KevGaming

Never even thought about having Unterseeboots off American coast, DOH! Cheers for enlightening me to this major oversight!

Got to hand it to you Hubert the changes to naval surprise makes using U-Boots a worth while exercise! Just finished a game (using the default difficulty settings + FoW +USSR neutral) my U-Boot fleet was blasting the British convoys out of the water, between 20 - 40 MPPs per turn! Normally I just throw my U-Boots into the fray as soon as I get them, usually get spotted and sunk within a couple of turns This time I changed tactics and waited till the fall of Netherlands and France before using the points from them to build a fleet of 4 boats (had to wait two turns to get them all built in the French ports in between buying two more aircraft and an HQ 'Rommel') also sent the Kiel boat down the coast of France and out into the Atlantic. Had to repair it enroute though British and French fighters plus a British cruiser knocked it down to 2! It survived due to my airfleets all under control of HQs. The first three boats were sent off to the coast of Canada (Original Atlantic boat plus the two French based ones) taking two turns to get into position. These were closely followed by the next two French based boats a turn later and the Kiel boat (now repaired) a turn after them. The first group of three were positioned two hexes away from Canadian coast middle boat in line with Halifax with a boat two hexes above and below it. Took 23 MPPs. The original Atlantic boat took 7 the previous turn as it got into position early. This is probably why the British sent two cruisers out to investigate. Both were surprised by my boats knocking 1 and 2 points off for the loss of 2 and 3. My turn saw both cruisers being sunk both attacked by two U-Boots each. Lost between 3 and 4 points of damage off three of the boats with one receiving no damage at all! The remaining two boats take up position two or three hexes east of the rest. Took 26 MPPs off Britain that turn. The British response is to send a battleship and cruiser to break my blockade and get surprised by the two trailing boats and then viciously sunk by the other packs. Britain did not send another ship into the mid Atlantic after this. I was able to keep 5 boats on station letting the 6th return to refit, then rotating this until they were all back up to 11. While this battle for the Atlantic was taking place the Luftwaffe sunk a battleship that made the mistake of sailing down the English channel, destroyed 2 RAF units and the FAF! The demo ended two turns after my U-Boots started taking 40 MPPs off of Britain. By this time all 6 boats were crowded within 4 hexes of Canada. Donitz would have been proud.

Right click the unit you wish to reinforce and select reinforce from the pop-up menu.

Well according to the Win2000 clock we in the UK are 5 whole hours ahead of EST so, if the pre-orders open at 9am in the states thats 1pm GMT. Guess I'm just going to have a long lunch on Friday. Then wait... can't!!

The link for the SC demo is on the battle front home page (at the bottom) under the hot links heading. Clicking on the "Download the Strategic Command Beta Demo (26Mb)" should download the file. Then just double click the downloaded and follow the instructions on the screen. Once the demo is installed you can find instructions on how to play in the directory where you installed the demo. Hope this helps.

Outstanding first effort! Can't wait for the full game. This demo has been the reason for not getting to sleep till way after 3am.

In response to item 2. I've just noticed that the units and indeed all of the terrain graphics are stored as BMPs within a bitmap directory (at least within the demo version), and was wondering if they could be edited or even replaced with similar sized and formatted graphics? Anyone any ideas?

Found an interesting site for orders of battle and general WW2 information and links. World War II Armed Forces If anyone is interested...

Yeah that would be quite nice. You could re-create the whole lend-lease thing, by being able to give allies MPPs. I'd also like to see any HQ unit being able to control other allied units. For example German HQs in control of Hungarian or Romanian units.

Spot on Lars. The crew of a sub would have to be deaf, dumb and blind to get surprised by a cruiser or battleship based war fleet. For a start those ships would be making one heck of a noise even if going slow. Not to mention the fact that capital ships have a much greater silhouette than any sub. I would like to see improvments to the way surprise encounters are handled for subs versus warships in the full game.