ComradeP

It is from the 40's though, so you should not mind some fungi.

Keeping a hatch open is, depending on the quality of the steel in the upper part of the hull, prone to allow bullets to ricochet into the tank, which also killed many tank crew members. Sigrun: I believe Soviet tank design also helped the Germans, as some of the commander's positions were located in ridiculous locations, further limiting the view a buttoned up tanker would have. A vehicle like the StuG wouldn't suffer much of a penalty, as the commander can look out of his tiny command tower (which is covered with a steel plate, but has openings in the sides) to get a 360 degrees pictures of what is happening around him.

S:HOWWII also used less vehicles, smaller maps and was focussed on fully destructible (on paper) terrain for squad combat. There's no "grand strategy" in S:HOWWII, as usually you'll end up playing some sort of "Commando's" like game of hide and seek, because the enemy outnumbers you 10-1.

Don't forget that this is a strategy game, without any likely naval component (yet?) and it is different from WWIIOL in almost any way. By the way: don't think some guys hate you already, they just have so much time on their hands that they post senseless things.

What will give an enemy gun the "captured" status after a mission? Will you have to have troops manning the guns at end, or is it sufficient to complete the mission/touch the guns. What about tanks? They can apparantly get a new crew, but how would that work, as you probably don't get "extra" tank crews. Will you have to bail out a tank crew, split them up and split them up between tanks?

Personally, I like micro management, so it's just a personal opinion that I don't really care if I have to select every soldier/tank. I can, however, understand that such micromanagement might be overly complicated for some, or rather cumbersome with a lot of units on screen. The pause function does help though.

I never disagreed with that, and in fact stated: "it's still quite high" but the problem is that realism doesn't attract as many players as "fun" which is why I'm afraid the infantry/tank ratio will remain unbalanced. Even though I knew of the figures you posted, I still felt the need to post about it. The air power is still unbalanced, and the call time is ridiculous, but a strike by Me110's (a gruppe returning from a mission could always strafe ground targets, if they had the fuel) is at least easier to bear than a He 111B bombing.

RMC: all those people, and most other users of a tripod MG, are kneeling/using their knees as the primary support for an upright position. The guy in the screenshot sits on his arse, like he's driving a car or something.

...but games usually don't include cute fluffy nerf balls, so a "nerf" generally means a reduction in power/capabilities/value for a unit or ability. We both mean exactly the same thing, and although the nerf ball picture made me laugh we should not take this further OT. (Unless you want to melee me with a nerf ball, or want to throw nerf balls in game).

I would guess that, taking the apparant complexity behind the "reinforcements" formula into account, the initial player units are very important. If Rune would've had a Char B1-bis, and could have hidden it from German airpower, he would have dominated the Germans (as they lacked weapons with high AP values in this particular scenario). I found the airsupport in the scenario Rune played to be more...balanced, as there were plenty of French tanks and the Luftwaffe, generally, had more planes to send on ground attack missions against tanks in France than in Poland (as the French armoured forces that posed the biggest threat were basically concentrated in one area, except for the unit in the Netherlands). I am, however, wondering why the armoured detachment lacked AA MG's or any sort of AA protection.

I think the ratio stands at 1 vehicle for every 4 infantry guys, roughly (look at the mission complete assessment, and compare the "human" figure, which probably includes crews, to the various vehicle figures). That number is still quite high, but I don't think the game would be "fun" to more casual gamers without a relatively high number of tanks. On the other hand: Blitzkrieg (to use a more "casual" WWII RTS game example) usually included a good infantry/tank ratio and allowed the player to have 4 to 6 tanks in his core. Most maps only had a couple of "auxiliary" tanks and vehicles, but plenty of infantry (not to mention that you could "spawn" infantry out of the blue, but not vehicles).

benpark: that's true, but foxholes or such could be dug I guess, or it should at least be up to the player where the trenches are placed. Knowing that the trenches will always be at the exact same spot might become boring after a few playthroughs.

sebastian: there might be a click-and-drag select function, and there's a pause button. I don't think squad leaders will be difficult to spot either.

I got the joke, and the choice of the vehicle to oppose the T34's with was intentional, and a wink to CM. I played CMBB and CMAK for "years", but recently retired.

Personally, whenever I play CM, I place the camera as high as possible, unless I need to find out what is blocking view/field of fire. I prefer orbiting camera's a good distance above ground level over camera's closer/on ground level in most situations.

Even though they were recorded in "their studio" (same studio?) I noticed that too, but my statement was more about the possible voices that might be in the game, than the video speeches.

WineCape: according to the movie, they are in;) J/K. We've not seen the enemy actually digging the trenches (or foxholes), so they might come standard with the map. Map defined trench systems are less flexible than player-constructed fortifications/trench systems.

In which way does that differ from "reducing its value"? As a reply to the topic: Even abstracted melee (the generic stabbing animation I mentioned) would be better than absolutely no melee. I can understand that without a lot of urban maps, it might not be very important, but that does depend a lot on the other maps. Judging by the maps shown in the screenshots/AAR's, I don't think there will be a lot of opportunities for melee.

Nightkin: judging by the " :mad: " quality speeches that other games deliver (or stupid English sentences with a Russian accent whenever a Russian says something) I hope this game doesn't use more than basic quotes, if any. Using German units as an example: A "Ja(wohl)", "Bereit" or "Fahrzeug meldet sich" is actually useful, as it confirms a unit is selected and ready to receive orders. An "Unterwegs", "wir rollen", "befehl bestaetigt" is useful for order confirmation. A simple "Feuer" is good enough to confirm a unit is firing. More complicated messages will probably either sound funny, or distract you from the actual gameplay (or both).

RMC: they had the time to make it work at least a bit, a generic stabbing or hitting animation doesn't cost 5 years to code. The development time/features balance/ratio is a tad off currently. It's still a good game from what I know of it, but I don't see why some features actually got "nerfed" out of the game. As a clarification: nerfing is spending (a lot of) time to code something, only to take it back out or reducing its value.

RMC: but it effects mostly the Axis, just do some calculations of how a Panzer IVH will fare against 3 T34's if it can only open fire at 400 meters or so.

Sigrun: the Russians also used the bad weather at the Kursk engagements to their advantage, as the weather limited German LOS and thus effective range (is dynamic weather a factor in the game btw?). Ranges are difficult to modify as the fact that a T34/85 needs to be close to score a penetration on a Tiger doesn't mean it can't penetrate a Stug's or Panzer III M's armour from the same distance. Ranges are thus very delicate to modify. An example: Let's say the Tiger has an effective range of "the entire map length/width (if its 2x2)" that would lead to problems with later Soviet tanks like the IS series and the ISU SPATs, as they would need roughly the same ranges (a Tiger doesn't have a realistic chance of frontally penetrating Russian heavy tank armour from 2000m). If tanks are "scaled down" in range from 500 to...250 or the like that would lead to unrealistic (or even "funny") engagements were the Germans will almost certainly lose against the amounts of armour the Russians have at their disposal. Delicate problems call for a delicate solution, and increasing the range to their real life values might be the best option. Conclusion: it should suck to be a Russian tanker trying to fight a hull down Tiger from across an open field.

OK, so more nerfs. I don't see how rural houses, or houses in cities, which can be blasted by anything over 50mm with relative ease, would impact gameplay so much that it would not be included in this game, but is included in other games (including RTS-wargames like Blitzkrieg).

My only serious problem is the development time: no matter how you turn it, mortars were in at one point (as proven by screenshots) and it doens't look like the environments have improved much, so I wonder what all the extra time was used for, as a lot of the features were already visible (perhaps not coded) years ago. In fact: one might add that the game was "nerfed" instead of enhanced, as ranges are currently ridiculous, but might change and mortars were in, but have been removed. I'm not sure about houses, but I don't think they were ever interactive.

Yeah, I just found out myself after watching the video again. The turret is too low, compared to the Schurzen, for a Panzer IV.