21-08-2004 21:26									#61
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

B: Here's the Sherman Crab. I've had to save as a gif to display here but it can be repasted back into a bmp and no colours have been lost.

Attachment: sherman crab.gif
This has been downloaded 167 time(s).

	21-08-2004 21:34									#62
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

quote: Originally posted by Mercator I can't be of much help here, except for Dutch spell checking purposes (though I can't be 100% sure the names were the same back during WWII. I'm using an '88 atlas). s'Hertogenbosch should really be spelled 's-Hertogenbosch, but that's just one character too long. I guess you could either leave out the hyphen or the apostrophe. Or you could use Den Bosch instead. 's-Hertogenbosch is the official name, but it's usually called Den Bosch. Nijmegan must be Nijmegen Vegel should be Veghel Zon should be Son I think you can spell St Oedenrode in full as Sint Oedenrode. I think Sommern must be Someren, but it's misplaced quite a bit. I can scan in the two maps from my atlas, if you want. It's not the most detailed though, some of the villages on your map aren't even shown on it.

Thanks, Merc, I'll make those changes.

	21-08-2004 21:36									#63
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

quote: Originally posted by fairline B: Here's the Sherman Crab. I've had to save as a gif to display here but it can be repasted back into a bmp and no colours have been lost.

Thanks, Fairline. What's the badge? Should it be on the other engineering unit?

	21-08-2004 21:40									#64
	Support Apolyton

It's the 79th Armoured Div (Hobart's 'Funnies') who operated all the wierd and wonderful tank conversions like the flail, crocodile and AVRE. They didn't operate as a single division, but were farmed out to whichever unit needed them. Leave the XXX Corps sign on the Engineer unit.

	21-08-2004 22:12									#65
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

Wow...

Once again fairline, your skills leave me speechless... that must be the most realistic looking Sherman, made for Civ2, ever.

If the flails come off, this will be the one M4 to rule them all

	21-08-2004 22:21									#66
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Thanks Typhoon. Buy yourself ToT, sign up for Tech's playtest and you'll be able to see the vanilla Sherman and a Sherman Firefly as well. There's also a Daimler armoured car, new Achilles, M5 halftrack, 6-pdr, 17-pdr, 25-pdr, Pack 75mm, a new Typhoon and reworks of the Sexton and various new German grapics as well. They are all ToT-optimised and will not look as good with civ2 palette.

I'm not posting them 'til Tech releases this though

	21-08-2004 22:38									#67
	Full PM-box? Change here!

ToT and fairline does indeed rule them all!

	22-08-2004 02:50									#68
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Stop it Curt

Here's the Bofors 40mm SP:

Attachment: bofors cmp sp.gif
This has been downloaded 163 time(s).

	22-08-2004 07:29									#69
	Full PM-box? Change here!

quote: Originally posted by fairline B: Here's the Sherman Crab. I've had to save as a gif to display here but it can be repasted back into a bmp and no colours have been lost.

Just one nitpick:

AFAIK, minesweeping tanks turned the turret the other way round when minesweeping, in order to avoid possible damage to the gun...

	22-08-2004 14:37									#70
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

I think I can overlook that little detail!

	22-08-2004 14:42									#71
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

quote: Originally posted by curtsibling ToT and fairline does indeed rule them all!

Indeed, I must try this scenario when it's released..

	22-08-2004 15:42									#72
	Suffering from ads?

quote: Originally posted by curtsibling I think I can overlook that little detail!

It's just that with all the overwhelming knowledge about mostly everything you guys here have, (_especially_ about WW2 stuff) I just couldn't let one by

	22-08-2004 16:07									#73
	Put an end to popups!

You're right about the flail and I deserved it

The Crab was a simple conversion of a Sherman I'd already drawn, and I didn't want to change it too much.

Sometimes it's difficult possessing overwhelming knowledge

	22-08-2004 16:15									#74
	Full PM-box? Change here!

Tech: I've sorted my problem with zip attachments and Outlook Express. Had a quick couple of turns with version 3 and I like the changes. One issue, however: every town taken so far has caused a canal bridge blowing event. I thought you were going for 50% chance of this?

	22-08-2004 17:02									#75
	Inflate your Upload Space

I do have TOT, but for some reason there's a problem with the civ2.exe and its keeps crashing

Unless I can find a new civ2.exe i can't play this wonderful scenario

	22-08-2004 20:51									#76
	Put an end to popups!

Fairline - glad to hear it. In fact the canal bridges DO blow 50% of the time. You just got the wrong 50%, I guess. Of the 5 along the route, usually 2 or 3 will blow. How has your experience been wih the major bridges, which use a very different system? Have you ever had any trouble killing the sapper before the Germans do?

Typhoon, it may be a week or two before this is ready to roll, so you hve time to get that sorted out. Try reinstalling.

	25-08-2004 13:53									#77
	Full PM-box? Change here!

Wow, techumseh! This looks very promising! Can't wait to play this scenario!

But what has happend to your "Warlords of China" project?

	25-08-2004 21:47									#78
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

quote: Originally posted by techumseh Fairline - glad to hear it. In fact the canal bridges DO blow 50% of the time. You just got the wrong 50%, I guess. Of the 5 along the route, usually 2 or 3 will blow. How has your experience been wih the major bridges, which use a very different system? Have you ever had any trouble killing the sapper before the Germans do? Typhoon, it may be a week or two before this is ready to roll, so you hve time to get that sorted out. Try reinstalling.

The buggers managed to blow 5 bridges, thereby blocking all routes north

Finally got to Arnhem though on the 21st, so that was fairliy historical. I'd loaded up Arnhem with 1st AB and a couple of them were left by the time I got there. Pacing was right, liked the new unit stats but I found the crab to be a bit redundant; rather than wait for it to catch up I dispatched minefields with 25-pdr fire. It would be of more use if it was with the first wave of XXX Corps troops.

The glider events worked fine and I received all anticipated reinforcements this time. All in all I'd say Plan A event/research path was ready. I must admit to cheating: I had to reload a save when the last bridge across the Neder Rijn was blown by a sapper, although I could have used a bribed ferry to cross. I'd say the Germans get to them 75% of the time before I do.

	30-08-2004 12:19									#79
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

Here is an update on progress. I've been working on balancing the scenario. It's a matter of slowing 30 Corps down just enough to make the 1st and 82 airborne div's life exciting, without making it hopeless.

As Fairlane noticed, the canal bridges blow more often (50%) which helps a lot. They can be repaired, unlike the bridges over major rivers. I changed the base time to transform terrain to 4 from 20, so it now takes 1 engineer 8 turns to repair a bridge - about a day and a half. Otherwise it's far too long and frustrating. Sorry I didn't figure that out sooner.

I added minefield terrain, the mine units being dumb. I kept running into them with my Typhoons. This terrain is impassible to tanks and artillery and costs 6 mp for infantry. Units defend at half strength. It can be converted to plains the same turn by the Sherman Flail or an engineer unit. It helps slow the tanks down nicely.

Engineer units can transform unbridged canal terrain into bridged, allowing the passage of armor and artillery. The flail has only settler abilities so it can clear minefields (mining) but not repair bridges.

I added lots of randomized German reinforcements on both sides of "Hell's Highway", making it tough to defend. If you're not aggressive and on the ball, you can get into trouble quickly. German historical reinforcements were also bumped up 50%. Finally there are large reinforcements triggered by an attempt to cross the rivers along the series of bridges on the west side of the map. It's still possible, but difficult.

I balanced the random Luftwaffe reinforcements. The Allied player has to work hard to avoid German air superiority on the north part of the map from the 3rd day forward. This is historical, as allied fighters were redeployed to the strategic bombing offensive after escorting the paratroops lifts.

I've given the AA units the 'can attack air units' flag, and the '88' an attack factor, so the trick of protecting a big stack under a Spitfire just got a lot more dangerous. On the other hand, you can now use your Bofors SPAA unit to shoot down adjacent German aircraft. Overall, I think it really enhances the value of AA units in the scenario.

Events have been checked over, I've had some inconsistency in the arrival of airborne reinforcements. It's a pretty complicated events text, using lots of flags and masks so certain units arrive at certain times and places, depending on which of the 3 plans (techs) is selected. I have only 5.42 kb left of 100 kb in the available events space, so I'm pretty much done there.

BTW, if anyone wants any tutoring on ToT events, let me know. It's really kind of interesting - at least to me.

Next steps include writing descriptions for the units, improvements and terrrain, and making multiple scenario and events files to vary the arrival times of both airborne and German reinforcements. And then some final playtesting and it's done. I'm still on track for a Sept 17 release.

	30-08-2004 14:58									#80
	Get a bigger avatar today!

You have been hard at work, techumseh!

I like the sound of things now - Especially some of the reinforcement concepts.
This tactical scen will be one of the most technical ever seen in terms of events.

Actually, if you have time after developing this one, I would be interested to hear your
wisdom on things like random unit generation and the events triggers.

So are you still on course for the historical release of this one?

	06-09-2004 22:08									#81
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

Any news Tech? I'm going to have a go at the other Plan research paths, unless there is now a newer version....

	07-09-2004 02:50									#82
	Tired of ads?

I'll send you the latest version. I'm satisfied that it's working well, at least for Plan A. At least it's getting close to being hard enough.

I've finished the readme (always a struggle) and this morning mapped out the combinations of reinforcements for the alt. scn files. I'm planning 9 different scn/events files, one of which will be chosen at random when the scenario is launched.

My intention is to have 3 variations of starting locations of certain German units, specifically the 406 Landschutzen Rgt and the 19 PzGren Rgt of the 9SS Panzer Div and of the arrival time and entry location of the 107 Pz Bde. There will also be 3 variations on the arrival times of the 2nd and 3rd lifts of the 1st, 82nd, and 101st Airborne Divs.

So there are 9 distinct possible combinations, plus 3 airborne plans that can be chosen for a total of 27 different variations possible. (3 X 3 X 3 =27) The replayability aspect should be pretty good.

It will take me most of next week to finish this work. After that, we'll need to do final playtesting to sort out any bugs. I'd like to have 3 playtesters, one to test each of the airborne plans. Any volunteers?

	07-09-2004 03:07									#83
	Tired of ads?

*steps forward to stuffy Brit and Canadian officers at briefing table*

Count me in, sah!
Send me the latest zip and I will test out whatever plan you deem.

	07-09-2004 11:20									#84
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

It's coming much more quickly than expected. Making the 9 alt.scn and events files was straight-forward enough. But I've made an interesting discovery.

There doesn't seem to be any connection between the scn file that is chosen when the scenario is started, and the events file. So you could have scenario5.alt and events2.txt. Or whatever.

	07-09-2004 14:33									#85
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

Will this cause problems with dedicated events for certain scn files?

	07-09-2004 19:18									#86
	Increase Your PM Length

It means you can't fix a specific events file to a specific scn file. On the other hand, it increases randomness. So if you had 3 different set ups and 3 different event sequences and wanted to have a possibility of matching each one, you'd only need to make 3 events file and 3 scn files, not 9 as I originally thought.

	07-09-2004 19:22									#87
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

A good thing for scens such as this!

	08-09-2004 12:36									#88
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

Say, Brian, would you send that scen over to me for a little playtesting as well?

I would be at stephUNDERSCOREsanderAThotmailDOTcom

	08-09-2004 15:38									#89
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

I am at:

curtsiblingATfire-bugDOTcoDOTuk

	08-09-2004 16:58									#90
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

May I try it too?

sgnonameAThotmailDOTcom