Hubert Cater

Hi PeekingDuck, Glad to hear you are enjoying the game 1. There is no mod or way to do it that I know of as the game was designed with the isometric tiles in mind. 2. This was just a design decision at the time. 3. SC3 is planned and hexes will make a return I hope this helps, Hubert

The game is tested to install correctly in either a default path or a custom path as many players install to custom paths but without seeing the problem first hand on your system it is difficult to say for sure what the problem might be. Perhaps it is the external HD that it doesn't like, it could be that the license system doesn't like the external HD etc., or it could be a quirk in Windows 8 and so on. I can only speculate as this is the first I've heard of a non default path installation that has failed in this way.

The two Brute Force campaigns were put together by a different designer from the rest of the campaigns and follow a bit of a different layout to accommodate the world map. Essentially everything you see in the campaign as described is intended. Currently the AI plays only a single side, either Axis or Allies and you have to control your entire side but the option to play just one country or a few countries on your side is something we are considering for the future. Hubert

Hi SeaMonkey, The new supply model is unfortunately only available in the newer releases and was not something that would have been easily retrofitted for GOLD. Clausewitz, The Industrial Centers locations can be seen in the Editor under Edit Country Data, you'll then see the list in the lower right corner of the dialog for each country. Hubert

To clarify though that if a minor has surrendered I'm not sure if this would be possible, perhaps a quick activation, armistice, and re-mobilization might work but again a test should let you know.

Minors should be able to switch sides as I believe even a mobilization script that swings 200% in the opposite direction will guarantee this so long as the minor is inactive. Off hand I don't believe majors can ever switch sides since the major has active units on the board that a player can move and purchase for etc., and we felt that the drawback was that if a player might think that their major was about to switch sides they could really mess up the OOBs and so on. But I haven't tested this in a while and a quick test should be able to confirm that one way or the other.

My pleasure

This is now corrected and if you update to the v1.02 patch that was released yesterday it should no longer be a problem: http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=266&Itemid=475 Hubert

Thank you and I've made some adjustments for the next patch that should be quite a bit of an improvement over what you've shown above.

Thank you and this will be helpful For screenshots, F11 will produce a PNG screenshot and F12 will produce a JPG. They will be stored in your installation directory under Screenshots. I hope this helps, Hubert

Hi Amona, Is this with the vanilla WWI release of the game or with Breakthrough? Also, can you tell me which campaign this is as well? Thanks, Hubert

Hi Hetulik, Welcome aboard and glad to hear you are enjoying the games 1) Probably your best bet for a start on these details is to take a look at the formula for Readiness and Morale on page 37 in the Manual of the WWI game. 2) Page 40 should answer most of this but if not let me know. 3) Great to hear you are enjoying the AI and in terms of increased difficulty it really depends on what you are after. For example, for the most an increase in difficulty bonus gives the AI a bit more money to spend which helps it recover from mistakes, whereas the experience bonus will make the AI units a bit stronger in combat, i.e. attack and defense. I hope this helps, Hubert

I like the idea of adding in another Industrial Center and probably Munich and I can likely add in the Decision event to split the USSR as well... most likely only for GOLD though as I doubt there will be another patch for Global vanilla.

Hi Bob, Breakthrough is indeed an updated package or expansion and has its own set of campaigns as well as the new features outlined in the Expansion Notes PDF file found with the installation under Manuals. To clarify, it is an expansion over the SC WWI release but I suspect this is what you probably meant. However, it is also an add-on in some sense as it does require some files from the base WWI game and would not otherwise play on its own... but campaign wise the new campaigns that come with Breakthrough only play under Breakthrough and vice versa. I hope this helps, Hubert

It looks like for the 1948 campaign the Carriers are all set to have '0' escorts/intercepts. I can correct this for the next patch and in the meantime you can adjust this in the Editor by opening up the campaign, going to Edit Country Data and then clicking on the Carrier Group item. From there set the Intercepts value to at least 1 from 0. For the Tac Air not escorting other Tac Air this is because the unit type used to model Tac Air is a 'Fighter' and within the game engine Fighters don't escort other Fighters by design. I hope this helps and welcome to the game and to the forums

Hopefully soon enough as we are just making sure we didn't introduce any new bugs with our fixes.

It looks to be resolved and I'm just running some more testing to conrim. But like Amona said in my test run it only happened 2 times in a full Ostaufmarsch campaign and this was with the AI playing both sides so hopefully it is indeed just a minor inconvenience for now.

Hi Amona, This is a bug I'm looking into and was unfortunately introduced with the latest patch. It is related to the improved combat AI but a small item that I overlooked is causing the issue. This will be fixed ASAP. Hubert

Thanks Bossy and to answer your question I think it is sometimes just a matter of what you are used to. From what I've seen from a technical point of view Windows 8 seems to be quite nice and they've done a good job of integrating the touch portion of the UI into the OS which will give it quite a bit of flexibility when implemented between the various devices out there, i.e. PC or mobile or tablet etc., whereas iOS or Android is just for mobile/tablet etc. Windows 8 does offer a sort of familiar 'Desktop' option which is nice for those making the transition but without the more familiar Start->Run setup which I've found to be a small annoyance in my testing as it throws you back to the Metro tiles instead. One plus is that it is certainly much more efficiently designed and in comparing the load times on my older XP machine which took well over a minute to boot up and load properly, with Windows 8 it is somewhere between 15-30 seconds in total instead. I've recently seen Windows 8 on a touch screen computer coupled with the option to use a mouse and I can see how it will have quite a bit of merit going forward for those that just like to surf the web, play games, check email etc. Very intuitive for users like my children or on the other end of the spectrum like my father. Granted it is not for everyone but I found that once you become used to the new design it can be quite nice... but that being said for development I'll be sticking with Windows 7 for now Hubert

Thanks everyone and Merry Christmas from me as well

Great to hear Bossy

Some excellent feedback and ideas here as well and I just wanted to thank you all as this will also give us some items to think about for the future. Hubert

Good points as always and there is of course always room for improvement and I thank you all for taking the time out to share your thoughts

It's a very good idea and I'd love to try something like this but I'm doubtful it would be for the first release of SC3 as a design like this would take a lot more time to develop and test and balance. But I don't see why it wouldn't be possible at some point.

My mistake, I was looking at both the Global and WWI threads and was referring to the GOLD expansion for Global when I posted the above. Either way, the campaign should play very well on the latest engine, be it the GOLD or WWI/Breakthrough engines