Flashblade

OpenBSD, yummy! That's what my NAT box is running

ladder / league play would be great. I don't think I have time to run a full site. But I could probably help out on the web programming side if someone else wants to run it!

As soon as I can find a copy I will be playing it, I yearn for the extra detail. Will still be playing my PBEM SC games though

It is definetly possible, but what got your tank unit out was as much the experience as the technology. Of course even with max ind. tech it would cost you close to 200mpp to bring those bad boys back up to full strength, and by then they would have lost ALL their XP...

In my experience there is only one essential tech: IT, all the others depend on what strategy you're going for and just as important: what your opponent does. IT is the obvious choice, you can halve the cost of all your units AND HQs. A numerous, diversified and well supplied army is much better than a small badly supplied one, even the best L5 tank group will get taken down if caught out of supply... Advancing to far in certain techs can also backfire on you by driving up the cost of your units. I had a great game going as the Allies, but I invested to heavily in Anti-Tank and my Russian corps got to damn expensive, in the end I couldn't afford to fill the gaps in the line anymore: Russia falls, game over. I am now much more carefull in where I put my research money after IT. On the offensive (Axis) my goal is usually to equal or surpass my opponents in each area, but no more. IE: if I am facing L2 tanks, I try and get L2 or L3 tanks, but not L4 due to the extra cost. On the defensive I concentrate the Brits and the Americans on obtaining air superiority while the Russians invest only in IT, once the cost of HQs comes down you can start mounting small counterattacks and your defence gets a huge boost. A really great tech to invest in is LR aircraft, here's why: 1 - Better recon: even the best commanders can't stop an attack they never saw coming. 2 - Does not affect the cost of your fighters or bombers. 3 - Allows your planes to attack on multiple fronts without moving, great for the invasion of Russia! 4 - Allow you to hit those far away industrial targets, at worst forcing the ennemy to spend money garrisoning them or at best wrecking havoc on there economy.

I would prefer to have one major power, for the simple reason that this way you can avoid duplicate research. At the very least you have to ducplicate IT to make anything out of both countries... past that I suppose you could branch off, Germany on the ground and Italy in the sea, but it just doesn't seem worth it.

Invasion of Canada & the US should simply be impossible. The Germans were never able to put together a strong enough Navy to protect a cross-channel invasion of England, even with the Luftwaffe flying cover for them... the idea that they could mount an invasion across the Atlantic in '40 is just silly. Germany simply did not have the infrastructure for this! You could more or less simulate this by making all German units & HQs landing in North America 0 supply and giving the US & Canada Automatic mobilization of an Army in each city every turn. This should make it virtually impossible to invade the US and Canada, as it should be!

I'm going to have to disagree with your grand strategy Norse. As with all strategy games, SC is about ressources, plain and simple. France is worth over 100 MPPs per turn to the Allies (139 if you take the Low Countries) and about 65 to Germany + the 700 to 900 in plunder bonus. If Germany takes France early they can use these MPPs to get a huge lead in tech. Also, the better the German player is doing the faster the Balkan minors join up. In my best PBEM game I declared war on Denmark to deny Germany the plunder there (gamey). Invaded the Low Countries so France was getting 139 MMPs a turn + the plunder bonus. This combined with British air support allowed France to hold out until Early '41. My opponent finally had to declare on Switzerland to make a hole in my line and get some plunder. But by then it was to late, Britain was able to capture Norway and because he need all his remaing force just to get into France Russia declare on Germany in '41: game over. I have never tried to mount Sealion, Russia is what is important. After France I focus on securing easy ressources: Norway, Yugoslavia, Greece, Iraq and Egypt... haven't gone for Sweden yet, maybe next game.

Tech in the air is not always as bad as it looks, in a current game my opponent got Lvl 3 Air as the brits in mid-41. I wanted Malta thanks to the silly interception rule I attacked the port with my HQ assisted lvl 0 fighers and then killed the remaing few strength points with the combined attacks of two BBs and two more air fleets. In retrospect I probably should have left him at one strength point to force him to use up his MPPs reinforcing his very expensive air fleets.

The problem I see is units never retreat... you have to have to completely DESTROY an army to move 50 miles... You also can't combine attacks, so even if you are attacking with 3 units in one turn, you get 3 individual attacks instead of one big one. Of course you can't really have combined attacks if you can't stack units. No stacking seeming to indicate that a corps and an army cannot fight within the same ~50 mile area.

Wow! Thanks a lot Norse. Great to hear that I can play SC on my Linux box... wonder if it will work on OpenBSD

I will ignore Sarge's post... I also think a download version would be cool for those of us with high speed internet connections. Especially considering that with service like Paypal it's ridiculously easy to setup secure safe online transactions. But I'm not sure if Battlefront would like that... the CD has plenty of advertising on it, if you put this advertising in the downloadable version it would be big, really big. Of course they could still charge the same (low) price. But not have to make any CDs or print any manuals.

10 games?! I played one full game! Now i'm playing a ton of PBEM... so far i've only completed one, and I am O-1 But I am getting better all the time!

Sounds good, have a few tidbits to add though. First of all, I don't think you need 6 air fleets to take France. You are proably waiting to long to attack. I usually start out with 4 and sometimes by a 5th. If you hit them hard enough this should be plenty. As the Germans you will always conquer France, the trick is to do it without losses, so concentrate on keeping your HQs close! And don't ignore the Med! ... I think you are missing out on some really great opportunities. As Axis I try and use the Italians to conquer the Med, Greece, Iraq, Alexandria and Vichy France... provide a really nice boost

Yup, I really think their need to be some tweaking done with the siberian reinforcements. Due to the inclusion of HQs they can really turn the tide in Russia, and should definetly have more triggers than just getting close to Moscow... btw does anyone know what exactly the triggers are? Hubert?