New Opportunity to Be Humiliated By Ones and Zeroes

[Bullwinkle58]

Bit on the "War in the East" Christmas sale last night. Couldn't resist the price, even though I know nothing about the Eastern Front and am not an old hand with hex-based, counter-centered games. Read some of the forum and tried the tutorial, and it's another learning hill to climb. (Did not crack the manual, but I will have to in order to figure out all the Pretty Colors.) I think it'll make a nice bookend experience with AE. Very different playing it after AE. I hear the new 1.05 patch AI is pretty good too.

[Canoerebel]

Well, here's hoping you don't forsake the AE forums.  That would be a great loss!
 
I know you've monitored WitE for awhile.  From time to time, you commented on the various problems that vexxed the game.  Let us know if these have been ironed out, or if WitE is still in need of refinement. 
 
Also, will you give PBEM a crack with WitE, or will you stick to the AI?
 
Finally, if you happen to run across Q-Ball, tell him he's missed around these parts.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Well, here's hoping you don't forsake the AE forums.  That would be a great loss!

I know you've monitored WitE for awhile.  From time to time, you commented on the various problems that vexxed the game.  Let us know if these have been ironed out, or if WitE is still in need of refinement. 

Also, will you give PBEM a crack with WitE, or will you stick to the AI?

Finally, if you happen to run across Q-Ball, tell him he's missed around these parts.

This forum is my browser homepage, so I don't think I'm leaving. [:)]

AE will always be my fave, as a Navy guy and just for the sheer size of the beast. I can already see that WitE is AAA baseball at best in that regard, but it will be fun to finish a game in one winter rather than two.

I don't anticipate participating in that forum much since I know little to nothing about the history, weapons, politics, or geography and the experts over there are, if anything, an order of magnitude more "puffy" than those over here. I have not looked at the PBEM server architecture yet, but from comments I think it works well and could eliminate part (only part) of my hesitance to engage in an AE PBEM match--the neverending file fumbling and multi-part interchanges needed to manage AE turns. I think the server also makes the process of finding an opponent more seamless. Any future AE will surely adopt this achitechture.

I d/led the 1.05 beta, which the team says is the last 1.05 even if it's not "official", and there have apparently been big upgrades in Axis AI from the ship state. The Eastern Front is, of course, highly weather sensitive, and GG had, as he always does, a dilemma. Do you hard-code blizzards and let players know they're coming, or do you randomize them and get perhaps very ahistorical results. I don't understand the details yet, but it seems that weather has been the central focus of balancing in the patches. (Weather has a lot of offshoots of course, from forts to supply, but weather was a back-breaker in RL.)

Q-Ball is a prominent celebrity [8D] over there, more so than he was here. He has done several well-written and recieved AARs, and is one of the Old Men of the game engine at this point. I think detailed land combat just suits him better. He has also made remarks that WitE lacks one feature he disliked about AE--that a years-long game of AE can be lost in one turn. WitE is less fragile from mistakes. I assume he refers to losing CVs, and if so I would disagree that losing the KB means the game is over, but that's his viewpoint.

[GreyJoy]

I own WITE.I bought it a month before i bought WITPAE.
Played only against the AI....it's a cool game and probably i'll get back to it sooner or later...but since my hands were on AE, i really feel my heart belongs to this game and this theatre.
There you have no navy at all...and the air battles are just "tactical"...menaing supporting the infantry....nothing more...
 
And even the graphic...it isn't very cool looking.
 
However i think that once my life becomes normal again (meaning with that once my actual Pbem game is over) i'll give it another try [:)]

[paulkenny]

Which Japanese plane was designated the one?[&:]

[stuman]

WiTE is a nice game. Virtue to be found in much shorter game length compared to AE. Not as many things to track, or keep up with. To me, it is not a matter of being better or worse than AE, just different. A nice complement. It is easy to keep a game of both going and to switch back and forth.

But after playing WiTE for a bit, I found myself yearning for the blue of the ocean [:)]

[Yaab]

It is a golden opportunity for Imperial Guards Division to shake hands with Das Reich around Lake Baikal. Wait, the WITE map doesn't extend beyond the Urals. And the time differences - weekly turns and daily turns. I predict coordination problems...

[henhute6]

ORIGINAL: paulkenny

Which Japanese plane was designated the one?[&:]

Type 1 fighter seems to be ki-43 hayabusa.

[Banzan]

Bullwinkle is known for only playing against the AI, so i would take his comment about "ones and zeroes" that way [;)]

[Sardaukar]

Got the WitE also last week. So far just played the tutorial, few turns of Road to Leningrad and 2 turns of Grand Campaign.
 
Well worth and bit less complicated than AE, also interface is bit more refined.
 
But after AE, no game has the "monster" feeling...WitE feels very manageable, especially since I used to play War in Russia. 

[SuluSea]

ORIGINAL: stuman

WiTE is a nice game. Virtue to be found in much shorter game length compared to AE. Not as many things to track, or keep up with. To me, it is not a matter of being better or worse than AE, just different. A nice complement.

But after playing WiTE for a bit, I found myself yearning for the blue of the ocean [:)]

This pretty much sums up my feelings. I'd like to add I really feel like the Axis side in AE has a better chance of doing well than the Axis side in WITE which is the reason I quit playing it but to be fair I haven't kept up on the latest patches.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Banzan

Bullwinkle is known for only playing against the AI, so i would take his comment about "ones and zeroes" that way [;)]

Bullwinkle is also known as a smart***, so your interpretation is spot on. [:)]

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Sardaukar

Got the WitE also last week. So far just played the tutorial, few turns of Road to Leningrad and 2 turns of Grand Campaign.

Well worth and bit less complicated than AE, also interface is bit more refined.

But after AE, no game has the "monster" feeling...WitE feels very manageable, especially since I used to play War in Russia. 

Did my new thread come across as a subtle appeal to the AE community to expand horizons, give up more free time, and support Matrix while getting a deal? It didn't? Well, maybe I should try again. [8D]

I've read the tutorial manual and played the tutorial twice, from each side, but I'm waiting for the hard-copy manual to do serious reading. I'll use PDFs to look soimething up, but I don't like reading books on a monitor.

I'm not a land combat guy, so it's stretching my mind, which is the main reason I bought it. Winter is here in the Great White, and WitE represents money spent on improvements rather than rotgut booze.[:'(]

The interface is surely more Windows-esque; extensive hyperlinks mean you can get there from here in one jump. I'm also grooving on map zooming from the mouse wheel (zooming at all; the AE map hurts my eyes when I'm trying to find LCU markers in the jungle.) WitE really makes me want AE2, with a new interface but the same "guts."

And yes, it does feel smaller, which isn't bad. I'm not sure how much I'll play the GCs. Some of the scenarios are pretty big. Also, for the Soviet fan, the later-start GCs avoid all that summer 1941 heartache.

[Grotius]

WiTE does go a lot quicker, and it's fun. The graphical look is great. There are apparently some game-balance issues for PBEM, but I haven't had time to try one. The AI needs a little help, so I bump it up to 110%. But yeah, after a while I also hanker for the ocean. Also, the air model in WiTE is somewhat more abstract, which I find less satisfying.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Grotius

WiTE does go a lot quicker, and it's fun. The graphical look is great. There are apparently some game-balance issues for PBEM, but I haven't had time to try one. The AI needs a little help, so I bump it up to 110%. But yeah, after a while I also hanker for the ocean. Also, the air model in WiTE is somewhat more abstract, which I find less satisfying.

Ditto on the air model. Never thought I'd say that after AE, but the air war is an afterthought from the player interaction perspective.

RE graphics: the map is gorgeous. Looks almost 3D due to shadings. And I've never seen color used so effectively on counters to make group cohesion easier. My main problem with old-time counter PC games I played, mostly early 90s, was the workload needed to collect mental info before you could plan a turn. The colors on the counters make this far easier. GG and Co. learned a lot about interface from WITP and the Civil War game.

[Banzan]

The hard-copy manual is not like the WitP AE manual, it only contains the first part of the manual. There is an updated manual (comes with the patches i think) wich is smaller and more easy to read while playing.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Banzan

The hard-copy manual is not like the WitP AE manual, it only contains the first part of the manual. There is an updated manual (comes with the patches i think) wich is smaller and more easy to read while playing.

All I saw in the Store was that it was on paper, and monochrome. I saw the post-patch manual in the D/L, but comments in the forum seem to indicate it only covers the changes made by the patches. I guess I'll see what I get when the Wells Fargo wagon comesa down the street . . .

Mostly what I need are the counter graphics, and some ideas of the phases, etc. The data tables I can go to a PDF if I need to.

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58


Did my new thread come across as a subtle appeal to the AE community to expand horizons, give up more free time, and support Matrix while getting a deal? It didn't? Well, maybe I should try again. [8D]

Kudos for your efforts to support Matrix. As a huge fan of the Eastern Front going back to the days of Avalon Hill's classic Russian Campaign to DNO to Fire in the East/Scorched Earth I fully intend to purchase WitE when fund become available. Funds for toys are very tight as I only recently returned to work after 2.5 years of unemployment, making a third of what I did three years ago.

I played the earlier versions of the game going back to the DOS days.

For anyone who might possibly be attracted to tactical/operation games and is willing to try a game with revolutionary new mechanics and the closest thing to a real AI in any game on the market.....take a look at the forum above this one......Command Ops Battles from the Bulge. Fantastic game that I participated in the beta testing for.

I have to admit that I haven't played it much since getting hooked on WiTPAE, but in all fairness grand strategic/operational has always had a greater appeal for me than tatical/operational.

[CaptBeefheart]

I'll be picking this up soon now that it's on sale. I've been a fan of the theater since I picked up Russian Campaign as a teenager. I also bought GG's War in Russia about the same time I picked up Pacific War.

Cheers,
CC