Re: game Preferences settings
 

Using only 100%.

Re: game Preferences settings
 

I use default settings. (hope reply is not too late)

Re: game Preferences settings
 

Always stick with stock settings

Re: game Preferences settings
 

Only thing I always change in WWII games is putting artillery up to 150%.

Re: game Preferences settings
 

This might be off topic but I would like to not see the message about what is shooting at me and it's range, especially from something I haven't spotted. This removes some of the challenge of not knowing where I am being fired at from.

Re: game Preferences settings
 

I think know you are being shot at by small arms or a tank/anti tank gun is okay to know, since that is realistic, but not much more than that.

Re: game Preferences settings
 

All SP messages are global - so your opponent sees the exact same message that you do. Just like all wrecked guns and vehicles "magically" appear if you randomly barrage behind a hill, or beyond your visibility and kill something, your artillery "phones hone" to you.

If you destroy a tank, you know then and there - so do not expend rounds on an already killed unit. (Part of the study done by Operations Research groups after Normandy noted one particular dead German half-track on the top of a hillock near hill 221, and looked at the several strike traces on the ground around it form different weapon types, and concluded from that and the after battle reports that it had been "claimed" at least a dozen times by different strafing planes).

It would need a complete redesign of the game engine so that the game worked "realistically". Say your Sherman moves up to the top of a hill, then just goes "bang" with absolutely no explanation - was it an 88, or did he run over a mine?. And then many casual gamers would not like that sort of "reality", and would complain that things go bang without any explanation of why, or that they had to pour rounds into a tank till it physically burned or blew up, before they could be 100% "sure" it was dead. But in reality, troops did pour fire into a tank to be 100% sure - firing till it "changed shape or burned".

Plus, we report the achieved penetration of any hit on a tank - information that real gunners did not get "telegraphed" back to them by real life ammunition!.

If you spot a unit in SP then you have 100% complete information on it. Make, model, number of men in a spotted section and what weapons they carry. Unrealistic, any boxy German tank was a "tiger" to most troops, any enemy gun was an "88" and spotting 2-3 men in a hedgerow did not mean that they were part of a 10 man rifle section rather than a patrol.

Neither do your own troops misidentify each other and open fire on friends - "blue on blue" (apart from pilots, but then they are Air Farce so that is perfectly normal for fly-boys:rolleyes:). But puttering about as an army cadet, and later in the Territorials on night patrols - popping blanks off at "enemy" that later turned out to be one's own side in the debriefing, happened enough even in training to be something to be legitimately worried about. In SP, enemy and friend are rigidly defined, as in chess.

You manoeuvre each piece yourself and choose which shots to take and at what targets for them (bar reaction fires, but you can set up policies for that with the full game), as if you were a godlike being. In the SP universe, cities would need no traffic lights since the player-god can avoid all collisions..

If the enemy turn up on your flank, then everyone can immediately react to this, unlike in reality. Everything is known to the player-godlike being who promptly wheels units to face off. None of your units needs orders or any general operations plan, since you the player-as-a-God knows it for them. Maps are 100% accurate and nobody gets lost, takes the wrong turning or whatever. None of your troops slope off for a crafty cigarette break or go off looting, either. You the "Q" figure know exactly where your boys are at all times, and exactly what ammunition status, which ones are hurt and so on. There is no need for your subordinates to send SITREPS that by the time you get them are already outdated, or have wrong map references saying they are at Xville, so you happily shell Yville and then suddenly get casualty reps since the officer got his villages wrong.

It is a wargame and not a simulation at the end of the day. Real simulations give out incomplete information, but that would be totally confusing to civilian end users who want a "chess" type playing experience and not a tactical training tool.

Re: game Preferences settings
 

As Plato once said, that imitative artists create things that are THIRD removed from The Truth:

http://sites.bu.edu/ombs/2012/11/12/...iation-of-art/

But then again, who could possibly spare real blood & flesh to educate oneself about the art of war, or, for mere enjoyment of one's spare time? There is bound to be tradeoff between preserving The Truth, and, making The Truth accessible.

Steel Panthers is an imitative art, it is a simulation; but simulation too has many levels, in regards to the realism it's trying to achieve.


Cheers

Re: game Preferences settings
 

Stick a post it over it while you play.

Re: game Preferences settings
 

If it is a 'God view' game it is with a small letter 'g'.
Units will go out of contact and not answer calls for fire missions. Units will suppress and not rally and carry out your orders. If you do not move units 'Hex by Hex' they will 'pop out on roads' when they should have stayed in cover, drive thru buildings or see no danger in heading for the gap in the wire the enemy has conveniently left for you.
While it is more game-over-simulation, the message info is still supposed to represent a turn's worth (2-3 minutes?) of unit observations and reports up and down the chain of command. The hit reports are too much for the situation but it is nice to know why my BFG did not kill it's target just to know the AI is not cheating.