<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Rich Hamilton</i>
<br />In the Gettysburg title alone are maps to cover the Manassas battles as well as Sharpsburg and others. If OOB's were left free that would remove any possibility of a '62 campaign game being created. So what you may say? Well, for a good portion of gamers out there an official handling of a campaign is all they will play. And the way things went crazy with Corinth is proof that left unlocked there would soon be no point in making any further official titles. Then everyone looses, as no new campaigns come out, no engine enhancements, etc. So yes, while a pain (and for some a frustration), it is the best course of action for the hobby as a whole.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
I don't understand your logic, Rich. On the one hand you say that for a substantial (I assume you meant "substantial," otherwise why worry about it?) <i>portion of gamers out there an official handling of a campaign is all they will play.</i> Well fine. Then why fret over home brews? How could the latter possibly eat into HPS sales if your original reasoning were correct?
The reason I went to the trouble of designing a new OOB for CG is that the OOBs provided are insufficient to accurately "model" anything. All sorts of errors, and plenty of subjective opinion which does not even come close to my understanding of the history, and I've read/studied just about everything <i>except</i> the OR firsthand--I threatened to buy that a few years ago, but the problem is I have nowhere to store it! (My shelves are more than full already. <g>)
As long as I'm on it, I seem to have found an error in the large Gettysburg map. For some reason a unit an artillery unit is not allowed to move directly from hex 113,159 to 112,159. Both hexes are clear, no obstacles are listed in the information panel, both hexes are of the same elevation, yet I'm forced to go around.
Also, in one of the Pipe Creek scenarios I found Confederate units places on a pond hex (along with breastworks if I recall), and when I tried to move those units I received some kind of "bridge" error message.
These are examples of why users need to be able to change the data provided by the company. Errors are made. I know how it easy it is to do that, as I've done a lot of game mods over the years and errors seem to be my specialty. <g> But the thing is, the user needs to have the ability to pick these errors up when he finds them. No?
I can only speak for myself, but this locking of the OOB files turns me off big time to your product. If I could possibly see how it might negatively impact your sales, I might relent, as I don't wish to see you go out of business, but the truth is I've heard these arguments for years, and it's always just a tempest in a teacup, to put it no lower.
I wonder why the breakdown of cavalry and infantry units as it's handled for the Nappy titles hasn't been ported over to the ACW games. What's with that? The "skirmisher" dynamic provided for infantry units in the ACW games is hopeless. And cavalry should <i>always</i> be able to be broken down--afterall, that's how it was meant to be used, and in fact how it was actually used. (See Buford's deployment and the results he achieved on July 1.)
Indeed, what you <i>really</i> need is the abilty to breakdown cavalry into 2-man increments, this to simulate the kind of picket duty troopers regularly performed at night. Same same for infantry, especially to reasonably simulate the role of sharpshooters. Infantry as well needs more fexibility at the regimental level <i>per se</i>, with appropriate rules to go with the "skrimisher" or "battalion" breakdowns (per published house rules for the Nappy titles) so that users can't get totally silly with these subunits.
A few changes to the game system along these (and similar) lines might breathe a lot of new life into the product, and go a darned sight further to increasing sales than your decision to lock the OOBs.
Anyway, I hope someone bothers to take a look at those two map errors I cited.
Take care.
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