Shaka of Carthage

Steve C Welcome to the wonderful world of marketing, where people who just look at the numbers make decisions on what is sold or promoted. A&A sold alot of units on retail shelfs. Then the sales tapered off. Real Time Systems are big sellers these days. Now you have some marketing geek, sitting in his cubicle wondering how he can get noticed among all the other geeks that have cubicles just like his. Hmmmm... Lets take a product that has already reached maturity (ie we are making as much money as we can off of it... aka a Cash Cow). And lets marry it with a hot selling concept... Real Time Movement. This is known in the business world as synergy (ie when 2 + 2 = 5). And that is how you get a new product called A&A RTS. If enough units sell, this geek will now move from his cubicle to a office, somewhere in the middle of the other offices (the corner offices are reserved for those who have power, the farther away you are from the corner, the less power you have). Hmmmm, it I explain the concept of dead duck, rising star and ?forgot name of last one?, you would have just learned everything that a MBA from a business school will give you. Please send $5 to the address I will provide you.

Edwin P and Iron Ranger Within SC, that is exactly what they become, some sort of super heavy artillery that can fire 100 to 300 miles. I just threw the idea out there, never thought it thru. Go with it if you want.

Not to be argumenative, but: Don't forget something you mentioned earlier. In terms of mfg costs, I doubt anyone could produce something "cheaper" than Russia. And I would guess that because of the slave labor, that the Germans could produce it cheaper than the US. And thats when you start to realize that Mfg Costs have nothing to do with Rate of Production. All in all, its a very complex subject that requires more effort than most people want to put into it. To take this into a totally different direction... Read something recently in the US Strategic Bombing Survey. It seems we have alot of it wrong. This is a percentage of total war production that was devoted to air forces... England...... 40 to 50% German....... 40% US........... 35% Next largest category was ammunition, which varied from 23% to 32%. Then it was ships from 6.5% to 12%. When is the last time that any of you spent 50 to 75% of your MPPs every turn on aircraft and ammo?

The way people talk about using strategic bombers, rockets and to some extent submarines, shows you why in other games they take the approach of only allowing them to be used in a sub-system called strategic warfare. The problem with Rockets in SC is that there is no way to reflect the negative effect it has on civilian morale. Would be more realistic as well if the Rocket unit was not spotted by Air or Naval units. Thats why it makes more sense to make a certain level of Jet advancment dependent on Rockets. Without that research, there would be no Jet aircraft.

The earliest one of those "Baltic" neutrals will join the Axis is Nov '40. I wasn't aware of any "block" on random events until after the fall of France. Interesting.

SeaWolf_48 I think its the Battleships you are talking about in 'Nam. I don't remember anything about any Cruisers.

#6 thing about Poland and Russian readiness isn't correct. Here is how it works. One unit on border until Oct '40. Then you need five (5) to ten (10) depending on number of minors that join the Axis. I put 2 units as each minor joins (Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania). If you don't have enough units on the Russian border the Russian readiness goes up 10% a turn. If you have too many units on the Russian border the Russian readiness will increase greater than 10% a turn. The border can be defined as within three hexes of Russia, but that first unit has to be in a city (usually its Warsaw). Whats really interesting is that I never knew of some of that other stuff that was mentioned.

It's not? :confused:

Speaking of ships... History Channel has a special on the "Scharnhorst" (the German cruiser right?) tommorrow night. And tonight they have a special on killing Hitler (some sort of English plot with a sniper). Finally, on regular TV, lets not forget there is part 2 of the CBS special on Hitler.

Hmmmm.... maybe I should move to England. They seem to have lower taxes than what I pay here.

Liam I'm gonna bite on one of the comments you stated, since I have seen you ask for it a few times. Artillery. If I understand you correctly, you want a new unit that is just Artillery? I don't understand how we should have one at this scale. Then again, maybe you are asking for a Division level game... in that case the Russians would get Artillery Divisions, but to my knowledge, no one else would.

Best part of the Borg was Seven of Nine. She can assimilate me anytime. Even though those Klingon sisters in Deep Space Nine work for me also. I find it amazing what they can tell from the shipwrecks. I guess the metal in the ships takes quite some time to go away, if it ever does. Educate a dummy... why is the Hood getting so much attention? What was so special about that ship, or do all of the sunken captial ships get that kind of attention? Oh my God! JJ, are you talking like a Soclalist? Or a Libertarian!?

disorder Hey, I like Civilization too! Here is one possible reason. Mr H has spent two (2) years (?) developing the systems that give us SC. Assuming there are no other constraints, map expansion is simply a matter of how many more hexes can be added to the existing map. All of the other game systems will work in the larger area. There will have to be some AI modifications for North Africa and maybe in the Arctic. But thats relatively easy. If you go to a "global map" and "strategic map" like you describe, you have only changed the interface (ie the way you see the entire map). It could be done in such as matter that as each strategic map is loaded it goes into current memeory while the other strategic maps are stored on a hard drive ... but as each maps load, there will be some hesitation (like when we start a new scenario). But now, and this is the important part, you have just changed the way the logic works. Because instead of having a "map" (like a chessboard), you now have multiple "maps" (think 3D chess, like on star trek). All this new logic has to be added, older stuff modified to work with these new variables, etc. Then you have to playtest it, etc. Hence, the short answer... its alot easier to work with the methods in place instead of starting over.

KDG and Wachmeister Sounds logical to me about the change needed in IT. One of you should propose in the Ladder that the rules be modified so that the '39 scenario receive this change.

Because we are ignorant Americans. Let me see if I understand this. There is England, Scotland and Wales. The three (3) together are the United Kingdom. It's hard for us to understand, because we think of the three in terms of being a state (English "shire"?). So of course that means English is like saying American and UK is like saying United States of America. Now... where does Northern Ireland fit into all of this? PS... and why does your English sound so funny? [ May 19, 2003, 06:39 PM: Message edited by: Shaka of Carthage ]

ditto

Quick story, then I promise to break the soapbox. I was strolling along in indian country one fine morning. There was this local who seems to have had some problems with the helicopter flying overhead. So he unslings this bolt action rifle and fires a shot at the helicopter. Copter is about couple hundred feet above ground, but it either hits them or they see the local firing at them. So they do a turn, fire rockets at the guy (who of course has now taken cover). Then they come back again with the 60's blazing. Go a bit off and circle. Then of all things, here comes a birdie (think it was a thud, but I was trying to have sex with the dirt at this point) and bam. Helicopter comes by a few minutes later, flys over a few times, then finally goes home. I wonder what the cost of the rockets, the 60 ammo and the thud bombs were compared to the cost of that locals rifle cartridge?

Few points, then I will get off of this soapbox. Hi-Tech is fine. So why aren't all of us using helicopters or light planes to get back and forth to work? Its not cost effective. Who is this "nuclear" threat we have to worry about? Russia is broke. China is still 20 years behind us. Anyone else? The French? We should be more concerned about suitcase bombers that strategic missiles. The key is cost effective. Iraq is a bad example. Being "ahead of the curve" didn't win us the victory. We spend more on defense today than we ever did to counter the Soviets. And who are defending against? Must be the Borg, cause it sure ain't anyone on this planet.

Global SC Again, depends on how you want to view your map, but if we stick to a 50 mile hex, you are talking over 60,000 hexes. Thats sixty thousand! Thats a large number of hexes that no one is gonna be playing over. Then again, to prevent them from being wasted hexes you might as well make all the nations of the world be eligible. And what you have just created in SC Global is basically a HOI "lite". That to me is another project way outside of what we should expect in the near future. And if there was a global SC, we should be thinking in different terms. More like allowing this to be some sort of multi-player online game where you can enter your turn each day and at the end of the day the computer processes the turns. Then you look at the global map, view your messages, and do it all over again the next day. This way, people from all over the world could play without you having to be online. Anyway, just a thought.

Liam Exactly. Having sea zones would make the North Atlantic naval war a "sideline". Would make it necessary to employ the naval ships in the various zones to counter the German subs. Otherwise, the MPP's of UK would be reduced (hopefully using the MPP+ concept ). No longer would we be tempted to use the ships as part of the land war because of the German sub threat. And we still have our current naval hex movement and combats in the Med, Baltic, North Sea. Panzer39 Even making a "deep ocean" hex that would be 100 miles across, still would not give us the correct number of hexes for the North Atlantic. By implementing sea zones, you could remove from the current map roughly 9 columns of hexes. Need to add 5 columns back in (areas for US, Canada, Iceland, Greenland, South America, etc), leaving us with roughly 150 "free" hexes. That would give me the ability to "stretch" the current SC map by about three (3) rows. Edwin P Hmmm... so a box dimension would be roughly 20 degrees North/South and 20 degrees East/West. That would make 12 boxes plus 1 more to cover the Norwegian sea. While two or three of those boxes are land masses (Canada and Greenland) you have now just opened up the strategic possiblites. Brainfart... I just figured out how to show you the map I am looking at. North Atlantic "Boxes" There are French colonial sites in West Africa. Those could be included as well. British would have to send forces not only to Egypt, but West Africa, East Africa, etc. Lot more strategic options now. Good idea Edwin.

How the Boxes are used Merchant routes would be within the relevant boxes. Axis sub would have to enter the Baltic arrow to get into the Arctic Box. Then from that Box it could travel into the North Atlantic Box. Same concept for any other type of allied or axis ships using arrows to enter boxes. Axis subs in a box would hunt down merchant ships. Allies could counter by deploying ASW ships. Either these are the existing ships and/or we need to add a destroyer counter. Someone else could work the numbers out, but the concept would be that each ASW asset gives you a certain % chance of finding a sub. Then there is the combat. And then we get the results at the end or beginning of each turn. From what I remember, Axis captial ships could be used as "surface raiders". I guess that would mean that if they entered the box, they would hunt merchant ships as well. This is the part where you naval experts need to provide the rest. Can those Axis capital ships enter a box not as a surface raider? Does that mean they then would be searching for a fight with Allied capital ships? Let me mention this while I think about it. Iceland, Greenland, could get a Air or Bomber unit. Once it reached a certain range (ie you must invest in Long Range tech), those units would increase your chance of finding Axis subs. I don't know if that is true for something based in Canada as well. The other thing I don't know about is supply. If an Axis sub entered the Baltic arrow... how many turns before it gets into the Arctic box? How long should it stay in the Arctic box? And how where these subs or any capital ships supplied? Or does the existing supply concept work for naval ships? Anyway, that is my basic idea. The rest of you can work the details out. PS... forget the destroyer unit. Lets call it a ASW unit. Now, you can have a ASW tech that not only covers the better sonar, radar, whatever, but it also covers the ASW unit having merchant and escort carriers. [ May 19, 2003, 04:52 AM: Message edited by: Shaka of Carthage ]

JerseyJohn Thanks for the comment. SC is much cheaper than me seeing a therapist. I still want to hear other peoples comments, but let me expand a little on some ideas. Since we are not going to pursue the North Atlantic hex map, we are going to have "boxes". Our current map should have representative areas on it for Greenland, Iceland, and other relevant strategic areas. I don't remember my longitude or latitude definitions, so lets just call them the east-west and north-south lines. Each box would be roughly 60 degrees going east west and roughly 20 degrees going north south. We have three (3) different boxes. Arctic North Atlantic 40 to 60 N by 0 to 60 EW. North Atlantic 40 to 60 N by 0 to 60 EW. South North Atlantic 20 to 40 by 0 to 60 EW. If you look at a map with the longitude/latitudes its easier to see. You can get from the Artic box to the North Box. And from the North Box to the South Box. Now, remember the Suez "arrows"? And the Baltic sea "arrows" for the subs? Baltic Sea should have a "arrow" for entry into the Arctic box for the Axis. As was discussed there whatever those conditions are for axis ships sneaking into to Arctic box depending on who controls Norway and the weather. Allies should have a "arrow" into the Arctic box in the North Sea and one North of Ireland. "Arrow" west of Ireland and "arrow" west of the Northern most tip of Spain would be entry points into the North Atlantic box. "Arrow" west of Gibralter would be the entry point into the South North Atlantic box. Equivalent entry "arrows" on the US, Canadain sides for entry into the relevant boxes. Easy right? PS... don't forget that the boxes are large enough that you can add the land hexes representing South America, French Martinque, Plymouth, Vigo, etc discussed earlier. And the existing map can now be expanded to include a larger North Africa, a bigger Sweden, Norway, Finland, etc. [ May 19, 2003, 04:49 AM: Message edited by: Shaka of Carthage ]

well dressed gentleman I tried to keep the other post brief, but the economic side is not something that can be explained in a few sentences. Hopefully, when I give the short answer to your other statements, you'll understand some of the reasoning behind it. Problem though, is that the entire budget was not spent on war materials. And even if you isolate just the military portion of it, you have to remember that in SC, all of the MPPs we get can be spent on war stuff. Impossible to figure out exactly what the US spent on the items it sent just to the ETO theater. Almost better to determine what the military units were and work backward, making sure you have enough MPPs to produce the units per a historical OOB year by year. Its a evenly balanced game. Key word being game. Its not historical. Me neither.

well-dressed gentlemen Glad you responded. I welcome the opportunity to try and explain some of my reasoning. Thats a valid point. First let me address the lend-lease. We seem to be quoting the same sources so bear with me. Total US Lend-lease....... $50,940,395,773.22 Of that, $2.5 billion went to "overhead"... money US spent that was either lost, spent on US forces or not charged to any nation. Still leaves $48.4 billion. These are 1940s dollars (to get current dollars, its about 11 or 12 times). UK got.......... $31.3 billion 65% Soviets got..... $11.3 billion 23% France got...... $3.2 billion 7% China........... $1.6 billion 3% As soon as Germany invaded Russia, US started sending help. But here is the important part. The UK started sending US economic aid it was getting to Russia also. I have been unable to verify those numbers for the moment. Hence... Conclusion....... UK Lend-Lease is 2.75 as much as Russias. I did an Economic comparison between SC, High Command, Clash of Steel and Third Reich. If you are interested, here is the thread. SC Economic Comparison Here is the MPP comparison for the 1939 numbers. ................3R..........COS........HC......SC Italy...........60...........43........80......115 Germany....120.........120.......120......120 France.........68...........77........97.....100 UK............100.........257.......178.....178 USA..........216..........129.......476.....180 Soviets.......72..........343.......111.....480 There are a few mistakes in the analysis, and I have promised to clean it up and post it as a HTML document on the SCHQ website, but for our purposes this is good enough. As you can see, none of the "sources" agree. So I dug into it further, determined merchant ship tonnage and who built it, got the GDP numbers for each year, got the tonnage of the raw materials that were imported and produced (mainly steel), etc, etc. Found a couple of things. The Russian numbers are very unreliable for various reasons. Even the new Russian stuff coming out has to be validated (which is hard to do). And the Allies were not above "inflating" numbers for propoganda purposes... hence you have to be careful when you use those sources (thank goodness for declassifed materials and the web). Then I had a relevation. SC is a game. While I was determing the historical MPPs, SC MPPs were for a balanced game. And consequently alot of those historical things (like lend-lease) were abstraced in SC to enhance it as a game (ie make it easy to play). Then some things became clear. German economy should never grow beyond two or three times its initial base (ie 360 MPP max). Italian economy once it entered the war was strangled by lack of oil (ie 60 MPP max). So Axis economy is only 420 MPP historicaly. US economy (for ETO), even when fully mobilized (which we don't do in SC), was 350 to 400 MPPs. Remember, the US is producing merchant ships, has a higher standard of living than anyone else, giving logistical support to its troops that no one else can dream of, etc. All those things are not reflected in SC. And depending on what number I want to use, over 200 MPPs should be spent as "lend-lease". Russia... first lets just say that the numbers are open to a wide variety of interpetations. Here is what I believe. MPPs should be around 100. Then by '45, because of the new factories, it should just about double the base number. So lets just give them 200 from the start. Even if they get the 60 MPPs from lend lease, I am nowhere close to the SC number. But remember, SC is a game, we need to look at playability. In SC there are no Russians. They are Reds. There are no Germans, they are Greys. There are generic units, so the difference between the Germans and Russians don't exist. So the Reds need more MPPs to "balance" them against the Greys. And that is why the Russian lend-lease numbers go to the Germans. Because its really the Reds "play balance" numbers going to the Greys. There is no historical MPP balance between the various sides. Besides, if the Greys have beaten the Reds, the game is over. The Allies have lost.

SeaMonkey Ok... you done gone and got me started again. If we already have a BB platform, why do we have to spend the money on creating a new one? Especially when the old one has armor plating that can stop all of the missile threats that sink current day vessels? Remember all the concern about the exocet in Falklands? I'm not sure that the old BB's would even know they were hit by an exocet. I'll tell you why. Cause ain't no one gonna get rich off of upgrading older platforms. Lot more money to be made by reinventing the wheel. For any of you that are old enough... remember the M-14? Why did we invent that when the FN-FAL was out there? Now we have the M-16, the spray and pray. Remember who first had those? The Air Force guys, since they couldn't shoot straight anyway. And now we are hearing how the M-16 can't penetrate the armored vests that the bad guys are wearing.... HELLO!!!!??? Where have I hard that before!??? I do hope the future US Navy is a force to be reackoned with. Cause the surface ships in the current US Navy are a joke. Back on topic, kinda... Modern day destroyers are really cruisers. They are the size of the WWII cruisers. Moder day frigates are really the size of WWII destroyers. So what the modern day Navy has is a bunch of Carriers, Cruisers and Subs. So where are the "infantry" of the sea, the destroyers? The guys who are suppossed to screen the expensive stuff from all the cheap stuff. We don't have any. And our modern day Cruisers (ie destroyers) are running around with small scale weapons like the old WWII destroyers. So they can't do any shore bombardment. God... how I miss those guys in those zippos and burfs (brown water navy in 'nam). Ok... done now.