daamion

Will it be possible for minors to produce units (if not directly, then by creating scripted events)? Also, will the map wrap from from the sides to allow units to cross the world - I haven't seen this mentioned, but for a world scenario, this is important...

Come now, the sarcasm was a personal attack. Incorrect - the aside was added for humor, not personal attack. It would appear that it wasn't found all that humorous. ie you couldn't and still can't refute any of the points raised. Already addressed previously. Sarcasm again, and yet again your lack of subject knowledge lets you down, the vast majority of WW2 combat pilots would have undergone concurrent training. Another personal attack. That would be strike 2. I'd have to say, in light of the above, that you are lying, but either way your point is spurious - it was quite possible to develop a high performance fighter that could drop bombs (the Me 262 being just one example, the Tempest another, the late model Thunderbolt yet another) - the Me 262 bomber/fighter limitation was in no way a technical limitation - it was just Hitlers idea, this is well covered in Gallands 'the first and the last'. Lying? Ouch, serious admission that your argument is going badly there, don't address any of the points raised and make a bad effort to turn the onus of proof onto me - you raised Torp bombers in spite of the fact that they are not mentioned in the game, it is up to you to justify it. And why exactly do you think any particular type of aircraft is or is not included in the general 'air fleet' unit? Finally something sensible. The problem is, if the allies had invested in airpower to the extent possible in SC, then it is quite possible that they would have done just that. To avoid it (hard coded) you need a fairly detailed economics system, and that is beyond the scale of this game. This is probably true - however, there is no reason that we can't strive to improve the game play of SC within the limitations of the game design as it now stands...

Under the current ground rules (see rationale below), air fleets are the only way to reliably remove weakened pieces from the board. Any savvy SC gamer immediately spends big on jet power research. To not do so is to loose the game, as you would forfeit air superiority to your opponent. Even if you didn’t attack your opponent’s superior planes with yours, his planes would decimate yours in defensive support sorties. Since both players are forced to spend big on jet power research, the game boils down to simple chance as to whom the computer awards advancements more quickly to. The player who gains superiority immediately sets about building large quantities of air fleets, often exceeding ground forces. This abstraction, IMHO, is a harmful to game play. Ground rules that create the disproportionate emphasis on airpower are as follows: no stacking is permitted, you can’t attack and move units to the rear to bring in more units for continued attacks, you can’t move then deselect and then attack, reinforcements and building new units is unlimited even when enemy units adjacent, reinforcements are too cheap or there are too many MPP’s in the game. I agree - I suspect that the combination of allowing retreats to occur (with the possibility of units sometimes being 'destroyed' instead of retreating) and limited (or in some way less desirable) reinforcements at the front (or within an enemy zoc) would have made for a much more fluid, and enjoyable battlefield.

Whilst I appreciate an attempt at sarcasm as much as the next person, it only works when the practitioner has the intelligence to understand the subject at hand, this you lack. Not the least bit interested in person attacks. 1. you can obliterate an army by destroying its logistic elements, without which it will easily collapse in the games simulated timeframe. 2. fighters were frequently used to attack ground combat elements. snipped This has been discussed from a historical perspective ad naseum - with points and counter-points offered. I personally don't agree with this assertion but I have no intention to revisit that lengthy topic here. It would also depend on the objective of the designer. Agreed. Perhaps you should read stuka pilot, HU Rudel did not see a major distintion between dive bombing ships and ground targets, also the FW 190 was able to carry torpedoes, I doubt it was a major task to train an experienced pilot to aim them. You also ignore the concurrent training that the military does, just because a unit is on operations does not mean that all training ceases, if they felt it was sensible to train pilots in anti ship work, they would do so. Interesting. Apparently this same experience to every single pilot in WW2... Name the realistic production limitations that prevent using an Me262 as a fighter bomber. I was actually getting at the conflict between the need to develop a jet-based intercepter to combat Allied bombers vs. Hitler's desire to develop a jet based ground-attack aircraft. I certainly wasn't suggesting it is not possible to do both. Supply a/c are not present in the game, you assume that late game ground attack is by dive bomber, it could be rocket/cannon carrying fighters or by cluster bomb, also you assume torpedo bombers, why? Why not? Why do you think it is that the USA, USSR, UK, and Germany all built more combat a/c than they did Tanks/SP guns? My question is, given the system currently presented by SC, why build AFV's at all? Or bombers? etc. Just load up on airfleets and use cheap corps to occupy the areas 'vacated' by enemy units that got to experience the power of air attacks first hand.

Here's an idea for a future change to the mod: Take one of Italy's inital armies and split it into two corps, placing them each adjacent to Rome (let's just say they are at the capital on training exercises...). The Allies can still launch a pre-emptive strike on Italy if they want to, taking some of the ungarrisoned cities, but the capital should no longer fall in one turn...

>>>The problem is that its unrealistic, both sides routinely put ground attack stores on fighters. >>The allies did it with Spitfires, Mustangs, P-47s etc, the Germans with Bf-109s, FW-190s, Me-262s and so on - most a/c could convert roles overnight, if not faster buy simply fitting bomb racks. 1) Well, as far as realism goes, I'm not so sure that the IGO/UGO system is particularly realistic in the first place. ("Sir they're attacking!" "That's fine" "But sir, they're manuvering around for more attacks" "Yes, that's ok" "But sir, shouldn't we do something?!?" "Son, IT'S THEIR TURN!!!") 2) As far as fighters being quickly refitted with ground attack ordenance - true, but were they used primarily for attacking supply convoys, targets of opportunity, etc, or used to obliterate entire armies? 3) I've noticed that some other games at this scale made the air-air/air-ground aircraft unit split - I wonder if those game designers were just including units for 'fun' with little care of realism, or if they noticed during initial playtesting that air units were too powerful and a combined air unit removed the need for players having to choose between different force compositions for their air fleets... 4) What about if the German player (for some unknown reason) decides to place his air units on the Russian front and launch no attacks. The Russian player (not knowing any better) repeatedly attacks and the German air fleets gain lots of exp. Then, the German player moves the same air fleets to France to oppose a D-Day invasion. The high exp units then kick the snot out of the Allied fleet - that air-air exp suddenly enable the pilots to be highly experience (highly effective) in torpedo bombers and dive bombers in naval attacks! 5) What about players being forced to make high level production decisions? Say the German player has developed jet engines and production limitations require that either an interceptor or a ground attack aircraft be developed with a jet engine (hmm...sounds familiar). In SC as it stands, the fighters, tac bombers, torp bombers, supply aircraft etc all get insta-jet upgrades! (Hmmm...jet engine dive bombers - bet the Japanese would have found a use for those!) 6) It still seems to me that air fleets are too powerful because they are too all-purpose (without sufficient offsetting downside - surely the major players built a large number of AFV's for some reason instead of all air fleets??). Imagine you were designing this game and you began describing the units to someone (who had never seen the game). Running through the units, giving strengths and weaknesses, you come to air units at which time you say: Air-Air: excellent Air-Ground: excellent Air-Sea: excellent Range: excellent Can take advantage of HQ exp and as an added bonus, can execute stat bombing vs resources! Of course, their use will be offset with thier high cost... (You say) Really? How expensive? Well, they'll cost slightly more then armor and less then strat bomber formations. I don't know what your reaction to this would be, but mine would be: well, with those capabilities, sounds like I'll be buying lots of air fleets and less strat bombers, tanks etc, without even seeing the game... 7) I suppose if resource requirements for production were modelled in the game it might have provided a means to limit air fleet production (as has been suggested by others)...but if the same mineral/oil costs applied to other (non-inf) type units, I'm not sure how well it would have worked (since it might have caused people to just build less ships and tanks to keep the air fleet count higher)

Although at this scale it likely doesn't make sense to seperate air fleets into air superiority/fighter units and tactical bomber units, it does have interesting implications. If tactical bomber units worked as air fleets do now for ground attack, but were weak for air combat and fighters worked as air fleets do now for air combat but were quite ineffective for ground attack, the German player would be forced to choose which type of unit to build with each aircraft purchase. If the German player built few fighters and many tac bombers, he could emulate the current ability to punch holes in the Russian line but would have difficulty later as the Allies could gain air superiority for D-day and the Russians could possibly use their fighters effectively (later on). If the German player builds a balanced force of both types of units, he can still ground attack well and defend vs. later allied offensives but is only going to have half as many effective ground attacks as now exists...which would reduce the number of corps that could be wiped out in Russia each turn. In any case, this is just an idea to help reduce the 'overpowering air fleet' problem - what do you think?

Nope, still waiting out here in the maratimes as well...

To check out VDMS Sound go to: http://www.ece.mcgill.ca/~vromas/vdmsound/

Well, not sure about COS Future Edition, but to get the 'old' edition to work on XP, all I did was apply the TPPatch (to get rid of Runtime 200 error) and used VDMSound (to solve sound card requirements)...as I recall, VDMSound also configures memory for you as well, so you don't need to set up the icon, specify amounts of memory to use, etc.

If the error you get with COS is Runtime Error 200, try tppatch which you can dl at: http://www.brain.uni-freiburg.de/~klaus/pascal/runerr200/download.html