Desert Dave

Always a major concern of Rush Limbaugh and his hyper-frantic, ideologically illiterate ILK, though... of late, the captive FCC has it's snoopers... on the snoop! :eek: But, seriously, this seems... a MITE complicated for a plain old, I-Go, U-Go, GS game, yes?

I prefer the I-GO... U-GO... probably because 90% of the games I have played up to this late date in my life were... boardgames. Besides, it is VERY tedious to give orders to all your troops (...icons) and then get to the last one and realize OOPS! I don't really want to take that objective yet, it's better to do it NEXT turn, and now, Of course, you've got to go back and CHANGE half the units that already have marching orders... to suit your suddenly new priorities. Trouble is, NOW you gotta examine the orders given originally so you won't give the WRONG troops the NEW orders which supersede the first impulse you had about just WHAT you wanted to do in the first place. Not only that but with "simultaneous clashes" you would need to implement "phases" to accomodate the Blitz move which follows "rip open the hole in the front-lines" move. I think this is another, and different game altogether. SC1 has a sturdy and expandable platform... all we need is the small and consequent improvements and SC2 will be... fantastic! As an I-GO... U-GO... "almost board-game" without the intricate setting-up and that supply calculating bother. :cool:

As Van Morrison might say, "... into... the Mystic."

Well, in a very certain sense, we ALREADY have an "abstract" Battle of the North Atlantic. I mean to say... if you are actually moving naval units around a map that is TOO SMALL, proportionally, to the relative land-mass, then this is... an abstraction. ANY abstraction can work, so long as you are willing to... suspend disbelief. Why is it more REALISTIC to have off-screen, or small battle-board combat, than to actually have movable units on a smaller ocean that... **ACCOMPLISHES the SAME thing, IE, it fairly accurately re-presents the WW2 Atlantic and Mediterranean naval wars? The adjustment is made in the mind of the Player, just as with every other tactical and strategic maneuver. IOW, IF I am able to cripple Britain's convoys to the extent that Britain's Economy is compromised EXACTLY as it would be if I had a perfectly proportionate ocean, or EXACTLY as it would be if I had off-board/screen combat results, WHY does it matter? EVERYTHING on the game-board, or computer screen is an ABSTRACTION. NOT ONE THING... PERFECTLY duplicates ANY of the combat or industry or research or movement capabilities. I am more than happy being able to move small and separate naval units within a necessarily restricted ocean, so long as it is... FUN, and is reasonably accurate as to Economic and Strategic effects. You may not be, OK, that's to be respected,but, herein the problem: how do you make ANY game that perfectly satisfies EVERY player's wishes & whims, now or in the future? You can't. So Hubert makes the game... that HE likes (... and believes will be successful, to some degree) and he must like naval units moving hex to hex, in an abstract naval war... as I do. :cool:

Kurt88's Full Metal Jacket Pic brings this to mind: It's 1966 and I am in these beat-up old wooden barracks... fiddling around with some dice in my foot-locker top, WHEN! Here comes the Smokey the Bear and he YELLS! "What are you doing! Where is your weapon!" Standing up straight, I say, "My gun is... " The subsequent discussion could be heard all the way from Fort Polk to New Orleans. "NO, NO! You don't have a GUN! What DO you have?" Leaning away, VERY slightly from the foul breath, I finally wise up and respond: "You are RIGHT! Sergeant, I have... an M-16 RIFLE!" He leans in further, red in the face: "That's right *&%$@-ing idiot, you have a... RIFLE! But, no brain. And why is that?" "Because, Sergeant! If the Army had wanted me to have one of those useless things, it would have issued me one...right?... sir?" ________________ The thing is, at some time or other, we are ALL like those barracks boys in that Pic... and so, some times, you just gotta accept that... IMMENSE and RELENTLESS ILLOGIC ... and just move on along... as Comrade Trapp will soon enough discover. [ February 23, 2004, 04:28 PM: Message edited by: Immer Etwas ]

Kurt88's Full Metal Jacket Pic brings this to mind: It's 1966 and I am in these beat-up old wooden barracks... fiddling around with some dice in my foot-locker top, WHEN! Here comes the Smokey the Bear and he YELLS! "What are you doing! Where is your weapon!" Standing up straight, I say, "My gun is... " The subsequent discussion could be heard all the way from Fort Polk to New Orleans. "NO, NO! You don't have a GUN! What DO you have?" Leaning away, VERY slightly from the foul breath, I finally wise up and respond: "You are RIGHT! Sergeant, I have... an M-16 RIFLE!" He leans in further, red in the face: "That's right *&%$@-ing idiot, you have a... RIFLE! But, no brain. And why is that?" "Because, Sergeant! If the Army had wanted me to have one of those useless things, it would have issued me one...right?... sir?" ________________ The thing is, at some time or other, we are ALL like those barracks boys in that Pic... and so, some times, you just gotta accept that... IMMENSE and RELENTLESS ILLOGIC ... and just move on along... as Comrade Trapp will soon enough discover. [ February 23, 2004, 04:28 PM: Message edited by: Immer Etwas ]

What is... SCROSS? Verb-like, as in... "to scross someone or something" or noun-like, as in... I used to be able to do scross-word puzzles? Is that but another of those avante garde East Coast conceits that hasn't crossed over the mighty Mississippi yet... and on out here to the great and not-so-scrossable Desert? BTW, I can't also do none of those things that JJ can apparently be honored to do, soo-ooo... what? :confused:

LOL! Ah Boggs, Boggs... the grease-paint Is never far from... your reaching, beseeching Hand... now, if we could only pump-up The volume - to Stupendous Loud!!... so we might More easily notice... the tremble In the grand-stand, and hear!! The cheers!... the... roar of the Crowd!!

LOL! Ah Boggs, Boggs... the grease-paint Is never far from... your reaching, beseeching Hand... now, if we could only pump-up The volume - to Stupendous Loud!!... so we might More easily notice... the tremble In the grand-stand, and hear!! The cheers!... the... roar of the Crowd!!

As I read this, you are saying that YOU are also a "jolly jokester!" Good! You'll live longer and have some honest clean fun along the way!! I have NEVER been offended or affronted by ANYTHING on this board... as you suggest, you can work the mouse and hasten right along and get where you believe you NEED to go. All in ALL, Battlefront is VERY fair and tolerates more than most boards, which is good, because, as I have always said... You don't MERELY want just nuts & bolts for breakfast, you also want to laugh and sing and ponder and be ASTOUNDED and also post serious stuff or some idiot nonsense as the Mood or Subconscious might strike you... literally. :eek: There ain't ANY... FINAL SAY... other than what is occasionally offered by the Moderators... at least... there shouldn't be.

As I read this, you are saying that YOU are also a "jolly jokester!" Good! You'll live longer and have some honest clean fun along the way!! I have NEVER been offended or affronted by ANYTHING on this board... as you suggest, you can work the mouse and hasten right along and get where you believe you NEED to go. All in ALL, Battlefront is VERY fair and tolerates more than most boards, which is good, because, as I have always said... You don't MERELY want just nuts & bolts for breakfast, you also want to laugh and sing and ponder and be ASTOUNDED and also post serious stuff or some idiot nonsense as the Mood or Subconscious might strike you... literally. :eek: There ain't ANY... FINAL SAY... other than what is occasionally offered by the Moderators... at least... there shouldn't be.

Bump. Bump bump bump. Bump bump bump bumpity bump... BUMP! If ony many would read this truly excellent and informative SC Guide, Which Bill Macon and Dan Fenton put together, With CONSIDERABLE time & effort, and SC playing experience, They wouldn't need to ask half as many questions. NOTHING wrong with serious query and question, but of course not!! Anyway, Please... read. You'll be glad you did!! :cool:

Andy Warhol ... that dear departed, dear demented Beaste Artiste ... would REPLICATE it... 40 times over!! (... as with those dearly-droll Campbell's Soup Cans), On a silken bed-sheet... retreived from the boudoir of... Candy-Dandy the Uptown Porn Queen, And drape it, he would... flippantly!! from a piano-wire clothes-line in Ash-Can Alley, New York, New York!! ... and so, The bleeding blueberry residue seeps eventually into common Cogniscente consciousness where it will finally congeal and put an end to 23 little precious Art magazines, practically overnight. And folks would make pilgramage from all over the Western Art World, and most especially France... IF ONLY To see this dearly designed Muffin-display... Just the ONCE, Before they might deprive Crude, Crass Civilization of their own avante garde Art expertise, and die. This rippling bed-sheet would be all the rage... at least until the next Basquiat might come indolently hip-hopping along, WHO Would rip that silken travesty (... his own considerably informed opinion, only) from off the drooping clothes-line and wear it in... absolutely scandalous disdain!! As a head-scarf (... given that his head is necessarily 44 times larger than yer average working stiff who is not privileged to know the inner magnificence of... such esoteric and privately appreciated Post-Apocalyptic... Art. This answer your question JJ?

Thank you for the generous comments Les the Sarge, 9-1, ... you are no fallen-away sparrow when it comes to original and apt observations. And also appreciate the sly Pic from JJ, ... who would remind me, and us, That the coding and implementation of new!! and mostly amazing!! stuff is... necessarily difficult, if not nigh on IMPOSSIBLE, especially When you are a one-man game designer, as Hubert is. I guess I was advising all of us, me included, to be... honestly open and receptive to WHATEVER it is that might arrive and NOT to... LIMIT the gaming possiblities. However, very true that SC2 MUST resemble other WW2 GS games to some certain extent, since you are not playing Nazi Space Ranger or setting up splashy miniatures for the Boer War. :eek: I will be truly and tremendously!! happy with ANY dedicated effort that... TRIES to improve on the WW2 GS-genre, HOWEVER it might eventually appear. [ February 17, 2004, 12:54 PM: Message edited by: Immer Etwas ]

Abstract Art exploded into human consciousness 'round about the early 20th century, principally due to: 1) Photography. Who could ever paint a picture more definitive than... a photograph? What's the use of keeping on with plain old canvas and paint? 2) Strictures of the Salon. Of course!! creative artists will ALWAYS chafe at petty rules and restrictions... it's what they DO. It's why we are all not... AUTOMATONS. Who says there needs to be proper perspective, and symbology that is classical, or a proportionality that is... strictly according to a certain... received wisdom? As dictated by some pretty elitists lounging around a drawing-room, absolutely remote and REMOVED from the flux & flow of steet ruckus? 3) Reaction to Technology. Humans are diminished and even threatened by new machinery and better ways to utilize it. In an industrial State, individual and/or collective consciousness is fragmented and indifferently abused. 4) Emergence of Psychology. Especially dream interpretations and thorough examination of motives and desires and fretful impulses. No longer can we blame the Demons or some other rudimentary superstitions, no matter that some of them are probably... accurate and intutive. So. What has this got to do with SC, 1 or 2? 1) Like photography, MANY WW2 GS games are out there, in board or pixel-language. No need to COPY or IMITATE... anything!! It doesn't MATTER what some other designer has done, especially if he is merely faithful to some statistical pattern or exacting OOB or "realistic" tank production schedule. Why make a photograph of ANY other WW2 game? No matter how wildly popular... once upon a distant time? 2) Salon imperatives. There will ALWAYS be self annointed "experts" in any field who will be "guardians" of what they privately believe to be... the good order. Well, "good order" NEVER makes something... new and world-shaking and life-changing. It just NEVER does. And never will. Better to ignore all the critics and mimics and staid old Conservatives. Make something... UNIQUE!! :eek: 3) Computer technology allows... amazing advances in what was, only yesterday, thought impossible. Whether this is in graphics, or AI, or computational calculations, the next game may very well appear... strange and hard to handle... for a while. Until the staid old game-players can come to terms with the amazing!! new parameters. 4) The "psychology" of it all. Put aside your preconceived notions and pause and consider... WHENEVER you change your habits, or closely examine your dreams (... with an inner eye attuned to ABSTRACT symbols and... what I will call... "soul-art"), then you are... a DIFFERENT person. So WHAT!!!! If an airborne brigade doesn't FIT onto a 50 mile hex in the SAME way that an Army does, so what!! As long as you get the appropriate EFFECT of having this "abstract unit" on the playing field, WHAT DOES IT MATTER if the BRIGADE is smaller than the Corps? Why are you so AFRAID of... seeing some pattern in a new... GESTALT. Let's set aside our everyday and ordinary ways of observing visual phenomena... it will set us... FREE!! To appreciate that the World, whether confined to a hex-map of Europe in WW2, or as you stroll along whistling and singing show-tunes there upon your neighborhood side-walk, is MORPHIC, and EPHEMERAL. May we... OPEN UP!! Let the new SC2 ... amaze us, and charm us, and above all else... let it arrive as though it were a fresh and daring approach to WW2 GS gaming. Pretend that Hubert is... Picasso presenting Guernica to an astonished (... AND, highly resistant public) or Odilon Redon smiling at you from behind an immense and foreboding Cyclops. In other words, be ready... for... ANYTHING!! :cool: And forget all that stressful concern & worry that some ABSTRACTION will RUIN our Life. It won't. Shoot, we could EVEN allow... mobile artillery, or Recon units, or Destroyers or... a naked Panzerwagen... descending a shimmering glass staircase???

Some really good ideas in here JdF and I would absolutely agree that we need to better replicate the Battle of the Atlantic. ANYTHING would be an improvement on what we have now. CONVOYS: I have long advocated having an on-board convoy appear at least once per year, maybe even twice yearly. It would be worth 50-100 MPPs and be destined for Britain, OR Russia (... randomly determined if by AI... otherwise the player would decide, based on each country's needs) once Lend-lease has been approved by Congress of USA. The extra amount of MPPs would be appropriated so to coincide with Britain/Russia's economic calculus. IOW, these Xtra MPPs are considered part of the Allies economic power, and if you need to reduce a few British/Russian cities or resources, that's fine. Whether they are subtracted from USA's economy doesn't matter... all depends on how and when you count up the resources. Anyway, the on-board convoys would have to be deliberately hunted down and destroyed. I also like the idea of Escorts, or Destroyers or ASW, however you want to term that new unit. And, the subs DO need to have some ability to survive longer. This could be accomplished in several ways (... and I'm sure others could come with more than these 3): 1) Make them harder to spot whenever they are "running silent" (... to use Hubert's own suggestion some while back) or in "loose formation" as JdF has now proposed. Naturally, they would then do LESS damage to convoy routes and to our NEW on-board convoys. 2) Make the actual combat results table less bloody, so that you are inflicting less damage each time, to either the subs or the escorts. These lesser results, along with the need to re-supply will force the player to continually shuttle his units back & forth to port... thereby causing MORE "cat & mouse" encounters, which is what you want. And besides, with so much else to spend MPPs on... all over the game-board, very few players actually buy many more new naval units. This way what is available at start would last throughout most of the war (... I believe this to be more realistic than having entire navies destroyed in one or two extremely violent encounters). 3) Require that ALL new ships, sub or surface, be built in certain home-hexes ONLY. No more building U-boats or Cruisers in Athens or even Brest. Each Major Power will have a "ship-building hex" or two (... perhaps Canada for Britain also) that must be used for any new construction. This will "spread out" the Atlantic even more, because the German player will have to negotiate the far northern seas, and then down along Norway in order to return to base; and the other way 'round, of course, when a new sub is commissioned. Obviously, I am very much in favor of ANY new concepts that will enlarge and improve this VITALLY IMPORTANT aspect of WW2. All of this would work best with a larger ocean, of course, but it COULD be make to work just fine with an ocean just a bit bigger, as long as the spotting and other factors I mentioned are strictly implemented. And besides, this would make for MORE excitement, engagement, and slightly remove the focus from that overwhelming land-war in the East. MORE CHOICES and MORE tactical/strategic options are ALWAYS better, and it tends to make for more diverse re-playability as well. :cool:

For some strange, and unknown reason... God has decided that ONLY one person per Continent can understand SC SUPPLY rules: North America... pzgndr. Europe... Terif. Now, it is no accident that these are probably two of our very best players... many of us would surely love to see a Heavyweight Championship Match between them, complete with AARs. Long ago I tried to internalize these SUPPLY rules, and so I did the usual thing and asked many probing questions. I got so many conflicting and bizarre answers that it PERMANENTLY tangled up most of the Supply Synapses in my brain, and to this day I couldn't explain ANY of it. Which is why I am NOT one of the better players, and no-one promotes even... a Featherweight Match between me and other similarly handicapped players. What they do for SUPPLY explanations in deepest Africa, or Asia or any of those sorts of places, I don't know, but there must be some person like pzgndr or Terif who patiently explains all those rules and permutations and exceptions and the like. I have taken to consulting my local Curandero... who tosses those old yellowed chicken bones into a rusting lunch-bucket and advises me on when to Blitz and when to remain near base-camp and when to give up the Ghost. :eek: That works best for me, though I do lose at SC more often than not. What the rest of you can do is... follow the wise ones, one per Continent as God has deemed appropriate, and perhaps one day you too can lay claim to being one of SC's greatest players!! :cool:

I have sometimes wondered... WHY? The fascination with... war-ships. OK. First of all, that breathing, REACHING!! Ocean IS... intimidating. Miles & miles & miles of... nowhere to go... but DOWN. :eek: They say that we, once upon a simple-cellular time, hove ourselves up out of that free-form miasma, and used little flimsy fins to saunter on over to a nearby tree... then somehow climbed the tree and soon after, commenced a very merry SWINGING! (... which continues to this very day, in the way that some will trade-off Life-partners, and the like.) Anyway, since you are out on that vast and awesome water-expanse, BEST To have bristling turrets!! and super-thick armor so to PROTECT yourself from... Monsters of the Deep? :eek: Or, little tiny coastal-gunships that can't navigate or shoot so straight (... as, once upone a screw-loose time... in The Tonkin Gulf?). It's like... the hyper-masculine back-brain fantasy... absolutely realized... you can swagger along, big broad bull-shoulder blunt to the sissy boulevard, and KNOCK ANYBODY'S BLOCK OFF who gets IN YOUR WAY!! Here, that deep and unforgiving water is... surely able to swallow and easily drown ANYONE or ANYTHING on Earth or maybe, in Heaven also. Yep, these bristling war-ships are like... a bulwark... a gathering promise... NOTHING!! Can defeat one 'a them... Behemoths!! No slimy grasping Monsters, no mighty Bismark, no terrific Tsunami... NOTHING! Or, Maybe not. Maybe they all ARE... ONLY stunning technological MARVELS, after all, worthy of anyone's avid worship! For my part, I have always stood oddly diminished... in an almost reverential AWE, as well. :cool:

Which is an excellent way to play, because it gives you a chance to pause and regroup and mull over ALL the little mistakes that you've made. And if you are playing tcp/ip, then there is no doubt that you HAVE made many small and potentially overwhelming mistakes (... and if you are like me, some larger ones too!!), unless of course you are some kind of X-treme Manic Commander who THRIVES on real-time, split-second decision making. Some gamers are like that. With SC or Chess or RTS or simply stroking down the boulevard, searching for fragile happenstance or even, Trouble. And, they have an unfair advantage over those who prefer to... MOSEY on along, singing a little blue-bird song as they ponder the game-board. BEWARE!! of any who would ONLY play tcp/ip... they are IN their element, I tell you, they have super-animated shock Synapses and WILL push and parry and push and harry and all the while they are smacking that "T" (... talk) button like mad, hoping to confuse and thwart your very patient arrangement of field forces!! :eek: I don't mind playing either way. I suppose it depends on your innate ability to TUNE IN, and as necessary, TUNE OUT. Or, DROP IN, DROP OUT, etc. (... Tune In, Turn On and Drop Out?) Well anyway, each has their favorite way to play... if you like to WIN now and again, best to schedule the game on your HOME FIELD occasionally. Meaning, tcp/ip OR pbem, depending on your prevailing psychological make-up. Or, as pzgndr has suggested, a little of both.

It is not merely the vastly different geographical scale that is involved. Better by far, IMHO, to keep the screen precisely small enough that you don't have to constantly click all over a grossly extended map that is, necessarily, due to huge ocean expanses, simply... TOO large. :eek: And besides, getting the European Theatre... JUST RIGHT, in terms of exactly and exquisitely blended game factors, such as: industry and research and supply and relative unit strengths, is the absolute primary consideration here, the way I see it. I would much rather have the "damn-near perfected" ETO, since no-one has... QUITE done it yet. Which is has always astonished me somewhat, since the greatest POTENTIAL, in terms of sales, would be... the WW2 grand-strategy game. Even part-time general-interest gamers could enjoy this kind of product. Well, what have all these many fabled game-makers been DOING all these dreaming decades? Since Avalon Hill and other companies went belly-up? But, given the great platform that has already been soundly established, if ANYONE can get it done, Hubert CAN. It takes MORE than merely knowing WW2 statistics and OOB's and relative hex distances between Alexandria and Tobruk, it takes... a magic moxie , a delicate but determined elan. Hubert has these, I am confident... and all who are now wringing war-gamer hands, I say this: You WILL indeed see SC2, SOONER than later, and it will be... a charmed revelation!! :cool:

Same to ya, kurt88. Looks like we're the only Rough old road-house rock-rollers Prowling around SC Town. 'At's all right. Two is... MORE than enough. For... ANYTHING, Might come biking or hiking out Along... the boulevard, turnpike Or... Signs & Wonders Thunder-road. :cool:

Happy New Year! To... ALL! And also, some and several Of the following: Battlefront moderators And Chief operating officers, Who have put up with... splutterings And mutterings and almost! literate Hatchet-jobs and spittle in Gobs and! untold sass & mischief, oh yes! Happy and easied days ahead... and also To all the... for-the-love-of-the-GAMErs, and The lurkers and smirkers too, and those heavy Competitors zestfully competing! and every single SC admirer and Co-conspirator - equal alike! Happy New Year too! To Jim Morrison as well, no doubt Older and wiser and hiding out O our Faithful American Poet... abiding In a hard-rock cabin somewhere in the vicinity Of Big Sur, California, satisfied! At last, that Recreational drugs are no... sublime solution, That the Miami policers are surely And truly, wise and benign, And that Janis Joplin didn't REALLY Mean it... when she conked him on A patchouli-laced pompadour... with That (empty) Southern Comfort whiskey decanter. And, last but not least, Happy New Year! :cool: To Hubert Cater ... who has provided Untold FUN and Panzer-like Sights & sounds galore! HI HO! It is mostly and only.. US! :eek: The cheering and confetti tearing & tossing crowd! Asking for... the Stars awhiling high above, And the Sun and Moon too! and also! Asking for... Even more! And, We WANT it, as DOOR-opening Morrison once and Dearly defiant declared... NOW! No, no, and hip hooray! We want it... Yesterday!! And how!

Good thing it is, That no'ne of these current members Are also... moderators. Or, Is that to be... part of Patriot Act II? Or, As Big Pink would have it: "We don't need no ed-u-cation, We don't need no thought-control, oh, no, no, That's just... another brick in the Wall. :eek:

President. It's... president. Anyhow, What you say... is true. Sad to admit, but, Tremendously True. Looking over the scruff-necked '04 pack, And considering the dire And reckless direction USA is presently heedlessly headed, Could be... :eek: It will... ALWAYS be true. Oh, for as far as the crying eye can see.

KDG... Thanks much for that link. I am with you... any time you can have the "usual" game-play changed around a bit, and ESPECIALLY when it gives the "good" player a chance to upset that (... cocky!) "great" player, why, that's the CAT's PAJAMAS! :cool: Hubert, I IMPLORE you... please! Include "special events"... HOWEVER you personally choose to implement them, for SC2!!!