Posts made by TimTheEnchanter

I ended up downloading something called peazip (open source freeware, not just demo/time-limited license and got decent reviews) to extract the version that was out there a week or so ago, but started seeing some flakiness going on.  Probably just a coincidence since there’s plenty of flakiness in my machine normally, but I uninstalled it for now, just in case.

RAR may be better, but since zip is integrated on most machines these days it is definitely easier to use.  Maybe just put both formats out there?

If you did use an expanded map with the counters like that, you’d probably want to use an additional counter for active research teams as well.  Funcioneta and I have been putting flags in spain, but if you’re going to put that much in to track techs, you should also track the researchers as well.

I like the concept (and have played around with various ways to alter the map to accommodate something similar).  However that particular layout seems to waste an incredible amount of space and makes the image - which doesn’t fit on my screen as it is - even bigger and more cumbersome.

I was also thinking we could add a row to the toolpieces and make custom icons for the various techs (a paratrooper, a rocket, a radar array, etc), and just line up the research tokens and acquired techs next to each country’s flag in spain, mongolia, or argentina or something like that - similar to how flags are used in saudi, etc.  But for that to work, everyone would have to use a version of toolpieces with the 8th row for techs, or they dissappear when you open the map.

@Constantinople:

Any players near Frederick, Maryland?

Howdy, neighbor!  PM sent.

Prince Frederick is southern maryland = the opposite side of dc from Frederick which is west-central maryland.  Probably about 100 miles/2 hour drive apart.

Started playing just over a year ago when my son got AAR as a gift for his 12th birthday.  I can’t get him to play, but I’m hooked.  :roll:

@HolKann:

Two great ideas + a little better unit pics = I’ll look into it when I have the time -> january exams are comin’ up.

BTW, the Chi IC is indeed the best one, had already made some kind of burned down building for it, but it was quite ugly, so tnx for posting yours…

Edit: simply added your unit pics to the file for now 8)

@Jeffdestroyer: try bigpieces, those have got some different units pics, or feel free to draw some yourself, it’s not that hard and it never hurts having some extra nice figurines :)

The Chinese IC really seemed like the logical choice for the damage token,  Any other unit from an unaltered toolpieces file might be confused for a live unit - expecially AAs (although I briefly considered using chinese boats, too).

And frankly, I found some mean-spirited humor in the implication that the more and more your factories became Chinese factories, the worse they became.  :-D

@jeffdestroyer:

I like the damaged factory vs using flags

The bombers and a few other pcs look to modern and not WWII
I also like the pcs of nations to be different when possible

The problem is trying to make any real differentiation in such a tiny space.  the pieces themselves are only 10 x 15 pixels, and 2 rows and 2 columns are used up putting in the shading to make them look beveled/raised. (Actually I cheated and use a little of this border space for the ends of the BB and CV so they can be a little longer.) That leaves a space of only 8 x13 pixels to work with.

The driving force behind these images was that many of the default pieces that came with battlemap when I started playing AAR were completely indistinguishable.  I could never tell a bomber from a fighter or a destroyer from a battleship and in general the pieces were very hard to identify.  Therefore I played around with them until I developed images that were at least a little more life-like, distinguishable from each other, and would be immediately recognizable to me.  It appears HolKann used those as the basis for AAR and I’ve just put a little more of my personal flavor into these files.

Historical accuracy was definitely secondary to “usability” of the image, although I did try to get some general ideas for the shapes of the respective boats and planes.  the fighter is roughly shaped like an overhead view of a Zero or even some of the other figs of the time.  It’s pretty generic.  You could definitely look at the bomber design and think it implies a more modern design (the wings are too angled), although you could say it’s got touches of a B29, but the most important factor in the way I drew it was that it had to look completely different from the fighter so I could tell them apart.

For me, I am not that “in to” the hardware of the war, and playability was my biggest concern, so making all units look the same across nations is actually a plus.  As far as the game mechanics are concerned, a fig is a fig and the easier they are to spot both on my side and the other side, the easier it is for me to play.

If someone else can design better pieces that are more realistic, but still recognizable, then more power to you.  I’d be interested in seeing them and potentially using them.  In the mean time, I just find them to be a slight improvement over what was provided and thought I’d share with others around here.

I’ve updated the toolpieces to be even more to my liking.  Among the changes I’ve made:

• Cleaned up several of the flags.  Some nations just don’t lend themselves well to tiny little circular tokens so a few just use full replica flags.

• Put in more differentiation/details in the ships.  Destroyers are smaller, Cruisers face right and are medium sized, BBs face left and are much larger.

• Removed unnecessary chinese units

• Put in a special “damaged IC” in place of the Chinese IC.  In our game, Funcioneta and I decided the best choice for damage would be chinese ICs - so this just makes it look more like damage.

Feel free to use these.  Just rename them to just toolpieces.bmp and put them in the AA50.GIM ('41) and AA51.GIM ('42) folders.

Whether you decide to use them or not, please let me know what you think of them.

Mediafire folder
http://www.mediafire.com/file/0zqh1qnymzu/ToolPieces_41.bmp
http://www.mediafire.com/file/odm3gngyodq/ToolPieces_42.bmp

Maybe I’m reading the wrong map, but the one I’m looking at says Japan starts with 31 ipcs, allowing them lots of big fat builds in J1.  In the 1941 scenario, they only start with 17 ipcs.

Ok, I’ve downloaded the .GIMs for battlemap and I’ve read the instructions online.  I’ve got no freakin’ clue how to approach this game, but I’m willing to give it a shot while waiting for league to start back up.

I would definitely want to try the NOs, and I wouldn’t mind trying with techs.  I haven’t looked at it enough to have a real preference for starting year or side.

Anyone interested?

You can send a PM

Hey, it looks like they used some of my images as the basis for the new toolpieces.bmp.  Cool!!  You can almost tell the pieces apart!

@DJ: The official rules are posted on the Wizards of the Coast site.  (And of course, there’s already an Errata page to go with it.  :roll:  :lol:)  Good luck trying to print them. I had to print it a page at a time on my work printer because the graphics make the printout so big.  I’m not even going to try it on my home/inkjet printer.

@Cmdr:

Romulus,

I play games in real time with ABattlemap all the time!

Make your move, roll your dice, finish your move, send map.

5 seconds later your partner gets the map.

He makes his move, rolls his dice, finishes his move and sends the map back.

This might actually be faster than tripleA too because you don’t have to fight the program to move the units where you want to move them and correct errors in the programming! (Especially if you want to use any house rules!)

TripleA is just too inflexible, it’s a burden to use and on many systems, it does not function properly. Not all, not a majority, but on many systems.

I really don’t understand your crusade against triplea.

All of the arguments about play-by-email apply to triplea as well.  You can send triplea files just like battlemap files. And by the way, that’s not Real-time unless you can see the opponents moves as they do it.  Actually Triplea is even more like real-time because if you get a file emailed to you, you can go into the history and see the moves and the turn played out again, as if you were watching it live.

I don’t get what you are saying about having “to fight the program to move the units where you want to move them”  The one potential problem area is with figs and carriers, but that is a minor nuisance in rare cases at most.  the mechanics for moving units is FAR better than battlemap in that you can potentially move entire stacks (including multiple unit types) with a single click instead of having to drag 5 or 10 units of a single type at a time.  Have you even used the program lately?

Now, your point about house rules I can see, but otherwise I’m not buying most of what you’re selling.  Just say you haven’t been able to get it to work on your machine, and quit making up complaints about the rest of it.

And that doesn’t even begin to address the actual features triplea has that an automated map tool doesn’t, like cash tracking, turn history, integrated calls to diceys, and many more.

Just confirming lots of “page is temporarily unavailable” messages for the past few days and in the cases when it does come up, the pages are ve-e-e-ry slow to load.  Something is hanging, big time.

@timerover51:

I have checked both my Rules manual for Revised that came with the game, and the Rules download from the Avalon Hill website.  I do not find in either set of rules anything about capping heavy bomber attacks at 10 IPC per bomber.  The only cap that is mentioned is a Strategic Bombing Raid may not inflict more damage for each bomber than the territory has IPC value.

Saying that each bomber is capped at 10 IPC is very much different that saying the each bomber can do a maximum of 10 IPC damage because that is Germany’s IPC value. 

@Krieghund:

Yes, it is much harder to do under LHTR with the damage cap.  However, under the box rules it’s ridiculously easy, with each bomber being capped at 10 IPCs.  You need only about 5-6 heavy bombers to reduce Germany to zero IPCs every turn, unless Germany gets very lucky with AA.

I think he just used 10 because the case being cited was an attack against Germany.

It’d take a miracle.

Inconceivable!

There’s a “puzzle” at C-sub that describes a scenario where landing something on Greenland is the answer.

Most other Message boards I belong to have an option to “Ignore” certain users, meaning you will see that that person has posted, but the text of his/her message is removed and replaced with something like “You have chosen to ignore <user>.  Click hereto see the text of the message”.

I’ve looked around and can not find such a function.  Is there one that I just haven’t seen, or is it not currently available?  It would be very handy if we had something like this to ignore serial offenders of off-topic discussion.  Who knows, maybe y’all want to ignore me too.  8-)</user>

I would think the separation of US and china would make holding a line in Asia more difficult overall.  Sure you probably don’t have to build the IC for china (I presume one will be there at the beginning of the game), but it also sounds like  spending would be limited to chinese income, so unless china is WELL positioned to hold off japan for several turns, or has radically different IPC structure than in revised the US will not be able to dump cash into the chinese IC to force the issue against japan. The IC will not be able to put up as much fight as a US IC might have (figs, tanks, etc).  Then once china falls, Japan presumably gets a nice shiny factory on the backdoor to moscow.

Obviously without knowing the initial setup(s), this is all based on likely incorrect assumptions.

If the Japanese attack a sz30 combined fleet on J1, they’re likely to lose several planes and run at least some  risk of losing capital ships, just to kill a bunch of boats many of which are usually dead in the first couple turns anyway.  If I’m the allies, I think I’m happy to see japan make that move, while the US pac fleet survives.