The G40 Waffen-SS Assault Pioneer unit rule is now available at the top of pg. 1 on the Axis & Allies Global 1940 House Rules Expansion thread.
G40 Redesign (currently taking suggestions)
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So who wants to do some playtesting? I’m down for playing by email or by forum! :-)
Pretty flexible about which options to enable, although I am really excited about the new subs / DDs, the Canada player, and the new minor factory / base rules.
If only I have enough time on my hands… :cry:
What do you think about TP A0 D1 M2-3 C8 ?
Combined with new DD A1 D1 C5 and Subs being hit by planes (without DD) but unblocked and always surprise strike on, it simplify a lot of interactions with planes and other naval units. A lot less of special rules, which is very beneficial from tabletop perspective.
Also, it fits better, historically speaking, in G40 to have troop transports with minimal defense factor. Merchant ships are figured by Convoy Disruption SZs.
All Transport units are military on this board.
And it seems all Allies take very seriously to guard them from Subs in every circumstances. There was no risk to take about loosing a whole division from a few torpedoes.Also, even a TP at 8 IPCs use as a blocker unit, is clearly a sub-optimal strategy when you have a much better 5 IPCs unit with an Anti-Sub strike first.
And, unless there is a whole bunch of Cruiser, Carrier and Battleship, TPs will usually not be taken as first casuaties.
And as a proof of concept in an AA50 inspired game with no DD A1 D1 C5 but regular DD A2 D2 C8:
@Der:
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Thanks SS!
I know my hope here would be that we can get more and more stuff included as time goes on, and especially if we can pick up a code wizard to help create/integrate more complex HRs.
I really like the template here though, since it allows an easy way to formalize HR ideas, test them out, then change things as needed. And it’s easy to to try alternatives without requiring a full rewrite at every step, since you can leave older concepts in place (just switched off) even as we try new stuff.
I’d love to get to the point where this system can handle all the ideas that have been proposed at various points by yourself, DK, IL, YG and others, for integrated rulesets already in use on the table top. Even the dream of a game like 36-39 seems somehow more in reach.
I think we have a lot of materials right now that showcase expanded roster options. We didn’t get to everything, and I’m still really interested in HR features for the map. Things like rail hubs, or political toggles, victory tables etc. Map features like universal scramble, or TTs that can be bombed based on printed production value (instead of just factories) things of that sort. But at least it’s a foundation to start building on.
When I get home from work tonight, I’ll have a look at some of the stuff I mentioned earlier. Barney did a ton of heavy lifting, and my skills aren’t at that level, but I’m happy to crack into a little tedium here and polish things up now that the basic xml is drafted and seems to be working.
Was thinking to redo some centers tonight. Maybe we can get Newfoundland displaying properly with a workaround? And a few of the new VT stars. Probably have a look at OOB centers for those while I’m at it too. Editing the xml may take a little longer for Russian_Infantry and the like, but that should be pretty straight forward. Barney cleared a path, and it’s way easier one you have something in place.
For sure Arg! I’m game to test some settings!
Wonder if it might be cool to grab the pre-release and try pbf at the war club. I’m excited.
Anyhow, back to the grind for a few, but will catch you guys in a few! -
Can I ask why the XML has different units for each faction, e.g. “Russian_infantry”? Why not just “infantry”?
It’s so the “Sphere of Influence” will work. Germany and Italy are allied and so are the western allies so they don’t need to be separate. Probably eventually give everybody their own dudes. It makes things much more flexible. Especially if you only want certain countries to have certain techs
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I guess if you really wanted you could have Russia and Japans roster stay the same and then when “Sphere” is on switch to the nation specific roster. Wouldn’t be that hard to do
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Aha that makes sense! Nice
Given that I didn’t even notice until Simon mentioned it, I think it’s probably fine for now. If it’s only for sphere of influence we could clean it up I guess with a switcher like you mentioned.
For now I was just playing around with the VC centers, and convoy/blockade flags. I think the medium flags definitely look better at 100% zoom. Though many players probably zoom out to 75% or somewhere around there. In which case you see a tiny bit of clipping on the edges, but I think it still looks a bit easier to read at a glance.
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yea i wish they had one between small and medium. I left the info off because that really clutters things. You’ll need to add a convoy flag for canada. I moved all the VCs around but some there’s just not much room. The convoys could probably be moved around a little more for the medium flags
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If you want I could make some flags. In the past in order to resize roundels I usually had to crop a new exterior circle at the desired size, since they never resize properly amd the circle always just morphs when shrinking them haha. Might take a little bit, but at least we’d have something between Medium and Tiny.
I thought medium looked pretty decent though
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yea just checked it out. medium looks pretty good. Would be kinda nice to have though. Never know where they might come in handy. But yea I wouldn’t make it a priorority or anything.
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If you want I could make some flags. In the past in order to resize roundels I usually had to crop a new exterior circle at the desired size, since they never resize properly amd the circle always just morphs when shrinking them haha. Might take a little bit, but at least we’d have something between Medium and Tiny.
Here’s a trick that sometimes helps. Save as a picture file the image that you want to resize (if it isn’t already a picture file). In Windows Explorer, double-click on the file to make it display in Windows Photo Viewer (or whatever equivalent is on your system). Click the Minimize square in the top right corner to make the window display as less than a full screen. Next, grab the bottom right corner of the window with your pointer and manually shrink the size of your window to whatever size looks correct; you’ll find that the whole picture shrinks smoothly, without any distortions. Once it looks the right size, take a screenshot, paste it into Paint and edit out the surrounding junk. You may need to experiment a few times to get the right size that you’re aiming for – there’s a certain amount of hit-and-miss involved in this technique – but in the end it should work out.
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Wow that’s genius CWO!
Haha you have no idea how much time that probably would have saved me in the past, when I was making those things for the Great War game. Totally going to use this method! Good looking out man
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My pleasure. As an added refinement: Note that there’s a limit on how small you can make the window and thus – at first glance – on how much you can shrink the picture in this manner…but there’s a way to work around this limitation if you find that you can’t get the picture small enough for your purposes. The trick is to start out with a larger image. Instead of having, let’s say, just an image of a roundel (to use that as an example) that occupies 100% of the space of a picture file, paste your roundel into a blank Paint document that includes lots of white space (so that the roundel occupies, let’s say, just 25% of the picture file) and save it, then display-and-shrink that image. In that modified picture, the roundel will be inherently smaller than in the unmodified one, so you can achieve a higher reduction factor when you manually shrink the window.
Also note: when you’re using this technique, and you’re starting off with a nice, clean initial image that you’re re-saving at any stage of the process, consider saving it (at least for initial working purposes) as a PNG file so that the image stays crisp. If you save it as a jpeg (or worse still, a gif), the image will deteriorate.
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Nice! I will rock some flags soon as I finish up the other elements.
I just fixed all the VC centers, so all the new VCs now display in more sensible locations for stuff we discussed earlier. Also fixed the stuff that was still wrong on the OOB map like Honolulu. It’s not 100% dead on, because otherwise it would be covered up by the starting fighter unit, but at least the tip of the V now touches the island of Oahu, instead of being all smack dab in the middle of the big island hehe. A couple other compromises were made as well to avoid having VCs covered by units, but for the most part they are pretty close to where they are supposed to be. Everything except the VC in British Columbia which for whatever reason cannot be moved, no matter how hard I try. But I think they look a lot better now, for the most part.
https://www.sendspace.com/file/gck41kFound a color that I think works well for Pro Allies Neutral. It’s slightly lighter than True Neutral, to contrast with the default Pro Axis color which is darker.
Sent both these to Barney. Maybe we can push out another link to sendspace with the cleaned up stuff.
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yea let me know if you want an updated version. Gamerman1 got lost in the shuffle and I want to credit him for his Normandy idea. Had ya in earlier Gamer but got some files crossed so we lost ya :)
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Here’s a demonstration I’ve prepared of the picture-resizing technique I mentioned. For illustrative purposes, I used two composite flag designs that I put together for fun a couple of years ago: an “Allied Major Powers” flag and an “Axis Major Powers” flag. Both flags are the same size in the original files, but you can see them here being shown on my desktop in three different display sizes because I’ve manually adjusted the size of the photo viewer’s window. Note that smallest sample and the largest sample are both the same flag (in fact the same file, opened twice), and that the round disk in the centre shows no distortion in either version.
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Sweet! That method is going to save me like half a dozen steps over the way I used to do it in the past!
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you guys should use dropbox. Their is no spam messages and you can load up any file
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Zero complaints? The way transports defended battleships in classic was ridiculous!
A2D2 fighters in air raids should be universally accepted!
I’m wondering why AA Guns have a first strike capability in SBR. What if the AA Gun shot simultaneously to the bombing? Isn’t it possible that bombers are shot down after they release their payload?
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I think the c7 defenseless transport is here to stay for most players. That c8 classic option was included for a shrinking minority, but one which has been vocal at various points about their disappointment with the new unit post v3. It was easy enough to include. So I can’t really see the harm. Most will ignore it I think.
I agree A2/D2 is optimal if using an OOB bomber (or one that is modelled on the basic c12 attack powerhouse, especially if it has an A1 in the dogfight.) But trying to make something universally accepted, by providing no alternatives kind of runs counter to the idea of flexibility for a customizable unit roster. Those dogfighting values assume an otherwise fairly standard OOB roster in the air. Right now it has OOB as the default, but I think A2/D2 would be a go to for pretty much everyone.
Any alternatives to the OOB AAAgun, should probably be explored. It’s surely the least popular unit in the purchase roster and among the most frustrating units in the game for many players. I’m fully down to explore alternatives including one that gets a different kind of shot than first strike.
:-DPs. As long as we’re thinking about those, a tech add for an oldschool style aaagun might be interesting (one that always fires during combat movement). Sure it received innumerable curses in it’s day, but I can imagine it being interesting with cheaper aircraft. It used to be a somewhat more effective counter purchase to the air war conducted by an opponent, since it could be used to close off air transits. Not that I’m chomping at the bit to go back, but it might not be bad to have as an option.
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My ultimate goal for this idea would be a digital form of A&A where players can do essentially everything that a player on the table top could do. But on the fly, without having to learn how to hack apart xml files, or parse the deep inner workings of the machine.
Expanding the functionality of the Edit Mode or the Game Options remains the dream, this is clearly just a backdoor, still limited in terms of what can be done, but at least its a lot closer to the table top for a few HR ideas mentioned in this thread. I’m still thinking about it not necessarily for what is the best fit right now, but what might be fun to have on offer in the future. I still think it would be cool if we had a recurring income bonus in the game menu, the way we have one for the AI (but for players as well). It would be cool if that could go to individual nations the same way a bid can be awarded, but I think it would be better in general if more stuff could just be done with the Edit Mode alone. To cover pretty much everything that can be done from the launch screen as well. Ultimately it would be coolest if all of this stuff had a separate HR edit tab (with different categories for units, or map features), rather than using the existing Tech Add system. But it just seemed expedient for the moment, since that one was already in place, and I have no clue how to create anything similar to do the job in a more direct way or who to talk to about it anymore.
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Zero complaints? The way transports defended battleships in classic was ridiculous!
A2D2 fighters in air raids should be universally accepted!I’m wondering why AA Guns have a first strike capability in SBR. What if the AA Gun shot simultaneously to the bombing? Isn’t it possible that bombers are shot down after they release their payload?
Once upon a long time ago, there was no Destroyer unit.
It is a totally different paradigm now.Even more if your naval fodder unit is at 5 IPCs and Subs at 6 IPCs.
Ask the question the other way around:
do you still need all of these special rules to prevent taking an 8 IPCs TP as casualty at owner’s choice?Do you really think it will change the game so radically?
Would you built an entire naval fleet around 8 IPCs fodder TPs and Carriers, instead of a more well rounded one with attack and defense capacity: DDs and Subs ?
With all the new possibilities, balance will be certainly affected anyway.
Adding this one, worth a try IMO.
At least from a tabletop and educational POV, KISS is always better.On AA in regular combat, I played with it too. Simpler, but have to roll up to twice @1 each combat round against aircraft. But my aircraft was Fg A2 D2 C7, always hit aircraft first.
Can work but need to be a competitive defensive unit compared to an Infantry.
Something like allowing always two roll @1 per AAA unit, each combat round.
That way, even with no attack capacity, it would keep similar odds to hit as an Infantry.
It can be easier to pay 4 IPCs for it (similar to artillery)Of course, it is much harder to change in Triple A. AA gun phase always precede regular combat is hard coded in engine.
But, if it becomes a feature that an AA unit can directly hit an aircraft in regular combat, then there will be no xml barrier to try my Fg hitting planes above and a TcB able to directly hit costlier ground units first (tank buster). To get an increase feel of aircombat above battlefield.
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