WWI Strategic Command variant (fun with the editor)

[Camicie Nere]

I just had a cool thought. If the SC editor is powerful enough, the first custom scenario I will create is a World War I setup. You would need to have the ability to change national borders, designate who made up the "Axis" and "Allied" countries, and, importantly, the ability to edit the NAMES of combatant nations.

But with that in hand, all one would need to do is fiddle with the unit values (i.e. infantry would have higher defense relative to attack, armor would be weaker and not as mobile, aircraft less powerful against ground units and targets, etc.) Maybe the first couple of "armor" levels could be cavalry. The "rocket" units could be chemical warfare assets. I can see this all taking shape in my mind right now! I'd sure as hell do all the necessary unit mods!

But anyway, I have always though WWI was a great and untapped subject for strategic-level wargaming. Though the western front was mucked-up and reltively static due to the preponderance of the technology of defense over attack, the grand strategic and political aspects of conducting the war in Europe as a whole could be fascinating. The "easterners" had a much more fluid and interesting military situation to deal with.

So Hubert, please, PLEASE allow us to edit the map and country names/affiiations! I am already doing flag mods for the German, Austrian, and Russian empires!

[Wolfpack]

Originally posted by Camicie Nere:

I just had a cool thought. If the SC editor is powerful enough, the first custom scenario I will create is a World War I setup. You would need to have the ability to change national borders, designate who made up the "Axis" and "Allied" countries, and, importantly, the ability to edit the NAMES of combatant nations.

But with that in hand, all one would need to do is fiddle with the unit values (i.e. infantry would have higher defense relative to attack, armor would be weaker and not as mobile, aircraft less powerful against ground units and targets, etc.) Maybe the first couple of "armor" levels could be cavalry. The "rocket" units could be chemical warfare assets. I can see this all taking shape in my mind right now! I'd sure as hell do all the necessary unit mods!

But anyway, I have always though WWI was a great and untapped subject for strategic-level wargaming. Though the western front was mucked-up and reltively static due to the preponderance of the technology of defense over attack, the grand strategic and political aspects of conducting the war in Europe as a whole could be fascinating. The "easterners" had a much more fluid and interesting military situation to deal with.

So Hubert, please, PLEASE allow us to edit the map and country names/affiiations! I am already doing flag mods for the German, Austrian, and Russian empires!

One thing you might have problems with is Italy. I don't know how the game editor is going to work exactly, but I kind of doubt you'll be able to get much flexibility with them as far as who they join. Meaning I think countries will probably have to be set to only join one side or the other, not have a chance of joining either (Without a DOW of course). I'd love to be wrong on this though, so feel free to set me straight Hubert. I've always thought that WWI was more interesting in many ways than WWII because there wasn't a clear cut "Bad guy", and the consequences of a German victory would seem in some ways to possibly have been better (In respect to avoiding further wars and disputes) than an Allied victory. And they came so close...oh so close...to pulling it off. WWII was more in doubt in some ways, but at least in WWI the Germans managed to make it a 1 front war, albeit a bit too late.

[vonManstein39]

On this scale, WWI will be relatively boring on the Western Front, but OK elsewhere where there is more space. The defender will have a tremendous advantage over the attacker, and air power will be non-existent (in terms of close support the aircraft of WWI were almost totally ineffective, so we couldn't have air units damaging ground units. Strategic bombers likewise were almost completely useless at damaging the enemy's economy. Armour was only an adjunct to infantry at that time, so no armor units, only cavalry, which always got slaughtered when it attacked entrenched infantry. As for the infantry, they had little motorised tranport, and so their movement rate would be slow.

WWI works better on a divisional scale where there is more to do, than on an army level as in SC.

[pzgndr]

air power will be non-existent

What??? With research and some luck, I'm sure we could see level 2 jet fighters by 1915. :eek:

Seriously, I'd like to see a full function game editor some day like TOAW provides. I've commented before on the robust features of SC and its AI. If we could have a map editor, some sort of events editor for politics and diplomacy, the ability to define any type of unit we want (like airborne units and air transports), and the ability to define resources, etc, then the SC game engine could be used for WWI, American civil war, or whatever. None of this will be possible with the current editor, but there's a lot of potential for later.

First things first, WHERE'S THE GAME???

[Wolfe]

Originally posted by Camicie Nere:

You would need to have the ability to change national borders

Apparently this, atleast, is possible!

Countries

:cool:

- Chris

[ June 19, 2002, 08:03 PM: Message edited by: Wolfe ]

[Otto]

In the Great War air power was most useful as a recon tool as opposed to powerful tactical and strategic weapons in World War 2.0

From what I know, the editing tool will be very powerful, but not powerful enough to make a completely new game...

[Straha]

Someone (Bill?) recently had the very interesting idea that there should not be a specific PTO sequel to SC, but rather a SCII where (among other changes) the map is not hardcoded anymore so that PTO could simply be another *scenario*. This, of course, would require a very powerful integrated scenario/map editor. Such an editor could probably also be used to simulate other wars than just WWII if we also could make new types of units.

Straha

[ June 19, 2002, 08:34 PM: Message edited by: Straha ]

[pzgndr]

Someone (Bill?) recently had the very interesting idea

To paraphrase from the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, "OF COURSE IT'S AN INTERSETING IDEA!" LOL

There's great potential for SC as a TOAW-like game engine where players can define their own game parameters and generate scenarios. Besides, I really don't want to endlessly pursue PTO, ETO2, PTO2, Advanced ETO Gold!, etc. Marketing pre$$ure may dictate otherwise, but FWIW I'd like to see Hubert and Battlefront move SC in a game engine direction rather than new game production. Straha indicates that mine is not the only voice in the wilderness here, so maybe we can make a difference. Thanks.

Btw, there IS an open-source game development code called Xconq out there which I've been messing around with for several months. You can edit the code itself in C/C++ if you want to, but only need to create scenario files with unit definitions and various tables to actually create and play games. So when I suggest various parameters could be tweaked, it's from some experience in defining these myself for a 3R-type game I'm working on. Anyway, this is just a shameless plug for Xconq which will soon release v7.5. SC has the AI and politics beat hands-down, so there's no real competition, but Xconq provides an interesting benchmark for comparison.

[Hubert Cater]

There are editors in use that control the in-game values, take a look at all the sub folders and you'll see all the data files the game is using. It's an interesting idea to have control over all of these files, but this unfortunatly will not be included. Just being honest, but I don't think having a multiple flavoured SC is a good idea (mostly for me) for a number of reasons, but the game will include a custom campaign editor that will allow for some variety in this area as already stated. Now does this discount a future 'Wargame Construction Kit' perhaps not, but that's a big 'maybe' for the future

Hubert

[pzgndr]

Thanks Hubert. Obviously there's a lot to consider in the game market today which most of us don't fully understand or appreciate. So follow your priorities. Get SC up and running first and then let us know what your next strategic command decision is. :cool: