http://spring1944.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=909

While there has been considerable discussion in other places and mediums, we've never really discussed the branches which are presently not in the game in a coherent manner here.

I'll just give a brief overview for those who haven't made it to the 1944 site.

Finland - Intended as an expert side, primarily developed by me, with Yuri providing the models necessary. Ambushes, highly skilled infantry, limited selection of armour and heavy equipment. Under somewhat active development, and may not be more than a few months away.

Italy - Intended as an intermediate Axis side, primarily developed by Yuri and myself. Inexpensive, numerous units, supplemented by elite infantry squads. Currently under slow development - I want to finish Finland before getting engrossed in Italy.

Japan - Intended as a reach expert side, currently not under development due to a lack of developers and resources. People often bring it up, and we don't know if we will ever include it due to the various problems with how Japan worked in comparison to other countries, but the groundwork was begun.

Zombies - A mutator game rather than a branch to eventually be merged, I really don't want to spoil anything. Under slow development. Nemo has done most of the work thus far and we should be making strides after the next main release.

Anyway, there is a brief overview of what is happening behind the curtain, so to speak.

<3

Now I need to make finnish winter war map for it!

How do you intend to balance a faction meant, as you say, expert side? Is the goal to make it equally powerful as others but harder to use, or just downright worse? Would it include stuff that might get essential to have in a teamgame with multiple factions etc.

It is mostly going to be more difficult to use, while generally reflective of the asset selection available. There are also going to be some side specific mechanics reflective of historical effective use (Winter War)... everything that is strictly necessary for a team or single player game is there, it just needs some design support to make it accessible.

making them broadly underpowered and requiring significant micromanagement prolly

equally "powerful" but harder to use is probably going to be the idea. that said, this stuff is all secondary to the proper main game work, so there's not much worth debating about yet (as it's not just theorycraft at this point, but theorycraft about something that hasn't even been made/implemented).

example of what I mean by equally powerful but harder to use:
if (for example, nothing is representative of what may eventually happen with them) we let all the Finn infantry cloak all the time, but take the cloak away if they gather into large groups: they'd be good at setting up/positioning as they want, but massive force-on-force fights would probably cause them to lose (since they don't have as many infantry/the same level of equipment). that sort of advantage is something that a player needs to think a bit harder on how to use most effectively, but if used well would probably be very powerful.

ðían something really be harder to use but equally powerful?
Isn't that an oximoron?
Are you guys ever gonna support prisoners?

Prisoners are out until they're refined, which probably means camps for prisoners, more defensive structures, and guard dogs. And no, it isn't an oxymoron. The amount of skill something requires to use and the power thereof are often unrelated. It is ever so simple to make a basic wedge to lift an object, but the more complex pulley system will prove much more powerful.

so do the finns get a hero unit?

YAY.

is a fix for S44 to work with spring master in the dev version already?
last time i tried (think it was v210), it did not turn up in the list of selectable mods with spring master.

That's because of SD breaking old-style (filename) dependency references. v220+ should work fine when downloaded in this manner.

Or you can download latest here:

http://spring1944.net/files/Build/S44Pre-M_v222.sdz

ahh nice.. yeah just tested with SD latest mutator, got me 220, and it shows up in master
thanks

That would have been the only feature making S44 worth checking.

You mean S44 isn't already complicated enough for you?

gtfo

Yeah, you know, besides armour zones on units, armour penetration based on gun calibre, suppression, cover zones on maps, etcetera...

To be honest... I had no interest in actually playing this game until you mentioned Zombies...

what im saying is that in gameplay terms harder to use=more micro to operate efficiently or in a more general way less effective.
More micro to operate=less efficient for cost.
you could have a very powerfull yet cheap unit but to make it work you need to invest tons of micro.the one offsets the other.
If a faction is more difficult to use doesn't it mean a faction is weaker?
or do you mean that its gonna have say less units per squad but they will be more micro-able and the harder to use part comes in the knowing that you need to micro them in specific ways that are different or unavailable to other faction units?
If It's the later than maybe "different" or "special" is a better term than harder to use,though it's just semantics.

what about a scenario, where you have.. say 2 pros and 3 close-to-pros, and you want to have a team game. playing 2 vs 3 with current groups would not be fun, because the 3 are too good for that. but if you have Finland, one of the 3 could play as that.. he'd be much weaker then the other 4, no matter what he does (eg, he can not have tanks at all), but knowing this, he could play a special style, doing support and sneaky attacks.. like "la resistance", with especially good cloaking abilities in general. also, grabbing bag flags in places where he suspects the enemies not to expect attacks.