Exel

I figure those would balance each other out. [ April 18, 2004, 09:14 AM: Message edited by: Exel ]

Having manual spotting missions would take the micromanagement to a level we don't want to go to. Recon missions were continuous and numerous irl, so having them automated in SC is perfectly logical. This is a grand strategy wargame, and having to do the everyday "chores" is just beyond the scale of the game. Next we'd be having manual supply lines, airfield construction and reinforcements. [ April 18, 2004, 07:16 AM: Message edited by: Exel ]

Ahem. Did any of you even read my compromise suggestion? The debate started all over again...

I didn't say there should be only a few beach tiles, but not all of them should be landable. The amount of beaches should be plentiful enough so that blocking all of them would be next to impossible, but there should also be a considerable number of no-land tiles. Otoh, the Germans *did* build their Atlantic wall to defend the beaches.

It'd all be easier with hexes...

Great idea. I completely agree. Whereas the majors didn't hand their best tech and equipment over to their allies, they did often sell or give them the next-best things, be it Shermans for UK or StuGs for Finland.

No. When D-Day comes, you invade along the entire coastline of France, bringing most of your western army ashore at once. Surely you can't claim that to be realistic?

Well as in the case of Italy, you really have to fight for the beachhead, but the invasion rarely gets pushed back to the sea if you have prepared it well. Limited landing locations would do the same for all other places and we'd have interesting amphibious landings elsewhere too.

There was already a thread about the very same subject. I also posted a solution suggestion there, but here goes again (to avoid the debate from starting all over again from scratch): Getting tech advances by research should depend on luck, but by investing more resources and directing them to the desired branch the probability of gaining the tech significantly increases. Also, each turn you get a negative roll, ie. don't get the tech, the chances of getting it the next turn increase. Now, lucky ones can still get techs with low investment and quickly, but even the most unlucky ones will with utmost probability get the techs eventually, as their chances increase every turn. This prevents the tech race from being an expensive and decisive lottery, but still retains the random element to spice up the experience. As for the random effect for research results I would suggest the following. Whenever the research calculations give you a positive roll, ie. you get a tech, there is a chance that the tech gained will be something else but the defined goal of research. Meaning that occasionally you'll get other techs than you have been aiming for, ie. anti-air research might produce you better anti-tank weapons (as was the case with the German 88mm FlaK 41 for example). [ April 17, 2004, 04:32 PM: Message edited by: Exel ]

The beach system wouldn't have to be any more complex than what it is for example in HoI. Some tiles simply allow landing, some (most) don't. The French coast for example is fringed with steep cliffs and rocky ridges - impossible to land significant number of troops. Even the Germans knew that there would be only two potential places for an Allied invasion of France, in Calais and Normandy. As I said in the first post, there's a reason why the Allies did not land all over the French coast. This should be reflected in the game, and quite frankly I don't see why it wouldn't be.

I think a better way to fix the stale mate front situations than moving to tiles would be to increase the significance of tanks. In SC1 they weren't nothing but more mobile versions of Armies with better defence. They didn't have any "blitz features" that would have allowed them to exploit a gap if one was created. An attack-move ability together with some combat stat refinements could be all that is needed. And remember, even in SC1 three-to-one attacks did occur, but breaking a stale mate was still difficult without extensive air support. So that obviously is not the best solution. Now, the only reason why WW2 wasn't the kind of trench warfare as WW1 was is because of the use of tanks (and well, air power). Without tanks (or with ineffective tanks like in SC1) the fronts would have become just as stagnating as in the Great War. This is how it should be in SC2 too; boost the significance of tanks. [ April 17, 2004, 07:41 AM: Message edited by: Exel ]

That is not true. As you can see from my example pictures, the hex layout offers the most round-like movement pattern where moving to all directions is equal. Tiles with 1.5 times penalized diagonal movement is quite round too, but it still leaves with the problem of unequal movement to all directions. I completely agree with you. I can only hope we can make enough uproar to make Hubert change his mind.

I agree on mountains and swamps, but forests should be allowed terrain. Finland is full of forests and they were extensively used for air bases; it wasn't hard to accomplish and they provided good cover. So in fact having your fleets stationed in forests should increase their defence rating and/or make detecting them harder. Strategic bombers however shouldn't be able to operate from forests.

There are two things that definitely need to be improved for SC2 regarding amphibious invasions. 1. Beaches. The land-everywhere rule of SC1 sucks. It's unrealistic and allows extremely gamey strategies. Instead of having to fight for a narrow beachhead and open it to get more forces in, you can land pretty much your whole army at once. France is the most horrifying example of this. There's a reason why the Allies landed in Normandy... So add beach hexes..err tiles that would work the same way as harbors, but only for disembarking. That includes the ability to disembark the same turn as the transport reaches the shore - the landing crafts didn't have to wait a week on the coast before being able to unload irl. All other tiles would not allow amphibious invasions. This would really boost realism and gameplay, as it's not only Italy that forces narrow initial beachheads. 2. Retreat rules. Even if the beach tile is occupied, you could still land and fight for it. The losing side would then be forced to retreat either back to their transports or the nearest free tile. This would of course require a special kind of combat system, assuming normal combat works the same way as in SC1. Though I think you already have something like this done already or in consideration, since you have paratroopers included too and they need a similar system.

One more thing that is against tiles; grid. With hexes you don't have to play with the hex grid on, since the simple and apparently somehow very natural form of a hex makes it easy to picture the grid in your head. Likewise, estimating distances is easy and there aren't any hidden gaps in the front lines. With tiles all this is different. Diagonal movement causes problems for perception and you have to keep the grid on - not doing so will greatly increase the risk of misestimation of distances and movement routes, as well as the risk of not noticing those "hidden" gaps in the front lines. In games like Civ3 where the tile system works all this is irrelevant and only a very minor nuisance, but in a game like SC where keeping a continous front is crucial it suddenly becomes a major issue. This results, at the very least, in the need to keep the grid visible at all times, which at least I would find annoying.

That would reduce the movement directions to 6, which would neglect the point in moving to tiles in the first place. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for hexes. I wasn't sure about what to think about tiles at first, but after conducting a little experimentation of my own (results posted above) I came to the conclusion that hexes are superior to tiles in a game like this. In Civ3 tiles with equal movement cost to all directions works well, but it is an altogether different kind of game.

Double post.

Here I give you few (extremely crude) examples of movement with different setups for diagonal movement. The black box in the middle represents the unit, the grey squares are tiles into which it can move. #1 - Movement to all directions costs the same: As you see, this results in the unit being able to move to an area shaped of a square. Looks horrible plus diagonal movement is very advantageous. Not good. #2 - Moving diagonally costs double the normal movement cost: This is Hubert's initial choice. Diagonal movement is disadvantageous (practically disabled since it's the same as moving via two adjoining squares). #3 - Moving diagonally costs 1½ times the normal movement cost: Now moving diagonally actually makes sense without being advantageous compared to normal movement. The pattern is not easily predictable however, and the system makes movement calculation tricky. The tiles marked with red dots indicate squares in which the unit would still have some action points (or fractions of them) left, but not enough to move. For comparison, here's the situation with hexes (screenie from SC1): The movement to all directions is equal and the movement pattern is both predictable and aesthetic. Simply beautiful. [ April 16, 2004, 12:11 PM: Message edited by: Exel ]

But CORE doesn't feature the new combat system which is totally superior to the default one. And Starfire was pretty finished already in its first release, by all means more finished and carefully thought creation than CORE ever has been. And the subject of this thread is how much SC2 should cost, so yeah, this talk about HoI's mods is totally off-topic.

Starfire can be found here: http://www.europa-universalis.com/forum/showthread.php?t=138386 CORE is a mess, in my opinion, because it has gotten out of control. There's no one really in charge and people just do whatever they like for the mod, and the result is very ahistorical. Many of the events have absolutely no sense being in a game with the scale of HoI ("German movie star flees to America, blaablaa effects"), many of them give boost or ahistorical significance to some country (like Poland, thanks to many Polish modders who just refuse to believe that Poland was easily overrun). Furthermore, the tech tree is unbalanced piece of s***. At some point - I'm not sure if they've changed it since then - the late tech tree even featured things way too futuristic for a WW2 game, like for example Mig-21 and the kind. Still, many like CORE above all else, but for a history and realism buff like me its mere existence in an annoyance. How did this come to this? We're waay off-topic. [ April 16, 2004, 06:47 AM: Message edited by: Exel ]

Yes. Anti-tank advance in a crucial time has many times changed the tide of battle in my games. Jet fighters have a more long term effect though. But back to the subject. I'd like some more comments about my suggestion - I really believe it could be a solution to the issue (if Hubert hasn't already come up with a better one).

The fighter detachments in SC represent - AFAIK - a unit with a mixture of different light, tactical aircraft. Not only fighters, but fighter-bombers and dive-bombers as well. Maybe even medium bombers. As such their high ground attack values makes sence - it was the light planes that did most of the tactical level bombing of enemy units. Heavier bombers were better suited and used for strategic missions, ie. bombing infrastructure behind enemy lines, not enemy units per se. At this point one could say "Helloo! Mr. Obvious...", but it seems that many here (let alone outside these forums) think that B-17, He-111 and Stuka were all used for the same tasks. I don't know how much less abstraction there will be in SC2, but at least with the two air unit types of SC1 it is more than reasonable to think that the fighter detachments also include everything up to medium bombers, while strategic bombers cover all the heavier birds.

The only thing I'm still sceptical about is the decision to switch to square tiles. I don't know if it works, would have to test the game to know that, but there just are so many situations where hexes would imaginably work better. Guess we'll just have to trust Hubert's judgement...

A compromise suggestion: Getting tech advances by research depends on luck, but by investing more resources and directing them to the desired branch the probability of gaining the tech significantly increases. Also, each turn you get a negative roll, ie. don't get the tech, the chances of getting it the next turn increase. Now, lucky ones can still get techs with low investment and quickly, but even the most unlucky ones will with utmost probability get the techs eventually, as their chances increase every turn. This prevents the tech race from being an expensive and decisive lottery, but still retains the random element to spice up the experience. As for the random effect for research results I would suggest the following. Whenever the research calculations give you a positive roll, ie. you get a tech, there is a chance that the tech gained will be something else but the defined goal of research. Meaning that occasionally you'll get other techs than you have been aiming for, ie. anti-air research might produce you better anti-tank weapons (eg. 88mm FlaK 41). [ April 15, 2004, 01:28 PM: Message edited by: Exel ]

Kelly's Heroes: Please read my post about Christmas sales on the first page of this thread, 22nd post. Christmas sales are great for big releases, but smaller ones get easily run over by the huge marketing campaigns of the bigger ones.