time frame

[gdpsnake]

One concern I have is if the game map is much larger then will the time frame of the turns be adequate to play. In other words, a USSR that is twice as big will take more than twice as many turns to conquer. For instance in SC1, France NEVER falls by June 40 even with average play because too few turns exist in the game.

Will more turns per month be used in SC2?

[SeaMonkey]

Don't worry gdpsnake, turns per time period is editable. Just as God intended for us humans..."You are free to choose".

[pzgndr]

I expect we'll stick with the SC1 seasonal turns for development of the default scenarios. It's easier to playtest the new features if we have a known foundation to work with. Otherwise we're playtesting a whole new game and that becomes risky and time consuming. As for France and USSR surrendering in SC2, we'll just have to see how all the new features work.

Players will be able to experiment with alternate turn lengths using the Editor. But it's not a simple change! Going from about 15 alternating seasonal turns per year to 13 alternating biweekly turns wouldn't be too noticeable, but going to 26 simultaneous biweekly turns almost doubles the game activity. Production MPPs and action points would all have to be scaled down. Otherwise things will happen twice as fast. Ditto for research and diplomacy random chances being adjusted for different time scales, but hopefully these should be accounted for in the game engine. All these things would have to be playtested to ensure the long-term game plays well.

[Yaggmoth]

I think those problems should left for patches to come, and just provide a playtested standard scenarios for the release.