Hubert Cater

Already fixed it

Not to forget the Battle of Britain and possibly 'Sea Lion'

Naval units are also affected by supply, and it is calculated by distance to port. Simulates 'milch cows' for subs and so on etc., Supply is calculated a little different for naval ships from land units though, it will be current supply value - 1. So when you leave port ships will have a supply value of around 10, go off in the distance and it decreases by 1 per turn. Come close to port and it will be the maximum value, either supply = distance from port or supply = current supply value - 1. So the idea is to have naval units touch base with their ports every so often as you've correctly guessed

Minor correction, armies have 3 action points corps have 4

Malta does start with an air fleet, and it is considered a fortified hex

- In FoW mode subs will be much more difficult to spot, it will be normal spotting range - 1. So since most naval units have a spotting range of 2 this gives you the opportunity to see them before they see you. By the same reasoning, the spotting of air units will also be decreased. - Other than the ability to dive from attack, they are treated just as any other naval unit. - Lend lease is not modeled in this game.

You will have to take Paris, but it is the least likely to fight on once you do (similar to Italy) Hubert

I used Eiffel at University and really enjoyed the language, so in a way I guess decided to chart some new territory Now this is just me, and I can assure you that everyone out there has their favourite programming language, but I just found that in terms of OOP Eiffel has one of the purest and most elegant approaches. There are many benefits like true Multiple Inheritance, Garbage Collection and most importantly "Design By Contract". DbC still appears to be only found within the Eiffel language and in the most simplist of terms it basically allows you to specify "pre" and "post" conditions to all of your routines. The idea is that if you provide the proper information to the requested routine then that routine will guarantee a certain result. Needless to say it makes tracking bugs very quick and easy, and it also makes comments *almost* unnecessary since you can go back to a routine you wrote let's say 2 years ago and look at the contracts and instantly know what it's supposed to do! Coming from a data base background you will probably feel right at home with the language since many of the principles found in entity-relationship diagramming are very similar to OOP and especially Eiffel's implementation of MI. Some good starting points would be the comp.lang.eiffel newsgroup or the ise_users group at Yahoo groups or even www.eiffel.com. I would also suggest picking up a copy of "Object-Oriented Software Contruction" by Bertrand Meyer which I found to be an excellent primer to many of the principles of OOP and some of Eiffel's strengths as compared to other languages. Good luck! Hubert

Sounds like an interesting idea but I think the leader ratings are going to remain preset

I would say that the other commonwealth nations are rolled into the UK forces, but this does not stop you from renaming units or even creating these units in the Campaign Editor. Canada will have a Corps and an Army available to them.

The demo WILL be fully featured (including PBEM ) and will offer only one Campaign - 1940 Fall Gelb which will run in duration for one full year, May 10, 1940 to May 10, 1941.

The slice of Canada includes Halifax , St. John's and Ottawa as part of it's representation. Hubert [ April 24, 2002, 03:53 PM: Message edited by: Hubert Cater ]

Correct!

Good one! You'll have to liberate the capital, but it does not mean that the whole country will automatically join your alliance, any remaining territory still controlled by the enemy will remain enemy controlled territory, so you will have to perform mop up operations to clear those parts up.

Fair enough! :cool:

There will be an option for "War In Siberia" which will affect whether or not Moscow can transfer parts of it's Siberian army to the eastern front during the game.

I think one of the difficulties in incorporating airborne into this game has to do with the scale. Since the smallest unit is at the Corps level, it would be very difficult to justify an airborne unit unless we were dealing with at least the divisional level. Same would also go for other specialized troops like mountain divisions or combat engineers, both of which existed in higher numbers than airborne units during the war. Probably the best way to consider the airborne is that they are implied as part of the existing Air arm in the game. This can be somewhat understood since the game deals with 'entrenchment' and 'readiness' that can both be affected from aerial attack and will give that disrupted sort of feel that both aerial bombardment and the dropping of airborne units would accomplish. As another example the same can be said with 'Tank Groups' or 'Panzer Armies' in this game. Although they are represented by the 'Tank Icon' it is not to say that this entire unit is made up of tanks, but rather that it has a higher number of tanks and would be mostly mechanized with still a sizable compliments of infantry within the divisions. Hope this helps, Hubert

Surrendering will be determined by the loss of the capital plus the number of units remaining in the field. This assessment varies from majors to minors and reflects the idea that some countries would have fought (at least temporarily) despite the loss of their capital. The USSR will in this case be a tough opponent as they may relocate their government (Urals) several times in order to keep up the fight!

Yes, in general any occupied nation will not be running at 100% capacity, and this will be reflected by the overall efficiency in these cities and other resources. Only after liberation will they begin to make their way back to full capacity once again. Also if any of these cities. ports etc have been damaged along the road to liberation this will also be a factor

No problems, unfortunately the campaign editor will only allow you to build campaigns starting from September 1, 1939. There was a typo on the Strategic Command main page (my fault) that read from January 1, 1939 which should have read "September 1, 1939". I apologize if this has mislead anyone. Hubert

Roughly, it will also depend on overall strength/effeciency as well as damages from bombing etc.

Good questions, as you've said the Air Fleet unit can act as either an interceptor or an escort, and this is possible on either your turn or on your enemy's turn. The reasoning is that 'Action Points' for these units are recalculated at the beginning of both turns regardless of whose turn it is. So for example on your turn an air fleet will act as an escort, then on your enemy's turn the same air fleet could act as an interceptor provided it is within reach and has enough strength to do so. As for baiting, this is entirely possible and would be somewhat realistic since I imagine this type of tactic was often used by either side to draw defending fighters away from the real targets. Best way I've found to avoid this is to tie in defending air fleets together over the area you would like to protect so that they not only defend this area but also each other!

Each different resource type from ports to oil will be represented by a different value. The total of these values will make up your income per turn. Oil will be the most valueable and will yeild the highest return in this regard when controlled, so for example getting countries like Romania on your side or gaining control of the rich Caucases (mines and oil) will feed your coffers while denying those of your enemies

Correct!

The 'rocket detachment' unit is really a generalization for the rocket technology scale that was seen during the war. This could be as you've said the Russian Katyusha or perhaps the German Nebelwerfer all the way up to the V-2 and really depends on the amount invested to develop these weapons. From the outset, rockets will be VERY weak as they will have a very limited range (1 hex) and pretty much no punch (so probably a very expensive purchase for little return). But with research and development, their range will increase considerably as well as their strike capablity (scaled by distance to target) and may possibly become the "wonder weapons" they were intended to be Also an increase in sub units will not directly affect British MPP's through background calculations, but as expected, England is financially rather tight with pretty much the Royal Navy acting as buffer to defend it's interests, i.e. protect the island as well as strategic locations such as Gibraltar, Malta and Alexandria. In this regard, subs are much cheaper to buy for Germany than it's own capital ships and can be used to disrupt the sea lanes for troop transfers from the US to England, or from England to North Africa as well as to devastate it's capital ships. Playing in FoW will really give subs an advantage as your ability to sneak up on your opponents positions is greatly enhanced Hubert