WarPlan vs Time of Fury

[Februarius]

How is this game in comparison to Time of Fury? TOF is probably my favourite wargame of this scale, but unfortunately has bugs, and also not so good UI. Or is this more like Commander Europe at War?

[gwgardner]

ToF is also my favorite of all European Theater pc games, up to this point, alas there are the never-to-be-corrected bugs. Warplan is army/corps, ToF is more corps/division. Both have very simple combat mechanics. You can do combined attacks more than once in a turn, with Warplan. I like the Warplan air and naval game better, because the interception and interdiction rules are better. Amphibious assaults are better in Warplan, as is the supply system.

I'm not a modder, have never looked at the Warplan editor, but understand that it is far more polished than that of ToF. However, ToF is very easily moddable, with text data files - I have no idea about Warplan modding manually.

Warplan is bound to have a better future, much better developer support.

[TrogusP96]

What about MWiF? How do you see it in relation to these other games?

[gwgardner]

I never seriously played WiF. The rules and mechanics are quite complex, to me. The scale is certainly much different than Warplan or ToF. At least a couple of WiF gurus are present here - Alvaro and Zovs.

[AlbertN]

World in Flames is the apex of WW2 strategy from my perspective.

It comes from a tabletop game (or well, -is- a tabletop game). It's crystal clear. Every interaction, every action, you as human player, take with full cognition of potential outcomes.
There is no this attack, this bombing, this thing, that you don't know how it may works out. The variable is the dice.

It comes with the limitations of a game meant to be played and handled by human minds and their computing skills. But that is good for me.

In its ways and mechanics covers for all that is relevant. Land, naval and air actions. It has railroaded or IF based diplomacy (ie: If Germany reaches the Caucasus, Turkey aligns with Germany). It has a very interesting system for USA entry in the war.

All the goodies come with a cost. It's a game of a certain magnitudo, that is quite time consuming.

[Hairog]

ORIGINAL: gwgardner

ToF is also my favorite of all European Theater pc games, up to this point, alas there are the never-to-be-corrected bugs. Warplan is army/corps, ToF is more corps/division. Both have very simple combat mechanics. You can do combined attacks more than once in a turn, with Warplan. I like the Warplan air and naval game better, because the interception and interdiction rules are better. Amphibious assaults are better in Warplan, as is the supply system.

I'm not a modder, have never looked at the Warplan editor, but understand that it is far more polished than that of ToF. However, ToF is very easily moddable, with text data files - I have no idea about Warplan modding manually.

Warplan is bound to have a better future, much better developer support.

I loved TOF, but it didn't work. Sooooo close. WP is the answer. Now with a better editor... (inside joke).

There doesn't seem to be a lot of naval units, but then I remember the brilliant solution that Al has come up with for convoys and escorts. There were literally hundreds of transports, escorts and subs running around the world in WW2 and hundreds of them were sunk. The capital ships were few and far between and few were sunk at sea.

When the Pacific is added (hint) then you will see some more capital ships. In the Atlantic it was mostly escorts, subs and transports.

Once I remember that, all is well.

[AlbertN]

Don't think in the Pacific we will see that more Naval Units til maybe latewar.

The ratio 3:1 shrinks the amount of units; so let's say Japan with 6 CV (and some CVLs), 10 BB (Yamato and Musashi come later), 18 CA pratically and an amount of CL / DD have a fleet of the size of the Royal Navy. (Technically the RN is larger as they had a 5:5:3 ratio by the treaties)

[TrogusP96]

Thanks for the observations. I was introduced to WiF in the 1980's. there's a good balance between the land, air and sea and for the Western Allies air and sea consumed especially for the UK, the larger expenditures. WP seems to do a pretty decent job at presenting this. How different is the the Western Front for the Allies until Overlord. It's naval and airpower and 15 divisions in North Africa, Sicily and Italy. Isn't that different than the Pacific until the Us navy under the Two Ocean Navy Act starts showing up. It seems so tempting for game designers to abstract the air and naval. I suppose one could argue why shouldn't the Barbarossa dog wag the Western Anglo tail?