gravyface1

Sept. 1940: Invincible allied navy wreaks havoc on waves of german u-boats. A UK battleship and a French Aircraft Carrier lay waste to the entire german u-boat fleet. Mar 1941: Italian mobility puts axis to shame -- for some reason, they can achieve level 3 motorization but the axis, the Founding Fathers of Blitzkrieg, can only reach level 2. June 1943: German units decimated by neverending waves of Allied troops. Island so crowded there's no room to land. Countless transport ships suck as UK desperate to solve overcrowding problems. Guilt-ridden u-boat sailors seek psychiatric help on shore leave. Main theaters of operation are just too small, with bad AI ramifications. I completely dominated England but yet had no room to land more than one or two units. I estimate that I sunk about two dozen transports full of troops because the AI didn't know what to do with zero hexes free. I'd suggest keeping only the northern hemisphere -- it's not worth a few sparse coastal towns for as much map real estate as Africa and South America consumes. Allied Navy is ridiculous. Let's keep the Germans at bay with numerical superiority, not God-like power. I don't know how many u-boats were lost trying to sink one battleship and French aircraft carrier. Not quite sure why the Italian motorization tech level was higher than the germans. I know the germans were, to the end, extremely dependent on horse transport, but the Italians weren't? Overall, it was amusing, but not something I'd play again.

Colin's idea is a good one. The key here (and I'm sure Hubert et al agree) is to hide the complexity from the surface, whilst still providing enough detail and accuracy for challenging game experience. Some games like OAoW hide no complexity from the user: you have to micro-manage each minute aspect of the game, detracting from the playability (imho) and increasing the length of the turns exponentially. However, having incremental transfer/operating movement increases based on infrastructure level and geography/location -- in addition to supply rules -- would be a welcome addition. It wouldn't make a difference in the interface, but it would make troop deployment much more important. As for the winter attrition, is there a way to apply the same random "rough seas damage" to units during winter? I have not touched the event scripting and am not sure if it allows unit substitution (land units instead of naval, for instance).

Yes, that does seem a little strange but you can turn it off. I don't have a problem with the amount of railheads generally-speaking, but I do think that the transporting of units should take several turns and be physically represented by the transport range. i.e. if you wanted to move a unit from Paris to Stalingrad, you'd have to spend one turn "preparing" (like the paras) to transport and the next turn transporting, perhaps even to a limited range, like Warsaw or Minsk. I just think that moving 30,000 troops halfway across the globe instantaneously has a negative effect on gameplay -- it's too easy to say "oh no! Allies have invaded France! I better teleport three armies to my major cities now" and have your forces fully-prepared, yet slightly low on morale, in a single turn.

message sent. Thanks BioWizard.

Well, I'm going to play with it and see where it leads me. I believe it will force you to think more about troop disposition instead of relying on a fat bank account and a Star Trek transporter to save your butt.

I must have that on already -- I can transport to any city as long as the supply is 5 I think. It's still too quick and/or cheap to do so. Think about how many resources would have to be diverted to moving an army of 100,000 men across the Continent?

I've come to the conclusion that troop transfers are too powerful. Having the ability to send a unit halfway across the globe in one turn puts modern transportation systems to shame. The railnet in Russia was incompatible with German locomotives and the Russian locomotives were either evacuated to the Urals or destroyed by the Germans during the first year of Barbarossa. In France, after the invasion, the allies had to spend huge amounts of engineering resources to rebuild the transportation network they devastated during the pre-invasion bombing campaign. Is there any way to decrease the transport range per turn? I could increase the cost to transport units so they'd be almost out of reach and this might even prevent the AI from wasting resources moving an army to one city in exchange for another army. I might even eliminate transfers altogether (make the cost 9999 if I can) and rely on units mobility and sea transports to accomplish this. Any thoughts on this?

Running Windows XP Pro Service Pack 2 SC2: 105.a Honch's Campaign v13 From error.txt: [02/09/2007 9:14:59; 5.1.2600; 1280x1024x32(1); v1.05a] FAILED(animate_unit_combat_and_tile_control_update): Segmentation violation How to Reproduce: German Heavy Bomber attacks Russian Tactical Air Group; Russian interceptor event; German Escort event. Russian Tactical Air Force is destroyed; error is raised. Can email ERROR.sav upon request.

check out the original 1943 Tiger/Panther training manuals in all their kitchy glory: http://thrillingwonder.blogspot.com/2007/02/wwii-nazis-tank-manuals-unexpectedly.html

Except for the Germans and the Italians... Oh well.

Playing as the axis, I'm having a hard time distinguishing between all of the Balkan (Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, etc.) countries and Spain and find it tedious having to click on each unit to tell what country they belong to. I've looked at Thrawn's sprites but I can't really tell which ones to edit to do this. Can anybody point me in the right direction? Thanks

yikes. Thats what I was afraid of. Oh well, I guess I'll start over.

I played a bit of a cat and mouse game with my u-boats, trying to lure the UK's navy close to my land-based aircraft so I could wear them down to the point where I didn't have to worry about them interdicting my assault craft. Next, Battle of Britain "lite" -- they only had 2 fighters left after France and my fighters were quite experienced by then. Take a port first: I grabbed Hull (NE of London) with a paratroop division, and then could unload transports in one turn. Once they poured to shore, it didn't take too long and was fairly straightforward. As for the "Efficiency-Fix" Grasshopper not know what you're talking about, Sensei. What I do know is that another 3 months have passed and the ports are only at 4. I need these troops badly; France is largely unprotected and I have no idea when the US is planning to attack.

Well, conquered England 2 months ago but my best troops are stuck -- the ports have not advanced in efficiency beyond 40% so transport is impossible. What gives? What do I have to do to increase port efficiency?

kind of OT, but Honch mentioned this earlier: what is "WIF, by Matrix Games" -- I'm always on the prowl for new wargames but I've never heard of this abbreviation.

In step 3, when I choose the "_1937 World Map" folder in the Campaigns folder, I get a pop-up error: --------------------------- SC2 Blitzkrieg: Editor --------------------------- Warning: Directory contains no import data. Import process terminated. --------------------------- OK --------------------------- Not quite sure why. Thoughts?

I figured it out: if you made a backup of your editor.exe, you can rename it and use it for opening 1.04 maps. It'll first error out, as its looking for a file named "plan.txt" located in the /Templates/AI folder, but you can just create an empty "plan.txt" file in that folder.

Ah, thanks for this. I'm afraid I haven't made it very far: how do I know what the map size is for existing/pre-1.05a maps?

Just updated my SC2 and am wondering what it takes to upgrade prior custom campaigns to 1.05a. I have not created any custom campaigns myself but I'd love to get the World Map by Sidius working in 1.05a.

Can't see to gain any diplomacy percentages, regardless of what my odds are each turn (currently at ~30% chance of success). I've tried reloading the same save game and trying repeatedly but the results are always the same: russian eventually declares war on Germany. Its Sept 1940 -- USA is still not in it, Italy's on my side, along with all of the baltic states except Greece.

No, thats what I figured too. I spent a good 4 hours on Sunday with a hex editor on one of the saved games -- no dice. They've obviously obfuscated the file so that's out of the question.

Just wondering if you can modify a custom campaign mid-game. I.e. if I make some changes to a campaign, and load up an existing save game, will the changes show up in the save game? [ November 11, 2006, 05:49 PM: Message edited by: gravyface1 ]

Can you transport aircraft? I have 3 US air fleets sitting on US soil, doing absolutely nothing because I can't transport or operate them. Whats with the uber-high naval attack against ported warships? Both russian cruisers were badly mauled in port by one understrength German infantry corp. Yes, I'm sure special forces could slip in ala Navy Seals and plant some C4 but that should be a random event, not a consistent attack rate. Other than that, love the game. Great balance of strategy and fun.

Yes, sorry, I think I initially mentioned UK.

Ah, good tip. So the USSR says, "20% Allies" -- is that their Activation Value? That would explain their low MPPs per turn: MPP Collection = Total Resource Value * Industrial Modifier * Activation Value