Bruce70

Yes,lower plunder for allies and/or axis may be a better "solution". That may be true IRL but in SC the plunder alone makes it worth the diversion. The only downside of invading Potugal is that you must invade Spain to get your troops out. Also true but it doesn't just stop with Portugal and Spain, I just used those as examples. No-one has discussed the "fake DoW" issue to stop your opponent getting plunder. Any thoughts on that? This is really only an issue for the few contries that have a small army and few resources (compared to the amount of plunder) eg Norway, Portugal, Iraq, possibly Switzerland. I guess the solution to that would be to make the plunder proportional to the economic value of the country or try and estimate an historical value for the plunder that could be expected from those countries. I guess that would solve the first problem too. [ September 25, 2002, 10:14 PM: Message edited by: Bruce70 ]

I agree that there should be no right or wrong. But IRL there were *consequenses*, I think the game should model those somehow.

... or possibly even SC1? Currently if you play as the Allies then after the US and USSR join the war you have free reign to declare war on any neutrals you like with no consequences. For example, if the Axis player hasn't already done so it is very easy for the US to capture Portugal and then possibly Spain almost as soon as they (the US) join the war. One way of remedying this would be to have the MPP production of every allied city drop by X points after a DoW. The points would build back up to normal levels in the same way they do when cities are bombed. Another problem is that you can prevent your opponent from getting any plunder by declaring war on, say Portugal again, just before your opponent does. You don't have to have any intention of actually invading the country or even any units nearby, and the one corps the opponent gets as a bonus hardly outways the plunder they would have got. Can't think of good way to prevent this ATM, any ideas? These may be gamey tactics that any self respecting player wouldn't do but it wouldn't hurt to add a little accountability anyway would it?

Perhaps this is true if you only play to win. Personally I like to experiment with different techs. One of my favourite strategies is to get the Italian navy in the Atlantic with L5 GLR. There are some techs that I have not found interesting though. I have never had any luck using rockets, never had a need for sonar (yet), have found little use for radar (but maybe this will change if applied to ground units) and I have never reached a high tech level in bombers despite trying on a few occasions. I often find that the Tank/AT tech battle is one of the most interesting aspects of the tech war.

You are correct they didn't only have 2mb, they only had 64K hence the name. If you wanted to spend up big at that time you could get a PC with a wopping 256K.

I agree. I think most people are ready to conduct a Normandy invasion well before the historical date. I do not see any reason to speed this up further.

To get more plunder!

I didn't know which thread to post this in so I thought why not start a new one? The majority view (or at least the vocal minority) seems to be that air power plays too great a role in SC. But there appears to be two different views on this. 1. Air fleets are too stong and should not be able to destroy a unit (in SC that is - lets not get into the RL debate) 2. Air fleets are too numerous and should be limited in some way. In the games I have played no major power has had more than 6 or 7 air fleets and the games have been quite enjoyable, so for me #2 is the only possible problem. Which of these two problems do other people believe is more serious?

Yes that is exactly the point I am trying to make, thanks guys. Change the economic model rather than just add a hard limit.

No that is not what I said, I suggest you read it again. No you are not picking on me, you are simply confirming what I already suspected about your character. Iraq is one example of extra resources that spings to mind. As for manpower I actually agreed on limiting units based on that. There is already a limit on what can be produced in SC. Its called MPPs. The MPPs you receive change as you conquer cities and resources. You have control over what you want to spend them on. This system is open to exploitation and you suggested a possible way around this. I have said that I am against it because it is completely unrealistic to suggest that no decisions could have been made to change WWII production. It really sounds like you should go back to your books, you clearly are only interested in history and not in game playing.

I agree with the idea behind this (re maintainance etc) but I still think that you should be able to base an air unit anywhere on the map. Obviously I would prefer an official patch (possible with a setup option) to change the movement rules allowing you to rebase anywhere. Anyway if you try it let us know what effect it has on the game.

I understand this POV but I think it *is* the best solution with the current game system. The alternative is for that demoralised, non combat effective unit to hold up the advance of a fresh, full strength, in supply, veteran army for 2-4 weeks. It is a shame that you cannot recover somewhat if there is no ground assault after the air attack but no game system at this scale is going to be perfect.

I have driven tracked vehicles before but no tanks. I think a moving tank would be able to turn faster because of its momentum - just apply the clutch/brake on one side and let momentum take care of the rest. Of course this would only work for about 60 degree (pure guesstimate) turns and under. A stationary tank would certainly be faster for larger turns since it can rotate the tracks in opposite directions and double its turn speed (sort of).

Using a combination of population and history is fine for armies and corps but not for air and armour. The player must be able to choose to build more (abstract) aircraft factories at the expense of armour factories. Or allocate more fuel for armoured units than air units than was historically the case. And as pointed out by others the resources available may not be the same as was historically the case depending on those captured/lost. A hard limit on anything but armies and corps would be completely unsatisfactory IMO.

Has anyone considered the possibility that air power isn't too strong but too cheap? Instead of a hard limit (which I woul be totally against no matter what the level) how about a softer way of limiting airfleets. How about a maintainance cost for these (and possibly other) units? Or make the cost of each unit type increase as you buy more, thereby making it economically impractical to have terribly unbalanced forces. Actually I don't like the second idea either - it really should be cheaper to mass produce than to produce in small quantites. But a maintainance cost for units would be good but I don't know if it can be added to SC1 without upsetting the AI and play balance. Perhaps if the maintainance cost only kicked in after a certain number (more than the AI typically buys) of units have been produced then it might be possible.

In SC2 it would be nice to see the different resources (iron, oil, manpower etc) modelled. But I don't think that is going to happen with SC1. Without those I cannot see how you can set an arbitrary limit on the numbers of units that can be built. I do want to retain as much "what-if" as possible. But I would also like to stick to historically possible what-ifs. Arbitrary limitations to make the game more "historical" can be counterproductive.

Just feel the need to be pedantic here... It *does* follow that if you can take out a platoon with one well placed bomb then you can take out three platoons with three well placed bombs. The contrapositive is that if three well placed bombs can miss a company then one well placed bomb can miss a platoon, which is also true (though irrevelant since the preposition is false). And while you can't derive your statement from any of the previous ones it is also true that three badly placed bombs can indeed miss a company. No statement was made about the relative probabilities of the two occurences (regarding well placed bombs). What Brian should have said is that it is less likely that three well placed bombs will fall, not that it is less likely that three well placed bombs will destroy a company.

I honestly don't care how complex the game rules are (thats what computers are good at) but I would like the game to stay simple and easy to play. But I favour the more realistic options - so I don't know which of your two categories I fit in.

This is why I think it makes some sense for corps or depleted units to take less casualties from air attacks than full strength armies. For example suppose that the damage inficted by air was 30% (example only and obviously this would actually be random to some degree) of the units strength rather than a flat rate. So a unit would go from 10 to 7 to 4 to 2 to 1 to 0 strength after successive air attacks. If it were deemed necessary (amphib landing for example) by the player 5 air units could completely destroy (make combat ineffective) a unit. *But* in general a player would be more likely to only knock a unit down to 2-4 stength and then move the air strikes on to another unit, leaving the ground forces to finish them off.

You're going to end up with more rules than WiF's at this rate.

That is a big negative, and why should ships be able to bombard a unit into oblivion but not airfleets/bombers?

I almost agree with the op-moves rule but not the others. Unfortunately I play against the computer quite a bit and just can't make it understand. I am also not convinced that you should be limited to city hexes and surrounds. There are a lot of cities or potential supply points not shown on the map. I wouldn't object to Hubert adding an additonal 'rebase' order for airfleets (and removing normal movement ability) and having an associated cost, probably less than the current op cost.

I haven't found that I need the hex grid. When you click on a unit the possible movement hexes are highlighted anyway.

I think someone from BF stated that if you order two products together they will ship together. This is to save on the shipping cost. If you want to get each ASAP (and pay full shipping for each) then place seperate orders.

How would people feel about this: Leave air-fleets as they are when attacking a full strength unit. But as the unit is depleted, the number of viable targets decreases and the level of dispersion increases (if only because the previous attacks left holes in the line). The fewer targets would mean that tac bombers should be less effective against depleted units and the increased dispersion would mean that strat bombing should be less effective against depleted units. You could certainly argue against the reduced effect for strat bombers so maybe its best to leave them as they are since no-one seems to have a problem with them anyway. The net result would mean that ground units would be slightly harder to destroy, without actually changing the initial effectiveness of the air fleets. It would still be possible to destroy ground units but players would know that they can do more damage by spreading their air attacks. Does anyone object to this *in principle*?