Musings of SOW Gettysburg… The things to laugh at.

[MarkT]

The things to laugh at. :laugh:

I am a Grognard Wargammer. I have been so for almost 50 years. I eat, breath, sleep, War games, Miniatures, mapping and design. It cost me two marriages, but gave me 2 great boys that are excellent game players. I am published is various places in gamming, and behind a lot of historical research projects. My specialty is Civil War and Napoleonics. My initial entry into this system was in TC2M. I wanted to do maps since I was trained as a civil engineer, and ALL wargames require maps (and I had done thousands). But, there was a mapper already modding, so I wrote scenarios. I have created tens of thousands of scenarios through the years, and I am published in doing so. All I needed to do was learn the syntax of the script file. A very easy chore. But the game has its amusing points. The seemingly unfixable question marks

Amusement:
Many people think the movie Gettysburg is a historical documentary. Sorry to burst you bubbles, but it is based on a piece of historical FICTION.

Amusement:
I read a post on the forum a while back. There was a discussion about, munitions' ranges and effectiveness. After looking up the data I found the individual was correct. The game is still wrong.

Amusemant:
In order to make this game historical, it needs to be modded. :woohoo: That is a good one.

Amusement:
Realism mode – It’s not. Or does nothing at all. Dictionary anyone?

Amusement:
Sighting friendly units – There are multiple range toggles in options to limit the sighting of your own troops to add realism, yet you allow the enemy units to be seen for miles….. Huh? Too funny. The MOST obvious OVERLOOKED sighting restriction, is what you yourself can see.

Amusement:
Zoom – Why have it when you are 150 to 2000 feet in the air… Oh yea to see enemy units across the map 3 mile away in the woods.
The ones you are not supposed to see.

Amusement:
Artillery AI- Oooops no amusement here, for there is no apparent AI for artillery. Easy to slaughter. We don’t even have to go into cavalry.

Amusement:
Supply Wagons – Originally a supply wagon was locked to its parent unit. I.E. Wadsworth’s supply could only supply Wadsworth. Well a decision was made, based on the fact that “…it was late in the war, most ammo was standard.” So from that point on, Wagons could be shared.
Well, why do we have weapon types? Well those weapon types are different. In most cases EVERY brigade is different from each other, so ammo is different. To me, it seems players were too lazy to watch their own wagons. So for playability, we virtually eliminate the need for supply and historical accuracy. Too, too, funny.

Amusement:
When I wrote the Mods Manual, I included all the data that I could find that anyone had created. Besides my scenario creation section, the manual consisted of a lot shear gibberish. Unformatted and barely readable. When I was done with my section, I highlighted sections and places with yellow highlight that needed work and (?) question marks and passed it on to the next person to add their part. After the game was published, I looked into the book. All of my edits and questions were still there and so was the gibberish.
For YEARS I looked at that and just laughed.
Then, yesterday I went into it and…… It had been fixed. Well, partly, almost. Many of my highlighted questions went unanswered. But there was a lot of new GOOD stuff. Sort of. The ability to create and edit Tree dds files apparently has been changed. What is written there does not work. Too Funny. How do you edit / create a plist file? Waste of reading. We are trying to promote mod ability aren't we.

Amusement:
Message / courier system
Originally, the message system had the couriers take the roads to deliver messages. This was great for the players who played large scale games. Not so much for the players that played low level command.
So those players lobbied to change the game. So now the couriers ride 200 yards to deliver a message, but never reach an officer that is out of sight. Sometimes over and over into enemy lines.
INSTEAD of a 100% turn around, why not give the player an option when sending the message ROAD or NOT ROAD. Toggle it. That decision was not thought out. It went from Tough to terrible. Couriers became a useless feature.

Amusement:
Grognard mode: The term grognard was usually associated with the bitching of the French Imperial Guard. This term carried over to the wargame community as a hard core gamer. That is what I am, a hard core war gamer. In NSD terms, it is a player that wants to commit suicide. This is simply comical. It seems, a carryover idea from someone that played too many fantasy games on Nintendo. Grognard mode should be all setting to absolute realism. Something we done have.

Amusment
Custom settings – not enough of them. Many don’t make sense. It only goes half way to nowhere.

Amusement:
It is well documented in the NSD files the movement rate of marching infantry is 2.5 miles an hour, yet the game speed is 4 miles per hour. The actual formula developed by Alexander the Great was: 2.5 miles per hour with a 10 minute rest. This breaks down (in mathematics) to 3 miles per hour. (Not, 4, or 2.5 in NSD Math). This is still a very funny mis -reading of the NSD Rosetta stone.

Amusement:
Troops marching around a corner - fun to watch, while they are in town, they look like they are looting.

Amusement:
Windows 10 Pro
Matrix has informed me that they have received no response from the developer. Well watching all the comments on Windows 10 (not many), I can see why.
Hey, sales hurt me too.

To the users of windows 10 home, how long is it going to be till you get an update from Microsoft that will kill your game?

I for one would be willing to pay for a new version of Gettysburg and Waterloo, and I would be happy to assist in any conversion. But I would like some of the amusements fixed.

CU