Fintilgin

I have played countless hours of SC and I never knew about forced march. Shocked and stunned. As an aside, I've always found the supply model in SC to be... strange and unintuitive. Pocketed units are always much stronger then I expect and a pocketed unit in a city with HQ support might as well not be pocketed at all.

Or, maybe, if adding a new USB device to your computer could potentially require you to relicense your games, you guys could, oh I dunno, come into the 21st century with your digital distribution and drop the draconian DRM? Just saying! This BS turns off a lot of customers, and discourages old ones from buying new games.

Been pretty busy/distracted, but I'll try to whip something up this weekend.

I'm not sure the naval situation can ever feel right in the SC2 engine, because the 'heart' of the game was built around the original European scenario, which was entirely land focused, and the naval 'simulation' was very basic. It works, and I don't want to say naval units are a 'hack', but they're pretty much ground units that move on water in the game. I hope SC3 redesigns the naval system from the ground up with an eye to making it more distinct then just flinging around destroyer and battleship 'units' like they were tanks racing around the Ukraine. What that design would involve, I don't know. Sea zones? Assembling multiple ships into actual 'fleets'?

Yeah, I noticed the same thing. I'm going to mod the NATO symbols myself before I start another game. Haven't decided quite what colors yet. I'm thinking the smallest infantry gets a black background like artillery units, the middle size is the same color as the base counter, and the biggest size retains the white infantry box. Something like the attached image, which is a little crude, but close to what I had in mind

I knew it was probably too much to hope for a major engine change like that, but I'm glad to hear it will be in SC3.

Honestly, it seems to me if you were going to do something like this, it would be best to decide to make a 'final' SC2 product, like Strategic Command II Ultimate Edition, and include the latest greatest engine and the very best of all the scenarios from the whole series, from Patton Drives Est, to WW1, to the Pacific, to the new Global Campaigns. Ideally, for SC3 you'd take something like the approach Paradox has taken with Crusader Kings 2. If you buy the base game you always can patch up to the latest greatest version of the engine, but the scenario packs are sold as DLC/expansions that 'slot in' to the base game. That would be way better then having 12 different games with incompatible scenarios and features like the current situation, which is a bit messy.

It looks good, but why so much ice in the north? You could probably cut off the top 20% of the map with absolutely no loss to gameplay whatsoever. Especially because the distortion of the map projection means there are way more squares up there then there 'should' be. Wouldn't cutting off some of that wasteland speed pathfinding and such? I know in earlier versions larger maps could cause speed issues. Also, does the map finally scroll 'loop' like Civilization, or are we stuck with the (kinda kludgy) teleportation arrows?

It would be nice if you could select certain players on your side to be played by the AI. This was a nice feature in Clash of Steel, you could play just the Western Allies or just the Soviets, or both as you pleased. It would also be fun and 'realistic' to be able to turn Italy over to the AI (if you wanted) and have to tear your hair out in frustration as the AI bungles things and you have to send in your own units to try to save the day.

If you do this, it would be nice to have the option of playing back the turn as normal or have 'forward action' & 'back action' buttons so you could go back and forth through the replay 'step by step' manually or just stop and think about something a bit before moving on. It's always frustrating to me to see something happen and then be snatched away to another part of the map while I'm still thinking about a particular attack or situation. Although I wouldn't want to lose the ability to just sit and watch the turn unfold like it normally does, either.

Yeah, I agree. I think in the designer notes for the boardgame Totaler Krieg, Alan Emrich said something I thought had a lot of truth to it. Namely, that too many WW2 games represent Germany as the Borg. The more they capture the more they can build. Which is pretty unrealistic. Personally, I'd put a pretty harsh penalty on utilizing captured resources. Like you only get 10% of the MPPs or something. Actually, at the scale these games are built at, I'd probably just go ahead and abstract it down to 0%. Any benefit is expended in occupying the territory. Maybe you could just say you get 0% from captured cities, but 100% from captured resources/oil? The primary benefit to the Axis of capturing large areas of the enemy should be denying the production to them. Germany MMPs shouldn't really go up much over the course of the game.

Yeah, in grand strategic WW2 games I've always felt the war is won or lost in Russia. So, as the Germans I don't usually 'waste' my units in North Africa - instead trying to throw everything at the Soviets, and as the Western Allies I tend to play very aggressively (maybe too much so) during the critical phases of the campaigns in Russia to try to pull German strength west.

I would also love to see a 'Days of Decision' style addition to a game of this scale that could generate 'alternate' WW2s. Ideally you'd go all the way back to who won WW1 and play through 'Political' turns of 2 years or so before going down to 3 or 4 months in the mid thirties and finally launching into the game proper. I suppose the biggest problem would be AI and balancing. Even if that's too ambitious for the base game it would make a FANTASTIC expansion pack. Realistically though the biggest thing I'd like to see for a proper SC3 is having it start as a global scale game. I'd also like to see hexes return, and maybe you guys could get the artist (if he's a freelancer) who did Panzer Corps. Now that's a lovely looking game!

Cool, thanks!

When the manual says: How near is 'near'? One square, two, fifteen? Thanks!