Desert Dave

I would agree with Terif on this one. AA can indeed be an important factor, in either the defense of occupied France VS Brit AF and Strat Bombing (... so to gain sufficient Experience so to later aid in D-Day), or VS Allied forays into the occupied cities, once landed. As with any other "favored strategy"... all depends on the individual's choices. Some I have played will invest merely in Air (... exceptionally! boring) or Subs or SBs or miles and miles of marching Corps.

Welcome! to you and all the UK (... and other Euro's) who are just discovering this fun and highly addictive game! You guys have been playing war-games of one sort or another since the Knights of Roundtable days, yes? :cool: Anyway, the AI is good, but eventually... predictable. You CAN find some Mod scenarios that provide more of a challenge, or You can look them all over to get up to speed on the latest ideas, and use the Editor to make a solo-game that is appropriate to your abilities. I've done that, and in my last solo game, I did NOT conquer Russia at game's end in May 1947! First time that ever happened. ***I would post this extremely challenging scenario somewhere, but it seems Otto (... who started a fan-site way back at the beginning of SC) has not been available for quite some while, and no-one seems to know when or if he will be again... :eek: Anyway, play around with those parameters that you can edit, and you'll eventually find a solo game that is fun and challenging to play. TCP is indeed a good way to go (... or some combination of pbem/tcp), because, as many have already suggested, the Nefarious Foe will always! surprise you with some great, or strange move.

Dare I suggest? Because, at times, One doesn't MERELY dream of revenge, One... enacts it out. The North Country is... cool. :cool: In an awful LOT of far-out ways... just... elegantly Jazz-elan-like, and Big Bird the old 50s nifty be-bopping Cat... cool. [ October 27, 2003, 03:18 PM: Message edited by: Immer Etwas ]

rambo, That is an apt and appropriate story, well told... you should be a... traveling raconteur and you would... Was going to say: "make a good living at it"... but, it would be hard to set a price-schedule for that, since it would be difficult to guage the market and the competition, and everthing would depend, like that little red wheelbarrow in the rain... on the day and age. Well, and now, the haircut-business fell on hard times in the 60s... all manner of folks were just... letting their hair grow, long and lush! :cool: Truckers, Hell's Angel's, Rodeo riders, Yippies & Hippies, and garage mechanics and stock-car racers and many more! And so, the barbers of the Western World had a genuine dilemna... do I LOWER my costs, thereby TRYING to induce these degenerates (... well, an old hanger-on at that Barber Shoppe reminded him that Jesus Christ and the disciples had long hair too!... were they degenerates?) to come in and get a haircut? One barber said, t' hell with that! I am very good at what I do, and I would rather work LESS anyway, so I keep my prices exactly the same! Well, soon enough he was working as a... roadie for a rock & roll band, and only cut hair on the side, which, given the wild & crazy guys he was associated with, only happened, oh, about once every 2 years. Strangely, he let his hair grow out too - and massively so! And ended up married to a feminist RCA Record Exec, and from then on, lived the life of Hollywood Riley, even to the extent of writing a little screenplay... all about this barber who... One odd note: in his later years he would get the old dulling scissors out of the attic trunk, and FORCE!! his only child to sit on a little kitchen high-chair (... even when he got to be 16, 17 years old!) and took incredible time and care over the kid's haircut. The kid grew up, a bit misfit, and he does have the one ear that is... a smidgeon smaller than the other, but! is now a successful business-person, who speculates on high-flying ventures here and there, and is SO well-to-do, that he can afford ANY computer game that comes out, no matter what the price! What a... LUCKY guy! ************************ I still say, let's not actively campaign for higher prices... on anything! SC2 will likely be a little more expensive, fine, it will be worth every penny. The thing is, you want a LOT of folks to buy it, and not stand in the shiny Tech Store of their Mulling Mind, and say... hmmm, $60 bucks!... and forthwith, set it casually aside. SC the Original was priced... just right. [ October 27, 2003, 11:51 AM: Message edited by: Immer Etwas ]

The Pacific Theatre is a totally DIFFERENT scale, given the Ocean expanses, and therefore, IMHO, should be a SEPARATE game. And, who would want to be scrolling around the whole damn day long... looking for that stray Aussie spotting-unit out in The Hebrides? Or even the Corps with No-Name, starved by constant! interruption to the flimsy-fragile supply line. I say... keep the Theatres apart. :cool: As for SC2, which is looking - each and every sun thundrous! mountain-meadow day! like a going concern... Hooray! :cool: We could use more width and breadth, to include: 1) Deeper into the dark heart of Africa. Don't need Ethiopia (... except as a "special event" event) but a couple more hexes to the south would be most excellent. The Afrika Korps may be mostly "romatic" but it is a challenge to play... in the SAND hexes, as rambo has suggested. 2) It would be great to see Trondheim (... and the Murmansk Transfer of MPPs to desperately importuning Russia!) on the board, and some way for those UnterSee Boots to circumnavigate around Scapa Flow, so... about 6-9 hexes further north. 3) The whole Middle East needs inclusion, to include Persia, and also those vast, winter bitten expanses out beyond! Moscow. As it is, the quick jump by those nefarious Panzergrenadiers! into Urals mountain range... is far too easy. Should be a long and tedious and terrible slog. 4) Out West, would be nice to have that huge Atlantic Ocean, where the determined ASW and the snarling Subs could hunt & seek and find and INTRICATELY clash, and in great! detail.

My guess is that the game was originally priced a little lower than equivalent games, because Hubert wanted as much EXPOSURE as possible... :cool: BECAUSE, in a certain sense he always had SC2 in mind! And then, with a more detailed and elaborate product, the new price would be... justified. As far as everyone ACTIVELY campaigning and promoting higher prices for computer games, well, I guess I have to wonder... :confused: Are you not familiar with... inflation? Or, the toiling & moiling (... and so unfortunate, well, they deserve just what they get!) Lower Classes, who have to struggle mightily with making simple ends meet, with cobbling together sufficient rent monies? What is this? I suppose, for those who are pretty well off and sitting in the Hobbse-constructed Industrial cat-seat, oh, no problem, me myself can afford ANY price, so why should I worry over those (... GEOMETRICALLY increasing) OTHERS who aren't so well off... LOL! [ October 26, 2003, 12:44 PM: Message edited by: Immer Etwas ]

As a one who has had some collateral experience with Asylums, which surely will come as no surprise to many of the similar-minded (oops... almost said SINGLE minded) members, I would caution: sometimes that can be good, and sometimes... not so wonderful. Depending on the Gestalt, but of course. Most popular games have alternative sites, usually called "unofficial official" fan-type sites and the like. So, no surprise that there would also be another place for SC folks to go, no? Remains to be seen just how expertly and with what degree of IMPARTIALITY they might have at the other place. Could be that they will end up... EQUALLY as confining, only in a completely different way, we'll soon see. Seems to me that there is often a good and sufficient reason to have DISINTERESTED and non-participating "moderators." Who would be fair, without that certain... ummm, normal human tendency toward... clumping up together and finally deciding on some special... EXCLUSIVITY. Who would not care to closely examine anyone's pedigree or extra-special qualifications. And so, will it turn out to be the case, yet again, where another well-meaning place would, quite innocently and slyly, but of course, KEEP OUT!!! those who they think are... not... QUITE... closely akin, or aligned? Well, and once again... we'll see. I don't agree that the Moderators on Battlefront have been unduly out of line, if that is the main complaint. Surely there should be some off-topic inter-play among members, and I have said so on this board. How could I not? Since I do very much enjoy elaborating and expanding on topics that pique my interest, in a kind of spontaneous, free-wheeling way. Some don't care for that, or RATHER: they don't care for it unless THEY themselves are the ones who are straying away, whatever unique form that might take, yes? Like everything else, EACH individual has their very own pet peeves and personal "likes and dislikes," and some will chafe or be annoyed or even disgusted at a comment, whereas some others will not. Who can say? Just what is relevant to living happily and well, in this extremely brief life? Easy to say... just go with the flow and be tolerant, so that YOU yourself might be better tolerated, but as we know... some threshold can be reached that would UPSET one person, whereas most others are hardly bothered. As for allowing other game advertisements, Battlefront has every right to be restrictive, if that's their particular policy. However, if I owned a company (... and, I have) I WOULD allow mention of other games, but, NOT other directly competing companies. A fine line, well, maybe, but each business much make their OWN calculations. [ October 26, 2003, 12:27 PM: Message edited by: Immer Etwas ]

You are right... could have sworn it was "6"... that would cause you to hurl that dastardly die!... clear to Kingdom Come... but then, I haven't played A3R for some while, due to all those great and sufficient reasons outlined by Dan Fenton. See, every now and then I will stick in an erroneous bit of data, on purpose, just to discover if the fellow Forum members are paying any attention. For instance, I will, and casually, so as not to be a neon-light in the plate-glass window of an all-night Truck Cafe, put in something obviously lunatic, like this: "The moon is blue every other 3rd month, following the falling comet near Uranus." Usually no-one bothers to set the Universe straight, but now and again somebody will notice and comment: "Well, you are not so hotshot smart after all, since it NEVER happens that way, at least it don't do that... in Helsinki!" And, too bad for me, but Paris sometimes became a 1-1 attack, when I wanted to get on to other, more interesting business, like bailing the Itties out of Greece. BTW, Dan, I don't miss the arguments over the convoluted rules either... you think those old ones are bad, try reading the new!! Naval engagement rules for A World at War! But, IF you do, have plenty of aspirin at hand, and nothing else to do for, oh, 8 or 10 hours, and that is only 20 pages... LOL! Yeah indeed... like Gibraltar. Take that fortress from the hand-wringing, beleaguered Allied foe, and you will win just about every time, all DIE rolls being equal. Generally, I have found, the females don't ordinarily prefer playing unecessarily competitive games, unless of course you are talking about "personal relational" things, at which they are so far ahead of us that... we may just as well be lugging a stud-club out of the cave. BTW, there is a software program that allows A3R or the new World at War game to be played, quite deftly it would appear, by way of e-mail. You can transfer photo-images so that there is no need to write down all those nefarious moves in such excruciating detail. :cool:

Far better? Well, I would disagree. SC...2, may be... far better, And maybe not, We'll have to wait and see. It's like that... Love of Your Life. O, momently lost, and so... hey Joe! Forget the cost, the woe, The Throngs, with all their wrong advice! You've got to... quit Acting so Broken-in-soul, and nice, And just... go out And get her! :cool: Yes, it is faster, and unfortunately, IMHO, so is our modern Life style... there seems to be... a fortuitous match here. Again, that... need for speed! :eek: I call it the Lightning Life. Cell phones instead of patiently detailed letters. Driving 20 MPH over limit so you can get across town 5 minutes faster... consequently, missing the Exciting Einstein Perspective ... you and The World moving together, at odds, and little moments, and large lush panoramas, and, Old Loves... in all that rip-trip & rush... lost. And fevered and idiot-illogical Media talk-shows instead of slow and patient, and carefully reasoned dialectic, ... which may somewhat explain... how... We end up in ill-considered Wars, :eek: And how... we execute ! political prisoners, even though it later turns out that they were actually... innocent! Time to take a good long look around, I am thinking, and... slow down. :cool: Computers can do many quicksilver and occasionally wonderful things, but, they can't give you... EVEN... ONE EXTRA... SECOND, In your (... extremely brief) Life.

Really, the one VITAL item that is needed for the British SC player... is... a little book. A sayings-book, placed close at hand to your computer gaming table... a book perhaps, by one of the following: Lao Tzu, Suzuki, or even, the later Thomas Merton will do. Because what is REQUIRED is... patience. A calm and casual Zen Apprehension that... all the while the clanking & smoking German juggernaut is annihilating nearly everything upright in sight! YOU will... have... patience. Too easy, and understandable, to choke and chafe and roar off! in simply-deflected directions. Let the Hun have his way. For awhile. YOU will wait. And wait. UNTIL!! the striking moment arrives! And so, invest in a Tech or two, depending on playing style (... Jets of course, perhaps IT or Anti-Air, a truly under-valued asset, or even more Sonar if the Wolfpacks are out in force and slavering, snarling of course). Zen Patience. YOU are the lean and lonesome Lion, breathing easy in the quiet underbrush, no insect or bird or snake will dare trouble your golden-cowled countenance... :cool: And O, that brutely mannered and black heeled... Antelope, why, it supposes there is NO treachery anywhere... on this, the sun flushed Tundra... what an ill-advised, ill-considered... fit of... brute hubris! Wait, wait... and wait a bit longer, then... screaming and elegant-beastly you... leap! For that... shadowed... antelope throat...

True, but then again, just about ANY decent war game, board or computer, is like chess. Long ago I contributed an entry on the forum where I stated that the Air Fleet was... "the Queen of the battleboard." We are in accord. All in all, a fine analysis of the SC pieces. And the 2 games are similar, in that you have specific pieces designed for a certain purpose. In that... you must adhere to the rules of the game. In that... you have some openings that are better than others, and, if you make some impulsive or foolish moves at the start, then you will have the Devil's own time trying to recover. :eek: But, the differences between SC and chess are much greater than the resemblances... in particular, the "luck " aspect, which seems to trouble some... immensely. Not me! As if LUCK didn't play an extensive part in every little aspect of each of our lived lives, every single day! JJ... Truly enjoyed reading those accounts of... personal exploits and the Bio's of Bobby Fischer, et al... this is one of the really GREAT! things about this forum board... we are allowed to share interesting experiences... how else would you ever actually LEARN things... of lasting VALUE? In a TEXT book... LOL! [ October 11, 2003, 11:00 AM: Message edited by: Immer Etwas ]

Just curious... some while back you told us about that great... BONANZA!! that you got, in the Stock Market I think it was... 5 Grand! or more, wasn't it? Anyway, why didn't you use some of that hard earned loot to buy a new computer? Nowadays, you can get a 2+ Gig Rocket-Ware... for a relative pittance, and so you could then play all those new high octane games, no? Well, just wondering, and you needn't reply, or provide a Financial Statement... showing all those debts to the bookies and the plumbers and those lost bets at Pebble Beach, or Boise Municiple Golf Course etc... To address the question at hand: Advanced 3rd Reich remains the best war-game ever made, to this day, and perhaps someone will convert it to the computer, which would actually allow it to be PLAYED, given that few of us are patient enough anymore to take the required time to set up all those 4-6 and 3-3 units. Having said that, there is every possibility that SC2 will become JUST detailed enough so that... EVEN A3R will be... almost forgotten. I am confident that... if you like 3R and A3R, then you will likely like the original SC. No worries that your little stacks will fall apart because you stuck a 1 or 2 sized Air unit somewhere in one of them, and you with those clumsy, hunter-gatherer fingers! Also, no terrible results, like failing to take Paris with a 1-1 attack by rolling a 6 on the die, which is, as all former 3rd Reich players can appreciate... attacker destroyed! :eek: [ October 11, 2003, 10:37 AM: Message edited by: Immer Etwas ]

Not to put pressure on Hubert, the magnificent one man shop, but... you are right when you are right. Which is why so many of us will offer our humble and quite interested opinion... about those aspects we would like to see incorporated into SC2. Nothing wrong with that... I am guessing that each one of us has, at one time or another, imagined and perhaps... actually created a WW2 game, true? Given that, we surely have decided opinions about what would BEST approximate the war. What we mostly can't appreciate, at least it is certainly true in my case, is just how difficult it might actually be to CODE those things we all collectively clamor for. :eek: Easy enough to make a map, and draw in hexes or sea zones and cut-out little cardboard units, but probably much more challenging to make the computer do all the intricate things we would like to see... become reality. Well, if anyone can, Hubert can... he has publicly stated that... he is a FAN of this Genre, quite likely as much as any of us. SC2, and the run-up to it... should be quite a lively adventure! Hang around, be amazed!

Seems like part of the FUN would be to TRY and time your various nefarious Empire dreams & schemes to closely accord to game developments, WITHOUT knowing precisely when they might arrive. Otherwise, you can be too-too exacting when you try to cut corners, like Bill Macon tries to do in our games. (... recently he damn near conquered the whole known world, and still managed to beat the Barbarossa clock... by merely a tiny little hair on his chinny-chin chin! :eek: ) Far better, I am thinking, to prepare for assumed eventualities, AS BEST YOU CAN, and not have such PRECISE information on other Countries and their war preparations. And so, I am also in favor of those hints of inclination that might appear in pOp-uP boxes, as Edwin P has suggested. IF we get a more detailed Diplomatic model in SC2, this would allow us to approximate the course of the War, without knowing, in perfectly pliable Hindsight, just what MAY occur next. IF you place sufficient MPPs into trying to influence, say, Spain or Sweden, THEN you can safely GUESS at future tendencies, BUT... you will never know for surely sure. This seems a fine way to insure maximum replayability, while preserving the Gamer's ability to influence future events, yes? :cool:

Another great name for our SC board! Sounds as though that V-2 is mounted, bristling appointed, and rip-rip! raring to go! Anyway, you would be sure sorry if you didn't acquire SC... I have been playing war-games since Bismarck was a tyke, and I can honestly tell you that SC is, simply, great FUN! As for COS, well, it was all right in its day, and has a few features that SC doesn't, but, IMHO, it ain't half the game SC is. There are a few features that I would like to see SC2 adapt: 1) The slower introduction of new units (... and delayed appearance of new models of old units), and 2) A diplomatic schematic that supposes some gamer input to effect Minor entry. You won't go wrong buying SC, and the added benefit is the sound and superior PBEM/tcp-ip set-up! :cool:

As forward-thinking war-game strategists, we would surely think so. However, look around... notice how the Bullies in your neighborhood act... they rarely stand alone (... unless they are certifiably Sociopathic, in which case they don't have a conscience, nor do they care what ANYONE else thinks... Hitler was NOT a Psycho/Sociopath)... see, they ALWAYS need some henchman, or similarly crazy cohort... :eek: This is how they remind themselves of Importance... I am not ALONE in my deluded world-view, see... over there! is so & so, who publicly supports my grandiose ambition. I will merely USE him and then pitch him to the howling wolves (... who were once apparently admiring and forgiving), no matter, he serves the purpose... of being EQUALLY insane. Hitler was a coward, plain and simple, and all cowards REQUIRE... 1) sycophants 2) an appreciative audience, and 3) someone to BLAME when the whole damned Haunted House collapses... from the weight of its' own brute... banality. ***(please note: on two occasions I have alluded to Hitler/Musso as... crazy, and insane. There are many, many different kinds of "insanity" and, being sociopathic is merely one of the many. True that "insanity" is largely a subjective phenomena, and yet... there are "scientific" ways to determine just what kind of "insanity" we are talking about... if not, from intuitional or gut-feelings... after all, from time immemorium, the "saner" members of any clan or tribe or group would roust (... if not gladly kill) any single member who threatened survival, or good Order, true?) [ October 07, 2003, 11:51 AM: Message edited by: Immer Etwas ]

True enough, and IMHO this is... a disturbance of the natural Communal order, so awful and foreboding that... a vast and smirking smoking upheaval is bound to... come slouching back around. :eek: The West just cannot be... the impersonal, pristine Corporate Headquarters, while the 3rd world remains... labor-exploited, bespoiled, and cynically considered... throw-away cheap. There will be (an eventual) price to pay. Thanks for the preview... one day I surely hope to pay a visit, so to see where and how the ol' Welsh ancestors lived. :cool:

Perhaps these two missing units will eventually show up in a little Desert museum, like we have out in Roswell, New Mexico, and their clothes will be dirt-ruined and tattered and their eyes... gradually grown large! and dark and pearl-shaped, and the hands and feet... long and slender and curling like... alien talons... And all manner of folk will climb into ponderous Travel Wagons and mark their maps and stop by on their summer vacations, and they will... ogle and... GASP! when one of the little lost Belgian legions... MOVED! Didn't it? Just that... once...

It just wouldn't do for the Italians to be run -- head over heals, out of Libya, which is the direction it was going before the Afrika Korps showed up to bloody the Dunes. :eek: It wouldn't do because... for any ego-maniacal leader like Mussolini, with a power-flow based almost entirely on martial successes over-seas... a sudden humiliating defeat in the Desert could, and likely would... cause the entire Fascist scheme, diseased from the inside, as it was, and with blustery promises of... a revived (...unholy) Roman Empire... well, that bullying Regime would collapse like... a lost little Legion in a treacherous stretch of olde Teutonic Forest. There certainly was NO hard information (or truly accurate maps) on those spoiling Oil reserves (... though there was some hesitant exploration going on in Libya) and it was only Rommel's daring exploits that allowed the German/Italian Panzer Armee to succeed... to the extent that, at one point, classified documents were being hastily burned in Alexandria, and desparate prepartions being made for British evacuation of that city. In hindsight, we all tend to OVER value that vast and apparently endless (... when flying over in a prop plane) tract of inhospitable terrain known as the "near & middle East." Just about every game-maker has it right, from SC to 3rd Reich to WiF... with VERY FEW resource points allotted to that area. And actually, Hubert (... perhaps responding to current events, and/or trying to provide a rationale for more rabid conflict in the Med Theatre) has OVER-VALUED the area a bit, with those oil wells in Iraq... sure, the Brits culled some small tea-cup fulls, but in truth, the SC value of Iraq is somewhat over-stated. Back to the original question: in the historical context, and given the established knowledge of that time, rambo is right... there really was no good and sufficient reason to "mess with Afrika." I for one am convinced that Hitler (... and not OKW or the German General Staff, who were hard-nosed real politik believers, long before any of the modern Euro-styled Bismarcks) was so utterly focused on liebensraum for the thirsting Volk, that he could not remotely envision ANY long-term use for that huge and forbidding desert-land. Better by far to annex the bread-basket, Ukraine, than waste prime military resources... out in the Desert (... which, incidentally, is why there are no major Industries located in New Mexico, or Nevada, or even most of Arizona, other than Govt installations, secret and known... simply, there is not enough... precious water).

See, the thing is... we ARE allowed to wander and meander... now and then, so long as it doesn't become too-too excessive, or more to the point, out of bounds... lame-brained flaming or stupidly abusive or just... utterly off the wall (... though, ahem, I myself would not comprehend what that last... might actually entail ) Seems to me that this is why so many, myself included, avoid the General Forum. And also why we remain loyal to SC, even if sometimes absent or lurking. Here on the SC board you DO get to share SOME brief personal information and insights, which allows a certain... "grog-cameraderie" to develop. Over there no-one knows very much, if anything, about many of the... OTHERS (... there are just too many active contributors, and besides, "relational skills" are hardly considered keen, cool or Machismo), and so... just as in a Real lived Life, it is far easier to harrass or insult or even... hammer some unsuspecting Waif or Fool or Innocent... right down to the ashphalt ground! :eek: I try to appreciate the intensely difficult (... and, probably quite boring) job of being a Moderator. They are mostly invisible and out of mind... until and unless they must step in to restore some semblance of order and/or courteous behavior. After all, you cannot even have small personal exhanges unless Civility is upheld. I have been on-board for quite some while, and all in all I think that Moon and MadMatt, et al, have been carefully fair and fairly circumspect. :cool:

True, except that the Brits still have that carrier in the Med. I have not "crunched the numbers" nearly as intricately as you have, but... wouldn't this actually give the Allies an Air Fleet advantage of 8 to 6 (... given that France is out, USA is in and Italy finds the industrial wherewithall to actually build and deploy 2 AFs). This seems too much of an advantage for the Allies, and I can foresee a situation (... given a very slight run of bad luck in Tech achievements for the Axis) where the tide will turn, even BEFORE the historical timeline? Well, perhaps not, and only further beta-testing will tell the tale, true? A couple of other comments: 1) I'm not keen on having Norway already German occupied in 1939. Seems this would detract from some of the early strategic choices... does Germany try to sortie along the Norwegian west coast in order to land amphib units in Bergen (... thereby risking its' few Untersee and capital ships, which would require them to build more... to counter the Russian Navy once Barbarossa begins) and, do the Allies land there (as they did historically) and force Germany to deploy valuable units, to include a HQ if they intend quick success, in order to secure the entire country before turning toward... Drang Nacht Osten? 2) Iraq being Axis, without units, seems OK; after all, the Axis can contest this area following the prompt British take-over, but would be forced to spend additional MPPs in the Med Theatre, which is good because it forces... yet another strategic choice. **I still like that Lend-Lease idea however (... adding roughly 1000 MPPs to Britains war-chest over the 2+ yrs until US entry) and I wonder if it couldn't be incorporated into your scenario somehow? Perhaps you have fine-tuned this scenario to the extent that those Xtra 1000 MPPs would throw the whole campaign out of kilter, I don't know, and so, yet another instance where extended game-play would provide the answer, yes? 3) British sea power seems quite daunting in this scenario... given the limited Air Fleets. Seems as though the Allies could soon enough control the entire Baltic Sea... unless the Germans built more Strat Bombers, which is quite expensive... and to the point, would this SB counter-strategy break the German bank? To the extent that they couldn't maintain sufficient striking power on the East Front? 4) Diplo-chits is an inspired idea whose time has come ... at least, for those who wish a better and more historical outcome. Like you, I also wonder if 2 (rather than 3) DCs would be better for forcing a DoW? All in all, a well-thought out "historical" campaign. :cool: I would add that Tech limitation though (... and here, I meant, and I believe Bill Macon meant to say... that you can only put two (2) chits in EACH area, NOT 2 chits total).

Catching up on old news since my vacation...Congratulations on your enlistment, and you are off to a fine start, Although, Sergeants, the gristle & backbone of any military force, don't much care for being addressed as "Sir." At least in the US Army, circa 1966-68... I can't speak for the Marine Corps. When I went through boot-camp, I was absolutely convinced that a certain robust and mirthless drill-sergeant... hated my guts. :eek: He would glare and spit & fume and force me to do... MORE than I thought I actually could. And, upon graduation, he recommended me for fast advancement to E-2! which remains one of the most startling surprises that I've ever had. Upshot? Take it, whatever it is, and keep on keeping on... there is no hiding and no quarter and there is no excuse, and in the end you will... stand up a little straighter for the rest of your life. If it happened to me, it can go exactly that way for... anyone. [ October 03, 2003, 01:57 PM: Message edited by: Immer Etwas ]

Likewise my great-grandfather, and grand-father (...both of whom were born in Wales) who emigrated to Erie-Ohio and worked in the dyno-dynamic Steel Industry in that area up until the Great Depression or thereabouts, at which time they improvised and wandered off into... the Restaurant business, and Show Business, which, I guess, only goes to bolster your original cogent point that the Western World is fast becoming "service oriented" as opposed to actually MAKING "things." Whether that is good or bad or a matter of utter indifference is, at least, a full-length 900 page Tome, such as The End of History or Decline of the West, , so I won't bore the bejesus out of everybody and go there.

We might wish to do that. However, I have long been an advocate of expanding the parameters of SC so that there are MORE variables... that are... visible and (mostly) KNOWN to the player. Well and good to say that most "cool & charming" aspects are... HIDDEN from view. That is like saying that Chess is a board-game reproduction of the Crude and Romantic Conflicts of the entire Middle Ages... since the playing pieces represent the principle Power-centers of that particular historical world. Better, I am thinking, to have more SPECIFIC pieces (... as I recently proposed in that thread where I suggested "specialized Corps units" such as Recon and Marine, etc), which would thereby geometrically increase the (mostly) KNOWN interacting factors. For example, if we are to have ACTUAL Paratroopers in SC2 (... and, all indications suggest that Hubert is inclined to include this NEW! unit :cool: ), then the CHOICES each player must make are increased... do you employ that unique unit, to do a specific job, or do you save it for some other better function? Having said that, I would agree that you must draw the line somewhere, else you will spend all your war-gaming days in terrible fits of confused attribution, and having separate "Morale" calculations probably isn't necessary or advised, IMHO. Though, I have on several long ago occasions, consistently advocated some sort of separate calculation for... Momentum, and/or Esprit de Corps. ***The reason: this goes back to my baseball board playing games... in a simple statistical formulation, you are NEVER going to get-at the reasons for the constant year-by-year successes of certain players, such as Whitey Ford, of the (deservedly) hated NY Yankees. His tantalizing mix of ploys & pitches and in-game MOXIE just CANNOT be translated to a cardboard playing card/charts. Now, I long ago made my own baseball game, since I could never find ANY one that sufficiently satisfied my imagination, mostly due to reasons like the one stated above, and so... Viola! there IS a way to include such strange and apparently inexplicable phenomena as... Whitey Ford's extraordinary "winning ability" (... consistently over and above the team's won-loss performance. I have done it, and it works like a charm! In regard to SC, or SC2, I would suppose that you COULD incorporate some sort of fluxuating National elan, such as the Germans possessed in the first 2 or 3, or even 4 years of the War. Likewise, the Brits unflagging... grit & spit-fire could be somehow re-presented. But, if you did that, it should be a quantifiable factor that the average gamer could recognize and include as part of his over-all GRAND Strategy. Not, HIDDEN from view in some sort of Picasso-esque Abstraction that only the interested critics and Art Historians might access and explain. LOL! I hereby nominate this quote... as the VERY BEST single quote I have EVER seen on ANY forum at any time, anywere! in the whole wide world! :cool: A similar thing might be said about each of our vantage point, from, and about... The World, The Nation, The City, The Neighborhood, The Backyard, The Front Porch, etc, etc. LOL! Ah, Mr Bill... a true and dedicated Aesthete after all! I always knew it to be true, and finally! actual evidence! You'll have to change your signature-line from William Tecumsah Sherman, to... say, an inspired Symbolist comment, from... Odilon Redon perhaps?

I would most certainly agree. JJ, don't be put off by any of this interesting but rambling commentary... your input has been... delightful and stimulating, and has helped to make this board well worth visiting. :cool: I don't think Les the Sarge, 9-1 (... and I too first imagined that this moniker referred to some sort of Commonwealth artillery piece... sorry Sarge, but... it's Sgt Kelso after all! ...whom I also had great fun sending into those hexed fire-lanes in that old board game... right along with Spec4 Immer, 5-2!!) ...was referring specifically to you... rather, some of those gutless boy-wonders and spittle-flecked Chicken-Hawks over on the General Forum, yes? Anyway, he can speak for himself... hang in there JJ... there's yet... much to do!