alanschu

It certainly is slower. Fortunately I found out that I could speed up turns by setting the message delay to 0.1 seconds instead of 1.0 seconds. I don't need a delay telling me that the CPU is planning it's moves with its barges. For any big event, it slows down. For instance, most ASW attacks zip by at 1000 mph, but if there's actual hits, it slows it down a bit. Plus there's the combat report at the end which you can read. I guess some people have been playing PBEM games for a year on their forum.

I wouldn't say a game like WoW wasn't filled with much of the "dregs of society" either. Anyone who's seen Barrens chat can attest to this.

As for how I'd compare Distant Guns. I'd say this game would probably play quite similar to Distant Guns as if you just simulated every battle in Distant Guns. Ships are slow to repair, and quite inaccurate except at closer ranges. Fire damage also seems to play a big impact, though I don't know if it's as big as Distant Guns. The weapons in WW2 could actually get through armor, especially if you're using a main naval gun. So you'll find flooding a bit more common. There's also a Systems damage, in addition to Flooding and Fire. The more systems are damaged, the less efficient your ship will run. Some specialty ships require the system damage to be less than 50% to operate. These ships are ships like repair ships, supply ships, and the various boat tenders. The oversea supply mechanism, while not perfect, is lightyears ahead of HOI2s though. Sinking convoy ships actually hinders the movement of supplies! It's actually possible to starve out Japan's industrial base, which is impossible to do in HOI2, given the large stockpiles on the capital. Japan needs to worry about ferrying resources and Oil to it's factories, so it can refine fuel and generate heavy industry points. The US, not so much. Though it's technically possible for Japan to start bombing US industry and screwing things up from that perspective. Good luck with that though. You'll have better success bombing the industries of Australia, India, and New Zealand. And I just got a message the IS-5, a submarine that I had been fighting for a long time and never officially sunk, sunk the other day. Yay!

Woo, my first real naval surface encounter. I moved some ships out of Singapore to see if I could do some damage to the transports my planes keep spotting. Unfortunately the Prince of Wales took some Torpedo hits and had to return to port, but not before shooting down 7 of their planes. The thing is a mobile AAA platform! But here was the results! That's got to hurt! SO anyways, I was talking about land combat. Here's a screenie of an infantry division: You can see clearly the unit composition. If you click on Show Unit TOE, you can see what a standard infantry division is composed of. I'm not sure how it all works yet, but the standard inf division doesn't include those 17 M3 Stuart Light tanks. I'm not sure exactly how they got there. I've noticed that sometimes I have more artillery guns than my TOE as well. I think maybe since I have Allow Replacements (in the lower left) checked, and I have an overabundance of supplies on Pearl Harbour, an HQ, and no other place for an M3 Stuart to go, maybe it just grabs the odd one from the supply pool. Oh well. Along the left are your unit characteristics. The division is lead by Major General Millins, who has 71 leadership and 76 inspiration. It's attached to the Central Pacific Command HQ, and is a US Army (important for what type of reinforcements it will get) division, station in Pearl Harbour which has 6 forts. Leadership is a mod for your attack efficiency, and inspiration helps with troop morale. Just below that is Experience and Morale (both of which are mods for your attack efficiency). Those are pretty straight forward. This unit is actually really good, with values in the 80s. Experience is super, super nice to have! You can see how many supplies it has, and how many it requires. Unless you're low on supplies, this is usually identical (or really close). If you get caught up in battle, apparently if you have sufficient supplies you can see them take on double the requirement, and they end up with a 200% attack efficiency base. Sweet deal! You can see that this unit has 510 support, and requires 611. It's green because the support is being managed by another unit that has surplus support units. And then there's the assault strength. Assault strength seems to be more related to just the number of infantry units, as you can have artillery brigades that have lots of guns, but no assault value. You need assault value to actually fight in battles, so I imagine the guns just work as a modifier and do extra damage in battles. Just below is the cost in cargo room it would take to load it onto an AP ship (troop transport), AK ship (cargo ship), or a Landing Ship. Most APs have a capacity of around 6000, so I'll need at least 3 AP ships to carry this beast. Most AK cargo ships hold 7000, so this wouldn't work so hot for them, quantity wise. Though you typically have a million AK ships lying around, and I'm only a month into the war. I get a new one almost daily. On the right hand side are orders. You can set a destination hex for this unit. If you want to engage in combat, you have to be in the same hex as an enemy unit. From there, you can choose to defend, bombard (use your big guns with certain ranges), a deliberate attack (just a standard engagement), and a Shock Attack (more aggressive. I believe the defense gets two chances to fire back on defense. But you'll overtake positions and cause more disruption in the enemy). If you have it set to Pursue enemy, you'll start off the next turn 15 miles towards the enemy in their new hex (each hex is 60 miles, so 1/4 of the way there). 30 miles if you're an armoured unit. Below the orders are the ability to set all to do the command listed. Pretty straightforward. The Set future objective is the next part, and it's pretty neat. By specifying an objective, your division prepares for an attack on that spot. So you'll end up with a bonus to your assault value when attacking in that hex. Units gain 1-2 points a day, and it sounds like it's instrumental in amphibious assaults. So it prevents ridiculously stupid fast island hopping. You can also use it for defense, so if you prepare for the town you're fighting in, you'll get additional bonuses. Once the Objective bonus is at 100, the unit trains instead, moving it's experience up to a number determined by the unit type (US Army cap is 50 or so, with the USMC being 60. So this unit wouldn't benefit from the training). The supply model is neat too. There's essentially 4 different land tile types as far as supply is concerned: highway/rail, road, trail, and cross country. Highways have a cost of 2, roads cost 5, trails cost 25, and cross country cost 50. Essentially, if your value doesn't pass 50 to a base that has more than double it's required supplies, it can push supplies to a land unit not at a base. So yes, if you're cross country and not beside a base, you're not getting fresh supplies.

I'm still willing to play that MP game!!! The games are pretty different naturally. I'm more familiar with HOI2, but it's mechanics are much, much simpler. You don't deal with the small parts of your army, it's just a division, with a strength and organization rating. While you don't directly deal out who gets what rifle unit and so forth, keeping tabs on the composition of your ground units is important. You'll want to check it's TOE with it's current stats (which is done with a button that toggles between the two), to see if it is missing equipment. I'll post some screens to explain in a minute. Right now it's crunching the turn as type this. The pacing of War in the Pacific is significantly slower. I was reading up that it's not uncommon for sieges against Chinese towns to take upwards of a month of near daily fighting. Supply is immensely important, as units that aren't properly supplied take a 50% hit to their assault rating before other modifiers are taken into consideration (such as fatigue, morale, disruption of the unit, unit experience, leader experience, the presence of a Command HQ, the presence of a Corps HQ). Units with no supply start at 25% assault rating. I'll post a bit more in a moment, as my turn just finished crunching.

Well, 'me' was supposed to be 'mean,' so that probably screwed a lot of stuff up.

How else would they be done? From what little I understand, I thought it was not uncommon for actors to respeak many lines of text that they say in the movie again in a recording studio during post production. Including the live actors. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> For cartoons and CG films like Shrek, the voices are done before the animation. Of course this doesnt preclude post prod "touch-up" work. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Ah yes, I guess that would make sense. But wouldn't the voices still be dubbed in? I mean, James Earl Jones was dubbed in. The actual Vader actor spoke his lines (with a british accent to boot!) and just went a long with it. When they did Dragonheart, they had some chap speaking the lines off camera IIRC, and then Mr. Connery added his likeness afterwards. This isn't actually an animated film, it's live action with CG added post-production. As for Hell Kitty and Astr0creep, I imagine it'd be to sync up body language and any type of animation. But I'd be surprised if there wasn't some stand in speaking those lines to begin with, and they could do sync work with that. I'm also not sure how much time it would take to sync up that sort of stuff post-production. I know historically rendering is a slow process. It's possible that they could modify the syncronization with the CG as they need to for the finer detail parts.

EU2 doesn't cost $1

I was speaking relatively.

Oooo, I just figured out all the HQ structure of the land units. That will help.

Well ok, but the point was that they're not truly self-aware. At least, I don't think so. I don't think so because no one really knows what self-awareness actually *means*. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Am I the only person that found this statement somewhat...odd?

How else would they be done? From what little I understand, I thought it was not uncommon for actors to respeak many lines of text that they say in the movie again in a recording studio during post production. Including the live actors.

There's no smiley face. Therefore, it's impossible that it's a bot.

One of my destroyers had heavy "Float" damage, and he sunk while returning to Pearl Harbour. I should have thought to have gotten one of the Destroyer Tenders (a boat that helps repair, as well as reload, Destroyers) out to him, though he only lasted a day so it may not have arrived. The Phillipines is about to fall, and I'm worried the CPU automation may be losing it way ahead of schedule (I'm still in the first month of the war). But then I saw they have a ton of units loaded up in the final base there, so they may actually hold out for a while. Still biding my time, not really doing a whole lot. Reinforcing Wake Island so I can safely get Catalinas doing naval recon out there. Much like real life, it seems as though ship to ship combat will be a relatively rare thing. You can set your Combat Task Forces to intercept within a particular hex radius, but you need to detect them first. Those land base air forces seem like they'll be important. I'm also garrisoning some of the islands in the South Pacific and am planning on throwing Catalinas in there as well. It's tough, because few places can support a large naval base, which greatly speeds up transfering supplies at port. Pearl Harbour is freaking amazing, but I imagine it will be a bit cumbersome (and slow) to have everyone coming and going from there once I move on to the counter attack. On the plus side, most single transports can stockpile a small base pretty well, so for smaller garrisons and construction it's not too much of a problem. Maybe I'll just have to spread out my forces. Though the bigger ships will still need bigger harbours if I need to do repairs. Part of the reason why I'm moving to Guadalcanal is because it can support a large airfield and a large port, especially compared to most of those islands. Turk looks nice too, but it's currently a Japanese port. I was considering moving along Alaska, but there are issues with the northern areas during winter (and southern areas in the Northern summer). One thing I wish was possible was to set a patrol radius for ships. While surface combat missions have the option of intercepting enemy task forces in a certain radius, they don't actually move around. With ASW TFs, they just stay in the same hex. Sub patrols in the same hex, and stuff like that. I haven't seem to have figured out a way to have them follow some sort of waypoint or area, so I may have to micromanage things a bit. I always had to order my ASW ships to go to the hex where the subs were detected. It's not hard to do that, but it'd be nice if I didn't have to. Subs not patrolling is a bit less of an issue, as I'd tend to put them in a choke point anyways. Plus, it's really easy to give the computer control over sub task forces, which will have him giving orders to do so. The 20 or so subs in the Phillipines are covering the area just east of Singapore and south of Indochina quite nicely while on automatic. I was able to pick off and damage a few cargo ships, and troop transports, which is just what I need. Set fire to some as well, which can continue to cause damage if they aren't able to repair it, so maybe I'll get some additional casualties. It is neat that ships have a chance to sink based on their Float damage. The more there is, the greater the chance of sinking. I guess some people have had CVs and BBs listing heavily and kick the bucket a few hexes away from port. Makes the Repair ships more useful, as they can help put out fires and decrease the chance of the ship sinking. The idea that fires can spread out of control is also something I liked in Distant Guns. The fact that my sub doesn't need an instantly fatal hit to sink a ship is a nice bonus. Speaking of subs, I got lucky and was able to place a random sub fleet shortly after the start of the war just north of Midway. It turns out that that is where one of the BB fleets near Pearl Harbour was going, and I was able to get a shot in (and a hit!) on their BB. I took some minor damage from the counter attack, but it was just simple system damage, and not much of it. I've noticed with my BBs from Pearl Harbour (of which I didn't actually lose any) are taking a looooong time to repair. In fact, I sent most of the minor ones to San Francisco (which has a better ship repair yard), and repair ships to Pearl Harbour to help out in the repairs. There is 4 battleships that have suffered greater than 80% system damage, and repairs are going slow. I'm working on creating a secondary port with some Destroyer Tenders on the Hawaiian Islands to deal with smaller ships that have taken heavier damage. I'm thinking once things get going, I'll probably just ship them back to the West Coast, and keep the Hawaiian Islands ready for minor repairs. Problem is, one of my BBs has 98% system damage, and a speed of 0. So he's in it for the long haul. It was at 99% system damage (and like 70% float damage with 50% fires...I think I'm lucky to still have it). It's an older Colorado class BB, so it's not like it's the end of the world. But it'll be nice to have it around for naval bombardments in the future. And I'm sure its 16" guns will still hurt any other ships it may come across. It's not very fast, but it's tough enough that it might work out as a decent flagship for a convoy raider. A max speed of 20 knots is still almost twice as fast as most cargo ships. And most things that are faster than it aren't as powerful (though may have torpedoes. But that's what the DD/CL/CA escort is for!). They have float planes on them, which help in finding enemy task forces as well. They did some interesting things with the industrial might of the US. First, they made a city in central US called "United States" that has killer resources and a lot of Oil. It also produces a lot of supplies and fuel (though not as much as San Francisco, which is easily the Hub of operations. Insane supply/Fuel production, and most ships seem to appear there. "United States" feeds it the resources to work though). I was a bit disappointed that I didn't get any say in building factories or units as the US. It seems as though when a ship is sunk, the US allocates resources to build another one (it's a bit of an abstraction. The manual mentions it can also be seen as reinforcements from the Atlantic Theatre). It comes with an appropriate delay, which I think averages around 550 days (so losing a ship is still a big deal). But in essence, it seems as though the US has almost an unlimited supply of ships, since it'll just build new ones. Of course, if you get your butt waxed, waiting a couple years for a replacement carrier is still going to help Japan immensely). Seems like the production for Japan is quite a bit different. You have more control over your factories, and have to be more aware of feeding them resources (as the Allies, you also need to be aware of feeding resources to industry in Australia and India as well). You can also expand your factories, and can determine what they build. Changing the focus of the factories results in a retooling penalty that puts the factory at 50% damage, to simulate a Gearing bonus for focused factories. You'll also need to worry about garrisoning Manchuria, otherwise you make awake the Soviet Union (which is inactive until 1945). Garrisons wil also be required for keeping Chinese partisans under control. I haven't looked at Japan's construction too in depth yet, but it is certainly more involved than the USAs. While the US has to worry about building aircraft engines and stuff for its planes as well, managing which factories are building those engines is certainly different. It also sounds like if a Japanese ship is sunk, it's kaput. If you want a new one, you better place the order. There's also various flavour things about the game as well. The Allies have superior damage control systems, making it more likely for the crew to fix repairs at sea, and to help keep fires under control (heavy duty fires seem like a real bitch). The Japanese also have their specific sub doctrine, which is to engage warships, not transports. I've noticed that my submarines, if they hit, tend to hit the ships I want them too (big capital ships, or a type of transport ship). Of course, I haven't encountered any subs with anything other than ASW DD/DE groups, so I haven't really seen this in effect. Most of my transports are still east of Hawaii, which doesn't seem to be too occupied with enemy subs.

MacTavish had Samsonov blocking shots too.

I finally found the bugger. He took out a destroyer and damaged two others before I finally got him. I don't have confirmation that he's sunk, but I followed this up with another 3 or 4 hits. I still have a smaller patrol out there, but I have lost him on my radar, so I think he may have buggered off/sunk. I also just got my first huge resupply from the West Coast, so I'm going to look to resupply and garrison Wake Island, as well as Midway. Just sort of biding my time. I set most regions to AI control, so I can just focus on the North and East sections. Moving armies to Pearl Harbour, as well as supplies. Building up the infrastructure on some of the neighbouring islands. THere's a constant stream of new transports becoming available in San Francisco, so I have a healthy stream of supplies in coming. I've also sent some up to Anchorage and some of the Alaskan islands. I did take control of some armies in Brisbane, and am moving to garrison Guadalcanal so I can start building forts, airfields, and ports there.

I'd give it a whirl. It can't be much worse than if you dropped a loonie somewhere.

Loyal followings are nice and all. There's a lot of people that still play MUDs with ASCII text as well. As for Counterstrike, 6 years can be argued to not really be all that old, especially seeing as the game still runs natively on modern platforms. You'd be better served to use Starcraft as your example, which is still getting patched by Blizzard 8 years after its release. I won't dispute that a Multiplayer game will differ with its longevity than a single player game. As for it not being nostalgia, would people go out and buy a game that was a clone of say Mario 3, or Mario 64? From graphical quality to gameplay, it's as similar as it can get without just copying the story. Would the next Final Fantasy game still sell just as well if it looked and played similar to Final Fantasy 7? It probably would because of the franchise, but what if it wasn't called Final Fantasy. I will agree that progress has become somewhat of an illusion, though only recently. This is in part due to the fact that developing games is insanely expensive. And please, explain the trivilization. Since you brought it up, you might as well try explaining it. Unless they keep moving Star Wars to new media types, it'll probably happen. Besides, I'm not sure if I still agree. All of my old consoles still work (including the 16 year old NES). If I want to go and play FF7, I can load up my PSX (which I just tested, and it still works). Yes, you'll get some people who's hardware has died out on them. But you'll find the same for your favourite movie that's only on VHS for instance. Games are coded for the specific hardware (or at least, Operating System). Rereleasing them is probably quite a bit more time consuming than rereleasing a video, especially since newer games have many more lines of code. It still happens on occasion though. The Sierra "Quest" games all just got rereleased. I never did play the King's Quest games so maybe I'll pick that one up. I'd be surprised if they are flying off the shelf as fast as Company of Heroes though. I know I won't be getting the Police Quest box set, as I've already beaten those games on numerous occasions. On the other hand, a game like Sid Meier's pirates did do fairly well as a rerelease, and the original Pirates was a popular game from my estimation. It also offers a game experience that is not directed soley by a story, which I think would help. Though I wonder if it would have done as well if they straight up rereleased it in its original form, rather than essentially making a new game based on the original premise. This is a good point. I have sort have always interpretted it as Company X seeing that Company Y is offering it, so Company X will be damned if they're going to be caught not offering a similar feature, but that could just be me being cynical. At the same time though, if backwards compatibility was so important, I'd think that Microsoft would have made a bigger push to make sure more games were backwards compatible. Doesn't the PS3 have backwards compatibility issues as well? Furthermore, we as gamers always insist how future graphical improvements don't mean as much as gameplay improvements, yet the focus from all but one of the console developers is still heavily slanted towards graphics.

If I felt you were calling me a canine, you'd call me dog, not dawg. The interface seems all right. There are places where it'd probably be nice to be able to type in a number rather than using arrows, but the numbers are never that big that it's that big of a problem. Changing missions and stuff for your units is straight forward. Getting reinforcements for planes is straightforward. Still getting the hang of reinforcements for land units though. Need to have appropriate supplies (as well as units in the pool), but I think I also need HQ units in the area too. Or maybe HQ units just speed things up. The manual unfortunately seems to have errors, so the fora are coming in handy.

Believe it or not, I am actually familiar with the WW2 history of Jap as a derogatory term. Posting the cover of a comic book is not necessary. It's just a mistake that I frequently do since Jap is a quick abbreviation of the term Japan when I am writing typing on a keyboard. Much in the same way I'll use a term like Brit. It's also, for better or worse, a term I hear a lot when playing WW2 games. When everyone else is saying it, it's easy to let it out yourself. I'd recommend staying away from War in the Pacific official forums however. The racism flying around there is rampant.

Heh, I never got any of that really from the originals personally. At the time (I was 12-13 years old) it was just a whole bunch of badguys for me to kill

Point taken.

Terrbily sorry if I offended you. I'll use Japn as an abbrevieation instead. Or perhaps JPN. EDIT: On second thought, if you don't want to come off as a disparaging twit, maybe you should just state straight up "Hey, the term "Jap" is a derogatory term" rather than being witty and going "ahem." It was an innocent mistake.

Meh, people also don't find faking deaths funny, nor attention whoring.

It wasn't a criticism, just an observation. Oh noes, north phillipines has fallen. It also seems as though my failure to move the Prince of Wales has effectively neutralized it, since it's now taken about 50% system damage after the first day. Whoops. Still sucking at the game, but my P-40s were able to shoot down/damage a few Japn bombers today, so I feel a bit better.