New Screen Shots

[Edwin P.]

Note the additional port city added to the Red Sea and the addition of the Nile River! Most interesting.

This should aid the allied defense of Egypt and make Egypt more valuable to the Axis.

All that HC needs to add is a tile with the pyramids to Egypt, the Empire State Building to New York City,the Acropolis to Athens, Lake Ontario (its the big lake south of Toronto) to North America and the Hudson River going north from New York.

[ July 03, 2004, 04:07 PM: Message edited by: Edwin P. ]

[Liam]

An idea, not sure others will take this but a Port on Crete would be a good idea for at least 1 reason. History's sake. They said whoever owned it owned the Eastern Med why a lot of German Paras died there.

In April 1941, british forces evacuated from mainland Greece to the large greek island Crete in the mediterranean. A month later Crete was invaded by german paratroopers. Although numerically superior, the british troops were defeated and evacuated Crete too. The main reason was that the british force in Crete lost to the germans in a test of determination. While the german paratroopers were elite troops who fought desperately for their life against the larger and better positioned british force, the british wanted more to preserve themselves. In such dire time to Britain, which then fought alone against Germany and Italy, the british force was not given a reason to defend Crete at all cost, and acted accordingly.

But Ploesti was such a reason. Ploesti is about 700 miles north of Crete, across the Aegean sea. Britain already had then operational bombers (Halifax, and later Lancaster) capable of reaching Ploesti from Crete's air bases. Crete could be held just like the tiny island of Malta was, despite all attacks. If only Bomber Command had alerted Churchill in april/may 1941 that Crete is the only place from which their bombers can strike Hitler's oil supply, Churchill could order to hold Crete at all cost, and it could remain in british hands, and used to bombard and destroy Ploesti's oil industry and paralyze Hitler's military much sooner than in 1944.

quoted from The Biggest Mistakes ww2

http://www.2worldwar2.com/mistakes.htm

[SeaMonkey]

Also noted a port in the proximity of Murmansk. I might add the Engineer unit has a combat orientation(kneeled rifleman and flamethrower). I'm wondering if they will have some unique combat abilities? I also would like any islands that are depicted to have some basing abilities(supply) or else why even represent them, other than perhaps to restrict naval movement.

[Edwin P.]

Interesting, I wonder if the allies will be able to trnasport troops around Norway to Murmansk?

They will definitely be able to send lend lease supplies via this port, and the Axis will have a strong incentive to take it.

The map gets better and better.

[afrika31]

also i am very happy to see the city bern in the mix this time, now taking switzerland is worth something

[Roosevelt45(the 2nd)]

sweeeeeeeeeeet

[SeaMonkey]

Now, back to my original hypothesis. Bill, Dave, HC, will islands be able to supply a unit without adding to the MPP allocation of either side? In other words, is there something in the editor that will allow a tile to have a base supply level without MPP allocation?

[SeaMonkey]

What the hell!!! Its been 13 minutes and I don't have an answer, what gives? Seriously, could I land my engineer unit on an island and expect it to provide some infrastructure for supply? Could it get off, I mean could it debark? I guess what I'm getting to is something i mentioned a long time ago, that being, if you could provide a tile an inherent MPP or supply level, then you could elevate the importance of that tile and make it more relevant to the game. This simple little feature could provide for all sorts of variability in user created scenarios.

[afrika31]

but a question. there's still no sign of vienna the austrian capital. little dissapointing since theres praug. if it's not to late maybe vienna could be added.

[Liam]

SeaMonkey, I think that's likely to take the game to another level. I wonder this much though I've got a very Sneaky thought, what about a Base rather than a City/Port, etc... Thatta way we can assign some sort of MMPage and evac abilities to any Corner of the Earth we might choose. I wonder what the logistics of such programming are and I think well worth while. Look at this way, at least somewhere like Crete, or Cyprus, or Sardinia could have Paras brought in? It would make for something interesting

[Liam]

Originally posted by afrika31:

but a question. there's still no sign of vienna the austrian capital. little dissapointing since theres praug. if it's not to late maybe vienna could be added.

YES YES YES Vienna, Let us Here the Sound of Music... At least Prague-Vienna in 1 name? They were afterall in the AustrianHungarian Empire at one time

[SeaMonkey]

Exactly Liam, I'll go for a base, but better would be that MPP value. It would stop ahistorical withdrawals from vast amounts of areas, like the Soviets withdrawing deeply into their interior or pulling back from the frontier border areas prematurely. Every tile would be worth holding on to, or in user created scenarios of a different scale the valued tile could be an objective not known to your opponent.

[Liam]

Originally posted by SeaMonkey:

Exactly Liam, I'll go for a base, but better would be that MPP value. It would stop ahistorical withdrawals from vast amounts of areas, like the Soviets withdrawing deeply into their interior or pulling back from the frontier border areas prematurely. Every tile would be worth holding on to, or in user created scenarios of a different scale the valued tile could be an objective not known to your opponent.

It's true Sea Monkey, each tile contains resources, population, industry and in the end MPPs. I doubt that SC2 break away that far from SC though, but the idea is cool as now if something has no strategic value it's pretty much freespace. It's realistic to give something per. Maybe in a future edition but I doubt that such a huge undertaking could be done now. Bases for now could be a simplistic way of making certian locations that are not cities/mines/Oil/Ports/Forts worth taking... Bases are used in SC in the Maginot and have a value. Sevastopol was more a Base than a city. Crete, would be a perfect example. Azores, Iceland, Greenland, etc...

[afrika31]

vienna would also take up a little of that empy space between prague and the hungarian/yougoslavian border

[Roosevelt45(the 2nd)]

Originally posted by afrika31:

but a question. there's still no sign of vienna the austrian capital. little dissapointing since theres praug. if it's not to late maybe vienna could be added.

I dunno,

Vienna was/is a lot smaller than Prague and though it was the capital of Austria, I haven't heard of a lot of important things that happened there during WW2.And because they(Vienna and Prague)are pretty close together I'd choose for Prague to be included in the original game and Vienna to be optional(with the editor).

[afrika31]

Originally posted by Roosevelt45(the 2nd):

[/qb]

I dunno,

Vienna was/is a lot smaller than Prague and though it was the capital of Austria, I haven't heard of a lot of important things that happened there during WW2.And because they(Vienna and Prague)are pretty close together I'd choose for Prague to be included in the original game and Vienna to be optional(with the editor). [/QB]

[afrika31]

Originally posted by Edwin P.:

Note the additional port city added to the Red Sea and the addition of the Nile River! Most interesting.

This should aid the allied defense of Egypt and make Egypt more valuable to the Axis.

All that HC needs to add is a tile with the pyramids to Egypt, the Empire State Building to New York City,the Acropolis to Athens, Lake Ontario (its the big lake south of Toronto) to North America and the Hudson River going north from New York.

and how about Hudon Bay? thats on of the biggest bays in the world, i would think it would have had strategic importance had Germany taken England and destroyed canadian ports on their east coast

[ev]

What is the "soft build penalty"? Does this have to do with the soft force pool limit? What is the "industrial modifier"?

I see you can edit the combat attributes of each unit. Great! Can you edit the production cost as well? ...e.g. make armored groups army size, so it is stronger, but more expensive...

[Roosevelt45(the 2nd)]

Can you create new kinds of units without excluding the original unit?

e.g.:create a unit that looks like a corps but has much more attack,defense, is faster(motorization),etc...and be able to build these units and corpses in the game.

This way SS-units and others could be added to the game.

[Edwin P.]

From my prior readings:

Soft build penalty

Each unit built in excess of your soft force pool limit costs more than the previous one.

If you have a soft limit for Carriers of 2, and build 4 then the 3rd one costs more than normal cost and the 4th one costs more than the 3rd one.

Hard Force Pool Limit

Maximum number of units by type that cannot be exceeded.

Industrial Modifier

I believe that this is a production multiplier - say 50%, 80%, 100% that can be changed by events to reflect increases in production as an economy moves towards full mobilization for war.

Cost of Each Unit

You can edit the cost of each unit.

[ July 05, 2004, 04:39 PM: Message edited by: Edwin P. ]

[pzgndr]

If you have a soft limit for Carriers of 2, and build 4 then the 3rd one costs more than normal cost and the 4th one costs more than the 3rd one.

I don't believe that's the plan. There should be a standard cost increase of about 20% (editable) applied to all units built above the soft limit. 10% is probably an oh-never-mind inconvenience, while 30% may be too much. We'll see. I also expect the soft limit to trigger a reinforcement cost increase for ALL units of that type, since the idea is you're placing a strain on what your production lines and training centers can produce. There should be a level of pain associated with exceeding your limits, eh?

Industrial Modifier ... I believe that this is a production multiplier - say 50%, 80%, 100% that can be changed by events to reflect increases in production as an economy moves towards full mobilization for war.

Unfortunately, the event scripts are severely limited in their ability to directly change some other game parameters, especially research items. The Industrial Modifier will be affected by Industrial Technology research advances. The IM is simply a way to start some economies at less than 100% and grow them over time with research. Like Italy starting at 90% and having 5% growth, versus USA starting at 50% and having 25% growth. These values are all editable, so we should be able to get a decent historical wartime economy in SC2. Research will have random results, so a few surprises should be expected.

There are a few other pieces to the economic puzzle in SC2. Industrial Technology research will help reduce production costs, like in SC1. Infrastructure Technology research will help reduce op move costs and some other stuff. And some event scripts can be used to "activate" resources, which is one way to trigger economic growth based on proximity of enemy units or historic date or whatever.

Also, unit costs and new (optional) production delays by unit type can all be edited. All in all, there's a LOT of flexibility to play with. :cool:

[pzgndr]

Can you create new kinds of units without excluding the original unit?

e.g.:create a unit that looks like a corps but has much more attack,defense, is faster(motorization),etc...and be able to build these units and corpses in the game.

In SC1 all units were automatically upgraded when you got a tech advance. No more. SC2 will allow manual upgrading, and you will be able to customize upgrades. Say you get L3 motorization but you really don't want to upgade all your L2 corps with a 20% cost increase. :eek: So you pick and choose a few elite corps to receive the upgrade and maybe rename them.

We'll be able to do this with all unit types, so expect to see a lot of variety in the SC2 games you play. For instance, Cruisers could be customized to be either ASW sub hunters OR BattleCruisers with advanced GLR tech to compete with enemy BBs. AFs could be short ranged jet interceptors or long ranged ground strike units. Trying to anticipate and react to what your opponent is doing behind his FoW curtain is going to be great fun in SC2. Hang on.

[Roosevelt45(the 2nd)]

Originally posted by afrika31:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Roosevelt45(the 2nd):

I dunno,

Vienna was/is a lot smaller than Prague and though it was the capital of Austria, I haven't heard of a lot of important things that happened there during WW2.And because they(Vienna and Prague)are pretty close together I'd choose for Prague to be included in the original game and Vienna to be optional(with the editor). [/QB]</font>

[Blashy]

This game is about war combat and it's industries.

Not about cultural thingies.

Let's not start nitpicking when it comes to SC2, hehe.

[Roosevelt45(the 2nd)]

About those industries,

Why isn't Glasgow included? Maybe it wasn't that much of an industrial town back then,I don't know.

Does anyone know something about Glasgow in the 1940's?