Piumarcobaleno

Well, attacking Vichy as allies (post usa\urss entry) is useful only if you are ready to land in Europe: Germany will otherwise take 20 mpps from Vichy (Marseilles) and the port, while the 2 cities and the port in africa (that you as allied) will take, would give you 15 mpps. Unless obviously you haven't before opened a land connection with Urss through iraq; in this case mpps would be 24 to allies.

Piumarcobaleno raises his hat and concedes to Iron Rangers and his "Fun" strat. Bid was 175 for Axis, which i used. Tought me a lesson on "all out" defence.

Have you ever seen a surpise air combat? How does it happened? Never heard of it before..

Codename Condor beats Piumarcobaleno (allies). Sorry for the disconnection, urgent thing to do.

As anyone would have noticed, there's a chat link right over the opponent finder forum. This is a simple java chat, and i've seen that there's a room for SC players, along with combat mission rooms and so on. The question is: does anyone of us actually uses this chat to find opponents? I've gone there only a pair of times, but i never found anyone in SC room. Maybe it would be a simpler way to find oppos if everyone of us went there instead of writing in the forums, not? Just a thought.

Maybe, apart from mpps, oilfields and cities could have a "fuel" value, like 2 for ports (trade), cities and mines (coal refining) and 6 for oil fields. Let's say that corps require 0 fuel, army 0.5, tank groups 1, sea units 0.5 and airfleets, along with strat bombers 2. These wouldn't be "expendable" points, nor cumulable, just a limit on fuel supply. Say Germany has 5 or 6 cities at the beginning, 2 ports and a mine, collecting 16 points of fuel supply. So Germany could field say 6 armies, 2 tank groups and 3 air fleets, with five point of surplus that get wasted, but could supply a few more units. Every unit that can't be supplied within this max expense would have a supply level of 2, and a readiness of 10\20% (maximum). How about this?

Arby Well, italy WAS a Major Power in Second World War. You sure wouldn't treat her as Belgium or Norway! It's interesting to see the figures of billion of dollars, but it's not like every nation was buying troops at a common shop. Even nowadays a US dollar has a differen buying power in each of these countries, so you can bet that these 30 or 40 billion dollars in Italy were for sure giving more items than the same amount expended in the USA! Second, Italy's army wasn't one of the best armed and equipped, but more infantry based, so count that giving a rifle to a foot soldier hasn't the same cost of building, equipping and keep going a carrier task force, or an intercontinental invasion army. I'm not saying that Italy was one of the most POWERFUL powers in the world, sure she fared awfully, but you can't say this only by looking at her war expences. Let alone this, very good ideas about national IT and units. Problem is, with units, that SC is a "what if" game, more gamey than historical under this aspect, so maybe this is why units are set equal for every nation. On the other hand, maybe in SC2, each player could chose some "optional traits" for his nation, say like "land power, +1 to army soft and hard attack, -1 to battleships sea attack and defence" and so on (my RPG background comes back!!).

Maybe a naval unit with very low sea defence and null sea attack, but with very high soft and hard attack and normal ground defence, could represent a particular type of attack, without the need of a new combat rule of retreat. This way one, two or three "Marines" units could attack shore hexes without having to actually land, to make space for a normal corp to touch the shores (let normal units "transported" land to a beach only if there's a marine unit near). Obviously this wouldn't strip away the tactic of the floating corp, it would just make it more expensive (125mmps for the corp, and 400 or more for the marine unit) and risky (525 mpps at stake, not only 125). How about this?

Ok, "i agree with this", my english teacher would tear me apart...

I agree with this, but it's maybe too complex to code in a game like SC. I'm not a programmer, so i'm not sure of this, but your suggestions, even smart and well thought, are maybe a difficult thing to see in a future patch (if there would be future patches)given its complexity. Maybe doubling the cost for transport, giving landing units low supply, or maybe give each transport on sea a sub warfare-like cost (say 5 mpps each transport that ends a turn in open waters, not in a port). I'm not saying that the option of an ampihibious attack, supported by battleships and aircrafts, that can let the landing unit fight its way on the beaches is a bad idea, instead, it's a wonderful one (like 3rd Reich, basically), but maybe it's too far away from SC, difficult to code, as i said before.

I agree to the amphib assault issue, but someone in the post before mine speaked about this regarding a more difficult sea lion for axis etc.; i was just suggesting to think twice on a patch that would burden axis even more on the earlier stages of game. Maybe just setting unloading troops readiness and supply near 0 on the first turn when they land would do the trick, without having to implement a new transport option in the game; this way a defender would have one turn of "0 supply" invasion to counter, giving him the chance to severely cripple the assault. Even a landed HQ would have supply 0 on the turn it touches the shores, so it could not supply the troops during the enemy turn; the turn after hq would go back to their normal 5 supply level, let's say Hq lands, establish his communication and supply lines and THEN is able to coordinate troops.

Do you want to make axis boulder even heavier? Combination of "Iolo defence" and "Dutch Gambit" are already capable of stopping the axis early in the game, with a combination of air power and good defence line.. In the second turn allies can muster 3 air fleets, one bomber and 2 carriers in range of bruxelles; more, usually players bid at least 100 mpps for axis, so england and france get 115 each at start, +100 or more for the bid for england, plus both nation can scrap say 2 battleships and a cruiser each in 2 turns (you need to scrap battleships right in ports), gaining additional 170 mpps each, that makes about 500 mpps for each nation by the end of the second turn. Consider that usually, if axis has not redeployed his air force near belgium to counter the dutch gambit, allied troops should make it into bruxelles on turn 2, so when you hit that "done" button, 300 points of plunder will go to the nation you have chosen. In 2 turns, france and england have collected 1300 mpps ca. The Fatherland, on the other side, can: A)have taken poland, gaining 300 plunder, but leaving time to allied to take belgium, so the plunder bonus is the same, or B)have operated troops to belgium (while allied troops can redeploy by foot), leaving poland alive for other 2 or 3 turns at least. In every case, allied player can buy stuff for 1000 mpps MORE than axis one, making room for one or two additional air fleets and a HQ. Let's see how much air power is in play now.. Brits 3 air fleets, 2 carriers and a bomber (+ a HQ if bruxelles goes to london), French 2 air fleets (+ a HQ if bruxelles turns blue), while german air force is by no way over 3 air fleets. Even with HQ helping germany, numbers are greatly in allies favor! And you want to tone down germany? That's fault of the "Chamberlaine way of thinking" very common to early years of ww2 play. It's obvious that we think of a preminence of axis in the first offensives, so you can say "that cannot be!" and let france fall, leave axis player live, and build 20 air fleets that will crush you in a moment. It can be "ahistorical" or "gamey", but maybe the allies have their best chance of winning the war in the early months of the war, at least in this GAME, because this game, with the current settings, is designed this way. That's "my two cents", kent brockman here, bye bye springfield

Well, even if you haven't an army deployed in France, i suppose you would notice if suddently city majors would send no more complains, post offices no more letters etc..

Carriers get the strenght increase only from 1 of the 2 techs (can't remember which now). Oil fields wield 3 mpps\strenght, you can be sure of this (look at iraqis' or russkies').

Do you really think that USA would have made a D-Day invasion with troops loaded on ships sailing directly from the homeland? Quite difficult to figure out. No Island Hopping in the Atlantic..

Piumarcobaleno (Axis) retired, Twiddle (allies+150) won in '41. OK, now i'll have to learn the right counter to dutch gambit (operating troops from poland on turn 1, ok, i'll do that. next time.)

Well, after this Runstedt quote it seems like i'll have to go back to Roman Empire to feed my italian pride

For what i have seen, jet doesn't affect directly ground attacks, but consider that A) it helps gaining air supremacy it allows an air unit to have even 14 or 15 strenght points, and i think that this helps too when calculating damage C) usually while times goes on, your aircraft tend to be quite experienced, so i think it may seem that this effect can be misjudged for jet effect.

Nope, you have to go to the opponent's finder forum (here on battlefront) and set up with someone; you leave a post like "someone for a sc ladder match, from 10am to 3pm", and wait for someone to contact you; obviously, u can find a similar post from someone else! Anyway multiplayer is done either by e-mail and tcp\ip connection.

Maybe is Molotov-Ribbentrop the name you are looking for, Shaka

German Jets are at level 3, by the way!

Player Piumarcobaleno signs up to the ladder. Here comes a n00b !

Here in Italy we have 1 hour more than england; just see how time is it in the date over this post. Here is 15.15. Hope this helps! Rambo, i wouldn't have expected a commie-like post like that from you

#2 if you are against a "regular" opponent, like the AI (even at +1 exp). #3 is maybe too much time consuming, for the bonuses it grants.. #1 only if your opponent has thrown many british mpps in the battle for france. I usually leave to Italy the quest for Africa, while with germany i chew up central and northern europe. I also saw that it works leaving norway and sweden alone, at least against AI at +1 exp (obviously against a real player you'll need a more aggressive tactic).

Sea wolf, that's the problem of loving too much in a game. The same happens to me every time I play a paper RPG different from D&D second edition, i always start a quarrel with the master 'grognarding' about "realism" in a game that depicts a world with dragons and wizards. That's the point, here we have a grand military strategical game, no micromanagement like automatic retreats, airborne troops and so on; so we have to like it like it is, Hubert has made many patches, all very useful, but in this direction.. it's ok to speak of current air power, partisans and so on, but maybe historical limits (sometimes taken from politic, sometimes from economy) are a thing this game can't and don't want to handle. This doesn't means SC isn't a very very fun game. [ February 07, 2003, 08:42 AM: Message edited by: Piumarcobaleno ]