MrYenko posted:

Holy poo poo. In my running game of WitP, I decided to send Houston, Australia, Canberra, the associated light cruisers, and the asiatic destroyers out prowling around the solomon sea... It paid off.

That's one way to prevent the Japanese from taking New Guinea, I guess...

MrYenko posted:

Holy poo poo. In my running game of WitP, I decided to send Houston, Australia, Canberra, the associated light cruisers, and the asiatic destroyers out prowling around the solomon sea... It paid off.




That's one way to prevent the Japanese from taking New Guinea, I guess...

Athaboros posted:

Today's episode of the Three Moves Ahead podcast is about CMANO; it's Troy Goodfellow, Bruce Geryk, and Michael Hermes talking about the game. I haven't played it myself, but after giving it a listen I'm tempted to pick up one of the smaller scenario packs.

Also, Baloogan's tutorials get a shoutout, which was amusing to me.

MrYenko posted:

Holy poo poo. In my running game of WitP, I decided to send Houston, Australia, Canberra, the associated light cruisers, and the asiatic destroyers out prowling around the solomon sea... It paid off.




That's one way to prevent the Japanese from taking New Guinea, I guess...

Phi230 posted:

Jutland is cool as hell it's like a 3d rule the waves minus the shipbuilding

gradenko_2000 posted:

Didn't the studio/publisher go under and get taken over by a much worse Russian company?

algebra testes posted:

I thought it was interesting how they talked about how they were un-used to worrying about sensors so much. Sensors were very much a concern in Harpoon as well. They must have been horrible Harpoon players. While a primary concern of commanders has always been finding the enemy, managing a wide variety of sensors with varying degrees of effectiveness is also a characteristic of modern warfare.

Phi230 posted:

yeah I bought it from a shady website and had to download it from this shady steam knockoff

Dimitris posted:

The Silent Service rises from the depths on March 1st
http://store.steampowered.com/app/785930/Command_The_Silent_Service/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wikzTukjK4o

algebra testes posted:

I thought it was interesting how they talked about how they were un-used to worrying about sensors so much. Sensors were very much a concern in Harpoon as well. They must have been horrible Harpoon players. While a primary concern of commanders has always been finding the enemy, managing a wide variety of sensors with varying degrees of effectiveness is also a characteristic of modern warfare.

Command is the kind of game that appeals to people who want to learn something about post-WWII warfare. That era has been characterized by an ever increasing reliance on aircraft, sensors, missiles and precision guided weapons, as well as a distance scale that's blurred the distinction between the various levels of war. When a single battle requires global movement just to support tactical level operations, and the outcome of a battle depends as much on deception, stealth and sensing as it does on concentrating firepower from platforms scattered halfway across the globe, is it any wonder that the learning curve will be steep? In order to have a faithful representation of things at all you need to capture that somehow. I can't help but think that their mixed review says a lot about their lack of understanding of modern warfare, and how the technologies that have evolved during and since WWII have changed warfare.

edit: oh my this is amazing all of it the whole thread

gradenko_2000 posted:

The most unreasonable take I found in that podcast was being incensed at the ability to pause the game, while also realizing that managing those many assets would be impossible in real-time, and never putting the two together that perhaps the reason this is so is because the player is doing the job of an entire staff.

Tomn posted:

This is actually v. realistic in that there are many (poo poo) commanders who would love nothing better than to micromanage everything their command does and who lament the fact that there aren't enough hours in the day to personally hover over everyone's shoulder.

Drone posted:

It probably barely counts as grog (hey, it's published by Slytherine...), but Panzer General knockoff Warhammer 40k: Armageddon is on GOG right now.

Anyone know how bad it is?

Phi230 posted:

Naval Combat: why are guns so loving inaccurate

Dadbod Apocalypse posted:

Progress on Close Combat: The Bloody First...there’s now an official Matrix page!

http://www.matrixgames.com/products/product.asp?gid=686

skooma512 posted:

What is it with the 1st Infantry Division? That's like the go-to if they're not doing airborne or Rangers.

algebra testes posted:

Yeah the 4th and 9th had similar histories in they did North Africa -> Italy and then D-Day I think, so you get the same variety.
I'd always thought a different division would be more unique and interesting or whatever.

gradenko_2000 posted:

I wonder what a groggy wh40k game would look like. CMANO with Fighta-Bommerz. Combat Mission but with physics-accurate Bolters.

Dadbod Apocalypse posted:

Progress on Close Combat: The Bloody First...there’s now an official Matrix page!

http://www.matrixgames.com/products/product.asp?gid=686

skooma512 posted:

Speaking of Italy, I wouldn't mind more games there. It's kind of a blindspot and it's really strange. Even movies basically ignore it, even back to the 50s and 60s when you would think the significant Italian presence in American society would encourage coverage.

Most games might have a level or two and that's it. Sniper Elite 4 and Medal of Honor Breakthrough are the only shooters I can recall most of the game in Italy. As far as RTS, I'm drawing a blank.

I guess it's because it wasn't a tremendous Allied victory?

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

He was playing the Italians like a World War I army and was successful in the scenario, but you kinda have to play the Italians like a WWI force.

gradenko_2000 posted:

I was playing around with the Mumar Cadaver community scenario last night, the one with the Los Angeles-class that needs to sink four Libyan merchants. My first run-through, I manage to completely sink three (and one Foxtrot), but I used up all my torpedoes to do it, and then misread that there was still one more.

My second run-through, I used manual weapons control to only shoot two torpedoes each to the four merchants, but then they wouldn't sink. I guess the game models damage control? One of the merchants even starting running away at a slow 7 knots until I hit it again. In these cases, would Harpoons have been better, or should I have just waited longer for them to sink? I was kind of expecting that modern torpedoes would gently caress up merchants real bad.

quote:

In another scenario, the one with a small Spanish CVL TF running an ASW exercise, what I did was to look-up the stats of the Guppy II submarine that was supposed to be the OPFOR, see that the effective range of its torpedoes was something like 3nm, set-up a 4-point patrol area that's 6nm away from the carrier, set the points to be relative bearing against the carrier, and then assigned all of my helis to an ASW mission against the patrol area.

I managed to get the TF to the port without so much as a peep, and the helis took shifts patrolling as they should, but it was hard to get a sense of whether or not it actually worked since I never detected anything of note. Do I still need to micro-manage dropping sonoubouys and stuff, or is that automated? How do you actually run ASW ops? The whole "patrol at twice the range of a torpedo's range" seemed like common sense, but I had nothing else to go on, really.

Alchenar posted:

The recognition that the game requires an in depth knowledge of post WW2 naval/aerial warfare and also the viewing of multiple manuals, online tutorials and guides in order to play, yet failure to consider that in TYOOL 2018 someone might fairly consider this to be a flaw really is something.

quote:

Also the 'it's not a game, it's a simulation' line being employed in order to handwave away why this video game should not be measured against the same criteria.

Dimitris posted:

Dimitris posted:

An effective way to see in retrospect what happened (ie. why you didn't stumble upon each other) is to use the recorder through your play session and then rewatch the "tape", switching sides to see what the other side was seeing.

gradenko_2000 posted:

I find this remark intriguing. What makes that a necessity? Force quality? Equipment availability? Both?

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

Yeah. They lack radios and possibly even lack them at the company level, starting at the battalion HQ, which translates to poor C2 which in game terms means slow artillery times (must do big preprep barrages), lower morale if units are separated, etc. You have large squads that cannot be split into smaller ones, so they can't really be effective unless you move them like a really big mass. Lots of rifles. And their tanks are practically tankettes.

My bro had them charge a U.S. unit that way, and managed to get an entire Italian battalion to advance to a firing line and start blazing away with Carcano rifles, which was pretty wicked to see. Some of the Italian officers might've had feathers in their caps but I might be imagining that.

algebra testes posted:

Some Italian units have weird plumes on their helmets I'm like 90% sure.