vonManstein39

Stalin figured Hitler was like him, crooked and cunning but with a strong sense of self-preservation. In Hitler's place, he (Stalin) would never have been reckless enough to attack Russia with Britain undefeated, so he assumed Hitler wouldn't be that reckless either. Wrong!

One thing we can all agree on: Both the USA and the USSR each, individually, far outproduced Germany. As long as both the USSR and USA stay in the war, Germany is doomed. And Britain outproduced Italy and Japan combined - true when you take into account that Japan chose to build many warships and only a few hundred tanks, unlike Britain which built a balanced military. So Italy and Japan didn't stand a chance either, not in a long war. My simplistic view is: The USSR did most to defeat Germany. Britain did most to defeat Italy. The USA did most to defeat Japan. The USSR could have beaten Germany without British help. Britain could have beaten Italy without US help. The USA could have beaten Japan without Russian help.

A Finnish HQ? But that's complete poo. What will the Finns do, with their own HQ? Invade Leningrad, And make Stalin so mad, That he'll smash Finland flat, And that will be that! [ October 03, 2002, 11:43 AM: Message edited by: vonManstein39 ]

A Finnish HQ? But that's complete poo. What will the Finns do, with their own HQ? Invade Leningrad, And make Stalin so mad, That he'll smash Finland flat, And that will be that! [ October 03, 2002, 11:43 AM: Message edited by: vonManstein39 ]

I'm a COS fan, still play it PBEM, and have monitored SC from the beginning in the hope that it would be even better than COS. I played the SC demo, but never bought the game, despite great enthusiasm evoked by posts in this forum. I was disappointed by SC. The COS ground combat system is more complex than SC's and allows greater tactical flexibility. Often I can force an enemy unit to retreat in the direction I choose, and use this to aid my own advance. Also the classic blitzkreig techniques of attack and immediate exploitation are possible, rather than just slogging it out head to head until the enemy army is destroyed. For example, it is possible in COS for the Germans to reach and take Warsaw in the first impulse, before the Allied player can make a single move. I especially like the trade-off in COS between unit strength, supply, morale and efficiency which seems very realistic. SC's naval warfare is more exciting and less abstracted than that of COS, but there are flaws here too that make the U-boat campaign very difficult to make a cost-effective strategy. SC's strategic bombing is also superior to that of COS. But it's the land combat that's the real meat of this type of game, and here I just prefer the COS system. Another major advantage of COS is the political screen, where trying to influence different neutrals can really allow quite a lot of variation between games. Persuading Spain or Persia (Iraq) to join the Axis is a triumph, while there is a small chance of getting Italy to come in early or delay the American entry. Transports in COS can be rebuilt - it's warships and subs that can't. Amphibious invasions have the problem in COS that the transports are not screened by the escorts, they can be hit at random, and once hit every unit on board is destroyed. But on the other hand units can land directly into an enemy-held city or fortress, even if there is an enemy unit there. The chance of success per unit is small, but even Leningrad, Gibraltar and Malta can be taken this way. Load up four corps and try landing them all in an enemy fortified city and one of them is likely to make it. COS doesn't have the same polished and protected PBEM support as SC, you have to save and email the game files, and trust your opponent to be honest, but within that limitation PBEM is possible.

We Are The Knights Who Saaay: "NEE!" [ July 01, 2002, 01:57 PM: Message edited by: vonManstein39 ]

No it should NOT be more. Not for a game that is downloaded from the Web. If I'm going to pay more than $25 for this game, then I want a proper printed manual for my money, not a pdf file. The loss of properly bound glossy printed manuals has been a SEVERE loss to the gamer, especially in the strategy genre. Unlike the no-brainer FPS games flooding the market, strategy games DEPEND on a good manual - a bad manual means a bad game package.

Thanks for your open-mindedness and respect for people Hubert. Not many overworked game designers can match that - you're the best I've seen since Oleg Maddox (creator of Il-2). It's easy for people to forget that you've worked your butt off on this game for two years. No-one could blame you if you were absolutely sick to death of SC by now - many people would be like "for God's sake lets publish this damn thing so I can have my life back!"

Sorry - seems like an unnecessary complication to me. If a feature makes no difference to the gameplay, why have it?

Spain only had a few cruisers and destroyers left in WWII - her last battleship was sunk during the Civil War. Her air force consisted of leftovers from that war too, until they started building Me109s and He111s locally.

I like your mod - but a couple of your aircraft choices I disagree with. The Me163 proved to be almost useless as a combat aircraft - it shot down less than ten enemy bombers during the war. It was very difficult to get into a good attacking position with the limited fuel available, and many aircraft were lost on the ground in accidents with the fuel. Even the unrealised Me263/Ju248 version with wheels and more fuel would still have been limited in impact compared to the Me262. Also as far as I'm aware in SC the war can't proceed longer than 1946? So I think that any plane that didn't have or wouldn't have had a flying prototype until 1947 shouldn't be represented, as it takes at least another year to reach the front lines in quantity after first flight. Like the B-47 and F-86 for example, which were created by the USA using captured German data, which if Germany was still fighting the USA wouldn't have. No one in the West knew about swept-back wings until after the war in Europe was over.

Sorry, but it's time for a rant. <rant> Leave the Frogs (sorry, French) alone! They don't deserve all this abuse. If some French soldiers performed badly in WWII, that's the fault of their generals for not making sure that they were properly trained, not of the soldiers themselves. </rant>

On this scale, WWI will be relatively boring on the Western Front, but OK elsewhere where there is more space. The defender will have a tremendous advantage over the attacker, and air power will be non-existent (in terms of close support the aircraft of WWI were almost totally ineffective, so we couldn't have air units damaging ground units. Strategic bombers likewise were almost completely useless at damaging the enemy's economy. Armour was only an adjunct to infantry at that time, so no armor units, only cavalry, which always got slaughtered when it attacked entrenched infantry. As for the infantry, they had little motorised tranport, and so their movement rate would be slow. WWI works better on a divisional scale where there is more to do, than on an army level as in SC.

The map borrows a lot from Clash of Steel in design - simple and easy to understand. Every difference in terrain makes a difference in the game, and every detail on the map serves a purpose. In Third Reich the map was more detailed, but was not as instantly accessible, and some of the detail did not affect gameplay. The lack of 3D or animated graphics makes no difference whatever to the gameplay of SC - 3D graphics enhance action oriented games, and real-time strategy games. Since SC isn't real-time but turn based, 3D action sequences would be non-interactive and repetitive, and would serve no purpose other than novelty-value eye-candy. I remember buying Microprose's Risk II, and the animated graphics were beautiful! They were great and fun for the first two weeks - then the novelty wore off. I turned the animations off and concentrated on playing the game.

This is a good point, but this is meant to be a 'simple' WWII strategy game, with a low level of complexity. It's certainly not Gary Grigsby's War in Europe. In some ways it's even less complex than Clash of Steel (COS), from which it borrows some ideas. Production is one of those ways. In COS you could see in advance what your enemy was building, as units took several turns to produce and the list could be viewed. That way, you could counter the enemy's production priorities by adjusting your own. So there was no way to catch a human opponent by surprise with a new unit appearing unexpectedly on the map. In Strategic Command (with Fog Of War on) you have no idea what units your enemy is going to build, and you can't see them until they enter combat. So if production of units took several turns, and you couldn't scrap them to make different ones, you might be building ships only to be caught out and defeated by the enemy building lots of air units (for example). Having instant unit productions compensates for FOW, because you can immediately counter a surprise production by the enemy. Otherwise, with delayed production, you would be basically playing a rock/paper/scissors type guessing game with production, hoping that what you're producing counters what the enemy is producing. This would make the game interesting, but harder to win and more daunting for new players. Losing a game after a 'fair fight' is one thing, losing mainly because the enemy outsmarted you with his production priorities is something else. I think the Strategic Command production method is fine for the level of complexity that this game aims at. For a more complex game it wouldn't be sufficient, but for this game it is.

Hubert: Please make the full version of SC support more screen resolutions (at least 800x600 & 1280x1024). I've given up on the demo because at 1024x786 my monitor emits a constant high-pitched whine that drives me up the wall! :mad:

I know what you mean. I preferred the COS version of production too - it was part of the fun trying to work out what you would need in a year's time. From an historical intelligence point of view, both sides generally knew what capital ships the other was building, and had some idea of the general trend of other production, but nothing like exact figures. In SC, to counter anything your opponent might do, you will just have to leave MPPs saved up instead of spending them all.

I know what you mean. I preferred the COS version of production too - it was part of the fun trying to work out what you would need in a year's time. From an historical intelligence point of view, both sides generally knew what capital ships the other was building, and had some idea of the general trend of other production, but nothing like exact figures. In SC, to counter anything your opponent might do, you will just have to leave MPPs saved up instead of spending them all.

Look at it this way, Vampyre: Even strategy Games don't have a shelf life of more than three years. Some of the games you mentioned are so old that many of the gamers who will buy SC were still in primary school, or maybe even nursery school when they came out, and thus never played them. Storm Across Europe - 1989 - A total pile of crap, ugly, virtually unplayable interface and worthless AI. High Command - 1991 - Poor interface, ugly graphics and crap AI. Clash of Steel - 1993 - Good except for poor AI. Third Reich - 1995 - it's only a straight port of the board game, which limits its potential, very complicated to learn, and the AI is OK for beginners but no match for the grognards who play this game. And they are all DOS games. Many gamers now have no experience of non-Windows games at all. Since COS is nine years old, copying some of its better features is no crime or great drawback. [ May 23, 2002, 11:00 AM: Message edited by: vonManstein39 ]

Great Guns! Will you two stop it! This is a war zone, not a garden party!

Having the corps AP at 4 (max) is equivalent to having motorised infantry. At this scale, a corps moving 4 hexes moves 200 miles. Summer turns last a week. That means a movement rate of 28.5 miles a day. An infantry unit on foot that marched 28.5 miles a day for a week would lose quite a few men in the process. Multiply that by several weeks and men would be dropping like flies. I don't think many foot troops in WWII managed to sustain a pace like that for very long. So in SC the corps are probably all motorised, whereas the armies are only partly motorised. The tank units have one extra AP due to their being elite units with a bit more drive and motivation than a normal mechanised corps. Mind you, I also prefer the COS system where AP did vary by country. You can't imagine Spanish infantry being equipped, trained or motivated to move as fast as German infantry!

If player is playing both Allies and Soviets as one side, then victory objectives should be joint. But if playing only one or the other, then objectives should be separate.

Hubert: Suggestions: Option 1: Quit could quit right out to Windows instead of the main menu. Option 2: If SC can detect the user (successfully!) loading the same PBEM game file more than twice, either by filename or (preferably) by the inclusion of a large random number in the game file which SC will check (this could be generated by formula using a conversion of the date and time to ensure a truly random and unique number), then SC will refuse to load that game file for say, 30 days thereafter. Make sure there's an error message saying why this is happening. (You've got to give the user one chance to reload to cover honest reloads resulting from power cuts and other real-life problems.) The only way round this cheat protection would be to uninstall and reinstall SC onto your PC - few cheaters will want to do that more than once! Option 3 - Quick and dirty method?: For PBEM, the game could load the requested game file, and then immediately delete it automatically from the save directory, so that if he quits and goes to reload it, it isn't there, forcing him to copy it again from his email program. This would really annoy cheaters after a while! Hope you find this useful! [ May 03, 2002, 10:56 AM: Message edited by: vonManstein39 ]

Well done Hubert - thanks for listening. However, shouldn't the convoys represent a bigger share of the British MPP totals? Britain was very dependent on convoys for both food and raw materials, especially oil and aluminium. She was never even close to being self-sufficient in food, despite the Dig For Victory campaign - if the Germans had won the Battle of the Atlantic, Britain would have had to sue for peace in less than a year. I suggest that convoys should represent two-thirds of British production - although the Germans would have to have several subs in the Atlantic to sink all of them each turn. That gives Germany a way of neutralising Britain.