should play with 3-D looking units in place of the block style icons but with no mirroring. Hopefully this helps, Hubert

While there are no current plans to build it for a Linux system I guess the option will always be there since Eiffel does allow for multiplatform development. Unfortunately at the time of SC1 there were no multiplatform multimedia libraries available and since SC2 was built upon much of the groundwork laid out in SC1 it wasn't an option for me to start over completely from scratch... would have taken that much longer Still, something to consider for perhaps down the road.

John, It is true that in the early years with only a few convoy routes to select from Axis subs can still have a hard time out there. While it may not appear so at first, the larger map does help and it is important to remember to keep moving subs around (away from ports and spotting aircraft) and to not constantly remain on a convoy path. The option to run silent is also helpful as well as in later years where there are more convoy routes to select from. The general idea is to make it as hard as possible for the Allied navies to spot your subs, and this coupled with increased storm damage percentages during bad weather turns, i.e. to help prevent the Allied navy from simply just parking their boats out in the Atlantic etc., should make the cat and mouse game a bit more viable than it was in SC1. For the disappearing sub perhaps this was storm damage that resulted in the sinking of your at strength=1 sub. Hope this helps, Hubert

Since the non 3-D units appear to work Ok it sounds like your video card is not supporting the DirectDraw mirror function properly, i.e. this only appears to happen when your units want to be *flipped* to face the opposite direction. I would suggest downloading the latest version of DirectX (if you haven't already done so) as well as downloading the latest version of your Video Card's drivers just to see if this helps resolve the issue. In the meantime playing with the non 3-D units appears to be a viable yet temporary workaround.

There is a known issue on some systems when you attempt to switch focus away, i.e. an ALT-TAB, during the AI animation turn. Can you confirm that this is not the case? In general though if you do not switch focus away during AI replay the game should run fine. If it is just a general lost surfaces error can you retry the download as perhaps it was corrupt.

Elmo, Pzgndr started a Demo Question Thread and if it is helpful, feel free to post any questions you might have and we'll do our best to answer them.

On behalf of everyone, myself, testers and Battlefront... thanks