Legend - Finishing What I Started

[Eric Larsen]

Daxon,
Okay you asked for some ideas so here's my take on what I'd like to see to improve SR2010 with SR2010 II.

First off would be to realize that SR2010 has two levels - the regional maps and the world maps. Basically an operational level and a strategic level. The biggest mistake I see at the world level is that while the manual says there's no World Market there is in fact World Market programming still stuck in the game. I'm playing my Americas versus the World variant so I've only got two regions to keep track of and I now have over 150 million "illegal aliens" sneaking into my game per year from that supposedly nonexistent World Market. I just take advantage of that programming snafu to enlarge both populations. If it were working correctly one region would be gaining immigrants while the other was losing emigrants, not both regions gaining immigrants from nowhere. I'd like to see the world level truly be devoid of any World Market programming and that might mean another game engine that runs the world level that has the WM programming aced out completely.

I'd also think that for the regional level the battalion level is excellent but at the world level it should be brigade level to keep the numbers of units down to something manageable for humans and the AI.

There needs to be AI's that match the short-term regional level games and another that is long-term for the world level games. The game certainly has the short-term AI as there are so many more boring little scenarios and missions compared to world level scenarios. When playing at the world level that short-term AI gives us short-term amusement and challenge. I'd like to see a long-term AI that builds and upgrades industrial facilities. I'd like to see a long-term AI that researches every good research tech, both military and society/industrial, so that it can keep pace with us humans who do it. I'd like to see a long-term AI that scraps crappy obsolete units so it can build more new and improved models and have an armed forces it can afford to run properly. I'd like to see a long-term AI that doesn't go stupid filling up every military build slot on turn 1 that it can't really afford to begin a game. There is just so much difference in approach to a short-term regional scenario and a long-term world scenario that there really needs to be separate AI's to run each. What works for one level can be a disaster for the other.

I'd like to see AI's playing the economic game better which means different AI's for different economic situations. Playing the economic game is something like playing an accordion. For a while you'll be compressing the accordion/economy to get your treasury built up and then you'll be expanding your accordion/economy to use that built up treasury to engage in some deficit financing to expand your production, research and military. I'd like to see AI's run production smarter so that they don't overproduce some items that then sit on the trade market forever or until the AI drops it's price so low that it's just too tempting to buy. Export pricing should be improved so it's not just a case of any day the AI sells something it automatically jacks the price up by a fullscrollwheel click and if it doesn't it reduces the price a full scrollwheel click. Pricing should be more stable and price increases/decreases should be done with small alt-scrollwheel clicks. AI's should not leave tons of stuff for sale for long and there should be price points below which it will just dump everything unsold back into inventory and start again. I can't count the number of times I bought stuff at well below the AI's cost just because no one was buying and the unsold stock just built up until I cleaned out the inventory and cleaned up on getting a great deal at the AI's expense. Military goods is the biggest problem product where I can take advantage of AI's overproducing and then getting stuck selling below cost. AI's shouldn't overproduce military goods for export especially when they're at war because I've seen where they then end up not having enough military goods when I am at war with them. If an AI has an overabundance of overproduction I would like to see it produce less than demand to burn up that excess inventory and turn a profit in the process. I find it works very well and I overproduce for a while then underproduce to burn up the excess inventory.

I remember some posts where a player was modding the game for customer buying tendencies. He was complaining that India had a high consumer goods satisfaction point and when I think of India I sure don't think of them as being super consumer goods consumers considering how many live in abject poverty. Things like consumer satisfaction should not be based upon regions but upon a universal factor like GDP/c. The reason some regions are more prolific at buying consumer goods than others really boils down to GDP/c. Therefore make GDP/c the driving factor in consumer satisfaction. The more disposable income people have the more they'll buy. After the basics have been fulfilled that means more esoteric products like consumer goods get bought. So make GDP/c the driving factor behind how much consumers in any region will buy. That will cut out arguments about whether or not some region has realistic consumer satisfaction points because it will all be universal dependent upon GDP/c. As a secondary factor government type would be the other factor driving consumer consumption as people in democracies tend to have more goodies to buy than in totalitarian types where consumer satisfaction is far less important.

I'd like a "Tootsie Roll Pop" AI, you know one that lasts a long, long time. I only play the world scenarios to enjoy all of the aspects of the game system and because that's what a Supreme Ruler would do. What I'd like is a long-term AI that can handle the world level for an extended period of time. I think that allowing the game to run indefinitely is a mistake. I remember some of you have discussed this and said you didn't intend for us to play 100 year games. I agree that you should put a time limit on the game. I'd think that 30 years ought to be the max and possibly less. That should allow for plenty of time for us to conquer the world and if humans can't accomplish that in what would be a "normal" adult lifespan then they shouldn't be trying to become Supreme Rulers.

I'd really like to see realistic WMD rules of engagement. The way you've screwed up WMD rules of engagement makes me just turn the crap off and play conventional. I grew up in the 50's and 60's going to elementary schools on army bases and I vaguely remember those "duck and cover" drills being drilled into me. Populations can be "conditioned" to accept the use of WMD's in a large-scale conflict the same way they were during the 50's and 60's and even into the 70's. I find the rule that whole cities or units would defect to the other side if your region uses WMD to be utterly devoid of reality. Yeah like some city would defect to the other side so it can then be a target for WMD use. While some of the population would disagree with WMD use and some soldiers might well go conscientious objector you would not see whole cities or whole units go that route. I was watching a show on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and this Russian soldier was answering a question as to why did the Russian soldiers fight at all in Afghanistan and he replied that just like the American soldiers went to 'Nam when it was unpopular they did their job and the Russian soldiers were just doing their job following orders when they fought in Afghanistan and he asked "what the hell kind of army would you have if soldiers didn't follow orders?" In another show John Gresham explained that Americans are not going to give up their nukes because they give us a warm fuzzy secure feeling.

So I'd like to see realistic WMD rules of engagement. First use would be the most unpopular position and it would be reflected in the Domestic Approval Rating taking a good hit. Depending upon government type the use of WMD should have varying negative effects. Tyrannical government types just aren't going to see much negativity because they keep control of the masses. More democratic types would experience more negative public dissent. It would make the law enforcement social feature more important to keep funded properly or even overfunded properly. Now when it comes to replying in kind to a WMD attack then the negative effects would be greatly diminished because if a region gets WMD'd the populace will be screaming for their region to reply in kind and WMD the offending region into total oblivion. Here not replying in kind would have a bigger negative impact, with the most negative being the democracy types of government. The totalitarian regimes would just not see much public opinion one way or the other if it's region uses WMD while the more democratic types would experience more public opinion swings. If you ever get minefields working they too ought to be considered "WMD" for giving negative public opinion on it's use. Why even bother with WMD's if you make unrealistic rules that make their use not worth the effort? If you're going to include WMD then allow us to play with it in a realistic manner. Regions with WMD that are losing the war will most likely use their WMD's as a last resort regardless of public opinion.

I'd like to see realistic "regional politics" as regards the declaration of war. The current system of little regions going ballistic on big regions is just utterly unrealistic. Yeah like when did you see little wimps going around picking on the big school bully? Nope it was always the big school bully picking on little wimps. Buildcap is the wrong reason to have regions decide to go to war anyway but if it is a factor then it should be big buildcap regions picking on smaller, adjacent buildcap regions. Whatever happened to the number 1 reason to go to war - Religion? Or the second reason - Economics? I'd like to see regions going to war with each other because they have different government types that aren't friendly to each other. Tyrannical type governments should be more prone to declaring war than the democratic ones though democratic ones aren't immune to preemptive attacks for economic or political gains. I'd like to see religion factored into the games so regions have basic religion types modeled. Then you can build in the religious enmities that really exist in the world today and would in the alternative history.

Just look at our current War on Terror. Look at how a democracy is installing puppet governments for economic gain while touting it's spreading democracy in an area of the world where totalitarian governments rule and have ruled for thousands of years. Look at how our War on Terror is really a smokescreen for yet another boring iteration of the Umpteenth Crusades of Christians versus Muslims. Look at how making a big smokescreen of WMD activity has brought about a preemptive war in Iraq to rid a totalitarian regime of WMD's that actually didn't exist just to secure the oil for economic gain. The reasons for war are many and varied and that fact needs to be modeled in SR2010 II. Regions should have a Religion rating like governments are currently modeled and those religions modeled in the game ought to have varying levels of peaceful/warlike intentions towards each other. There should be radical and moderate flavors for some religions like Christians and Muslims. Just think how improved the regional Middle East scenario could be if there were Jews surrounded by lots of Muslims. Some Muslims would be radical like Iran while some would be more moderate like Jordan. Some would be more likely to go to war with Isreal while others would sit on the fence waiting to see who's going to win before jumping on the winning bandwagon. Regions should also consider economic gains for declaring war. Is there some adjacent region that has some economic goody that that region lacks? That's a good reason to go to war especially for a bigger region wanting to steal a smaller region's economic goodies. Regions that aren't adjacent should be very unwilling to go to war with regions far away since the AI can't get any units there to fight anyway so what's the use of a region declaring war on another region when it will never go fight it? I've seen way too many AI regions declare war and jack up their alert levels and all it accomplishes is to break that region's bank account and it never fires a shot in anger.

I'd like to see AI's that aren't so prone to declaring war on us humans, esepcially at the hardest difficulty levels. Make us humans have to declare war at the highest difficulty level and make the AI's do the diplomacy thing early so they make lots of allies. That way the onus is on us humans to declare war on an AI and then that AI gets lots of AI buddies to support it. A lot less inter-AI warfare would go a long way to making it more difficult for us humans. When the AI's go stupid and declare war on each other it just makes it way too easy for us humans to go around mopping up the economically trashed AI runts. It would also make things tougher if AI's actually did diplomacy with us humans and tried to get alliances with us so if we do decide to go to war with them then we would have to break alliances beforehand which ofcourse would have negative consequences for us with Domestic Approval and regional politics.

I'd like to see the tech tree finished and more futuristic military units modeled so that all of those techs that say they're a prerequisite for unit designs actually have unit designs attached to them. I'd also like to see all those military techs like facility defenses or defense upgrades that used to say they'd increase unit/facility defenses to actually work the way they're supposed to. Too bad the facility defenses don't actually work because it sure would improve the AI if it could research the facility defenses and make it's facilties tougher for us to missile into oblivion. Too bad that when you were making an alternative history you didn't take advantage of that depression to have regions dump all that old, obsolete military junk you ended up modeling early on so you could have made more of those futuristic units. The game certainly shows how ineffective that old garbage is against more modern equipment. One thing I noticed that could be improved is CVN's 79 and 81. I would suggest switching the naval catapult system tech for something in the electro-magnetic line since CVN79 or CVN81 do not use the old steam-driven catapults but newfangled electromagnetic ones. That would give them more of a technological edge over the older CVN's and would force players both human and AI to start researching the electromagnetic line before being able to get them. I'd like to see more society techs since they seem to peter out way too quickly. More conservation would be cool as I've found that it is better to conserve than not to. Lots less industrial facilities needed and it becomes easier to become self sufficient economically and have exports for sale.

I remember one post where one of you were telling us that you put a big damper on researching techs so we couldn't blitz through them quickly so we would be kept busy longer. Why bother trying to extend research to keep us busy when the AI is so pathetic at keeping us busy in the first place? I've found that R&D is very unrealistic because of that. I find that the smart way to R&D is to R&D one tech at a time so I get that tech's advantage sooner. I R&D one tech at a time and when it reaches one day left I add another tech. Usually the first one completes R&D the next day while the second gets a small half-day headstart. That's just very unrealistic to have a region, esepcially a large one with lots of R&D slots, to only R&D one tech at a time. It's even dumber when you look at how the AI's R&D - they damn near fill up their R&D slots right away and then it takes the AI's forever just to get their first completed tech. Sadly the AI's are actually doing it realistically as regions in real life do research more than one tech at a time. I bet Iran is researching more things than just nuclear power or weapons. There shoud be a spending cap on individual techs so that we can't blitz through one tech in a matter of a week or less. If there were spending caps on individual techs then one would be forced to research multiple techs. There should be no spillover of unspent tech R&D money on tech level or efficiency. What's spent on tech should only go for techs, what's spent on tech level should only go to tech level and what's spent on efficiency should only affect efficiency. If there are caps on individual techs then one would have to research more techs in order to use up it's tech budget. Adding more techs would not increase every tech's estimated research time unless the total tech budget were exceeded. The AI should be smartened up to how to maximize R&D so it doesn't put too many techs into R&D thus extending when they'd get done. The AI should be smartened up to R&D society/industrial techs especially at the world level. For shorter regional games it wouldn't be as important.

I'd like to see some better scenarios. They all seem to be nothing but variations of the same theme. Same start date, same techs, same military strengths. I haven't looked at all the scenarios but what I've seen doesn't give me much variety. I'd like to see a "Final Battle" world level scenario where the start date is like 2026, all the techs have been researched by all regions, all regions have nicely built up economies based upon the latest techs like synthetic fuel plants and fusion power with all facilities at maximum size, all regions would have the latest greatest military equipment they can have. No R&D to keep us busy and the AI confused and always behind technologically. No real need to upgrade facilities unless they get damaged. That way it would be more of a straight wargame and the only thing to keep us busy is fighting. I mean if you're going to do alternate history then by golly take advantage of that alternate history to give us true alternative history scenarios even if they're a bit unrealistic. What's important is to give us some fun alternatives when you're doing alternative histories along with ones more realistically based.

The other thing I don't like about the cookie-cutter scenario design of scenarios is not one unit is ever trained up. Despite a depression regions would always be training some of their military up to wartime snuff. Granted not their whole army but they would keep a group of elite units trained up. Units like special forces, airborne, marines, and strategic bombers would always be kept trained up as their special functions dictate that in order to function properly they have to be well trained. Some armor, some mech and some of other units would be trained up a bit too. If a unit that is 100% trained is 2 times as effective as a 0% trained unit (I read that in one post) then economically it makes more sense to have a smaller, better trained army. I've found that it works well in practice as now I do not make a huge army but one that has the best stuff and I train every unit up with atleast one round of each type of training. Naval and air units I run through two or three cycles of training because they don't do terrain training. I find that trained units trash untrained units rather easily and the AI never trains units so it's a cakewalk through the untrained obsolete trash the AI's throw at me.

Training cycles would be a great user friendly addition. Allow us to give units more than one training session at a time. I sure would like to be able to click on each type of training I want a unit to engage in and then sit back and let the unit train itself up. That would be so much more user friendly than currently having to assign one training mission at a time and then having to wait until they're done just to tell it to do another training type and hopefully I don't lose track of where I'm at. If the training progressed one type at a time as shown in the training popup display I'd be a happy camper.

I'd also like to see scenarios where each region doesn't have the same economic setup but is setup to run itself better. The domestic markups and production efficiencies should make sense for that region so that AI's have a better base to work from. Us humans can make adjustments smarter so making each region more economically viable in the setup would help make the AI's better opponents. I would suggest putting in R&D projects in the queue for each region to begin each scenario, especially ones the AI isn't likely to research at all. That way you as the scenario designer can help give us a better game by helping to overcome the AI's current poor R&D choices, especially at the world level. You should also know who the best ministers are for each position and you should give AI the best AI ministers possible. I want to see the "A" list of ministers working the game for the AI's, not just the "C" list. I do end up using two of the six you use by default but in different positions. If you're going to make half units then make sure they are half units. I've seen that you create half units that are actually full strength units because you're not making them fractional. The problem is that this makes those half units show as full strength for cargo capacities and a half unit will show the same cargo capacity as a full unit because you didn't fractionalize the half units properly to show half cargo capacity. I can't count the number of times this confused me into sending a damn half unit to carry a unit that a full unit could carry but the half unit can't because you didn't properly fractionalize them. Those half units are worthless and I just scrap them at the beginning to keep from making mistakes on cargo capacity.

Another improvement would be to make sure that combat supply doesn't screw units up from moving properly. I'm really disappointed in SSBN's because I discovered that if you give them a full load of missiles and send them off to some distant shore to shoot them off that then they're stuck moving extremely slow because they keep saying they're out of supply. Combat supply has nothing to do with movement, that's what fuel is for. Please fix this so combat supply does not slow down movement, it just makes that unit want to boogie back to base to resupply like really a bat out of hell. Plus make sure that uncombatsupplied units don't go traipsing through enemy territory where they would just get shot to pieces with no way to defend themselves unless they have no alternative. I would also like to see combat supply capacity be higher than missile capacity so units could missile up and still have combat supply left to run defensive weapons like AA weaponry. I tend to think that combat supply and missile capacity should be separate. I think of SSBN's and if they're not carrying missiles in those missile tubes they certainly aren't packing those empty missile tubes with combat supplies.

Another improvement would be to make missile firing units fire missiles smarter. I'd like to be able to order some strategic bomber unit at one of my airbases to make a missile attack on some distant target that is beyond missile range but in range of the bomber plus missile range. That way I could order a long-range missile attack without having to micromanage flying the planes to some "firing point" where I then have to give the plane it's target. Better yet you would then enable the AI to make those same kinds of attacks that now are just beyond it's capability. Currently AI strategic bombers will only attack something if the target is within the missile's range. That means that on the world stage a human can completely ignore homeland air defense if his homeland is safely distant. It would be good to see AI's make missile attacks on "fortification" targets like industrial facilities as that's something we need not worry about currently. I'd like to see the AI's make smarter missile load decisions. The current method of target types just doesn't work very well since the default is to turn off fortification targets. It also means that the AI's just load up several mismatched missile types into the same unit. Then it tries to fire it's wad at the same target. That really is stupid if you're attacking a hard target and that missile unit has missiles with good hard target attack factors and some missiles with low hard target attack factors. I've noticed that for missiles there are some with good hard target attack factors and low soft target attack factors and vice versa. Really isn't smart to load up a missile unit with both types since that missile unit will blow it's wad attacking one single target and target type. I've found that loading up missile units with one type of missile works best. That way I can use the best missile to attack each target type. I also find it stupid to load up strategic bombers with naval missiles. Strategic bombers ought to have only the fortification target type selected and should only load the best fortification attack factor missiles. Or if no good fortification targets are within range then those strategic bombers could load one type of missile to attack some hard or soft target type. Those target type selections could be made smarter for units by trying to keep units focused on what they should be firing at. Really stupid to watch ground missile units firing at ships when there's more than enough ground targets it should be firing at. I'd put the ship target type behind the ground unit target types to ensure that ground units get trashed first before ships and planes and fortifications.

Another improvement would be to make the user interface more user friendly and not such a clickfest that merely causes tunnel carpel syndrome. I really like that when I access a stack of units from the map I can go from one unit to the next by simply clicking an arrow button. Makes cycling through those stacks really quick. What I'd like to see is where ever we have lists of units that we could also go from unit to unit sequentially by clicking arrow buttons rather than having to go into each unit then exit each unit. At the world level going through lists of thousands of units just saving one click per unit really saves us a lot time clicking thus giving us more time to actually play and have fun not to mention saving our overworked wrists and fingers. Another user friendly touch would be a "reference point" where we can mark some hex out in the middle of nowhere like the middle of an ocean and then access some unit and then be able to easily find that "reference point" to make moves or set firing points for firing long-range missiles. Only one reference point is needed and as we designate new reference points the old one disappears so maps don't get junked up by reference points nor does it overtax filespace.

Scoring is another problem area I'd like to see improved. In every game where there's scoring the developers have been nice enough to give us a scoring rundown in the manual. Those manuals would tell us how many points we score for doing different kinds of actions. That scoring rundown would then allow us to understand why the score is the way it is. Not in SR2010 where the manual tells us nothing about how scoring really works and we're left scratching our heads wondering why the scores are the way they are. Another problem with scoring is that it's nonsensical in some cases and looks to be written specifically to cover the AI's poor play. The economic score is the best example of this as I've been able to deduce that budget suplus/deficit is the main and probably only driving factor. The AI's are very good at running budget surpluses because they are pathetic at trade and have to cover their import bills with budget surpluses. The problem, which I've explained in a previous post, is that I can manipulate trade with the AI's. In the world scenario in one game I was playing North America with a huge production surplus of oil. Since I was running budget deficits I was ranked near the middle of the pack on the economic score. India was the highest scoring region economically and was importing serious quantities of oil. I was able buy and sell oil on the same day. I would buy low to find out where the other oil exporting AI's had their prices set while selling high. I was able to bankrupt India's treasury so that I could flood the market on one day while I dropped my sales price below the other AI's because with India as the highest economic scorer it would buy last and thus at the highest prices. I was able to cause the other AI's to not sell their oil that day which I knew meant they would drop their prices back down to their "default" sales price which was far lower than where they were selling. Then I could jack my price back up the next day and really clean up while those other AI's were stuck selling oil at far lower prices. I was able to cause the Middle East to start losing money everyday where before it was running a budget surplus and a trade surplus everyday and really building up it's treasury. The other really stupid thing was that India was constantly running short on 4 or 5 products everyday for months on end and yet it stayed the number 1 economic scorer. When a region has a product shortfall that should cause a negative impact on the economic score. If it keeps that up day after day on multiple products it should really lose economic score so that it drops to the bottom and gets to buy first at the lowest price so it has a chance to recover rather than being stuck at the top buying at the highest price thus ensuring it will never recover.

Scoring should make sense and should be spelled out thoroughly so we can understand the scores we see. For economic scoring budget surplus/deficit should not be the main driving factor. Economic scoring should accurately reflect who's running the strong economies and who's not. That way the smart feature that makes the highest economic scorer buy last would actually benefit the weaker AI economies instead of screwing them on trade. How well a region satisfies it's consumers economically should be the main driving force so that growing economies with growing production capacity like we humans run would end up the highest scorer and we would end up as Tail End Charlie when importing. That's how you should use economic scoring to help the AI's. Only in games with the Total Score victory condition does scoring actually matter. In games where Total Victory is the victory condition scoring is absolutely unimportant.

Diplomatic scoring is absolutely incomprehensible. I can only deduce that we humans are damned if we import and triple damned if we export. On the other hand the AI's seem to be blessed when they export and triple blessed when they import. I really can't see where our diplomatic actions have any effect whatsoever on diplomatic scoring because while I've been busy being diplomatic having to take the lead in making any diplomatic offers and giving AI's good deals I've always come up way short on the diplomatic score.

So please make scoring relevant and realistic. Make sure the scores are logical and make sense, not just ways to cover up bad play by the AI's. Make sure there are multiple ways to increase/decrease scoring for any scoring subsection. Once you've gotten that down then you stand a chance at tailoring the AI towards smart play and good scores. Then spell out how scoring works in the manual so we understand how scoring works and aren't always dumbfounded by the scores we see.

Since I play against the AI exclusively I actually have a vested interest in seeing a better AI. I can see why the AI's have been programmed for short-term play. I was reading one of Chris's update 5 afteraction reports and it struck me immediately that every one of the developers was rushing to get into action along with the AI's. Ofcourse the developer team is always in a hurry trying to self test their handiwork because they have to spend so much time making the game they have little time to actually play and enjoy the game the way we customers can. A sad irony that the makers of wargames have so little time to enjoy their own handiwork. Because the developers are rushing things they tend to think that's the way we customers play. The small scenarios certainly tend to cause things to get rushed but on the world level patience is the key. To make a better AI one really has to understand how stuff really works and that only comes from trial and error gameplay - lots and lots of that. That's why engineers were given such priority for the AI's because the development team thought that was smart because they were playing rushed and not getting deep into the R&D for those spiffy futuristic units. Against the newer spiffier R&D military units engineers are old garbage and easy cannonfodder. Combat engineers are not combat units they are combat support units and should be used as such. Certainly one engineer can help improve the defense of each unit it is stacked with but I see way too many instances of AI's stacking nothing but engineers together and that just wastes the defensive boost.

I wouldn't mind investing some of my time to help you make a better AI, especially for the world level. I spend plenty of time thinking about how it could be done but I really don't know how the AI's are controlled to be able to make it happen. I don't screw my games up by modding them so if something's not correct I can see it and report on it reliably. I did see some AI files that looked like we could change things like funding levels for social spending and it looked like the AI files corresponded to the victory conditions. I wouldn't mind being able to understand what files I can change and a basic rundown on how those files work so I know what I'm changing if I change something.

As you can see I've given this game plenty of thought as to what could be done better. Be thankful I bitch about stuff I don't like because I want to see a better game even if it means having to invest more of my money to see it happen. As long as I'm bitching about the game it means I'm playing the game and I'm hoping the game will be improved to be the game it should and could be. I'm just trying to get my two cents in before any final decisions are made public as to BG's next project. I'm hoping BG will make the smart play and put out SR2010 II to finish what BG has started before going off on other tangents. The game concept is great but the programming hasn't finished the job yet. Another rendition can turn a good game into a great, great game. It seems that nowadays games are so complex they really can't be finished in one shot so I for one am not dismayed I have to buy multiple renditions of a game to actually get a finished product that is enjoyable. I also see it's an industry standard that the second game will rely upon the first game for some aspects so customers need to buy both or three renditions of the same game for it to work properly. I also understand that as a small company you need to make new products to bring in new money so you can keep making these games. If BG is smart you will finish the SR2010 series before moving on to other tangents so that you've established a good historical track record of finishing what you start so for future releases your customers can be confident if at first you don't succeed you'll try, try again until you've accomplished the mission. If you finish SR2010 properly you'll give yourselves the proper foundation upon which to build future games most likely relying on the very same game engine.
Thanks,

Eric Larsen

[Il Duce]

...I don't see much here that hasn't already been discussed - and in my mind, many have been concluded - in these forums already.

[bergsjaeger]

Was going to say the same thing Duce. And that was a hella lot of reading. Hate to know how long it took u to type all that.

[moondrift]

yep gotta say its is stuff that a lot of people have asked for and things that in various posts the devs have said they would leave for the next game.

[Eric Larsen]

Was going to say the same thing Duce. And that was a hella lot of reading. Hate to know how long it took u to type all that.

bergsjaeger,
It took me about 4 hours or so. Lots of typing. Yeah some stuff may be rehash of stuff already discussed but it's rather impossible to keep track of all the posts on this forum. To do that would preclude us from playing the game. I'm glad moondrift says lots of this stuff has been discussed by the devs as being food for thought for the next version.
Thanks,

Eric Larsen

[Balthagor]

...Yeah some stuff may be rehash of stuff already discussed but it's rather impossible to keep track of all the posts on this forum...

Since the search function has been restored on the forum it is not impossible, thought I will grant it may be difficult. Searching before posting is important to keep us from constantly having to waste time re-reading topics already discussed.

[Khapheen]

Was just reading through this, and it might not be the place, but maybe there could be a way in future games to choose 'WMD DAR effects' or something like that, before starting the game - just like the AI stance. In some modes, your armed forces, population, other nations, etc would impose a harsh penalty on Chemical, Bio, Nukes, and so on. In other modes, the response would be much lighter.

Also, I've always thought that a WMD retaliation (to another WMD attack) should count against you far less than an opening strike. I used to play a really old game (Command HQ - loved that) that did it that way, albeit in a sort of primative sense.

Anyhow, maybe this has been mentioned before. Just an idea.