Hubert Cater

Actually each city has its own sounds as well and for each type, i.e. western, middle eastern etc. and the smaller scenarios have their own unique village/town sounds... just a few small additions/touches here and there for added flavour

Yes, that 150 page manual is a true necessity in order to fully appreciate all the "under the hood" changes that have been applied to SC2... in general SC2 is MUCH MORE than simply a larger map

Good idea and feel free to take a look at the D-Day mini-campaign subfolders as this is essentially how a mod would work. You'll notice the structure and what has been edited in order to give alternate text, sounds, unit, terrain and resource graphics while at the same time preserving all of the original files.

This is by design and in this specific case actually helps mimick the very "real life" morale situation in the field by the time Germany invaded France. Overall testing has shown that this feature works quite well and as mentioned before lets the player have a few options on how they would like to conduct the war by trying a few alternate strategies... i.e. do I attack early or later on with perhaps an morale initiative bonus?

This is the weather in effect... i.e. during Mud your Air spotting and attack ranges are generally halved. There are other such effects that can also result in lower attack and defense values.

Killer Tomato, One of the new Morale and Readiness features is that takes into account initiative. Initiative in the sense that there is a small bonus of morale applied whenever you conquer a country and in turn there will be a small morale drop for your opponents. In the early years this can be very effective for Germany when played to conquer Denmark, Benelux and Norway in quick succession where German morale will be very high for a few turns while at the same time Allied morale will drop. The formulas are designed to re-stabilize after a few turns and values will generally return to normal. In general, while the option still remains, as it did in SC1, to attack Benelux early in 1939 after Poland, Fall mud, Winter snow and the lack of initiative or morale bonuses may server to slow down the attacks and not necessarily make it more beneficial than to wait until spring as was done historically. All in all this gives players more options and more pros and cons and in fact there are many more nuances like this that give SC2 much improved gameplay over the long haul. Note, that many of these nuances will unfortunately not be as apparent in the shortened demo but over the longer campaigns items like the Production Queue, Diplomacy Effects, Research and Upgrade Changes, Soft Builds, Weather Effects play a much more effective role than they did in SC1. For Unit Purchases, this option has been disabled for the Demo. Hubert

I have

Um Narayan, I guess you have a complete misunderstanding of what an NDA means. First off don't you think it would be prudent, and this is only of course if you were allowed to post in the general forums, to provide assessments on the release versions and not the Beta from several months ago? Since your posts serve no real benefit and will only confuse people on the current state of the game I'm locking this up.

Actually the higher spotting bonuses was under consideration and I guess it still is but currently it has not been implemented. For now the higher difficulty settings relate to plunder bonuses, i.e. +/- 25% as well as to MPP collection, +10% for each of the Intermediate and Expert levels. Also, if preferred, scripts can be specifically linked to the various difficulty levels.

All language versions will be 100% compatible except for the natural fact that they will be localized including the master campaigns, i.e. unit and territory names etc.

Not to worry, if it is on the same computer you can uninstall and reinstall as many times as you like without having to re-run the on-line activation as the license system will already know you have licensed the game. Hubert

Bismarck fan, good news is that the demo is also just around the corner

SMG42, I think the conversation has led to some confusion here. Convoys are only related to the transfer of Military Production Points or MPPs. To disrupt a convoy you can either: 1-Position a sub along any of the on map convoy routes 2-Damage the source or destination port below strength = 5 The subs don't target actual ships in order to disrupt a convoy but by placing the sub within a convoy route this simulates the sinking of the convoy ships in real life and in turn a loss of collected MPPs by your opponent. The discussion relating to HQs was more or less a discussion about unit supply and how a unit calculates its supply and how to potentially reduce a units supply value. With respect to Air and other Naval units these can be used to protect the convoy routes from subs and/or damage convoy ports etc.

It is an interesting idea and perhaps something to consider for down the road.

If you reduce a convoy port, source or destination, to less than strength=5 the convoy is disrupted with 0 supplies being shipped. This is just another layer available in order to disrupt convoys.

SMG42, Malta is actually a script and not hardcoded... in fact pretty much all effects are via scripts otherwise hardcoding would get in the way of modulatrity and customization which is essentially what makes SC2 special. For supply, the general rules are still not that far off from SC1, so in using your example, units in Ireland would have their supply value determined by the city and port strength of Dublin. Reduce the city and/or port strength and it will in turn reduce the supply of any units in Ireland dependant on them.

Hey, nice mods Fantomas I've actually got a question for you, can you send me an email?

I can't officially speak for Battlefront but my guess here is that most (if not all of these questions) have been answered already and/or the info is contained within the original release announcements and/or order pages. Take a step back here and put yourself in Battlefront's shoes for a moment... as Publisher you make the original annoucements and as far as I can tell each of your specific questions regarding release etc., can readily be answered from the information they have already provided. After that Moon, Matt, myself, various Beta testers have also provided additional answers (regarding release) that from what I can tell could also have been answered by carefully reading the original annoucement/order page information. Battlefront has also provided the forums, search tools etc., and while everyone does their best to answer most questions (granted not everyone is going to like each answer), there does come a time, especially when there are still a million and one things left to do, when you can only answer the same question so many times. Well as noted above I do believe Battlefront has done their job and a good job at that regarding the annoucement and answering the relative questions. Let's be honest, pre-orders were announced with a 4-6 week delivery date and that has not changed. So in the end there is not much we can do if someone has ordered and then decides they don't like the lack of a specific date... no matter how many times you ask the question Pre-orders give you the option to order early and guarantee you delivery of the first available shipments... not everyone chooses to pre-order and that in the end all Battlefront has done is give you the option... options are good right? Now, why do I sometimes pop in and answer questions? Well I too care about this game and prefer a certain tone within the forums and will try and answer a few questions or calm things down when appropriate and/or when I have the time. So... if you really want to take the pressure off of me, and this goes for everyone , take a step back once in a while and consider the monumental tasks needed to be accomplished to get this game done, take the time to read the release information provided, and use the search tools within the forums as it is a great way to know for sure if you question has already been answered If after that you still have a question that needs to be answered please feel free to ask away and everyone involved will do their best to answer your questions.

I don't get this Moon - why does the fact that BF is not going to "push out a product out the door just for the sake of meeting some date" mean that BF is incapable of providing a date at all? You've been telling us for two years that the delays are to ensure the product is perfect out of the box (and we love that) but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to plan and stick to a deadline you set yourselves - that's just being professional and I thought BF was setting out its stall to be better than other developers, not just less efficient? LutraMage, let's just be clear here that Battlefront is the publisher and I am the sole developer. Yes, it is true that we communicate timeline info but at the end of the day if you really need to point fingers feel free to point them at me since I am the only one missing apparent deadlines, not Battlefront.

we're not children waiting for Christmas, we're customers waiting for a product we've already paid for. LutraMage, I believe when pre-orders were originally announced the shipping date was expected (also announced) to be 4-6 weeks and that puts us in the late March early April time frame. In fact this same info is specifically contained on the pre-order page found here: https://www.combatmission2.com/sc2_order.html Off hand I don't know of any changes to this that you might be aware of, and I would know because I am naturally in the loop on these kinds of things , so all we can ask for is your renewed patience for when the game will be shipping in the expected time frame. I can't remember ever having paid for a product before where the suppliers weren't even able to say when you could expect to receive delivery. I think it is safe to say now that this is a false allegation, agreed?

Sorry Edwin, unfortunately too busy right now to elaborate but you'll get a good idea once the demo is available

Officially no but this could be easily scripted if so desired

Justanotherwargamer, thanks for the kudos and I think you'll like the game as well Hubert

Not to worry it won't. Truth is, and as I've mentioned in the past, the bulk of development time, and I do mean 99.9%, has simply been to just complete the game based on the original design document. Everyone has to remember that other than some excellent campaign work and beta testing, there is only person coding/developing/producing this game and so things will take time. This is of course on top of all the other day to day business requirements that need my attention and well you get the picture. Am I tired of developing... that might be an understatement at this point ... but if and when any fixes are required post release I usually add in some additional touches to improve game play (as needed) overall. If you look at the history of SC1 there were many additions that were not typical of *fixes* but rather updates to make the game that much better. In general this is all I am referring to here in the sense that if I am already working on some aspect of the game (post release) I can easily add in a few additions (as well) that the SC2 community has reached a general consensus on... but in no way does this delay release and/or indicate some sort of fault in the game as is.

Gentlemen, No hard news just yet because the details are still being finalized. Hubert