Replying to Steel Panthers

Can we please split this topic into a favorites thread, it kinda makes me squirm when requests topic turn into what is essentially a favorites topic.

Question: have you tried to run it on alternative modes, like in win95? I'm not sure ('cause I've never had any problems) but I think it's mostly because of that.

I am playing the free version of SPWAW but it always crashes from time to time. Anyone have this problem?  

(Sorry for double post)
First real bug found from WinSPWW2!!!

In Long Campaign where I had set battles to 30 and I had had an incredible career so far (8 decisive and 4 marginal victories), I grabbed one more decisive victory, but it gave me "special battle" with no choises and ended the game!!! My last save is from relative distance back, so I haven't yet had chance to test is it going to repeat it.

Humorous side of the situation: it happened right after my decisive victory in Stalingrad... I thought could it somehow be that it is in-coded game feature, a la Panzer General, like I had really made the difference in war and Soviets would had fallen, but I don't believe so and there would still be the Allied forces to deal with.

Edit: Yep, it was a bug. Now I'm happily continuing to humiliate Soviet forces in Karach. But, I remembered wrong, I had 9DV and 4MV, now I have 10DV and 4MV, and most likely I'm getting 11DV from Karach. Anyways, at best (not in meeting engagements) I think the game is actually enjoyable in Long Campaigns - though my vibes of destroying masses of Soviet forces may give some special edge into it... Btw, what is shocking, is that I have over 4,5K repair points and I've been perhaps little too often upgraded my equipment (experience loss thingy). Paying 1000 repair points gives 750 auxiliary points to battle... Odd, because I don't believe that the game actually increases enemy points because you have expanded your core units - which makes it totally stupid to spend the 250 points for units that fight only one battle on your side when you can expand your core and without penalty have them follow you to next battle!!!!!!

Edit2: Mwhaha! New personal record in meeting engagement: 6175 - 38!!! Decisive victory?

Yeah, I abandoned my scenario-project when I noticed that negative values are impossible. However, 0 point civilians do have some effect: they drain your ammo...

PrejudiceSucks, on Jun 17 2007, 10:43 AM, said:

obviously civilians are for scenarios only. and there you can set their value to 0 (regrettably you can't actually set their value below zero, which would make for a series of very interesting scenarios, where one player would actually be trying to feed the civilian portion of their forces to the enemy for bad publicity. Think Gaza.). as for reaction fire, it often hard to tell violent civilians from guerrillas in plain clothes (the key difference is that the later have guns, but it's not uncommon to mistake a lead pipe for a rifle from a 100 meters in a highly stressful situation). Or you can play out the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (with the rebels having an unreachable victory point worth about 2/5 of their forces' point value, and trying to stall the soviets with whatever combat units they have, while letting the numerous civilians escape).

a1s, on Jun 6 2007, 07:35 PM, said:

The one problem with that is that you can't set them as "neutral", so it makes the game into some kind of Darfur simulator, as your guys reaction-fire civilians etc. etc. and you actually get points for taking them out.

In a bigger picture you are quite right, but still not quite accurately. In France Allied forces onslaughted to occupied territory, that had been living in relative peace for almost four years. German occupiers lived among the civilians, whom, when the shelling and paradrops began, were caught in the middle. When the bridgehead was secured, civilians in continental Europe were aware of possibility of attack and thus they had a chance to evacuate themselves. However Germans did no evacuation of civil population in large scale, nor didn't Allied forces warn civilians where they were going to attack. During Operation Market Garden civilian casualties were inevitable, however it isn't very fashionable to speak of them.

Juni Ori, on Jun 8 2007, 12:42 PM, said:

I was thinking about France(Normandy xD, too much saving private ryan).

Ahem... And the trophy of this weeks most ignorant comment goes to... No seriously, sorry, but check your sources again: Warsaw, Sevastopol, Rostov, Stalingrad, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Warsaw again, Budapest, Berlin, just to mention few. None was fully evacuated if at all before combat took place. However, on the other hand civilian casualties would be only cosmetic, because in truth no side fully and most not at all respected civilian lives. I admit it is in MBT more useful and logical. Including civilians into WW2 would be unnecessary slaughter, however bringing more realism into the game.