dicedtomato

This is intriguing. Kuniworth talks like Rambo. But if Rambo is Kuniworth's sock puppet, why would Kuniworth create a personality so close to his own? You'd think a sock puppet would be the opposite. As for Kuniworth's fixation with the word "gay", his Buntaland site has a section called LEGENDARY (that Rambo word again) EPISODES. It's all about him playing a guy called Masturbator. Curiouser and curiouser... Diced Tomato

I've suspected for a while that Kuniworth is Rambo. They both use the word "Bunta", which I've never heard anywhere else (I thought it was an African tribe). Their syntax isn't identical, but fairly close. Diced Tomato

I think Rambo is a sock puppet. He's too much of a caricature to be real. I wonder if someone on this forum is having a little fun with us. Either that, or multiple personality disorder. Diced Tomato

Like many others, Iron Ranger misunderstands the word "historical." An historical game doesn't mean that the Axis must do the stupid things they did in real life. I don't know any gamers that would want a game to unfold exactly as history. It's not what happens that counts. What's important is WHY things happen. An historical game provides rewards and penalties for various strategies. For example, the Axis had severe difficulties supplying their troops in Africa. In SC2, the Axis can easily mass enough land and air power to take Suez and overrun western Russia - all in the summer of 1941. The Axis wouldn't have tried that in real life; they would have had to make choices. SC2 relieves them of the need for choice. Similarly, real-life logistics imposes constraints on the ability to mass aircraft. You just don't mass five airfleets (a couple of thousand aircraft) in the middle of the Libyan desert one week, and then send them all to the Urals in the next. Because you can do that in SC2, air power becomes far more flexible and devastating than it should be, which means historically difficult strategies become easy. Because the Axis have the initiative, numbers and tech at the start of the game, these flaws tend to favor them. I don't say it was impossible for the Axis to conquer the Middle East or England. I just question whether they could do it all almost simultaneously. There's a difference between alternate history and sheer fantasy. You can keep sticking realism Band-Aids on the system, but I suspect you'll just disturb some other factor. Make air power more realistic, and then it's the Axis who have trouble winning. I don't know what Hubert's goals were. Judging by the way SC2 turned out, I think he would put playabiilty ahead of realism. Diced Tomato [ July 06, 2006, 08:30 PM: Message edited by: dicedtomato ]

My job title isn't SC2 Cheerleader. I may not shower the game with praise, but I've yet to see Blashy admit that the game has serious flaws. Instead we're repeatedly told that it's our fault because we're not playing the game right, or we get some bogus historial justifications because someone pulled an article from the Encyclopedia Lazy (otherwise known as Wikipedia). I've seen the list of changes for Blashy's "historical" scenario. They don't address the fundamental realism flaws because they can't. Only a redesign can do that. As to whether I enjoy the game, I'm still playing it, but probably not for much longer. Once you decide not to take it seriously as an historical sim, SC2 is a lot more fun. Diced Tomato

I suggest all of you read up on the Battle of the Bulge. When it was the panzers attacking down narrow roads into minefields and anti-tank gun ambushes, it's amazing how many Panthers got trashed. Diced Tomato

Where do I start, Desert Dave? There are so many places where SC2 fails as an historical simulation. Here are a few: * An abstract naval system where fleets gallop around like panzer divisions. * A random tech system where you can go from WWI-era tankettes to medium battle tanks in a few months - or be stuck with 1939 tech in 1943. * A strategic movement system where units zip Spain to Moscow in a week. * A peculiar economic system where diplomacy and troops use the same currency (MMPs), so France buys chits instead of troops. * A logistics system that allows the Axis to romp across the Middle East, Scandinavia and Russia - all within a couple of months. * Diplomatic chits that turn diplomacy into a guessing game (Sweden goes pro-Axis by 40 percent, and you didn't have a clue the Axis were pressuring it. Surprise!). * A morale feature that demoralizes or elates the Red Army because Tunisia has fallen. * Ridiculously overblown air and naval bombardment. * Generic force pools with little differentiation (which is why the Italian fleet can fight the Royal Navy on equal terms). Many of these flaws are intrinsic to the game. Giving the U.S. a couple of extra armies, or toning down air bombardment, will help a little. But the game is basically strategic Panzer General and its "let's all pile on the bunny" tactics of swarming a target until it's destroyed. That's not going to change (maybe with SC3, but I doubt it). Adding realism band-aids will just complicate the game without tackling the underlying weaknesses. Better just to have fun and get our realism fix with another game. Diced Tomato

No, the problem is that SC2 is closer to Panzer General than a hard-core wargame. What I fear will happen is that Blashy, Desert Dave and Hubert will keep adding "historical" features that will only break the game. It's like putting a golden roof on a wooden shack. We need to acknowledge the truth; SC2 is not a wargame, but a strategy game loosely modeled after WWII. If that's the case, we don't need to worry about realism. The only question is what makes the game fun. Want to make subs stronger against surface ships? Do it because it's fun, not because you're trying to fix a hopelessly unrealistic naval system? Want the U.S. to have more armies, or the Russians to be demoralized because Tunisia fell? Don't rationalize it, because it's not rational. Just include it because it makes the game more interesting. It will save a lot of pointless bickering over what is and isn't realistic. The game isn't realistic, so why argue? Diced Tomato So that's what you did. Bastage. Think SC2's problem, such as it is, is that Hubert put most of his effort into programming the basic game. It's going to take awhile to tweak all the settings to get a historical simulation of WWII. I don't like the sub war, gone in 30 seconds, attack values are too high and reducing diving was the wrong way to go, imho. The Malta effect is screwy. And some readiness hits for invasions are too high, Russia didn't give bugger all about Denmark and Norway. There are others, but I'm willing to give it time to mature. SC1 wasn't perfect out of the box either, but kept me amused for quite some time. </font>

They graduated kindergarten. Diced Tomato

SC2 ultimately fails because it can't make up its mind whether to be a historical wargame or a simple strategy game. It tries to be both, so it accomplishes neither. It's not a bad game. I've played a fair amount, and enjoyed what I've played. But the more I play, the more I realize that SC2 is really just another Hearts of Iron. A gloss of faux realism over a basic strategy game that encourages all sorts of gamey tactics, while everyone congratulates themselves that they're simulating WWII. I'm not into holier-than-thou wargaming. I can be as cheerfully ahistorical as the next guy. But I don't like the way SC2 does it. The game becomes boring after a while (yes, I have played many different opponents, most of them very skilled). Everything comes down to a handful of lucky or unlucky diplomatic and tech rolls, which means you're scrambling to find even more weird tactics. So France builds diplomatic chits for Russia instead of troops, or the Axis invade Tunisia to demoralize Russia. Some of us like that sort of game. To each his own. But SC2 is long and complex enough that I wish it would either be more historical, or more wide open. Instead of pretending to simulate WWII, it could be a hypothetical wargame where you can totally ignore history. Master of Orion meets World War II. Diced Tomato

Nice work, Blashy. A few quick thoughts: 1. Russia already has problems with a methodical German advance backed by massed air fleets. If you're slashing the Siberians, you need to give them something else. Maybe reserves that automatically come in when Germany attacks? 2. The UK is still too weak. If you're going to make Sealion more tempting, it's going to be harder for Britain to hold the Middle East. US and Soviet readiness should rise sharply if Suez is taken. 3. If you're going to make U-boats cheaper, you should make cruisers cheaper. If the Royal Navy loses a lot of CAs fighting the Germans and Italians, it could get nasty. 4. As per #3, the Italian navy should have its combat values or morale/readiness reduced. They shouldn't fight on equal terms with the RN. 5. Making US tank tech two levels lower than Germany's is a bit harsh. I'd say -1 is more appropriate. Diced Tomato

Dr, Tomato called it "Megalomania" after diagnosing the irrational belief that the Axis could take the Middle East despite empty gas tanks, wipe out the Royal Navy with a few U-boats, and leap tall buildings in a single bound. But it's Hearts of Iron that's really Megalo Heaven. Play Germany, crank down the Allied AI to Stupid, and boom! South Africa falls before your mighty panzers! Wham! Ecuador becomes Aryan! To be fair, there are some very good and hard-working HOI modders who spend an incredible amount of time trying to create historical scenarios. HOI's event system makes SC2's look bland as baby food. But they're wasting their time on a silly real-time engine and an AI that can't cope with it. Diced Tomato

Hush, little Gerald. Just keep pretending that one minute Winston Churchiill is pondering whether to invade Vichy, and the next minute he's ordering the 2nd Dive Bomber Squadron to attack at 7 a.m. This is not rapid decision-making. It's instant gratification for the hyperactive. I wasn't talking about AI Japan invading the U.S. The HOI AI is even dumber than SC2's. But a human player can take a weak nation and do all sorts of fascinating things. Meanwhile, let's take another trip to the HOI AAR page. Oh, look, there's Germany invading South Africa... Diced Tomato

Call me whatever you like, Desert Dave. Just because I'm a tomato doesn't mean I'm thin-skinned! Diced Tomato

HOI is more realistic than SC2? Talk about damning with faint praise! I have played HOI 1, HOI2, and Doomsday. If your definition of realism is Japan conquering the United States, or The Rise of the Mighty Albanian Empire, you'll love HOI. I actually do enjoy the pre-war diplomacy and research. It's when war begins that the game falls apart. There you are signing diplomatic treaties and choosing whether to research better aircraft or better tanks, and 30 seconds later you have to decide whether the 10th Panzer Division attacks at 9 a.m. or 10 a.m. Oh, what I would to merge SC2's turn-based system with HOI's economics and research... Diced Tomato

Pretend you're King Midas and count your gold pieces. Diced Tomato

Not a mod, Dave. This is needed to help out Blashy and others who are struggling to fix flaws in the game. They're trying to find a way to model the U.S. Army. But which U.S. Army? The 1941 version looked nothing like its 1944 successor. Modifying the force pool on an annual basis means the U.S. can have a smaller military than Poland in 1939, and a huge air and tank force in 1944. Good to have you back, Dave. Your verse was missed. Diced Tomato

I'm thinking of simple additions to the hard build pool. But there's no reason that you couldn't recreate the manpower shortages faced by the Germans and British, by reducing the hard build pool towards the end of the war. Diced Tomato

Here's an idea that will improve game balance, as well as make the game more historical and more fun. It's the concept of annual force pools from World in Flames. In Wif, each country gets new units added to its force pool at the beginning of each year. Not as reinforcements, but as potential production that players have the option to build. It's a neat way of showing how technology improved (the U.S. gets Mustangs in 1944, the German and Soviets get more powerful tank corps, etc.). It also shows how the size of a nation's military expands over time. The problem with SC2 is that it gives everyone their entire military from the start. In 1941, four U.S. armies is too much; in 1944, it's too small. Six German air fleets in 1942 is too high; that belongs to 1943-44, when Speer boosted aircraft production. Soft build limits only worsen the problem, because they can also be built too early. But what if the Germans had four air fleets in their force pool in 1939, and got one more per year after that? They don't have to build them if they don't want to, but if they do, it makes massed air fleets less of a gamebreaker. The U.S. can get several tank groups to spend all those MPPs on - but not until 1944. It might also lead to a more diverse game. Instead of a race to build air fleets, perhaps Germany will build subs. The Western Allies can build massive air fleets and heavy bombers - but not too early. This shouldn't be hard to code. It could function like Siberian reinforcements, except that units appear as potential production instead of on-map reinforcements. Diced Tomato [ June 25, 2006, 10:20 AM: Message edited by: dicedtomato ]

Fixing air fleets will be the biggest improvement. The only question is how this will affect the Allies in the second half of the war. If they don't have a lot of ground units, and airpower is scaled back, can they take out the entrenched defenders of Brest. or will D-Day flounder for lack of a port? We'll see. But it's a step in the right direction. Sombra is correct that my comments are based on playing against the German General Staff. But where else should I base my comments? On people who don't know how to play the game? Whatever Terif does will be copied by everyone else, so I might as well go to the source. In six months, most of the newbies will have disappeared. Those are who still playing will mostly be the professionals. If the pros can exploit flaws in the game, we should deal with it now. Diced Tomato

Sombra says fun is when the Axis go through the Allied defenses. Guess what? Fun is when the Allies go through the Axis defenses. You play the Allies hoping that by the middle of the game, you're strong enough to put Germany on the defensive. But some people seem horrified that Germany might have to take it on the chin just like the Allies do. Deal with it. Forgive my lack of empathy, Major Spinello. But when I've explained that Axis logistics would have made it practically impossible for them to drive to Baghdad in 1941, or that U-boats didn't routinely sink battleships, I'm accused of strangling the game with an historical straitjacket. And why do I diss HOI? Look at some of the AARs on the HOI Web site. Let's see, here's a game where Japan captured Syria and Iraq in 1941... Diced Tomato

In other words, German production rose because there was excess capacity. So the question isn't whether German production was harmed by bombing, but what production would have been in the absence of bombing. The Combined Bomber Offensive meant that the Germans had to cope with erratic production schedules. Building fighter airframes is useless if the engines are delayed because the factory was bombed or the rail lines were blocked. Then there's the cost of dispersion. The U.S. churned out all those Shermans and B-17s because it could build huge factories. The Germans had to disperse their plants and hide them underground. Then there's the effects of "de-housing " workers. Would you want your tank built by an assembly line worker who spent all night in a shelter, and emerged to find his house on fire? Add in the cost of an gigantic air defense network with radars, searchlights, flak and fighters, and the indirect costs of bombing were considerable. It's hard to say whether strategic bombing was the wisest use of Allied resources. For Britain, it was about the only way they could attack Germany before 1943. The problem isn't that bombing was ineffective, but that the Bomber Barons promised to win the war with airpower alone. Diced Tomato

Cary, can you explain how bombing made German production go UP? Diced Tomato

It's two sides of the same problem, Sombra. Because of games like SC2 and especially Hearts of Iron, Axis players become discouraged and frustrated if there's a spot on the map that they can't blitz. They feel the game "limits" them if Russia doesn't collapse like a domino in 1941, or they can't invade Ecuador and Timbuktu. For the first half of the game, they expect to pound on the Allies, but heaven forbid if Russia still has a city or the Allies a navy to return the favor in the second half. So the game either ends early because the Axis believe they've lost if they haven't conquered the North and South Poles, or the Allies lose heart at a German empire that stretches from London to the Urals. Have you ever seen an Allied player complain that the game isn't fair because Poland falls in 1939? Diced Tomato

Why are so many of you afraid that SC2 won't be fun unless Germany conquers the entire map? Now I understand why we have so many juvenile wargames. You feel a need for Germany to take over the world? Then play Hearts of Iron, which is to historical wargaming like Bugs Bunny is to Shakespeare. Why do you fear that you will be "locked" into repeating history if Germany can't reach the Urals in 1941? When a game forces Germany to declare war on Russia in 1941, that's being locked. But a game that limits the Axis ability to conquer the Middle East or Siberia? That's the historical flavor that makes SC2 different than Risk or Commmand & Conquer. If you want to change history, do Sealion instead of Barbarossa. Build subs instead of tanks. Invade Spain instead of Yugoslavia. A good historical wargame doesn't force you into a particular strategy, but it does make you suffer the consequences of your decisions. I think it's the latter part that some of you don't like. Finally, there is no shame in Germany going on the defensive in the second half of the war. In fact, it's only fair, considering the Allies get pounded for the first half. It's also more fun. One of the most satisfying games I ever played was taking Germany in World in Flames. To win, the Allies needed to conquer every German city by August 1945. From 1943 on, Germany was pounded from East and West. I barely, barely managed to hang on to Dresden at the end of the game. It was enough to give me victory. And I assure you that it was more satisfying than if I had taken Moscow in 1941. Diced Tomato