Maginot Line Fortifications

[sturmovik]

I'm sorry but what am I to think when I explicitly post about how I have been releasing my own set of OB*s since the late 90's and I wanted to contribute to the community and as soon as I post the fruits of a good deal of research I get blown off. All I knew was that the game has 15 types of colonial border guards, but for some reason Maginot line fortifications were just unnecessary. You can call me thin skinned, but when someone kicks a good deal of work to the curb without much of an explanation or nugget of constructive criticism I see that as a little rude.

I always saw the SP franchise as a great WW2 battle sim that strove for accuracy by attempting to include every single possible type of unit that would enable the community to create scenarios of battles of unparalleled accuracy. If the actions carried out by the old OOB team to capture every single type of unit is now seen as a mistake I would suggest that you edit the sticky to discourage people from posting solicitations for new units.

BTW Andy's a great guy and we used to talk quite a bit about 10 years ago (I won't hold it against him if he doesn't remember me). I know that you're the ones maintaining the game now, but it would still behoove you not to act like it's some sort of closed shop / old boys club (unless you want it to be). I've been editing OB's for just as long as you have, but when I thought I had found a niche where I could actually contribute something I get talked down to like a n00b and told to get stuffed.

Anyway, I think I got the answer I was looking for in Andy's last reply. Here, perhaps I can suggest a reboot of this conversation.

Andy:

"Great ideas, but unfortunately we've discovered that the explosion of units in previous versions of the game negatively impacted non-scenario gameplay so we are really not looking to add any more niche or non-core units to future releases of the game."

Me:

"I'm sorry to hear that. I guess 15 types of Brandenburgers can get a little confusing when playing campaigns or head to head. Let me know if you ever need any of the information I've gathered."

[DRG]

Originally Posted by sturmovik

Anyway, I think I got the answer I was looking for in Andy's last reply. Here, perhaps I can suggest a reboot of this conversation.

Andy:

"Great ideas, but unfortunately we've discovered that the explosion of units in previous versions of the game negatively impacted non-scenario gameplay so we are really not looking to add any more niche or non-core units to future releases of the game."

Me:

"I'm sorry to hear that. I guess 15 types of Brandenburgers can get a little confusing when playing campaigns or head to head. Let me know if you ever need any of the information I've gathered."

Mike, Please do pay attention to this. I realise this was an attempt to "make nice" but if you are going to "quote" someone make sure it is a real quote and not made up to suit your own purposes as at no time did Andy ever say these were "great ideas". Had he thought they were "great ideas" he would have said so and the whole exchange would have gone differently than it has to date. What he DID say was

.......those things really have little relevance for the stock OOBS. But if you really do want to make your own modified OOB with such items then by all means feel free to make and post it for those who might download it.

and

By all means, if you want to have your own OOB with lots of different specialist Maginot fort units, then feel free to make such and offer it up. But it will be your mod, and you can have the pleasure of maintaining it and entering into any support discussions with the end users.

And nobody but you thinks those were "hostile" comments.

I have no issue with you or anyone else requesting changes or additions. That's what we've been doing all these years. The latest "to-do" list of potential changes or fixes we need to investigate for SPWW2 is 32 pages long and the one for MBT is over double that. This year we are lucky because usually those lists are longer. The 2007 patch upgrades for both games took up well over 1000 man hours of our time and the one in 2008 was only a bit less and this follows the pattern set all the way back to SP2WW2 in 1998 and most of that work is squeezed into the winter months. Last year the MBT list was over 120 printed pages long so what we do is a bit more involved than just tweaking other peoples OOB's .

If you think there are OOB errors report them and they will go on the list. If we think they are justified they will be fixed. If not they won't but we won't be getting into endless debates about it because we really don't have the time and lost the inclination to debate things like this some time ago. That said, every report DOES get looked at no matter who reports it

Don