Welshwill

No doubt this question has already been asked but. The US production allocation during WWII was, I believe, 60/40 between Europe and the Pacific. These figures mean that the total MPP allocation for the US throughout the war would equal 300MPP!!!! The US alone out produced the Axis in virtually all areas of industrial production. The next patch should rectify this problem and slightly increase the US allocation upon their entry and ramp up their allocation on a yearly basis. If the USSR is able to start with 480 MPP in 1941 then the US total should at least equal this by 1944 if not exceed this value. The production capacity of the USA hugely outstriped their opponents and they were virtually self sufficient in all raw materials. The current settings are historically wrong and this allows the US to play only a minor role until mid to late 43 by which time the Axis are running rampant.

Send it through. Will w.walsh@ntlworld.com

Thank you. Will [ August 15, 2002, 12:05 PM: Message edited by: Welshwill ]

I have only noticed on the main menu screen. I normally keep the speakers off and only noticed the drumroll when I turned on the speakers to let me know when I recieve a PBEM. It is a pain in the arse as I normally leave SC open but minimized when not being used. I wouldn't know where to begin creating a wav file, couldn't you add this as an option with the next patch? [ August 15, 2002, 11:52 AM: Message edited by: Welshwill ]

Where can I get an empty 'wav' file?

When Russia is on the defencesive early in the war I try to defend the Urals, creating a mountain citadel and in the Caucasas, just below Stalingrad. The problem starts when I try to place additional forces, I get the message "unable to position units" or something along those lines. This should be rectified, as long as you have MPP to spend and territory under your control, you should still be able to deploy additional units.

It is possible the games being sent to you have not been updated to v1.02. Suggest that your opponents try re-installing the patch. Niklas Did you recieve my E-mail regarding a game? w.walsh@ntlworld.com [ August 11, 2002, 06:22 AM: Message edited by: Welshwill ]

I'm running five.

Okay on the Partisans and the time difference will mean only a couple of turns a day. That okay by me. Choose your game and send it through. Will

I will be happy to give you a game, but I live in the UK so there will be a big time difference. Happy to play any rules, just leave the Hex off. Will w.walsh@ntlworld.com [ August 10, 2002, 10:59 AM: Message edited by: Welshwill ]

I would like to know if the research in the PBEM games follow the same rules? I have pumped the industrial tech up to the maximum and a year later I'm still waiting for my first advance.

I would rather see a map extension as the first major upgrade.

Dave Thanks for your advice. I just tried playing a turn between my E-mail address and my partners. It is rather long winded. I think the PBEM helper is designed to manage the transfer and playing of the games. Do you fancy a game, I don't mind what scenario. Will w.walsh@ntlworld.com

Thanks Hubert Do I have to use that helper or are their any other options? [ August 06, 2002, 12:32 PM: Message edited by: Welshwill ]

There is a PBEM Helper download on the SC HQ site. When I installed this file it didn't recoqnize that I has Stategic Command on my system. I then tried to install SC manually, as recommended in the Options menu, but just couldn't work it out. Do I need to create a PBEM game first? If yes. Will need an oponent first? Will [ August 06, 2002, 09:45 AM: Message edited by: Welshwill ]

I not to sure how to set up SC for the Modify installed programs and Enable it manually settings.

How does the PBEM system work? I have tried downloading the helper from Strategic Command Headquarters, but this didn't work. I couldn't set up SC manually and it didn't pick it up automatically. Will Battlefield.com be supplying the necessary software in the future? Will [ August 05, 2002, 05:15 PM: Message edited by: Welshwill ]

The first attempt they did, but onthe second attempt I had sunk at least three BB's, the CV was down to 4 and two other BB's were down to 1.

Do the Industrial tech advances stop when you reach level five?

In my last two demo games I occupied both London & Manchester in the same turn, the one that ends on May 2nd. Imagine my suprise when the UK didn't surrender?

Will we have to wait for you in the USA to wake up before we in the UK can order the game? What time on Friday will the order slots become available, estimated Grenwich Mean Time?

Mighty nation built the world's largest and most powerful mountain defence system By ERIC MARGOLIS -- Contributing Foreign Editor ST. MAURICE, SWITZERLAND -- "I shall show those insolent herdsmen and cheesemakers!" thundered Adolf Hitler in 1940, after Switzerland refused to allow the German Army to pass through its territory to outflank France's Maginot Line forts. Soon after France's defeat, Hitler and Mussolini ordered their general staffs to complete Plan von Menges, the invasion and partition of Switzerland by the combined armies of Germany and Italy. But the Axis never invaded tiny Switzerland, then a nation of only 5 million. The reason was not, as revisionists claim, because they needed Switzerland for banking. Other neutrals - America, Spain, Turkey, Sweden, Portugal - were also available for finance and trade. Or because the Swiss co-operated with Hitler's Germany, an outrageous myth concocted by American lawyers and politicians seeking to soak the wealthy Swiss. In 1940, when America was still neutral to Hitler, Swiss fighters shot down 11 intruding Luftwaffe aircraft. The true reason was Switzerland's fierce national determination to remain free, backed by its top-secret National Redoubt - an immense system of over 100 mighty forts and thousands of casemates and bunkers buried deep in the heart of the Alps. In July, 1940, as Europe was surrendering or being overrun by invincible German armies, General Henri Guisan convoqued all senior officers of Switzerland's citizen army to Rutli Meadow and issued his famous order: "Fight to your last cartridge, then fight with your bayonets. No surrender. Fight to the death." The world's oldest democracy would stand alone against Hitler and Mussolini. The Germans and Italians decided against attacking Switzerland because of the casualties they would have faced. Switzerland's 700,000 soldiers were given the grim command to be ready to leave behind their homes, wives and children, then retreat into the mountain fortress system, which had only enough food and shelter for the army. Each high Alpine valley was to become a little Thermopylae; every Alpine fort another Verdun. Working round the clock, in two years Swiss engineers created over 100 powerful artillery and infantry forts dug into granite mountainsides. Switzerland's secret Alpine Redoubt exceeded in size, strength, firepower - and, of course, effectiveness - France's famed Maginot Line, hitherto believed to be the world's mightiest fortress system. Drove right by At the heart of this huge military complex, whose existence is only now coming to light, lay Dailly, the world's largest and most powerful fort. For four decades, I have driven by Dailly without ever suspecting its existence. Now, as a guest of the Swiss General Staff and the elite Festungwachtkorps (Fortress Guard Corps), I was one of the first non-Swiss allowed to inspect the top-secret fortress. This Swiss Gibraltar lies some 15 kms south of Lake Geneva's eastern end, between Montreux and Martigny, the gateway to the St. Bernard Pass, commanding the Valais, a highly strategic valley formed by the Rhone River, the major land route between Italy and northern Europe. At St. Maurice, the Valais is further constricted by the outthrust of the Dailly massif, a steep, pyramid-shaped mountain spur that juts into the valley, narrowing the defile to under two kilometres in width. Here, in 47 A.D., Roman Emperor Claudius had the first bridge built across the fast-flowing Rhone. Fortification of Dailly began in 1892. By the early 1940s, Dailly had literally become, as the fort's technical chief, the redoubtable Aspirant Jean-Claude Raboud told me, "a giant Swiss Gruyere cheese," honeycombed by 60 kms of underground galleries (tunnels), with camouflaged gun embrasures, searchlights, troops barracks, magazines, supply depots and headquarters. North and south of Dailly lie numerous other forts: neighbouring Savatan, Scex, Cindey, Petit-Mont, Follateres, and more, a lethal gauntlet of underground strongholds with a staggering 300 kms of tunnels and interlocking fire from artillery, mortars, and machineguns. From outside, the forts are invisible, save for a few nondescript wooden buildings. The camouflaged embrasures for machine guns and artillery - trompe-l'oeil flaps that look like rock - are indistinguishable from more than a few feet away. They suddenly open, pour a withering fire, then close. Turrets are disguised as rustic chalets, sheds or boulders. All guns are pre-registered on their targets and can be fired blind, directed only by voice or electronic commands. The valley is crisscrossed by tank barriers, minefields, and obstacles. The main road and its bridges are mined with special demolition charges. Together, the Valais forts represent the pinnacle of 20th-century military architecture and engineering. Dailly staggers the mind and body. To reach its entrance at 1,400 metres requires negotiating 29 vertiginous switchbacks etched onto the mountain's steep side. At the fort's narrow summit - known as "The Needle" - you look straight down, a terrifying sheer drop 1,800 metres to the valley floor. From this aerie, one sees - and the fort's big guns can reach - all the way north to the end of Lake Geneva, the fabled Chateau of Chillon, and Montreux; and south to Martigny and the St. Bernard pass into Italy. The fortress was designed to accommodate 1,800 soldiers, with enough munitions, food and water to hold out "buttoned up" for six months. Neighbouring Savatan held 1,600 troops. Hewn into virgin granite, and protected by elaborate air filtration systems, Dailly and many other alpine forts were immune to everything except for direct hits by nuclear weapons. Upgraded in the '70s Fearing a Soviet invasion, the Swiss extensively upgraded their forts until the late 1970s. France similarly upgraded and upgunned some of the Maginot forts during the 1960s. Dailly's fighting power came from a variety of weapons designed for distant and close-in action: machineguns; 75 mm rapid-fire guns; 105 and 120 mm artillery with a range of 17 kms; 81 and 120 mm semi-automatic mortars; 20 mm AA guns; and two turrets with fully automatic 150 mm cannon. These latter are fed by an elaborate production line 50 metres below the surface. Shells and propellant cartridges are loaded onto conveyer belts, mated, fused and then fed up by an ammo hoist system to the automatic cannon, huge, evil machines that can fire a storm of 22 heavy shells per minute to a distance of 25 kilometres. Watching this production line of death in operation was a remarkable experience. My Swiss escort and friend, Lt. Colonel Marcel Krebbs, rightly described the huge 150 mm guns and their 50-metre high barbettes as "pharonic," worthy of an Egyptian pharaoh. So were the fort's power plants, barracks, and magazines. The Swiss spared no expense on these battleships buried in the Alps. The Cold War's end led Switzerland to sharply reduce its armed forces and decommission many forts. Large forts are being replaced by smaller artillery works armed with 155 mm long-ranged guns. But much of Dailly and its neighbours are still active, serving as bases for Swiss mountain brigades defending the nation's fortress heartland. Though I'm a veteran fortress explorer, Dailly left me at times with both vertigo from "The Needle" and claustrophobia after hours of tramping through narrow, dimly lit concreted galleries, or squeezing in to a tiny lift that took us up through the rock inside the 150 mm turret. Just looking down the 560-metre deep shaft of the funicular elevator that supplied the garrison made my head spin. After eight hours at titanic Dailly, one of the true wonders of the world, I was overwhelmed, elated and totally exhausted. And I finally understood why Swiss friends used to tell me, "Switzerland isn't a country; it's a fortress that looks like a country." http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_july7.html

Decrease side and bottom menu bars, by reducing flag and font size, and use extra space to increase map area. Allow all countries to have an MPP allocation. They will be able to raise additional unit and reinforce units without impacting on Germanys resources. I believe that this will enhance the Axis invasion of the USSR. Increase the map area for North Africa, especially around Egypt. Include Iceland in the map, this would allow the axis to control the North Atlantic, if they are able to seize control. Establish a port at Lisbon and possibly include the Azores. Hubert: Do you have any plans to develop this concept further? It would be great to see the following concepts: Pacific War: Imagine if the Japanese had invaded the USSR, Australia, India or East Africa. Maybe even launch Operation Orient and conquer the world. NATO v Warsaw Pact: What huge potential this could have, especially with a time frame stretching from 1945 to ? Well we could be fighting the USSR in 2010!!!! Arab v Israel: Will the Israeli’s finally be defeated or will it end up with the US fighting the USSR? China v Taiwan: India v Pakistan/China: Korean War:

I would like to see Coastal & Siege Artillery units added. Maybe the amount of units purchased could be limited.

I would like to see Coastal & Siege Artillery units added. Maybe the amount of units purchased could be limited.