First impressions

[hellraiser]

First impressions:

Game looks nice, I had no problem with the installation of the demo, no apparent graphical bugs , it plays out quite smoothly. 1600*1200 is best for playing it IMO.

Indeed I had some sort of Panzer General feeling when I first looked at it , the eye candy stuff is there

The buttons are ugly though, no offence guys but it is the way I feel it; especially the large ones.

I had some difficulties placing the subs in convoy lanes. Because there's no indication of the lane on the tactical map. The lane shown in the overall map makes it rather difficult to be sure if u placed the sub correctly or not on the tactical map - or maybe I am missing something ?

Diplomacy seems a very powerful tool. I had Romania joining in July 40 and Spain rapidly leaning towards my side (axis). Indeed it can provide the players with some nasty surprises - don't be surprised if the 'competitive tcp/ip' gamers will ban the use of diplo

Paratroopers seem to be quite powerful - historically a para division, although a highly trained combat unit, often saw its efficiency decreased in the initial stages due to bad drops, enemy flak, etc. Hopefully players can't/won't overuse paratroopers - they appear to be badass

The tile system don't appear bad at all. It allows a more aggressive attacking and apparently a more fluid gameplay.

Micromanagement is far more present than in SC1, that's for sure. There is so much content added - from various research, diplo, etc options to upgrading each and every unit. More tactical from this point of view than SC1.

Anyway, congratulations for the good job, Mr. Hubert. And don't worry, which such a smart and active community, the game will be tweaked in no time...let the game come to us and we'll begin the true testing

[ April 06, 2006, 02:27 PM: Message edited by: hellraiser ]

[Hubert Cater]

The buttons are ugly though, no offence guys but it is the way I feel it; especially the large ones.

My poor artist!

I had some difficulties placing the subs in convoy lanes. Because there's no indication of the lane on the tactical map. The lane shown in the overall map makes it rather difficult to be sure if u placed the sub correctly or not on the tactical map - or maybe I am missing something ?

I mentioned in another thread that even during testing the idea had come up but with everything that needed to get done and with the indicator currently present in the Convoy Map dialog it was sufficient for now. Something I'm working to improve though

Diplomacy seems a very powerful tool. I had Romania joining in July 40 and Spain rapidly leaning towards my side (axis). Indeed it can provide the players with some nasty surprises - don't be surprised if the 'competitive tcp/ip' gamers will ban the use of diplo

I think this is one area that I think most gamers will be surprised. Diplomacy is not as inexpensive as it seems, primarily because you have a lot less MPPs available at your disposal as it was in SC1 and the risk of using MPP versus other investments, unit purchases, research etc., seems to have worked out quite nicely. Plus it is not always a one way street as your opponent can always participate in counter diplomacy so you might not ever be sure why your diplomatic chits have yet to fully pay off. But as you say it can always be disabled if that is the preference and/or the values can tweaked.

Anyway, congratulations for the good job, Mr. Hubert. And don't worry, which such a smart and active community, the game will be tweaked in no time...let the game come to us and we'll begin the true testing

Thanks and I am also looking forward to seeing what others might come up with

[Timskorn]

Since we don't have the ability to build units in the demo, we have all the MPP's we want for diplomacy. I don't see how that would apply in the full game. You'd be hampering your military.

Also it didn't seem that paratroopers were really THAT powerful. I had a misdrop in the D-Day scenario, lost a couple to German armor, plus they're pretty expensive to purchase in the theater campaign.

[hellraiser]

Something weird...I conquered both norway and sweden and both skando convoys still add cash to axis' treasury. Is it normal?

3 diplo chits invested in Spain produced a +36% result in one turn...omg...is it normal?

[zmoney]

I agree with the Para's being about right. They are expensive and not really any more powerful than any of my other units. They are great if used right.

Like I've stated before I haven't played SC1 but I have played other games like this in the past so it was fairly easy to pick up the basic's. My questions are; can the para's be redeployed and jump some where else after they've made one jump or is there a time limit, like you have to wait a month or two before you can jump again?

Also if a country decides to side with you through dilpo, do you receive more troops or just more mpp's?

Lastly how do you move your aircraft to a more forward position? Do they have to be in range of an HQ and if so how do you assign units to a specific HQ or is it just you have to be in range of an HQ with enough slots to take an additional unit?

[Hubert Cater]

Originally posted by hellraiser:

Something weird...I conquered both norway and sweden and both skando convoys still add cash to axis' treasury. Is it normal?

Yes, the idea being that even if you conquer the country you originally had a convoy relationship with, the convoys would naturally continue as you now control the country. There are a few such specifications when it comes to convoys and convoy relationships and mostly just to have them make sense in all cases.

3 diplo chits invested in Spain produced a +36% result in one turn...omg...is it normal?

Yes, there is normally an 8-15% diplomatic hit in your favour with an added bonus, albeit a small much smaller likelyhood, that you could receive an additional 20-30% hit

[Hubert Cater]

can the para's be redeployed and jump some where else after they've made one jump or is there a time limit, like you have to wait a month or two before you can jump again?

Yes, they only need a supply value >= 7 in order to re 'Prepare'. You'll notice the 'Prepare' option when you right click on a Paratroops

Also if a country decides to side with you through dilpo, do you receive more troops or just more mpp's?

Both if the country has units to offer and for the Theatre campaigns I believe 99% do.

Lastly how do you move your aircraft to a more forward position? Do they have to be in range of an HQ and if so how do you assign units to a specific HQ or is it just you have to be in range of an HQ with enough slots to take an additional unit?

When you click on an AF it should highlight its movement range, simply select the new location and it will move there. Note, you can only attack or move with an AF and not both on the same turn. Also, movement may be restricted for some minor AF as well as during snow or frozen weather turns.

[Fubarno]

It took me about three run throughs on the demo to get a working handle on the game. Having played SC1, it was intuitive enough for me to stumble through and figure out.

Some of the things that took me some time were:

- Asigning HQ to specific units manually.

- Attacking a unit that is inside a port, fort or city.

- Using the waypoint function.

- Getting used to the nuances of tiles and the angles available for attack, movement and supply.

Some of the things I really liked off the bat:

- Waypoints for movement, especially for naval assets.

- Assigning HQ to specific formations.

- The battle of the Atlantic will actually have the potential to be a 'battle'.

- The North African campaign has room for maneuver.

- The new techs and how units need to be specifically upgraded to recieve the benefit.

Some things I thought were not intuitive in the interface:

- The use of color seemed to be backwards or wrong. White for reduce and black for increase on reinforce. This was confusing.

- When initiating combat in a hex with both a fleet or land unit that has an underlying infrastructure such as town or port, etc... the default attack is against the infrastructure. In war the primary way to win is destroy you enemy's armies so I would think the default attack would be against the military forces and attacking the infrastructure would require holding down the Ctrl key.

I still haven't touched the diplomacy part of the game, and I've only played the allies so far.

Overall first impression. This game will be the one I have been waiting for. It's great and will only get better with future patch upgrades. I'll order when the game comes out. Don't let the grumblers get you down HC. You have created the best WW2 in Europe strategic sim ever released (based on the demo). How's that for a first impression.

[hellraiser]

A good thing is that influencing the major powers thru diplo is more costly (3 times than a chit purchased to influence a neutral) - I managed to knock russia's readiness down with some 11% in one turn - very nice for my Axis since my income was far higher than the cost for the diplo chits...

Seems the Sealion penalty of landing near London still apply. I did a Sealion immediately after France and the russian readiness went up immediately didn't check the US one, though.

Landings are EXTREMELY powerful if timed correctly and if the attacker manages to conceal his invasion fleet (amphibious transports). The trick I used vs the AI was to lure the RN near Iceland, by sending all the available surface ships and submarines to raid the lanes and engage the allied ships. Thus only 2 RN capital ships interfered with my sealion - London was captured in 2 turns - had I timed the embarking - landing stuff better (and if I had more air ) London would have fallen in 1 turn. Then, the time limit of the demo struck so Manchester was left for another day

Definitely UK now has to keep some troops at home, otherwise a well timed strike could knock her out of the war in a matter of several turns.

[Exel]

The tactical map could use a zoom-out. Ideally you could choose from 2 to 3 zoom levels going from the present default to perhaps even the strategic map.

Maybe it's just me, but it feels that it is sometimes hard to grasp the overall situation and you miss out things with the camera being so close to ground.

Would scaling the graphics down by 25% for a wider zoom be lot of extra work?

[hellraiser]

well, Mr. Excel, you gotta stop playing in 320*200 for starters j/k

1600*1200 works very well - try raising the screen resolution a bit and check if that suits you. Bigger monitors help as well

[Marky]

i think u should be able to drop paras right on top of an enemy, like at malta

and i think there should be a training option, especially for air units

[Lars]

Originally posted by hellraiser:

well, Mr. Excel, you gotta stop playing in 320*200 for starters j/k

1600*1200 works very well - try raising the screen resolution a bit and check if that suits you. Bigger monitors help as well

Er, bigger monitor won't help. Higher resolution will.

A zoom would be nice for those of us with older monitors.

[devoncop]

Hi All.

Well as someone who for a reason known only to any greater power managed to miss out on SC1 and has preordered on the strength of this forum and the screenies and details given I went into the demo totally blind.

I found it absolutely superb with actually very intuative buttons and cannot wait for the full game.

I naturally discovered things like reinforcements about 2/3 of the way through trying to defend Normandy (doh!) so had my ass handed to me courtesy of the heavy bombers taking out my SS Panzers , but had a ball.

I will keep lurking and learning from the vets out there until I get a manual and some quality time with the full game, but up to now..........well done Hubert.I have been a paradox and Matrix games fan up to now, but you have won a convert!!

Best of luck all

Ian

[santabear]

I think the technical aspects of the game still need some refinement.

There is little about this game that I find "intuitive." Movement on the grid takes some getting used to, as does general game management, buttons, reinforcement, etc. I've played for about four hours, and still haven't "intuitively" figured out how to undo a move.

I suggest that the demo needs some signficant documentation. It has a very "user-unfriendly" feel to me at the moment. If I didn't know the work of this team from SC1 I would have deleted the demo and moved on by now.

Everyone is different and has differing intuitions, but my expereince is that this is not a universally-intuitive game interface.

[devoncop]

Santabear.........

Totally respect your opinion re the intuition.But I have done a bit of trial and error to discover various elements and this doesnt bother me but I can see how some people would be bothered.

I am sure the "undo move" button appears as one of the buttons in the right hand column when the pointer button is clicked to the right or left at the bottom of the right hand button colums (you can see how much of a techy I am eh?!)

What are the actual effecs of the HQ units by the way?I am assuming they increase attack/defence values for attached units...am I right?

Cheers

Ian

[anoldman]

Santabear --> Maybe you're just stupid?

*That was a joke btw...*

--AOM

[hellraiser]

Originally posted by Lars:

Er, bigger monitor won't help. Higher resolution will.

Oh they do 1600*1200 is better on a 19 inches monitor than on a 15 one Things are bigger, eyes won't hurt you so much

[hellraiser]

Anyway, while playing allies I noticed that no free french units were created - I had HQ shipped to UK, syrian garrison moved in uk controlled tile, algerian troops replaced uk garrison in Gibraltar. 3 fr. ships in uk harbours. None of them managed to turn FF.

Apparently the 20% chance of turning to FF applies to all surviving french units irrespective of their location, so no more 'at least the fr med units' stuff in SC 2, right?

[ April 07, 2006, 08:55 AM: Message edited by: hellraiser ]

[Blashy]

Anyone who turns off Diplomacy is hurting the gameplay. Diplomacy is part of a war and it works very well here.

You got lucky with that hit. I've tested Diplomacy where both sides had 25 chits per country, both sides went nuts into Diplomacy, but with counter diplomacy it did not affect all that much.

One chit is 5% chance of a hit, so 5 chits (max) in one country is 25% per turn with a 8-15% possible increase if you get a hit.

As soon as your enemy starts seeing some changes in diplomacy he will counter, or he might have invested somewhere else and you see a big jump and now you have to consider countering or if you've invested everything you have to consider dropping a chit somewhere to counter.

Diplomacy vs. the AI I would say is a "scripting in progress". Diplomacy vs. a human is fantastic and enriches the possible strategies.

[Lars]

Originally posted by hellraiser:

Er, bigger monitor won't help. Higher resolution will. But 1024x768 spread out over 32" makes no difference, which was more my point.

[hellraiser]

Oh now I get it. I'm off to buy a super plasma screen, the size of a living room wall, so I can play using my favourite resolution of 125 X 100

[Hubert Cater]

Santabear,

Movement on the grid takes some getting used to, as does general game management, buttons, reinforcement, etc.

Reinforcement is the exact same as in SC1, right click on the unit and it will give you the 'Reinforcement' option

I've played for about four hours, and still haven't "intuitively" figured out how to undo a move.

This is actually the same as in SC1, i.e. once you move a unit the 'Undo' move button will appear in the upper right hand corner of the screen in the Button area.

I suggest that the demo needs some signficant documentation.

We've posted the full User Manual and it is available here:

ftp://ftp.battlefront.com/pub/guides/SC2_pdf_manual.pdf

Hope this helps,

Hubert

[santabear]

Hubert,

Thanks for your response. The manual helps a lot...as does your hint about the undo.

And I'm finding that it's easier to visualize the movement with the grid turned off at the moment.

I actually fought a pretty good D-day battle, and I'm beginning to see how this is a great improvement over SC1.

Thanks again,

SB

[Lars]

Originally posted by hellraiser:

Oh now I get it. I'm off to buy a super plasma screen, the size of a living room wall, so I can play using my favourite resolution of 125 X 100

Er, no, I don't think you've quite grasped it yet…