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Fintilgin

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Everything posted by Fintilgin

  1. Yeah, I have to say it's a little frustrating that we got a global game where the map doesn't scroll-loop seemlessly when reaching the edge, creating a 'cylinder' of sorts. I imagine the engine wasn't originally built to support it, but it does seem like the sort of feature that really should have made it into a full-price release of a truly global game. The arrows are a bit of an awkward 'hack'. I suspect the best we can hope for in this vein is that if there is a SC3 then looping maps are built in to the engine at the start regardless of if the initial scenario will use them, so that we don't have issues like this.
  2. Yeah, I admit I do like the free uboats. I never, ever built any against the AI because my attitude is that the war is won or lost in Russia and I focus all my resources there. It's nice to be able to harass England now.
  3. They finally came out in massive force and knocked me off the Canada/US line around September of 1942. No sign of activity near India or South America, though.
  4. I sent the wrong save game at first, the correct one is the 1942-2-15.sav file which I sent second. Sorry for the confusion!
  5. Just some observations so far. Started as Axis in 1939. I'm playing on normal/normal as an intro to the game. Germany has gone through it's normal route. Took Poland, France, & Scandinavia on the historical schedule. Invaded Russia in spring 1941 and reached roughly historical lines with the bonus of taking Leningrad in the early winter. The biggest thing I noticed as the Germans is that the AI seems to have given up on trying to stop my subs and I've gotten a LOT of subs for free. I don't know where the British navy is or what it's doing, but it's not protecting its convoy lines. I have the Bismark and a couple subs parked on the line from Canada, four subs parked on the Murmansk line, one sub in the Indian ocean parked on the convoy line near the Maldives, and a couple cruisers and subs around South Africa, cutting off it's convoy line and Australia as well. Except for a single destroyer near South Africa I haven't seen any allied response to my subs/raiders for nearly a year. I'm not even moving my guys any more, they just sit on the convoy lines and rack up kills. I've lost a couple subs, haven't bought any, and haven't sunk any British ships. Odd. Despite my taking a bunch of damage from the Russian winter, being a bit overextended, and having some badly damaged units on the front line (a 4 tank, some 5 infantry) the Russian AI didn't counterattack, and instead was pulling back along the line. I also noticed the AI had built two forts in front of Moscow, but hadn't bothered to garrison them, with their forces in and behind Moscow. I didn't have the strength to attack Moscow itself, but I did dash some units forward into the unguarded forts to destroy them before pulling back to my defensive lines for the winter. I could see they had enough units to garrison those forts, but they had their units behind the city instead of in front of it. Like the Brits, the Russian AI just doesn't seem very aggressive. Speaking of that, as Japan I decided to largely pull out of China. I figured it was a huge grind and sink of production points, though I thought I'd fight defensively there to let me advance further in the Pacific. The Chinese AI doesn't seem to be able to handle this strategy. My forces had abandoned most of China by the spring of 1940 and established a strong defensive line near Peking. I figured this would be an area of heavy conflict and was ready to hold off the Chinese there. No Chinese unit has approached Peking or advanced next to any of my defending units for two years. In fact, the Chinese AI seemed almost scared to advance into the cities I left empty. They parked units next to a few of them for several turns before finally taking them. In fact, Tsingtao is STILL empty two years later. I still control it despite pulling all units out of China south of Peking. I guess the Chinese and I have an unofficial cease fire. My army from China has redeployed across the Pacific. I chose not to attack Indochina, so as not to open another front with China and instead invaded Thailand and Singpore by sea. I should have brought a bit more force to that area, though. As of March 1942, the Dutch East Indies surrendered, but I'm not making much progress against Singapore, and my invasion of the Philipenes is going poorly. But, on the bright side, I've conquered New Guinea, Hawaii, and Alaska! Engineers are moving into Fairbanks now to fortify against the inevitable American counterattack, and my six high-tech carriers are heading back from Hawaii and Alaska to assist in the Phillipenes. Other then that I thought the base Strategic Command map of Europe was a bit small, so the Global Conflict micro-Europe is a bit painful. But the game still has that 'one more turn' feeling and for the last two or three hours each turn was going to be my last for the evening, so I'm having fun.
  6. Haven't had very long to play, but I did notice that I parked a cruiser down by Capetown, South Africa blockading it, and have a couple subs down there too cutting off stuff from India, and the Allies have made no attempt to dislodge me. I've been blockading Capetown for about a year and a half!
  7. I came here to post these.
  8. Does it make everything bigger, or just the terrain? Right now, my biggest problem is that cities and units can get all crammed together and it can be tricky to click on the right thing. For example, I unloaded a unit on a tiny little island barely larger then a single city icon, and I had a hell of a time clicking on the city to attack it rather then the army, which was 'in front' of and blocking most of the city. What I'd like to see is that, as you zoom in, the terrain and map gets larger, but the icons and units remain the same size, letting you pick things out better. Personally, I'd like to be able to blow the terrain up to maybe three times the size it is currently, while keeping everything else the same. Right now the game just seems to squinty and packed together (at least at 1680x1050).
  9. Well, that's what I figured. I've rarely see AI that can do good naval invasions. That's why I was surprised the map generator couldn't do maps that were primarily land. I figured the map generator would likely play to the AI's strengths, and thus perhaps the game was much more naval orriented then I'd thought, and it might be much weaker on land (a fact 'hidden' by disallowing generation of pangaea maps).
  10. That's a shame. I prefer fighting over huge, sprawling land masses. I assume the AI will be able to handle a map like that if we paint one up in the editor? I'm sure I'll still enjoy the game in any case.
  11. Will there be random maps that are primarily land, or a single continent, like pangaea maps from Civ?
  12. One thing that might be nice to see in the AAR is more actual 'gameplay'. Zoomed in shots of how the game actually works. How units are built, techs researched, what it looks like moving units around, how battles actually work. The zoomed out 'executive summary' is interesting, but it doesn't provide much actually insight into how the game plays.
  13. I know it's way too late to make any changes like this now in an under development title, but here's someone else who really hopes future SC games will drop the squares and iso-projection. Call me a traditionalist, but as much as I love the SC2 Europe and Pacific games, I always feel like they look like a mod for Civ2. I'd love a future SC game to have a nice, crisp, clean look like the new Time of Wrath or the beta screens from Grigsbys new Russia game. Anyway, good to hear there is something new coming down the pipe soon.
  14. Looking forward to reading this. I'm very interested in this game.
  15. Speaking of atomic bombs, I do find it a little weird (and slightly off-putting) that it's impossible to win a historical victory as the Allies. I'd rather see a victory condition like: If China, Russia, India, and Australia have not surrendered, the Philippines have been liberated, and the allies control Iwo Jima, Tinian or Saipan they can drop one atomic bomb per turn on Japan. Each atomic bomb has a decreasing chance of forcing immediate Japanese surrender. 40% for the first bomb, 30% for the second, 20% for the third, 10% for the fourth and 0% for each one after that, requiring invasion. (If I were programming the game, I'd 'pre-roll' these at the beginning of the game and hide them in the save file, to prevent single-player save/reloading.) Of course, I'd also extend the game until the late summer of 1946 and maybe strengthen the Japanese home-guard events. I mean, maybe it's already to easy to win as the allies, but forcing a massively ahistorical event to win the game seems really odd to me.
  16. I have to admit I'm pretty put off too, by yet another strange little third party e-licensing program. I wish you guys (and Matrix Games too, for that matter) would get on board with one of the services like Steam or Stardock's Impulse. Or, at least build your own little similar system. If I buy a game, not only should I be able to download it, but I should be able to delete and download it again any time I want, for any reason, without fuss or hassle. Hell, that's even what Amazon is doing with its Kindle e-books. THAT, in my opinion, is THE future of digital content. I shouldn't have to worry about finding a time expiring link in my e-mail to download my one and only download of my game, or unregistering my license or any such BS. Now I'm sure you guys wouldn't make as much money per copy with something like Steam, but I think you'd make more in the end. They've got other sort of nichey strategy games on there, and moreover they've got 15,000,000 users all of whom would be able see a little banner ad on Steam for SC or CM with a link to a demo. I've gotta believe you'd pull in a ton more people who've never even HEARD of Battlefront or your games and make up for the profit it would cost to have them up on the service. Maybe I'm wrong, I dunno. I just wanted to get that off my chest. I love your games, and I'm still weighing if I want to get SC:PT, I've just gotten increasingly frustrated with strange little "Trust us it's Okay" DRM solutions. I don't have the slightest hesitation at picking up a game from someplace like Steam or Impulse, because I don't have to unregister some license for dozens of games if I want to make room on my harddrive, I can format anytime, or buy a new computer and just log on and redownload gig after gig of my games without worry. I'm a disorganized person, and if I have to hesitate or think twice about DRM or making sure I order a physical backup to make sure I can keep playing my games, I'm much less likely to make a purchase. I want to give you my money, Battlefront! Why won't you make it easy on me?! EDIT: Also, ugh. Sorry, no offense, but Battlefront Toolbar?! I may know you guys aren't evil, but normally if a program I'm installing tries to sneak a toolbar installation into my browser it gets instantly wiped out while I run away in the other direction screaming 'Spyware! Spyware!'. Seriously. If I'm a prospective customer who doesn't know a lot about your company, and I download a demo to see if I want to buy the full product, what the heck am I supposed to think about that? Why would I want some publisher jamming their lame toolbar in my browser, when I don't even know who they are or if I like their games yet? Is that supposed to engender confidence that you guys are legit and not scumware vendors? Even EA doesn't try that (do they?). Again, no offense, but who thought this was a good idea? I guess if you guys think you've got some amazing Battlefront Toolbar, make it a standalone download, not one of those "Hope you're reading real close, and uncheck these boxes, or we're automatically INSTALLING CRAP IN YOUR INTERNET BROWSER!"
  17. Ah... Whoops. I installed WAW into the SC2 directory, because I thought that was how it was supposed to go. WAW works fine, but SC2 crashes on start. Maybe I'll just wait for the WAW version.
  18. So if I have WAW installed, is there any way to play this global campaign? Do I have to make a unique installation of vanilla SC2? Bit confused, here.
  19. Honestly, I wish all these wargamming companies would just get together and create something like Steam. Support each other and work together instead of all having their own hodge-podge digital systems. I'd never hesitate to buy something off Steam, because I can download it as many times as I want and I never have to mess around with stupid 200 digit 'keys' and that sort of silliness. I know that game is MINE now that I've paid for it. I don't have burn installers to CD and scribble long codes on them or anything. But I'm always a bit reluctant when I know I'll have to add another code to the couple dozen different codes from Battlefront and Matrix Games and Gamersgate and such places. If I want to download again at Matrix after 30 days I have to buy 'extended download' insurance, etc etc. It's just a pain.
  20. I did try the National colours option, but honestly I still had a really hard time seeing my options in snow. Here's a couple samples, I sent you an email with the files zipped up. I opened each of the light_XXX.bmp files in Paintship Pro, then I: 1.) Raised the colors to 16 million. 2.) Adjusted the RGB values by about -40 blue. 3.) Did a color replace on the background to restore it white. 4.) Dropped the colors back down to 256 and saved. I suppose I'm biased, but I really rather like it. Winter is much less frustrating.
  21. I enjoyed the demo, and I think that (finally) with WaW, SC2 will displace Clash of Steel as my favorite game in this genre. A quick note, though. Maybe it has to do with me running at a high resolution (1680x1050), but I find it very, very hard to tell which squares I can move to during the winter. Slightly brightened white is very similar to white. I often just have to swing the cursor around, watching it change to see where I can go. Maybe it's possible to darken the areas where you can't go? Or something? I had the same problem in vanilla SC2, but it seems worse somehow in WaW. I suppose I can just darken my snow graphic, but I thought I'd mention it. EDIT: I used Paintshop Pro to give the highlighting a golden hue that I rather like. If anyone else wants this, I can upload it to CMMOD. I'm really chomping at the bit for my download to activate. It's really a shame that if it's gone gold we can't just download it NOW. That would be awfully nice, and it's not like there needs to be a street date when it's not going to physical EB stores or whatever. Anyway, thanks for the hard work. I really haven't played much since the early days of release, but I'm looking forward to getting back into the game. [ October 22, 2007, 07:55 PM: Message edited by: Fintilgin ]
  22. Hi! I'm enjoying the game so far, but I do have a quick hotkey request I'd like to see make it into a patch or something. Maybe I'm missing something, but I'd love a fast way to reinforce and upgrade my units. Right now it takes a lot of clicks and confirming to do so, especially if you're dealing with a bunch of units at once. It would be REALLY nice to be able to select a unit and push, say, CTRL-R or CTRL-U and that unit would be (assuming you had the production points/tech level) instantly upgraded or reinforced to the maximum possible level. No confirmation box or anything. Then I could go down my line, holding the CTRL key, select a unit, R, select a unit, R, select a unit, R, select a unit, R, select a unit, R. All done!
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