German Biased?

[Double_Deuce]

serg3d said:
The good site about red army in english:
http://battlefield.ru
And site with big number of war memories, dayries, letters and documents in russian:
http://militera.lib.ru
some other russian
http://rkka.ru

I frequently check the http://rkka.ru site as they are a good source of information. Does anyone know of a good place to get 1:50,000 maps of areas of the Eastern Front? I thought about getting the Moscow map set from HPSSIMS specifically for the purpose of a Moscow area campaign. Of course, it would also require some detailed OOB's of units operating in that area of at least Regiment/Battalion level. Would also need to know locations of thise units to match up with the maps.

Are you volunteering to help out if a project can be started?

[cbblackard]

I designed a lot of the scenarios for this game over the years and can say the following:

1) Don and Andy never directed what scenario topics should be covered. They pretty much gave scenario designers the freedom to design the scenarios which interested them most. Personally, I believe that has led to more and better scenarios from the designers;

2) I've always been more interested in the German military than the other sides in WWII -- and that relates primarily to the fact that I find German armor to be far cooler than the armor of other nations. That's not to say that JSIIs and T-34/85s aren't cool, but I'm willing to bet that most wargamers/modelers agree with me and are bigger fans of German armor than other nations' armor;

3) Over the past twenty (20) years, there has been a TON of books published relating to the German military in World War II (including the translation of many German unit histories) making it possible to accurately design scenarios from the German point-of-view. Unfortunately, there are very few books from the Soviet point-of-view. Thus, if you are an Eastern Front fan (as I am), it is a breeze to design historically-accurate scenarios from the German point-of-view but next to impossible to design Soviet ones. Hopefully that will change in the future.

CBB

[Warhero]

And how about converting Lost Victories/Desert Fox/Watchtower megacampaigns into WinSPWW2? Heh it could be too BIG task to anyone...

Just dreaming...

[Pyros]

Warhero said:
And how about converting Lost Victories/Desert Fox/Watchtower megacampaigns into WinSPWW2? Heh it could be too BIG task to anyone...

Just dreaming...

The ANZAC project is bigger and more complicated than any of the above...

cheers,
Pyros

[troopie]

No, it's biased toward nations that have a lot of info available in English. There's a lot of material about the British, American and German armies in English, so those tend to get the attention. There is, I am sure, a lot of info about the Japanese Army out there. But it's in Japanese, which most wargamers don't understand. There's a huge number of books on the Great Patriotic War in Russian, most of which have never been translated into English.

If the game is biased, it's biased toward the USA, the only country to have two orbats. Don't flame me, I know why.

troopie

[Marek_Tucan]

I don't think the game itself is German biased (after all, despite its name the game starting screen or Mobhack loading screen sport solely Western Allie's stuff )... As for the scenario, I think it's partly because there are lots of materials and partly because it's percieved to be more challenging to play a company of Pz IV's against a regiment of T-34's than vice versa

[Charles22]

troopie said:
No, it's biased toward nations that have a lot of info available in English. There's a lot of material about the British, American and German armies in English, so those tend to get the attention. There is, I am sure, a lot of info about the Japanese Army out there. But it's in Japanese, which most wargamers don't understand. There's a huge number of books on the Great Patriotic War in Russian, most of which have never been translated into English.

If the game is biased, it's biased toward the USA, the only country to have two orbats. Don't flame me, I know why.

troopie

On the other hand, the Japanese are one of the least interesting nations by far in terms of a total inadequacy with tanks and anti-tank capabilities.

Even the Italians could often field a decent medium tank at various times.

You also don't see that many French-oriented battles, but they did have some of the best tanks in the world for a while, but then they didn't fight very long either. I don't know about WinSPWW2, but most games I see have more USSR scenarios than the French and Japanese combined.

The USSR has the glamor of being a large nation with a lot of times having the best in some unit or other, while all the Japanese have that is different, or better, is the regard towards their often fanaticism in battle.

The best the WWII Japanese had to offer, their ships, isn't in this game of course.

For myself, I don't know if I will ever play a Japanese campaign (though I have started a few), just because the tank/anti-tank capability is so dreadful. I at least want a reasonable chance to destroy the enemy tanks without having to throw a suicidal man with a mine strapped on to achieve it.

[PatG]

Charles22 said:
<snip>
On the other hand, the Japanese are one of the least interesting nations by far in terms of a total inadequacy with tanks and anti-tank capabilities.

Even the Italians could often field a decent medium tank at various times.

<snip>

For myself, I don't know if I will ever play a Japanese campaign (though I have started a few), just because the tank/anti-tank capability is so dreadful. I at least want a reasonable chance to destroy the enemy tanks without having to throw a suicidal man with a mine strapped on to achieve it.

But for someone like me who is tired of The Battle of The Monster Tanks, the Japanese are an extremely interesting infantry force.

Gotta love this game - something for everyone.

But then this morning I shot up some Nationalist Chinese Marmon Harringtons mini tanks with a 37mm infantry gun (you know - the French one with the pathetic APCR round) so I'm feeling pretty happy with my Gunjin.

[Charles22]

PatG said:

But for someone like me who is tired of The Battle of The Monster Tanks, the Japanese are an extremely interesting infantry force.

Gotta love this game - something for everyone.

But then this morning I shot up some Nationalist Chinese Marmon Harringtons mini tanks with a 37mm infantry gun (you know - the French one with the pathetic APCR round) so I'm feeling pretty happy with my Gunjin.

Well yes, there's always some nation wimpy enough to provide a fight for any of the major combatants. I was thiniing of course about how wimpy their anti-tank capability was against GB or the US. China don't even count in my book. I might someday start a Republic China campaign and hope I see a lot of commies to attack, but, alas, i would probably get bull-dozed by Japan in virtually every battle. I wonder if the commies have a greater chance of fighting Japan than the Republic Chinese?

[Smersh]

troopie said:
No, it's biased toward nations that have a lot of info available in English. troopie

If that where the case you would expect similiarly high proportion of german scenarios in ever sp type game. But Spwaw and even MBT (again, not ww2) have much more vareity. Spwaw has two Soviet Union campigns, and several English Campigns, and alot more scenarios.

There is clearly a "german bais" or german slant whatever you want to call it, (take a look at the scenario list).

There is no information available in english on the USA or Britian? Compare the combined scenarois of the USA and UK vs. Germany. a clear high ratio of German scenarios.

I think we have already addressed why this is the case, other people have answered this already.

there are a few people interested in a possible red army campign and even a british one. this is a good thing.