New game under development (non-Tiller)

[von Mohr]

So do you actually move your units or does the AI do it based on some set of goals you give?

You move your own units.  There are usually about two hundred of them so it isn't too much of a chore.  You're generally confronted with five or six areas with about a dozen units in each, so it isn't too taxing.

 
     Is there a Blitz forum for the Decisive Campaigns games? If not where do you find opponents?

                                                von Mohr

[Philippe]

The game was released yesterday, so now I can post my mod:

Historical Flags and Symbols mod version 1.0


The purpose of this mod is to represent all flags and symbols that were used by the different units in the game as accurately as possible within the constraints of the game engine. I am interested in vexillology, heraldry, and semiotics, not politics. You should never be allowed to forget who is doing what to whom, because when you bowdlerize evil you make it more acceptable.  And then the bad guys win.


This mod is a graphics-only mod.  It makes a few changes to the graphic presentation, nothing more.  It will have zero impact on any pbem games, and won't cause problems if one player uses it but another doesn't. It is very similar to my mod for DC:Case Blue, but not identical.  Several of the flags from that mod have been repainted (e.g. the Romanian and Soviet flags).


This mod is designed to be used with other graphics mods. These don't exist yet, but no modder can resist making grass mods, so sooner or later...


Here is a list of what this mod changes, by country:


Germany:

The mod uses a German roundel derived from the roundel on the Parteiflag.

The large, medium, and small headquarters flags are the Reichskriegflag, the German warflag. This is the flag that would have flown in front of any army or navy headquarters, as well as in front of administrative offices in any occupied territory.

The crossed anchors icon for the Wehrmacht navy is the emblem that was worn on the shoulder boards of the Kriegsmarine.

The Luftwaffe eagle icon has been repainted.

I have replaced the SS icon with the white SS runes on a black background.



Romania:

The Romanian flag is now King Michael's warflag.

The national icon for Romania is now the Romanian cross (reportedly modeled on the German balkenkreuz).



Finland:

The mod uses the Finnish warflag from WW II.  The Finnish warflag is unusual in that it uses a medieval swallowtail design with the national coat of arms mounted on the intersection of the two arms of the cross.

The national icon for Finland is the national coat of arms (gold lion rampant on a red shield).

The alternative would have been to use the airforce symbol.  The Finnish airforce began using that symbol when the country was becoming independant during the aftermath of the Russian Revolution.  A Swedish nobleman whose ancestor had gone crusading in the Baltic donated a personal airplane to Finland, the first airplane in what was to become the Finnish Air Force. To show their recognition Finland adopted part of the nobleman's coat of arms as their aircraft symbol.  In the Middle Ages, if you had gone crusading in the Holy Land, you often added a Jerusalem Cross to your coat of arms.  But if you hadn't gone all the way to the Middle East and had only crusaded with the Teutonic knights in Prussia or the Baltic, you removed half of the crossbars from the Jerusalem cross before you mounted it on your coat of arms. So that is why the Finnish Airforce was using a symbol that we now think of as a swastika long before the German Nazi Party came into existence.  The Finnish Air Force swastika isn't really a swastika, it just looks like one.  I didn't want to use the Finnish Air Force symbol as the national ID symbol because I always prefer to use national coats of arms instead, and on top of that I find it very confusing to see a swastika on Finnish units, even though I know where it really comes from.




Italy:

The national icon for Italy is now the coat of arms of the house of Savoy (white cross on a red shield with a blue border).


Hungary:


The icon for Hungary is now the national coat of arms with the crown of St. Stephen.



Soviet Union:


The Soviet Roundel now sports a hammer and sickle.  


The Soviet flag has been repainted.


The icon for Soviet regulars is derived from the Red Army badges that were made out of enameled metal, and is a red star with a gold edge and a gold hammer and sickle  mounted in the middle of the star.


The icon for troops from Siberia is identical to the icon for Soviet regulars, except that the red and gold star is shown against a green background.  Siberia has lots of taiga and tundra, and both are green when not covered in snow.


The icon for Soviet conscripts is identical to the icon for Soviet regulars, but without the gold trim around the edge of the red star (a very small hammer and sickle on a red star).


The icon for Partisans is a simple red star cut out of fabric (no hammer and sickle).


The icon for Soviet Naval Infantry (the Black Death) is based on the fouled anchor that appears on Russian marine badges.



Non-swastika version:

I have decided not to make a swastika-free version of the mod.  The game's vanilla graphics are perfectly adequate if you happen to be squeamish about that sort of thing.




WHERE TO GET THE MOD


The mod can be downloaded from this link:



https://app.box.com/s/4x7dvkpfjtns0pmsnzeybui19mpopkvb



I frequently run out of bandwidth towards the end of the month.  If that happens you could always wait until the begining of the next calendar month and try again. But there is also a copy of the mod hosted on Vic's site here:


http://www.advancedtactics.org/scenario....&tengine=0



If you are interested in the flag mods that I've made for the other games in the series, here are the relevant links:




http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp...=&#3970837



http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3768892



Historical Flags and Symbols mod version 1.0 screenshots:

[Strela]

I'm really looking forward to having a look at Vic's latest title. I think the command interaction is a brilliant innovation and everything I have read (one day after release) indicates he has done a great job.

I just need to finish the little project I'm working on to have some spare time to give it a try....

David

[Compass Rose]

....a little project?    

[Bioman]

While I have not played the game yet I have looked at the OOB. Basically all of the units of a given type and nationally are exactly the same. For example every German Panzer division has the exact same number and type of units: 5000 infantry, 550 halftracks, 75 Mk III, 50 Mk II, 40 37mm AT, 30 105 Art, 30 Mk IV and 20 50mm AT. Even the SS motorized divisions are the same as the regular mot. divisions although their combat values are different.

The same applies to the Russians every tank division has the same number and types of units even those that had no tanks. The values are 100 T-26 and 5 T-34.It seems that they may have just averaged the amount of tanks that were available and spread them evenly out over all of the divisions. The infantry strength of the Russian infantry is 10000 men which IIRC is about 50% to 100% more than the actual divisions had.

Hopefully none of these abstractions affect the way the game plays.

[BrotherJayne]

"Decisive Campaigns: Barbarossa played from the German side puts you into the role of that senior manager.  You are constantly being asked to make decisions or delegate the choices to a subordinate, which amounts to pretty much the same thing.  It is often painfully clear what the intellectually correct choice should be, and you repeatedly find yourself compelled to make a poor choice, or even the worst choice, with full understanding of what the unpleasant consequences are likely to be.  

Any action you take is likely to upset someone.  Antagonize a subordinate and he'll be slow to carry out your orders, which won't do wonders for your next performance review.  Annoy your peers and your fuel allocation will get diverted to Western Europe, or your supply trucks won't get repaired when they break down.  Anger your superiors and count yourself lucky if all that happens is early retirement.  Anything you do or don't do comes at a political cost, and you rarely have enough political capital stored up to do what absolutely needs to get done, let alone what you really want to do.  So you perform a heart-breaking triage on the decisions you have to make, repeatedly making bad choices so as not to upset the apple cart because you need to keep your political powder dry for the big fight over that one thing you think you absolutely need."

Gents:

I deal with this type of "political / work environment drama" on a daily basis... and have no desire to have it modeled in a game system that I play for fun and "escapism" from the daily grind!

When I play operational scale games, I want my units to go where they are directed and fight when they are told to do so... no questions from the unit commanders - thank you!

Those special modifiers are optional. Currently trying them in my game, seems like a mixed bag

However, I also started the game with a "clean slate" in terms of relationship with various members of the Reich's crazy ass command structure, which might be skewing how it's working out game wise

I'm kinda thinking I prefer Decisive Campaigns: Case Blue

[phoenix]

Nice mod, Phillipe. Great work.

I wish someone would mod the awful map. It's so basic.

I did buy this game, but I'm not enjoying it much so far. All the counters seem so huge, and the hexes, no map detail. Hard for me to think I'm doing something that has a relationship with something that did actually happen in the real world. Lacks immersion, for me, in other words. But it might grow on me.

[von Mohr]

Gentlemen,

    Is there a Blitz forum for the Decisive Campaign series? Where do you find PBEM opponents?