Matrix Games Forums

Should true troop cost be on or off in a PBEM battle? This setting seems to vary in battles sent to me (rarity is always on though).

Its funny that you ask this, as I have a problem with this very question.

I normally ask for all realism settings to be on unless otherwise negotiated. However I have been finding folks turning true troop off at the same time as turning rarity off. Sometimes there is a good reason to turn rarity off, such as in large games were you soon run out of units to buy, or where you want something special like a river crossing or parachute landing. I have never agreed to turning true troop cost off, but I notice a few turns in to games that I am being overwhelmed with Soviet Guards etc.

Now it is up to me to pick this up early and speak out in protest if it hasn't been negotiated beforehand, but I am going to check very carefully in future because it is happening a lot.

The reason I brought it up is that I sent a battle to someone and didn't realize True Troop was off...now I'm in the desert in 11/42 facing a force consisting almost entirely of Tiger IE's. I understand turning these off if you're setting up a *special* scenario, but it seems like 'stacking the deck' to turn them off in a PBEM game. They were added to SPWAW to address the old concern of unrealistic force composition; looks to me like they should always be on (unless specifically agreed to beforehand). And I can't complain too loudly about the battle I mentioned above since I'm the one who set it up. <img src="rolleyes.gif" border="0">

Seems to me that everything should be default unless agreed upon beforehand.

Sigh................

When a prospective pbem is received, here's how to find out "what is what" without a lot of effort and wasted time.

Load the pbem battle. Exit without doing anything.
Go to preferences and see what the settings are. Look 'em all over. If you don't like what you see, go back to the negotiation table.

There are a lot of places to make mistakes when generating a pbem battle. It is very good to check the preferences before spending a lot of time.

Further, the person who is sending the pbem battle should check the preferences before sending them to be sure mistakes were not made.

To get a set of default preferences to work with, merely delete to prf file and then load SPWAW.

Originally posted by Redleg:
Seems to me that everything should be default unless agreed upon beforehand.

Sigh................

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That's what I was trying to ask in my original question: what is the default setting? As you mentioned in the follow up, when you load a PBEM battle from someone it changes your preferences to their settings; I didn't realize these preference settings are then retained. Forgot about the prf trick...thanks.