Matrix Games Forums

Two questions today.

Vichy France.....what exactly is it supposed to be in game terms? There is no physical demarcation between Vichy and occupied France. There are no Vichy French units to garrison their own country. The Germans/Italians have to garrison that port on the south coast of France the French pronounce as "Marsay" and spell in a manner that could never, ever be phonetically pronounced as they do. Algeria is an independent(?) country............why did you even bother to include rules describing Vichy when there appears to be no actual game mechanism that "Vichy" has an impact on?


Upgradres.....why does it cost the same to upgrade a unit multiple steps as it costs to upgrade it one step? It seems to be an incentive to avoid upgrading until absolutely necessary so as to get the maximum number of "free" levels for a single upgrade price.

The idea is that refitting would cost the same whether you were replacing your gun with 50mm, or 75mm upgrade. It is to give you a decision to make abotu when to upgrade rather than just upgrade everythign when you discover a tech.
 
Vichy France was added mostly for flavour, but the bare bones are there to allow us to develop it further in the future.

But upgrading from say a bf109e to a bf109d should be different than upgrading from a bf109e to a Do335. Even a small increase of cost between levels that rose each time a level happens would be better than the way it stands now.

As an example lets say the Germans upgraded armor once in 1940 and then nothing till 1945 but had 5 labs in and levels went up to max. If they had just a small amount of points they could theoretically upgrade their whole armor force from roughly a pzIII to a Konigstiger in one lump. Not too realistic.

Vichy. I would assume you could give them some garrisons and change Algeria from indie to either FF or Vichy.Also break Algeria into its correct designations(Tunisia,Morocco etc).Do the same with Syria. Give Syria a chance to go either Vichy or English.

For fleets put in a mechanism to make them either Vichy or FF.Make it guessing game instead of always happening the same way.

ORIGINAL: Iain McNeil

The idea is that refitting would cost the same whether you were replacing your gun with 50mm, or 75mm upgrade. It is to give you a decision to make abotu when to upgrade rather than just upgrade everythign when you discover a tech.

Vichy France was added mostly for flavour, but the bare bones are there to allow us to develop it further in the future.

OK, I can see where you are coming from on the upgrades, although I also see apathetic lurker's point as well. Adding in the fact that upgrading wastes a units turn, the decision on when to implement an upgrade becomes an important factor.

Vichy doesn't provide much flavor when it has no impact on game play. It just seems like a half finished work and the promise of future development doesn't do much to make the taste in my mouth less sour. It's just poorly implemented. It hasn't stopped me from playing and enjoying the game, but I do feel it could have been much better fleshed out before publication.

I actually understand the release without Vichy with a plan to later add it. 
 
We were going to find problems regardless what was released.  Some of the problems are glaring.  Vichy, lack of playback for PBEM, no winter in the west, etc.  Some are milder OOB, strange methods of amph, lack of AI in the Med and Africa. 
 
Probably most of these issues could have been worked out prior to release and in a world without this patch concept verses a finalized game it would be.  But WE have allowed software producers to release substandard stuff for years.  From windows to all of our wargames we constantly see patches and upgrades.  This is good since it means games etc can continually be brought current and bad because everything we recieve for computer designers is an unfinished work.
 
My only real complaint is that there is always a no return on software and I believe this is due to the fact that they know it is not done and dont wish to repay the customers when they are still dissatisfied after they patch it the 10th time.