John DiFool the 2nd

Nupe, you updating this for WWI Global like Al is?

Elaborate. I know Totaler Krieg has "Dice of Decision" which basically rolls up a hypothetical setup to WWII, and that can be unbalancing, but if the players are making the decisions...? As the German player I'd love the chance to get an early start on Plan Z.

I don't see a way, in game, to tell if a loop is "mine" or not. Very confusing; do you mean they have to own the island/city in question? Not sure how that makes sense. Note the Japanese used a northern route to approach Hawaii in the real war. Well, I've declared war on the US (used my CVs for other things), toggled off the fog of war, and the only Pearl BB I see is the Pennsylvania, which somehow ended up in Australia. Checking out the scripts I see that a lot of the Pearl survivors are "rebuilt" later in the war.

[Different Issue] Now perhaps I'm missing something, but why can't I cross the international date line (before war is declared) as the Japanese, to go and I don't know, bomb Pearl Harbor or something? I'm specifically talking about the ones which lead to Midway in the North Pacific. If the intent was to make the Eastern Pacific a Japanese-free lake, that is a bizarre design decision. And then I go to find the American BB's at Pearl (declared war and turned off fog just to check it out), and they aren't there-aren't anywhere actually.

Or have I been doing this incorrectly all this time-the above refers to chance per present level (0-4) doesn't it-but don't you also suffer a law of diminishing returns for each extra chit (which of course Nupe doesn't let you do in his magnum opus)?

Shouldn't the tech progression in the readme on the download page read "10 0 0 0 0" not "10 8 6 4 2" since you can't buy any of those extra chits?

I don't see it (and in fact I came here to see if you had a new one up-might do some gaming over the 4 day weekend).

Or past games, hint hint...

Oh don't worry Hubert hasn't forgotten (if I may speak for him), but even as a very amateur programmer I know how hard it is to revamp something like this towards the end of a game dev cycle-he would have to queue up a whole big round of playtesting for starters. It will have to wait for SC3, even if tech is pretty much recognized as broken after all is said and done. The main issue is that a scenario designer can't affect the maximum and minimum research cycles. Here it is anyway: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=65151&highlight=algorithm I'll throw out one more idea, and then I'll shut up. Can you buy more than one chit per turn per category? If not, then let tech ramp up as 0/0/0/0/20%. This will make for a minimum of a 5 turn dev cycle, ensure that if you really want it, you'll get it, but only after substantial investment and a guaranteed delay. [Checking] Looks like Hubert would need to provide three new options in the editor: you can only buy one chit per turn, increase the maximum number of chits to preferably 20, and ALL chits are consumed after a payoff. The 2nd one would be problematic tho as the in-game screen would have to be substantially revamped, but even the other two changes would be an improvement. With 20, you would invest say 25 MPP per turn for 20 turns (500 total), with the chances ramping up progressively like 0/0/0/0/0/0/0/0/0/0/1/1/1/1/1/2/4/8/16/32. Even with 5 it can go 0/0/0/5/10. But of course you have to playtest it, gotta make sure the AI can handle it, etc. etc.

The other option is to play coop against the AI, you controlling say the Western powers and he the Russians.

As I've said before, the only way to minimize the effects of luck on teching, with the current system, would be to crank the chance per chit up to high levels, with a corresponding hike in the cost per chit. Say you can buy a maximum of 2 chits per category, 25% chance each (or 25/20 if you like), cost quintupled, which means about 500 MPPs per chit or so. So now you can invest where you like, with a virtual guaranteed short term payoff, but you have to pay through the nose for the privelege. My attempts to convince the two main Global modmakers of the wisdom of this approach has fallen on deaf ears, alas, as they prefer, nay worship at the altar of, the lottery system instead. For newbies, Hubert has been very favorably inclined towards changing to a progressive tech system (somewhat similar to Civilization's, with randomizers built in, where you can see how close you are to the payoff), but I doubt it will go into any SC2 iteration.

In multiplayer, it is, kinda sorta.

I'll note that battleships tied up to docks have been known to shell approaching ground troops-most notably several Russian ships in Leningrad which basically became artillery platforms.

Units which are attacking can take "damage" purely in the form of general wear and tear (tanks break down, soldiers come down with a mass case of scrofula, etc.).

Apparently, vespa-I think it turned out to be something not really amenable to a patch.

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=84719

That's not why it's useless: you can easily spend that much buying units in just one calendar year (tho it is of less value the later in the game, so then yeah). But Hubert awhile back (in PDE actually) made any repair/rebuild costs based on the default cost of the unit, not based on the production tech cost. So its effectiveness is about halved; I've argued with him that he should flip it back, as the tech would be applied to reinforcing materials/equipment which has been built using the new reduced costs/efficiences anyway (then shipped to the front), but he stuck to his guns.

So then, is an update imminent? I might then try to get that massive 6 player free-for-all going, at long last...

I wondered if you could do something like gold (MPP) units, to ship to the home countries of allies, and you can! Is your choice to not let majors build them a structural (game engine) limitation, or a design decision? Can you have a script that would automatically disband the gold units once they reach their destination, bestowing their value to the recipient? Then we could have the mother of all convoy battles...

Agreed on this; on a map this big having more ships running around, IF it doesn't confuse the AI and/or bog the game down, would be preferable. Hubert had it as a 2 capital ship task force (plus support vessels)-would Nupe's scenario work if that became 1 capital ship per map icon? Or would this overcrowd ports and movement arrows?

It had been doing that for the last several days ("Your password is now more than 60 days old. Please click here to reset it."). Suspecting a phishing attempt I did nothing. Come today and now I can get into the forums no problem. I just scanned my hard drive a few days ago (came out 100% clean). Anyone have the straight dope on this?

Several of the mods have "warp" zones, spaces which you can place a ship and it will basically double or triple its transit speed.

I've been crowing for a config file to be added to the file system which would allow for total customization of all units-their tech, their type (land/sea/air), their everything. Radar was absolutely vital to the outcome of the uboat war, but it isn't modeled at all there.

Has this been upgraded to synch with the patch (talking about everything else other than the scrolling speed fix)?

One annoying little thing: if you get a hit, you get a dialogue box reporting it. But if your opponent gets a hit on his turn, you see diddly, and have to check the diplo screen to see if anything changed. If you forget to check nasty surprises might be in store.