I am not a German speaking / writing person, but before I get too far, should I just use more common names or for English only folks is this too much of a stretch?
(PS thanks in advance)...
PS it won't hurt my feelings if this is just too much... I just want some other scenario designers and players opinions...especially us non-native German folks.
Beta Tester for: War in the East 1 & 2, WarPlan & WarPlan Pacific, Valor & Victory, Flashpoint Campaigns: Sudden Storm, Computer War In Europe 2 SPWW2 & SPMBT scenario creator Tester for WDS games
Too much. Non-German speakers will be put off; fluent German speakers will wrinkle their brow unless the translation is perfect. And then there will be the crew that pops up with a million detail corrections that may or may not be actually correct.
We went through this drill in SP series. First, it is hard to find ALL of the actual translations one wants, and then often involves using nonstandard abbreviations because there isn't enough string space to hold many of the translations.
I would give German names to specialised equipment or organisation where it refers very specifically to a particular entity. All the squad names, in particular, are going to necessarily be somewhat generic, so they might as well be generic in English.
For what it's worth, I believe the Germans get a Heavy Motorcycle Squad in my Poland 39 scenario, not a Schwerekradschutzen
"What did you read at university?"
"War Studies"
"War? Huh. What is it good for?"
"Absolutely nothing."
Thanks fellows! I do appreciate the comments. I did spend about a day on this mini-project trying to replicate the German naming conventions and as a non-native German speaking/reading it just became too confusing.
What I learned was how to mod the eqp. file and the fact for myself as a designer I like all of one's Nationality stuff in an easy to find place, instead of scrolling or hunting through lists.
The other incentive and thing I wanted to try out was by have each nation (or sides) have their own set of Infantry units and or weapon systems, I could then setup up replacements for each side and also make modifications to each side's set of units. It could be more work then its worth, but I would like to see how it looks or plays out.
But the bottom line is I think I am going to dispense with the excessive naming of squad/team types and just keep it simple...
Thanks for listening and being a sound board...
Beta Tester for: War in the East 1 & 2, WarPlan & WarPlan Pacific, Valor & Victory, Flashpoint Campaigns: Sudden Storm, Computer War In Europe 2 SPWW2 & SPMBT scenario creator Tester for WDS games
Personally I don't like it when designers use too much German--in SP, half the time I have no idea what type of German unit they're talking about until I look at the pretty picture and the armament.
More generally, I decided to have different versions of German squads for '41, '43, and '44 to account for gradual improvement in inf AT capabilities over time. Not sure how other people have done it...
Agreed, it was an experiment and or a test, just got to be too much for me. I am going to craft the equipment I like at the end thigh, over time.
Beta Tester for: War in the East 1 & 2, WarPlan & WarPlan Pacific, Valor & Victory, Flashpoint Campaigns: Sudden Storm, Computer War In Europe 2 SPWW2 & SPMBT scenario creator Tester for WDS games