Nato symbols only are a no-go for WWII games

[Godisard]

ORIGINAL: Chris10

you said it : US army group...germans did not used their symbols on a regular base...just accept it

You're just trolling. According to you neither germans, russians nor the allies bothered with symbols. I showed you otherwise for the Allies. No doubt a google search will bring up maps from the others. Why do you think the Germans had their own set of unit symbols? Perhaps to use on maps?

[Chris10]

ORIGINAL: HRL58

face it...when zooming in you only find hq symbols and not a single unit symbol for infantry or alike...for divisions they only use acronyms and numbers...[:'(]

Well the Army-HQ:s and Korps symbols are there, and If you look carefully you'll see that some russian units even have the symbols showing their suspected motorization/armoured levels under their command flags.

But if you still demand small pretty sprites to make this a game appealing to the broad public that plays FPS or Racing games I rest my case

with the official statement from Joel there where no case anymore anyway...[:)]...
but I found it quite interesting to discuss the map issue and the usage or no usage of the real symbols in real military maps..germans did not bothered with them much...only occasionally using HQ symbols but not on a constant base and less using all those fancy symbols exisitng in the records...
I know that for fact as I had lots of maps from my granddad in my own hands when I was younger but I liked the idea that poeple would go crazy now looking for prooving me wrong...LOL..there are german maps with symbols but very very few
My granddad passed away in feb 2011 at age of 86..he was 3rd Parachute Division in France 44...fighting in the battle of Hürtgen Forest and others..got severly wounded and awarded an iron cross and two of my greatuncles did not come back from Stalingrad...their only remains are some black and white photos in uniform as their bodys never where recovered and identified.
Funny thing about this is that we are a family spread out over the planet..we have a polish family wing with a different surname , a swedish family wing ,a canadian and the original german....

ORIGINAL: Godisard
You're just trolling. According to you neither germans, russians nor the allies bothered with symbols. I showed you otherwise for the Allies. No doubt a google search will bring up maps from the others. Why do you think the Germans had their own set of unit symbols? Perhaps to use on maps?

Go and find a german military map used for operational planing issues which is using all the corresponding symbols we had on our books (not only HQs) and I apologize...same goes for russian maps...I have seen lots of early allies war maps without symbols too (as far as I rememebr the allies where actually more than just the US,where they?)...maybe towards the end of the war they changed that and got more accurate, especially US maybe, who knows...however...when I say they did not bothered with symbols it doesnt necessarily means that there do not exist any maps where they are properly used,whats wrong with you ? If in 50 out of a 1000 maps they use symbols you have prooven your point that they indeed used them but I too would have prooved my point that they did not bothered with symbols as the vast majority of maps is without them...Where is the contradiction here or the trolling ?..you dont seem to have any clue about the term trolling neither you seem to be able to maintain a reasonable discussion and sticking to the matter and the facts...its plain simple ...once you feel the need to start to offend others or accuse them of trolling you most probably going into the wrong direction as YOU actually become the troll by starting a flame war that way, understand ?

[Godisard]

ORIGINAL: Chris10
Go and find a german military map used for operational planing issues which is using all the symbols we had on our books and I apologize.

Here's a map that shows symbols for Army HQ, Corps HQ's, Divisional HQ's and, although they're a bit difficult to make out, I believe a Regimental HQ and tank platoons: http://www.gutenberg-e.org/esk01/maps/esk05b.html
Is that good enough for you?

maybe ... maybe, who knows...however...

That's a lot of maybes for someone who was so sure that symbols were not used on WWII maps by any of the combatants. One thing I am sure of though is that neither the Germans, nor the Russians, nor the Allies used sprites on their situation maps.

[Chris10]

ORIGINAL: Godisard

ORIGINAL: Chris10
Go and find a german military map used for operational planing issues which is using all the symbols we had on our books and I apologize.

Here's a map that shows symbols for Army HQ, Corps HQ's, Divisional HQ's and, although they're a bit difficult to make out, I believe a Regimental HQ and tank platoons: http://www.gutenberg-e.org/esk01/maps/esk05b.html
Is that good enough for you?

Interesting that you deleted the part in my qoute where I said a german map showing more than JUST HQ symbols...[:D]

iam tired of discussing this..you are so entitled by your opinion that you wont even see or accept the truth if it would kick you into your butt..so iam going to rest this issue my friend

ORIGINAL: Chris10
when I say they did not bothered with symbols it doesnt necessarily means that there do not exist any maps where they are properly used,whats wrong with you ? If in 50 out of a 1000 maps they use symbols you have prooven your point that they indeed used them but I too would have prooved my point that they did not bothered with symbols as the vast majority of maps is without them..

obviously this looks to complicated as you seem to be unable to process the logic behind this...thats ok

[Godisard]

ORIGINAL: Chris10

Interesting that you deleted the part in my qoute where I said a german map showing more than JUST HQ symbols...[:D]

The map shows some tank platoons as well.

you wont even see or accept the truth if it would kick you into your butt

Go look in the mirror.

But here's a tactical map which shows not only symbols for Regimental and Battalion HQ's but also for infantry and artillery. Somehow I doubt that that will satisfy you though.

[Mynok]

How long does it take yall to recognize a troll when you smell it? [8|]

[Joel Billings]

ORIGINAL: Chris10

My granddad passed away in feb 2011 at age of 86..he was 3rd Parachute Division in France 44...fighting in the battle of Hürtgen Forest and others..got severly wounded and awarded an iron cross and two of my greatuncles did not come back from Stalingrad...their only remains are some black and white photos in uniform as their bodys never where recovered and identified.

My dad possibly called for artillery to be fired at your grandfather. My dad was an FO for a corps artillery battalion in the Hürtgen Forest. It's a small world.

Anyway you are right about PG in that AFAIK it was the best selling hex PC wargame, selling over 250,000 at full price and probably another several hundred thousand at lower prices or part of bundles. Given that until then the best PC hex wargames would sell 30,000 copies, that was quite a leap. Of course although it had hexes and detailed weapons stats, it was not the kind of historically accurate game that most think of when they talk about wargames. But it was fun to make and fun to play.

[PeeDeeAitch]

ORIGINAL: Omat
no beautiful ladies.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's not go overboard.

[Ketza]

Was the first version of PG a console game from nintendo? I recall playing a game very much like PG in the early 90s on a console game. I played it all night for 2 days until I beat all the scenarios. It was fun but did not have a lot of replayability. I found PG to be the same way.

[Joel Billings]

Daisunraiku (not sure of the spelling, but I heard it called Dice and Rice). It was the inspiration for PG. Played by several of the senior SSI development people (I think Chuck Krogel, Bret Berry and maybe Dan Cermak), they thought it was good and that SSI could do something like it. Paul Murray, a veteran PC game designer/programmer that had been assigned to a Nintendo project was put on making PG when the Nintendo project was cancelled due to budget problems caused by the delay of AD&D Dark Sun. Lucky for all the future PG fans out there. I remember Chuck playing Tom Sawyer and getting me intrigued enough in the project that I ultimately wrote the campaign tree and set the parameters for the maps in many of the scenarios, and then Bret got me interested in doing the voice scripting for the German General (the voice actor won a CGW award for best voiceover in a game... You're sevices are no longer required.....Bang). PG attracted a lot of the most talented people at SSI to it, and the final product showed this. A similar thing happened with Steel Panthers, but that's another story.

[WarHunter]

PG will always be a classic war-game.

The use of silhouettes to convey the command and control Army, Navy and Air forces was simply inspired design. It worked for a vast majority of gamers. Whatever the level of skill they had. I don't think it would have done well with NATO symbols.

I've played many a board game that did not use NATO symbols and still made sense of the counters. Sprites or Symbols make little difference its the information it communicates that matters.

PG had scenarios and campaigns for solo play. The AI was moronic but it never quit. Back when hooking up 2 computers meant dragging it over to a friends home and setting it up to play Doom. PG could be played head to head.

PG played on 1 Computer Hotseat was awesome. Although it became very clear many scenarios were not balanced at all. Did it really matter among friends? Besides, when snacks and beer are shared with good conversation and smokes, a few house-rules are easy to work in.

When hot-seat was multiplay, it filled that void quite well. When not playing WiF or some other board-game, PG easily became a staple for my gaming time.

If you are curious if PG is still worth the time to play, or maybe you have not seen it. Check out the link. The decision is yours.

http://rudankort.spb.ru/pgforever/
PG forever, works right out of the install with Win7.

[randallw]

I enjoyed PG, even though the scale of the game was always a bit of a mystery.

It may be strange ( or not ) but most of the (computer) wargames I played up to the late 90's more often had the tank/infantry/arty symbols compared to NATO symbols.

[Chris10]

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings
My dad possibly called for artillery to be fired at your grandfather. My dad was an FO for a corps artillery battalion in the Hürtgen Forest. It's a small world.

Yes it is !
well..Iam confident that it wasnt your dad who got him injured [;)]. Artillery was not very effective in that battle as the forest was very dense...same applied for air support...
US commanders totally underestimated the density of the forest and morale of the german troops and their will to fight. They moved in as if it would be a cakewalk and soon It turned out one of the longest and bloodiest battles the US had to fight in europe taking severe casualties. It was a much harder fight than in Omaha Beach.
When I was around 14-15 I obviously tried everything to get my granddad to tell glorious war stories but he refused to talk about the war until to his death, he always answered "well,we better should forget about this my boy" and then he smiled. He was a very very serious man. I think all his life he carried a huge weight of terrible memories and traumas he tried to forget.
Interesting detail is that at the Hürtgen Military Cementery there is an american war memorial honoring a german Lieutnant who rescued a wounded american soldier stucked in a german minefield and got severly wounded himself in the attempt helping the american boy to get out of there and later died of his wounds in hospital while the US soldier survived.


For the older this is no news but the younger on this board who really wanna know about the war in the east should try to get a copy a Fieldmarshall Erich von Mannsteins Book "Lost Victorys" and get first hand knowledge of the epic struggle from one of the most genius commanders of WWII who was highly respected even by his enemys and up to his death in the 70s high and highest US, NATO and British Generals constantly attended personally his birthday partys and he is the only ex Wehrmacht Fieldmarshall burried with all military honours in Germany.
http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Victories-Me ... 796&sr=8-2

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings
Anyway you are right about PG in that AFAIK it was the best selling hex PC wargame, selling over 250,000 at full price and probably another several hundred thousand at lower prices or part of bundles. Given that until then the best PC hex wargames would sell 30,000 copies, that was quite a leap. Of course although it had hexes and detailed weapons stats, it was not the kind of historically accurate game that most think of when they talk about wargames. But it was fun to make and fun to play.

thnx for helping me out....that is a far better elaborated and more like what was on my mind when I said that PG was the father of the pc hex-games...when you are not a native speaker sometimes things come out in a different way and could be misunderstood...[:)] and yeah...I played the crap out of PG...it was unbelivable responsive and intuitive...of course its no comparison to real serious hex wargames cause its mechanics were simplified. I always dreamed about some sort of super PG like WITE or bigger size with more strategic/mechanic depth but maintaining the simplicity of the UI and the gameplay so when I found out that WITE does not feature icons/sprites (at least optional) but only the dry/metaforical NATO chips, which is very anachronistic anyway, I felt sort of alienized...[:)].
It had nothing to do with the quality of the game itself , neither I wanted to diminish or bash it any way cause from what I have seen and read its mechanics are well thought and a lot of hard work had gone into it.

ORIGINAL: WarHunter
If you are curious if PG is still worth the time to play, or maybe you have not seen it. Check out the link. The decision is yours.
http://rudankort.spb.ru/pgforever/
PG forever, works right out of the install with Win7.

Thnx a bunch for this link. I will certainly check this out. My Playstation 2 gave up some time ago so (fair enough after 9 years) so I could not play PG anymore and gave away all my Playstation 1 and 2 games so It got forgotten as life moved on.
I played PG and Allied General always on Playstation as their versions used to run a lot faster and more responsive than the PC versions.

ORIGINAL: WarHunter
The use of silhouettes to convey the command and control Army, Navy and Air forces was simply inspired design. It worked for a vast majority of gamers. Whatever the level of skill they had. I don't think it would have done well with NATO symbols.

Very true....

[Schmart]

ORIGINAL: Mynok


How long does it take yall to recognize a troll when you smell it? [8|]

I see I'm not the only one to smell a troll. Stop feeding it guys!

[Joel Billings]

I think the discussion of the original point has run its course. There were some fair points brought up but I think they've been answered.

[neuromancer]

ORIGINAL: PeeDeeAitch

ORIGINAL: Omat
no beautiful ladies.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's not go overboard.

I know, right? I was pretty alarmed when he said that too!

[neuromancer]

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

I understand the desire by some to play with weapons icons instead of NATO symbols and don't want to belittle it. I worked on Panzer General and loved it and understand where Chris10 is coming from. As pointed out later in the thread, providing the weapons icons that are more than just a simple "generic" icon to replace each NATO symbol would require coding work (especially if you wanted more than one per country per unit type, i.e. to show changing weapons over time). We made a decision early on that due to the target audience of this product, we could not afford the time and resources to provide this option for the few that would use it. We actually provided both options in our Civil War game War Between the States. However given the information that the counters provide and the detailed nature of this game, and the customer base we were targeting, we just didn't think there would be many players that would feel strongly about the need for icons and decided to use our limited resources on other items. I wish we had unlimited resources and could provide this option, but we don't as we don't think it would result in more than a few extra sales of the game.

Thank you Joel, I beleive that about covered what I expected their view to be.