Rabtherab

After being away for several months I thought I would say hello. I was going to say something else, but aw hell...

Hank: What I was suggesting was that just playing one of the axis or allied powers was an option, you could still elect to play the complete team. In this way, those who would not find great interest in playing just Italy for example, could choose not to play that way. I think it's safe to say that most hard-core wargamers are piqued at the idea of playing and hopefully winning as the historical underdog, and would at least like to explore the possibility of being just italy, if only to see how much better or worse they could do. Also, the advantage of being able to have a truly five-player game (six if you allow France to be seperate from britain), is another real plus there. As it is, with an entire alliance being controlled by a single player, all countries in the alliance fully co-operate with the overall goal of the player. Historically, the various countries in each alliance often had conflicting interests, and didn't alway follow a single overall plan. This is another thing that would be nicely modeled by allowing seperate players for each nation. I think having this flexability only improves the game. And of course, playing the entire alliance is still the default, so those not wishing to use this feature don't have to. Any time you can inject greater freedom to explore an historical situation, the better. In my opinion. I'm fairly confident that everyone will agree to that, at least. More options is a plus.

The random factor must be retained. War is not a perfect information game. Even when an attack has been planned to perfection, random factors can ruin everything. What if equipment breaks down? What if your men mutiny? What if there is an enexpected earthquake the evening before the battle? What if your army is striken down by the hand of your opponents deity? Chess is a great example of a zero-sum, perfect-information game. All things being equal, and opponents play flawlessly, it will always end in stalemate. Only sloppy play by the better player, and/or accidental brilliance of the other player, influences the outcome. War is an example (arguably, no mathematic debates please) of a zero-sum, imperfect-imformation (i.e. random, or hidden components, et cetera) game and von Neumann's "Minmax Theorum," seems to apply; but it's not a predictable one, and all things being equal, the better skilled general can still lose, due to an unforseen (i.e. random) event, such as natural phenomenon, accidental brilliance of the opponet, morale, fatigue, or (as in the case of Napoleon at Waterloo, according to some) hemorrhoid flare-up.

I'll agree with you there, there is a lot of freedom, and plenty of history altering ramifications to your political actions in HOI, and I agree that something similar would benefit a games like SC. I'd like to see a game that manages to get it right, and for my money, I'll wager that SC2 will come close, if not win the big cigar. I really like the fact that Mr. Cater uses this forum to get design feedback from the community. SC, is the first WW2 grand strategy game to do this, and I think this will give it what it needs to be the game that all us old-timers have waited for since we first opened the box containing, AH's "Third Reich." It's nice to see a game influenced by the fans, rather than another one tarnished by marketing dufusses, who change the game in order to allegedly sell more copies. I truly believe that the first game that actually gets it right, will have steady sales for some time to come, once word gets out. With or without large scale promotion. P.S. I'll certainly look into that WW1 game, I believe I've played it before, but I'm not sure just from hearing the title.

I didn't like HOI, or the EU/EU2 engine in particular. I find that very little of it works well, and all that detail just bogs things down. I've never even really bothered to learn the interface efficiently, but I think thats because I never really spent the effort to learn it. It just didn't grab me from the very beginning. Too me, realtime and grand strategy don't mix well. I think real time and tactical actions work well; I really enjoy Shogun/Medieval: Total War, for example. Whenever I see a person on some forum rave about EU's engine, I think, "What sort of Masochistic, Crack Inhaling, variety of creature is this?" So to be fair, I'd say that HOI/EU/EU2 are, just to give them the benefit of the doubt, probably good, realistic systems. They just don't do it for me at all. I'll probably take them down to the local used game/cd shop whenever I get the motivation to do a spring cleaning of me CD's.

One thing that all WW2 games seem to have in common is this: You may select which SIDE you wish to play. I'd dearly love to see a game in which you may select a single country. I've always wanted to play Italy alone, and let the AI handle Germany. This possibility fascinates me. I've seen a few games that alow you to divide the alies, where you could play the western allies, and/or Russia and vice versa. But none that allow you to select only one of the axis powers to play. The idea of playing one country, and not knowing for certain if your allies plans will mesh with yours or not, is a level of intrigue that would greatly benifit this game. The other advantage of this greater flexability in selecting a power to play, is the capability of have 1-5 player games. That would really make for interesting player-player diplomacy, et cetera, as well as making a much more interesting game vs. the AI. Just my own personal. I don't know if this sort of modification would be to abmitious for the final 1.07 patch, but I sure would like to see it in SC2. Regards, Rab The Rab.

You just can't imagine how overjoyed I was to see this post. Ten thousand thank-yous! BTW, I created a medals mod (it's on the SCHQ web site: rab_medals_mod.zip), and I thought you might be interested in using it, officially. <sly Grin> I've noticed that when the medals are altered during reinforcement, the new graphic simply over-writes the old one. If you would please, in the final release of 1.07 have that changed so that the old one is erased before the new one is writen? I hope that it isn't a big deal. If so forget about it. Only if it wasn't too difficult. Thankies!

Agreed, as the game goes on, tanks can't stand up in the initial assults against fresh troops. But as anyone should know, it's a tanks MOVEMENT factor that makes it a powerfull unit. It's their ability to exploit gaps and encircle the enemy that matters most. Once units are cut off, even the advanced infsntry units collapse. Infantry corps/armies simply don't have the movement allowance to be used in this role. If you do not build tanks or invest in research with them, how do you accomplish break throughs? Without this important ability, It's little wonder that your games become static WW1 style games with one side or the other capitualating from sheer exhaustion, and weight of numbers.

It seems to me that the real problem people have with armour, and ground combat in gerneral, is the difficulty in breaking dead-lock, and the tanks relative weakness vs. infantry. If you employ the correct tactics, this has never been a problem with me. Frontal assults are simply idiotic, you must carefully scrutinize the enemy lines, choose a weak-point, soften it with air, followed with a massed infantry attack to open the gap, then pour your armour through it and cut off the ememy. Once the ememy units are cut off, you mop up with infantry on one side, and with your armour on the other. The tanks MOVEMENT factor is what really makes them a powerful unit. They aren't supposed to be used for frontal attacks. this is consitent with history, and has always resulted in a fast moving "fluid" game in my experience. Land-lock has never been a problem in my games. I'm not saying that the lines don't become static from time to time, espesially when the tide is turning from one alliance to the other, but if you use the proper doctrine, even a stubborn defence can be broken, and a war of "movement" resumes. In all the other strategic games of ww2 I've played, tanks are always given a special rule to simulate breakthroughs. I think these special rules are just short cuts, to help players engineer an armoured breakthrough without really knowing how to do such a thing. Since breakthroughs are so important, players shoud be seeking opportunities to obtain them at all times. The most refreshing aspect to SC for me was that it lacked such a rule, and you actually had to plan and execute (sometimes unsuccessfully) an armoured breakthrough. This to me, is the most fun and exciting part of SC, nothing gives me greater anxiety while planning, and relief and joy when achieving, than a breakthrough. I hope Hubert doesn't change this aspect at least. In my opinion, this game does an excellent job of presenting the chanllenges and simulating the mechanics of armoured warfare during ww2.

V1.0 is finished! I emailed the mod to SCHQ. So I suppose that it will be available when/if he puts it up. I'm looking into having it posted at other plces as well. More on this later.

I'm working on a medals mod (rab_medals_mod.zip)that I think will add a cool new look to the game. I expect the mod to be ready within an hour or so. I like the effect of the medals being awarded for unit experience. I thought I could add to the effect by using actual historic medals from the period. I've changed the bitmap so that units only have medals displayed that have actually been awarded, ie. no more greyed out medals. A unit with no experience has nothing displayed, and a unit with one medal has only that medal shown, and so on. Each contry now has three historical medals awarded rather than one generic medal displayed that it gradually filled in. I'm not the greatest artist in the world, but I think this first version is fairly nice looking, and I hope you like it as much as I enjoyed making it. I'm going to se if I can have it posted on SCHQ with the other mods. Does anyone have any suggestions as to where else I should have it maade available for download? Regards, Rabtherab

Rabtherab - Both