SeaMonkey

Come on Rambo, you know the drill, let the partisans popup in calculated locations. They're great training tools for double strike carriers with LR, just soften them up a bit before the coup de grace.:cool: I'm not a proponent for knowing partisan locations, they should be stealthy, as IRL.

Yeah right! Are you absolutely sure this time? I have DLed almost every version and never even get to Barbarossa before a new one pops up. How am I to do a thorough test, much less start a PBEM? And tell me, which SC file is the correct destination for the media files?:confused: Seriously though.......this is a great mod....I can't get myself to play anything else.

lofty....the question is how do you want to take it? Slow, meticulously, suffering the fewest amount of casualties, garnishing your attacking units with experience or with overwhelming force and damn the cost? IMO, the most efficient is to use a double strike armored unit that is HQ supported and in full supply, high readiness with the maximum amount of experience so as not to incur casualties........those vets know how to do the job, just give them the tools. wlape3's approach of softening the target also helps before sending in the Panzers. You could also wait until you've just taken down an enemy/neutral country(accepted their surrender) which heightens your morale and readiness. A couple of amphibs with research knocking on the door from sea tiles can do the job also. So as you see, "there is more than one way to skin the cat". Happy gaming!

There's that reference again, that adjective of "great" seems to confound my existence,:confused: most recently a descriptive verse about "a great big windbag full of sh!t" .....someone said....whatever could that mean? Oh well.... I'll just chalk it up to another failing human recognition characteristic! Now...back to the game!

Nor do you need signs...or flags, just evil intent. So you see the problem? No?? Look in the mirror, you humans are the problem, your rationalizations and perverted sense of entitlements. You are given the gift of life, that's it, you may not even be entitled to that, it just may be a convoluted conclusion of cosmic forces. You have been infused by your maker with freedom of choice and you can discern between right and wrong by that infusion, but you must maintain clarity, contemplation and deductive reasonings which many of you choose to ignore, so you're doomed to be repetitive to a great degree and your progress is slow.

Hey Big Al when you get your life put back together there is a tile on the Malaysian peninsula that needs to be redone, currently its a sea tile, needs to be land, you didn't intend for that I assume? Great Mods, Big Al's for AI play and Nupremal's, awesome PBEM against your buddy. You guys rock! Thanks for all the hard work. And of course to our "main man", Hubert, who made it all possible, "best of the best", wargame designer, thanks for the 1.03 patch.:cool:

Crap! My mistake JJR, thought y'all were doing Nupremal's mod....sorry....continue the dissection.

Want some killer carriers Rambo? With those double strikes you can quickly build experience, but make sure you keep them overstrengthed. Cycle them in and out of the >5 supply harbors and use them only after you have reduced the target with LB air and ground units, never use them at less than 11 strength unless you've got a sure kill. The "chow" coastline is easy pickings, they can strike every turn and by the time USA comes in they are as good as German TACs and get them some range in the process, save the NW and Adv Air till later. China is toast!

Ok, here's how Rockets work and they're not just for German model. Most scenarios start with a modest investment, perhaps one chit in rocket research, and if you get a hit for level one then you have range. Rockets can pound the enemy in any kind of weather so every turn usage is important because the thing that really makes rockets effective is experience. So the primary concern is deployment to capitalize on the every turn strike adavntage without losses. Places to consider are Sicily for Malta bombardments, Gibraltar, Finnish and Baltics coastlines, etc. They are also very good at getting an HQ a lot of experience since there is no adverse effects, so use Manstein, Rommel, whoever and get them up to snuff and then redeploy and start over, think of it as training. Ohh....and by the way.....training is an aspect for SC3....keep your new units at home for awhile, invest some MPPs and get them one medal of experience before you put them in "Harms Way".

Good ones rez, Nupremal's mod has the Ukrainian cooperation possibility.

OK JJR, you're queued up for the response, keep the rhetoric to a minimum and explain to the guy how its done.

I've been toying with the idea to attack USSR at the first Spring thaw of 1940, not honoring the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement. Use the winter of 39 / 40 to set up defenses in the west and then go all out April 40 for the Red Bear. One problem in Big Als campaign is that the Ruhr area of Germany has 0 supply and an incomplete westwall fortification line early in 1940 and the Allies will hammer you with air. Haven't gotten that far in Nupremal's scenario, little playing time.

Your right Hubert, my mistake, amphibs do not regain supply, I assumed they functioned like other naval units. What I really would like to see, not necessarily for SCG, is amphibs portrayed the way they were in real life. The troops were transported to just off the beaches and then transfered to landing craft, so in SC they would need to transit from transport mode into amphib mode. To keep amphibs from being used in a gamey way they should lose all supply and readiness in two turns(turn of creation and one turn of APs). This way they can be created in a friendly port or transit from transport to amphib, but only have a one turn distance to disembark otherwise they lose all effectiveness. Simulates the need for close island bases for efficient amphibious operations and makes islands more valuable, as they were. Also, to accomodate a more lifelike use of transports, I would like to see them lose 1 supply/10% efficiency per turn they are at sea slowly degrading until they reach a minimum of.....??....say 2/20%, something like that?

Ahhh, now my favorite part. SC3 units, the real deal, the playing pieces, probably the most important part of the creation. We want this as close to realism as a game can get, excluding the micromanagement. So what have we got, a tile as a container, a DoD with limitations and a plethora of ideas for the units to fill the map with. Where to begin? How about optimum conditions and then we migrate to the less than "best" situations. So ...for instance we have a tile with a DoD of 10, in 10 supply/100% efficiency (OK for the moment forget about the 150% of an offensive over supply possibility). We select the tile and the various units in the deployment are displayed in the "units screen", essentially it is an OOB of the tile/map position. Now your imagination can run wild, carriers, fighters, infantry, armor, engineers, HQ, on and on a veritable task force of combat abilities, with support. Assets, yeah.. heavy armor, large caliber artillery, transport(air & ground), you get the picture? What are we going to do with all this stuff and how are we going to do it? WTH..... think? You're going to organize this list into combat groups and send them on missions? Exactly!.......your going to right click and select the desired forces from that list (OOB unit screen) and compose a "taskforce" and send it "in harms way". Is the hallucination clear...now... or am I the only one that dropped acid?:eek:

Now that we have established the concept, what are the limitations? If a designer sets the DoD in the editor as a max of 10, should that be rigid? What I mean is if a tile contains 10 SC units should that be combat units, or can supply units be a part of it, what about an HQ, does it count for the "stacking" limits? What about an overstacked condition? What are the consequences of violating the DoD, perhaps loss of command and control to a certain degree. How about greater combat losses as the density of men and material is exagerated over and above what the terrain can effectively accomodate? Can engineers assist the situation by building fortifications and housing more combat troops? To add to the above, how about rigid and passive zones of control. If the deployment is half the DoD does that disallow a loss of AP when an enemy unit moves into the area of influence. At what level does a DoD negate an enemy's exertion of a ZoC, for supply/communication situations. DoDs need specific definitions for the players to ascertain the effects.

Yeah gamey indeed, anyone check out the use of amphibs for shore bombardment?:eek: They don't take any losses and they can just sail around getting new supply from any friendly ports and continue the the massacre of enemy shore units. Along with the all powerful double strike CVs, I might add. Thanks for finally getting the double intercepts for fighters, at least one tooth was removed.

OK I'll admit that this is not well thought out, but here it goes. SC3 will have tiles and those tiles will be a part of seazones(sz). The tiles will allow the maneuver of naval and air units and the results of those movements will dictate the control of the seazones. Let's say we have 50 tiles in a sz and there are various ports in the sz controlled and garrisoned by both opponents. The allied player wants to control the sz and since a port is a container for various units he allocates some of those units for patrol, in essence movement based upon the allowed APs. The organized task force, it can have aircover in the container if it stays in range, is set out on patrol using movement waypoints into the sz and as it passes through the tiles they become "patrolled" and change to the allied ownership color. Now the allied player uses another task force, same thing, an air recon group and on and on as it slowly turns all the tiles in the sz to a friendly color and if the number of tiles is greater than 50%(26 tiles) then the allied player establishes control of the sz. The opposing player(axis) can see the enemy tile controlled colorations but he can't see the units that produced them. He just knows that there are allied patrol units and they are in control of the sz and now its his turn as he tries to wrest superiority from the allied player. The axis sends his units out and where they come into actual contact with allied units combat can result(a % chance based upon experience, naval warfare, numbers, etc.) and he can send reinforcements to help, once the enemy units have been positively Ided. Sea combat proceeds at it does now with the current SC engine. So what happens if you have control of the sz? First you discover enemy communication and supply(convoy) routes(remember the logistical layer) with your patrols and depending upon the degree of control( numbers of friendly air/naval groups you can completely shut down supply to locations in or bordering the sz. Understand that both players units can remain at sea, on patrol/station, of course at supply and readiness loss each turn. The patrol waypoints can be set at the beginning of each turn and the designated units will continue on the path for however many turns it takes to complete the mission only interrupted by enemy actions or a change of orders from the controlling player.

I've been giving some thought to a new characteristic for our base SC3 tiles which will interact with the playing pieces. If you think about it I'm sure you'll agree that the tiles represented in SC can be construed as containers for units, therefor limits must be set in the initial layer to define the boundaries of those deployments. So, with that in mind, the tiles used to create the map will have another parameter to be set by the campaign designer, "Density of Deployment", (DoD). What happens is the designer will designate the generic land or sea tiles with a starting DoD representing the maximum number of playing pieces that can be contained. Then as you add terrain the DoD is reduced or the unit is inhibited from using certain aspects of the deployment, ie. motorized components can't enter mountainous/jungle situations or no basing of aircraft(engineers allow a limiting base,after improving the land). For example, the designer sets the DoD for land tiles at 10 units, sea tile at 20, coastal sea tiles at 5, etc. Now one of those land(clear tiles) receives some light forest terrain and the DoD becomes 8, unless of course a major road runs through it. You add mountainous characteristics to the tile and it becomes 5 if that is the value the designer chooses. So now a campaign creator can use the DoD to give the player some orientation about the actual useful area encompassed by a geographical position and different tiles, although appearing to be the same size, will not have the ability to accomodate the same size deployments of combat units. More on this in the "Units Layer".

This is a decent idea Jon, but one problem, it takes too long to finish a game. Recognizing this fact back in the WaW days I designed a fast action tourney version of the War in the Desert, a campaign that had parity. This is what we need for a tournament to occur, a campaign of equity with approx. 20 turns per side, it could be designed with all the SC elements, production, diplomacy, research, but it needs to run fast and have a high degree of variability.

Remember the active phase of the logistical layer, well this is a loose definition of how it should work. Any home city or connected friendly(>=80% efficiency, 8 supply:e/s) can create an enhanced supply impulse(ESI), amount set by the editor, can be dependent upon "infrastructure" research level. Let's say you create from Berlin, 100%/10, 5 ESI, if it was 80%/8 it would be a max 3 and you send it down the network to a forward location, it moves at an editor created number of tiles/per turn, and if the number of tiles between connections is greater than ? (editor #) tiles it can suffer a friction loss. Now what happens when it reaches its destination? The city/village/resource/HQ now has that as an additional supply dump, so now efficiency/readiness/morale can move to a greater than 100% if the supply level is over 10, otherwise it adds its number to the passive value for that location. If it is 5 and the ESI is 5 the location becomes ten and can be further stockpiled to a max of 15, subject to erosion on 1 per turn or 1 per attack for elligible units. HQs still manage supplies but their priority function now is to add APs to the attached units. I'll explain this later in the "units layer" thread. An ESI can be transported, subject to limitations(editor) by rail, road, sea, and lastly by air, a right click activated menu allows the creation/movement and can only move through the network of 5/50% or greater s/e connected communication centers. Any questions so far?

To expand on some of Wushuki's ideas, what if before the game starts each player could choose between approximately 5 different doctrines/strategic goals. For instance; 1. Germany decides that the UK will be their foremost war opponent and follows Admiral Donitz's plan to isolate them with a large submarine force and contest the RN's control of the seas. 2. Again, UK first priority, but Germany embarks upon a strategic bombing campaign to neutralize the Brits. 3. Germany decides to employ diplomacy gaining Polish help to attack the Soviet Union along with Balkins and Baltic states' assistance, emphasis on the ground forces. 4. Germany decides for a Western European initiative, attacking LC, Denmark, Norway, France and perhaps Spain to gain strategic deployments to cut off UK with submarines and LR air campaign. 5. Germany goes west with amphibious and air assault doctines to subdue France first followed by Sealion. Each choice would be accompanied by a unique OOB deployment, research and starting diplomatic positions.

Come on JJR, you haven't been paying attention. Remember or maybe you aren't OK with the rationale that SC size units are not "Killed" but just disrupted, shattered, rendered "combat ineffective" to be later rejuvenated? One thing you're right about is the over-complications and the extra "clicks". I'm trying to think of a simple way to present the communication network, hoping for an epiphany. Just think of a vast spider web, invisible unless selected, where only the connected sites can be maintained at 5 supply/50% efficiency. Unconnected, they erode their logistics automatically, until re-established. SC already kind of does this, but it assumes that a location can sustain itself to certain level rather than relying upon its connecting infrastructure. In reality it doesn't work like that, especially for locations that are remote or ones that are cut off. So in the new model you will connect them.....yes ...using clicks for setting the waypoints or just let the AI set the direct route, your choice. Now....how about you....any specifics?:confused: This is just as much your game as it is mine.

I'm going to lay this out in stages and it will begin with the underlying network, which, in a way, SC already possesses. The problem with SC is again the network is not dynamic enough and defficient in player interaction, which we will try to solve. Imagine SC's convoy system as a basis to expand upon, think of it radiating out from the home country resource base to all the acquisitions and trade partners on the map. Obviously it must be a two way street with supplies flowing in both directions and the player should be able to set it up using the "waypoint" movement system. This logistical network could be viewed by either selecting the now accessible SC convoy map or a hotkey that exposes the layer to the owning player. The network will have to use the rail and road system integral to map making for land links and then radiate from ports across sea tiles to the other friendly facilities. To appreciate full supply features the network must maintain an unbroken link and is of course subject to enemy interdiction. Because the network can be easily interrupted the owning player must be able to modify the route from turn to turn.........the question is....route modification should be dependent/limited upon what? An MPP investment? Since the route will have an active and passive mode, active being an offensive/repair/building logistical basis and passive being the maintenance apsects there should be some ramifications for a rapid adjustment. Also, remember the "friction" feature inherent into each tile/hex, this will cause a defficiency in the transporting of logistics if the player chooses a long and arduous route. Any ideas?:confused:

Before I post some proposals I would like for Hubert to comment on the viability of having the AI conform to the present supply feature but have human players deal with a different logistical system. In this manner, we can keep the present system for the AI to deal with(it knows how), but design a more complicated, realistic model for human play against the AI and other humans. Now I'm not advocating tossing the present system out, just some tweaking of the details, basics are to be built upon.

Hey...yeah..Rambo ole buddy....your back:), feels like old times with you and Kuni in here:p, but you're going to have to dispense with this passe' crap. SC Global is about the mods now, Nupremal and Big Al leading the way, more coming in, so forget the generic global scenarios and go for the gusto. How about you and Nup do an AAR?:cool: Anyway, welcome back.....and try not to stick your foot in your mouth, you too Kuni! Keep it light, be gentle and jestful, some of our SC brethren have thin skin. You feel the need to verbally chastise someone.....I'm your Huckleberry!