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Fallschirmjager -> RE: Did I Miss Something? (12/3/2006 9:57:35 PM)
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I know this is not the thread for it but in an atempt to support the developing team I went ahead and purchased the game.
As I said before, alot of good stuff exists. But unfortunatly it is crippled by some fundanmental flaws.
The biggest thing is a trap that all games of this genre fall into.
Giving the gamer too much to do and being too slow about doing it.
The war progesses at a snails pace and makes it very difficult to mimic the pace of the real war.
Most of this stems from a crippling lack of resources on both sides and the secondary problem of taking too much time to build buildings and equip armies.
I played two games where I controlled both sides and did not do any fighting. I focused on building and equiping armies.
I got to 1863 in one game and 1864 in another and try and I might I could not match the real war with either side in terms of size and content of my armies.
Take to example building a realistic army.
You have your infantry
Cavlary
artillary
engineers
special units
In the game you have to build each of these at different locations around the country and then assemble them wherever.
Due to lack of resources and taking forever, it could be 6 months to assemble a army of 75,000 men with 150 guns and 15,000 cavlary and the enginering and logistic capacity of the basic civil war army.
Why does it have to be this way?
My idea is to simplify the entire process.
You should be able to create armies with all these components coming online and forming all at once.
NO army in the civil war went into battle without everything I listed above.
None
You will never read an account of even the smallest battle without reading that the army had some guns and at least a regiment of cavlary.
That was the doctrine at the time and every army everywhere followed it.
You should create divisions at a time and it should come with a pre determined amount of artillery and cavlary raised from the same location.
It should be automatic.
Instead by necessity many times you send armies into battle with no guns and no cavlary at all.
This is not right and degrades the quality of the game and its historical nature.
Every army once raised should be created at the same time with a user selected amount of guns and cavlary and engineers.
Every army in the ACW had these and should should armies in the game.
Secondly equiping armies with guns is tedious.
Every unit starts life with 'improvised weapons'
I am not sure if this is correct or not, but in the game this is depicted as a sabre and pistol.
Umm...show me an entire infantry brigrade in the ACW who collected 2000 farm boys who brought their own pistol and sabre from home...
The south had state militias and Union armoures to pull weapons from.
At minumum they should come in with a random chance of having muskets and a random chances or what they bring from home, which should be a mix of muskets, flintlocks, rifled muskets done at home, old fowling pieces and shotguns.
Not very good but realistic and definitly not a sabre and pistol.
The north also had state militas and state armouries.
They had a decent supply of US model 1822 and 1842 muskets. A handful of Sprifields and then whatever was brought from home.
There should be a random chance of newly created units having all of these.
Once either side reaches a certain technology and manufactoring point the level of what new units bring into the game should change.
For the North by 1863 or so every new unit should come into exsistence with a Enfield or Springfield
By 1864 a improved springfield or a rare chance at a repeating rifle.
For the South by 1863 it should be a mixture of what was gleaed from the North or purchased for Europe or manufactored
A random chance should be in place for either Springfields, Enfields, Richmond rifles and Lorenzs
By Gettysburg no unit of regiment size of greater was carrying muskets any longer.
In the west muskets were getting rarer.
Yet in the game even in 1864 of 1865 there is a good chance of finding entire armies equiped with weapons that historicaly had not been used in a year or two besides by militias and garrison troops hundreds of miles away from the front lines.
By 1865 when Grant expanded the size of the AOP by bringing in coastal artillery regiments and rear line garrison trooops, even these were equiped with rifled guns of good quality.
So to sum it up, as each side hits certain technoglogical and manufactoring points the base level of guns should increase.
Artillary in the same way.
By Gettysburg 65% of the almost 300 guns brought into battle by the North were rifled.
The smoothbores were either 12 lb, 24 lb or Napoleons of good quality.
The south had 40% of its guns rifled and the smoothbores were also of good quality.
Very few were old 12 lb howitzers of 6 lb guns.
But in the game each artillary units is created with 6 lb guns.
After late 1862 or so this should not be the case.
You should have a choice of either rifled or smoothbore units and then a random chance of the unit being created with a higher quality gun.
You can upgrade it from their.
Im going to wrap up this long post and play some more and see what else comes to me.
Overall, like I said. I like the game and some good stuff does exsist. But some flaws do exsist that keep this from becoming a long term highly replayable game.
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