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Also, you can imagine how that giant one-piece hatch would severely limit forward visibility; not that the Soviets encouraged tank commanders to go into combat "unbuttoned." It was supposedly also very heavy, and dangerous if you dropped it before it was latched. It would eventually be replaced with a two piece hatch the would open to both the forward and the rear. Crew could then poke their heads just out of the hatch, like prairie dogs. After finishing my last play though of DC:B, which I loved, I had to pick up WitE in the last Steam sale. I was a bit intimidated by the enormous manual, but it's really not so hard once you dive in headlong. Started with the Road to Minsk and Road to Moscow scenarios; am working my way up to the big campaign. I don't completely get how the FBD's work. Do I have to manually order them to repair each track segment, or will the continue automatically once they start in a line? The rail buttons seem to change to "Return to HQ" on subsequent turns. But I can't tell when they move by themselves, if they are in fact doing so.
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Mar 8, 2016 15:01
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Orange Devil posted:So this thread's been real positive about DC: Barbarossa, but it's not on steam yet and I have some time on my hands right now so my question is, how about the other DC games? Are they worth picking up? I have Warsaw to Paris; it's a great came with a series of linked scenarios covering the invasion of Poland, the Netherlands, then France, with a final scenario covering a notional invasion of England if you do well enough in the historical ones. The combat system is very similar to Barbarossa, except that artillery is broken out into its own units and air power is modeled less abstractly, so you need to use those assets to soften up entrenched divisions before you attack them directly. The map scale is finer, which makes encirclement much easier (but much more critical) than Barbarossa. Barbarossa has a more complex logistics system, with rail conversion and truck columns modeled and fuel and supply tracked separately. But Barbarossa's real innovation is the character-driven political system, which doesn't exist in the early DC games (or any other game, except maybe Crusader Kings, really). My understanding is that Case Blue is similar to WtP, with some streamlining, but is set on the Eastern front (just after Operation Barbarossa) instead. Anyway, the other DC games are solid wargames that are pretty easy to get into and very enjoyable. But they aren't as innovative as Barbarossa, which really does bring something new to the table. I would recommend all of them, but at the current prices, I would just buy Barbarossa unless you're really into the WtP campaign. Barbarossa will be on Steam 4/28, and I believe they'll give Steam keys to people who bought it through Matrix before then. Tetraptous fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Apr 10, 2016 |
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Apr 10, 2016 17:02
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I'd also be interested in PBEM WtP! I've never played any of these games with other people. 
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Apr 10, 2016 19:05
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Chump Farts posted:Dtkozl and Tetraptous I need your factions then I can put together an email. I'm totally down for whatever--put wherever it makes the most sense.
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Apr 10, 2016 22:25
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StashAugustine posted:I can see that TS has a way to see the discard pile but there's no way to easily check what's still in the deck right? As far as I know, that is correct. The game's interface has been steadily improving throughout the beta, but it's still helpful to be familiar with the board game and know what cards are coming up. For those of you just getting into Twilight Struggle with the release of this game, I highly recommend Twilight Strategy as a resource for learning what the cards do and when best to play them. The hardest thing to wrap your mind around is the concept that most cards are going to get played sooner or later--having a hand with powerful enemy events can be a very good thing, as you are in control of the timing and can play them to minimize the effects, while still getting ops points to do something useful. You should think twice before space racing a powerful enemy card.
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Apr 14, 2016 04:26
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Is it possible to get our DC:WtP game back on the rails? I've not done PBEM with it before, so I don't know how replacing a player works with a password protected game. I don't care who fills in the player slot, but I would like to finish out the game!
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Jun 3, 2016 04:26
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Saros posted:Worst case you could email Vic (the DC guy) and ask him to change the password to something for a new player. There also might be a change password option like there is in ATG? Sadly, not one I can find. Vic is super great (he once fixed a minor and pretty insignificant bug I found in WtP within 24 hours)--I'm sure he'd help if he can, but I don't know if I would want to impose on him. It's been long enough since we played that I've kind of lost my sense of the game, I'd be up for starting over if anyone else is.
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Jun 3, 2016 20:49
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Just picked up ATG. I'm down for that, or another go at DC:WtP, or even DC:Barbarossa or WiTE! PM me!
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Sep 21, 2016 03:26
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I think it would be fun to try. A bunch of generals squabbling while the world falls apart sounds on point for Nazi Germany.
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Oct 7, 2016 01:57
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Yeah, I've not played Case Blue, but I wouldn't say Barbarossa is harder to learn than WtP. WtP has a lot more fiddling with artillery and airpower and a deeper hierarchy to the order of battle (it's very important to keep your divisions together!). Barbarossa abstracts all that complexity to make room for the political system (which is a pretty intuitive system) and a somewhat more complex supply system for the Germans. I'd probably tell anyone new to the series to start with Barbarossa, to be honest. EDIT: Vic is a super nice guy, too, and provides excellent support for being a one (well, now two, I guess) man show. I totally encourage you to buy his comparatively reasonably priced games. Tetraptous fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Oct 12, 2016 |
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Oct 12, 2016 22:08
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Saros posted:Would anyone be down for some goon games of Defcon? Turns out you can get it for £1.50 and its good fun to lay waste to the world. I definitely would--I've had it for a while, but there's not a lot to it on the single player side.
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Nov 15, 2016 23:42
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I'm down for trying ATG again.
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Jan 8, 2017 16:04
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Obfuscation posted:Afghanistan '11 is out now. I was going to instabuy it but turns out that it's three times as expensive as Vietnam 65 so maybe I'll wait for a sale instead. Same here. It sounds like it is a deeper game, so it may be well worth the premium, but I'm not bored of V65 yet, so I can wait to see how others like it first.
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Mar 23, 2017 18:49
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ZombieLenin posted:I do not believe this. This is literally unbelievable to given my experience with Vietnam 65. I liked Vietnam 65?  Seems pretty polarizing, although many of the negative reviews seem to come from people who didn't really give it enough of a chance to get past the simple seeming first impression. I wouldn't really call it a grog game, though; it's barely even a wargame.
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Mar 28, 2017 21:37
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Fantastic news! Since the new scenarios can be played inside of vanilla CMANO, is it safe to assume some or all of these new features are coming to the base game? Or are things like the new cargo operations done somehow through scenario script trickery? EDIT: Not to say that I'm not buying it either way. 
Tetraptous fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Mar 30, 2017 |
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Mar 30, 2017 19:04
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Baloogan posted:the new cargo is ~not~ scenario script trickery You guys don't disappoint! 
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Mar 31, 2017 18:09
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Likewise, Northern Inferno exists now and costs 15 units of your strange currency. It's well worth it.
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Apr 11, 2017 12:19
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Picked up Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm during the Steam summer sale and finally had the chance to start playing it this week. So far I've just done the tutorial and played "A Time to Dance" three times from the NATO side. I'm really digging the hex-based WEGO concept, but man is it hard. So far I've brought my score up from 40% to 50% on the scenario, mostly by ignoring the VP locations, since my forces trickle in and I don't have much time to get them anywhere good, and focusing on setting up good defensive positions to annihilate the incoming Soviet forces. I looked for some AARs but they either did as poorly as I did or used some gamey strategies to exploit foreknowledge for that particular scenario. I'm going to move on to other scenarios for the time being, but anyone have some pro-tips for the game in general? Is there something I should be doing to make my units more responsive, or is that just the nature of the game? The way I've been playing it, it seems like the initial orders given to any unit are by far the most important, since once they're engaged there's little opportunity to change them.
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Jul 13, 2017 00:58
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Speaking of Battle Academy, I bought the bundle for the DLC and Battle Academy 2; I already had the first Battle Academy. PM me if you want the key. Battle Academy is pretty fun! The cartoony look and simple interface hide the fact that there's a fair bit of complexity under the hood. The single player missions are pretty varied and will require different solutions to complete; it can be a bit puzzly, but there's usually room for somewhat varied approaches to each problem. Multiplayer is more freeform and quite entertaining; Slitherine's PBEM system works well, if you aren't familiar with it from other games.
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Sep 18, 2017 13:20
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Popete posted:Are people using the auto-feeders? I'm not that far so I haven't unlocked a lot of turrets yet but I usually go for the high damage turret instead of the lower damage auto-feeder. I just use my engineer to run ammo around during fights. I like having one for the tail gunner, since that's usually the first station to run dry and the hardest to get to. I don't use them on any of the other stations. My engineer is often too busy fixing stuff to run ammo! I make the other gunners get their own; really quick for the waist locations. Nice thing about that is that the gunners will return from the ammo box to their stations automatically, so you can move on to other things as soon as you give the order. This game is awesome! But at $12.74, it's too inexpensive to be grog. Immersion ruined. Tetraptous fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Oct 20, 2017 |
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Oct 20, 2017 19:11
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skooma512 posted:I lost a landing gear. I was expecting a belly landing but I got a fireball and a dead bombardier. I have made a successful-ish normal landing on the runway with a missing gear. All crew survived and the bomber returned. I don't know what the odds of that happening are, though. Maybe it would have been worse had I come in with more damage?
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Oct 22, 2017 16:01
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Same here!
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Dec 7, 2017 03:08
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Alchenar posted:In this week's episode, Chump Farts learns about paratroopers and why you should garrison airfields. That’s how you knocked out my airfield so quickly—I forgot that you had paratroopers! Planes can move up a lot faster than ground troops; guess that works both ways!
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Dec 28, 2017 05:16
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WtP is probably the simplest game, and quite fun! DC: Barbarossa is probably the best game, and is a bit unique, because of the political system. You can’t go wrong with either. I’d probably hold off on Case Blue until you’re bored of the other two.
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Dec 28, 2017 18:13
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Looks like aircraft detail may still be up in the air. Despite being a big aerospace nerd, I kind of hope that most details of the aircraft design and operations are kept outside of the hands of the player in RtW2. The RtW is about the ships, and the most important (and often overlooked) part of naval aviation in this respect is how the design of the ships will affect the launch and retrieval of sorties. Much like how RtW walks you through the development of dreadnoughts, in the sequel I'm hoping for a game that models how aircraft carriers developed from weird experiments to the most formidable ships on the sea. The game should focus on how flight deck design decisions affect how quickly a sortie can be launched, how long it takes to reconfigure from air defense to attack to recovery, and the how things like catapults, arresting gear, and deck size change the size and capabilities of the aircraft launched. During combat, I don't want to have to worry about the aircraft from when they leave the flight deck until they're ready to land. I don't want to design the aircraft, but I do want the aircraft that operate from my carriers to be limited by the capabilities of the carrier I designed. I want the game to model readying, launching, recovering, and rearming aircraft with a level of detail like that of CMANO, but with more player interaction and visibility. I don't want to have to plan the missions these aircraft conduct like I do in CMANO, I want the AI to do it for me.
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Jan 26, 2018 23:27
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Dadbod Apocalypse posted:if you state ahead of time that you want to be a “grog game designer,” do they prevent you from attending the courses on user-interface programming? Maybe there are special courses for grog game designers: Grigsby’s First Law: Never make it the reasons for the success or failure of actions too clear to the user from the in game interface. If you do, your customers who read the manual will feel cheated.
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Feb 8, 2018 03:08
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uPen posted:Aircraft design competitions is a neat way to handle it and lets you concentrate on the important bits rather than designing a better recon plane. Really looking forward to this whenever it comes out. Yeah, that seems like a really good solution. Rule the Waves was such an unexpectedly great game; it's hard to know if Fredrick can extend that formula and still keep the magic he stumbled into on the first one. Still, my optimism is increasing!
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Mar 2, 2018 01:10
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Alchenar posted:RtW looks a bit daunting because of the spreadsheet screenshots but that's a false perception because there's basically three screens you need to look at - where your ships are, what ships you are building, and what ships you are designing. Yeah, and the fact that it looks like some random business application is actually a good thing the way I see it! (Same goes for CMANO, really.) You already know how to work the standard Windows UI elements just fine, so it's easy to discover all the functionality that the game has built into it. It looks ugly, but it's way better than most grog games that try to roll their own UI and just end up with a cryptic and confusing mess. Seriously, dive in. Rule the Waves is really fun and really easy to play. The only tricky part is figuring out how to buy the drat game. So excited for RtW2. By the way, if you do get into the game, D.K. Brown's The Grand Fleet: Warship Design and Development, 1906-1922 is the perfect companion book to understand how and why the design of warships went the way it did historically, and explains why all of the designs features and systems in the game work the way they do. I feel that Fredrik must have been reading this as he developed the simulation. Tetraptous fucked around with this message at 15:59 on May 31, 2018 |
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May 31, 2018 13:54
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For whatever reason, the idea of a "CSS Tucker Carlson" just tickles me so much. The goofy layout just makes it all the better.
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Jun 19, 2018 20:22
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Bold Robot posted:GearCity sounds like it might fit the bill. I dunno if it would count as true grog since it only peripherally touches on war stuff, but otherwise it checks a lot of boxes. GearCity is pretty awesome. At present, detailed military production is limited to engines (for ships, tanks, and aircraft) and pickup trucks and vans, since they use the same systems as civilian auto production, which is the focus of the game. All other war production is abstracted, and AFAIK, your production has no impact on the course of the war. The game can get really micromangey. There are now some auto-tools to help you, but especially as your company grows there’s always a ton of things to do each turn if you want to optimize profit. I usually get a bit overwhelmed at a certain point. Still, it’s pretty awesome, and the developer does a great job interacting with the community and incorporating good suggestions into future updates. I think a lot of people following this thread would enjoy it.
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Jul 12, 2018 02:27
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FrangibleCover posted:I hope so too, but the way RTW1 always worked in my experience was that you ended up in a series of small, scuffly wars that attrite your fleet and everyone else's in such a way that even a late game Size 0 fleet battle doesn't end up quite as big as Jutland was. Maybe they'll have changed it for RTW2, or maybe the scuffly system over 50 years is enough to build up huge fleets like that thanks to the absence of the interwar naval treaties so long as you don't have a first war. Even with very large fleets, it's difficult as the UK to match the historical construction rate of the fleet. You can maybe match the number of battleships built, but usually at the expense of smaller vessels. If you, as the player, follow the natural tendency to build your ships a bit bigger and better than the actual warships of the era, the numbers of ships built are necessarily fewer. This make it pretty difficult to end up with a fleet big enough to have a battle quite like Jutland, but maybe that's not altogether inaccurate; we really only had one Jutland in the first place, and it if things had been a little different it might not have happened at all. The system for having wars is a little weird in RtW; if you're playing for prestige it's not uncommon to have numerous Great Power wars over the course of the game, which is pretty ahistorical.
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Nov 13, 2018 17:44
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I’m game for WtP. Maybe we can even finish this time!
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Dec 20, 2018 18:34
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Dadbod Apocalypse posted:I'd like to gauge the potential interest in a casual Battle Academy (1 or 2) tournament among us. If there's enough interest (8+), I'll set up the brackets and will offer a small prize. YES, I’m in!
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Feb 9, 2019 16:45
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