Monday, January 31, 2005

Quick note.

My last note was Thursday talking about the capture of Stekene.

Last night I participated in the fall of Willemstad (if you consider participating running around the castle while 20 tanks camped the AB). So far this is a fairly spectacular collapse on behalf of the Axis. I, for one, am fairly mystified at its causes.

Lets look at the timeline: (my memory is a little rough, be kind).

- Axis have stormed west, crushing the BEF, Gent is Axis. Germans also threaten Mauberge.
- Allies launch counterattack taking several towns back up to Brussels and including the recapture of Gent. Namur is also allied.
- Axis recapture towns around Brussels. Front is somewhat stagnant for a cpl of days, then the Werchmact begins to push East again (IVg arrives on battlefield). Upper Meuse , including Namur, Dinant etc is Axis. All towns up to Gent are Axis. Axis push out from Brussels to Soignes and take Charleroi. Also sometime during this Axis take Mountfacoun and Sedan area. Later in this period the Sherman is introduced but the front remains stagnant with a slight push by the Axis.
- The Spit IX is introduced. BEF goes mad, captures towns E and SE of Gent. A few days later the German front north completely collapses. In the course of Fri/Sat night, Brussels and Antwerp fall + several of their buffer towns. South front remains stationary.

The triggering factor 'appears' to be the Spit IX but I don't get it/believe it. Why would a plane have such an influence on numbers, espcially ground numbers? And don't kid yourselves for a second that it was anything else but numbers. On Friday night (US EST) we had ridicolous numbers and were simply steamrolling towns. Brussels fell in approx 30 mins with barely a whimper from the Axis forces.

The French had the Sherman, which is usually a big numbers getter, for several days before the German collapse. In fact the Germans were a plus in towns captured for the first days of the Sherman arrival.

Are we seeing the beginnings of a of a true 'dinner/weekend club'?. The Allies have at most times enjoyed a slight numbers advantage in the evening hours (US) and weekends but it now appears to becoming even more pronounced.

This is not good for the game. It's not good for the Axis OR the Allies. To be truely a game I believe side numbers have to avoid these large differentials in all timezones. The problem that the Allies have always had with the 'breakfast club' is not that the Axis have a numbers advantage, it's that the difference is so large at those times. Now it appears that the Allies are enjoying an imbalance of such proportion but in US prime time, a much bigger recipe for disaster in terms of game balance.

I hope I'm wrong.


(That was a quick note wasn't it? :P)

Thursday, January 27, 2005

Notes

Reading all the old posts on this blog is at once embarassing as well as illuminating. As usual all my predictions in regards to how certain things would affect the game were pretty much wrong.And some of the writing, well, lets just not mention it again ok?

A few notes of interest:

- I did finally achieve LT rank in the FAF, of course now that I have the rank I barely use it.

- CRS has decided to actually realistically model fuel levels for the Spit IX. This is something I discovered last night while loitering over Evere Airfield (Brussels), not exactly the best location for such a revelation.

- It's quite amazing how quickly you can begin to take something for granted. Can anyone remember what it was like to play without mobile spawning? It's only been in game for a month and it seems like it has been here forever. Either that or my mind is trying to block the memory of all those endless truck rides.

- The BEF's capture of Stekene last night was a bit unexpected to say the least. At one stage we had almost zero cutoff, they had several artillery pieces and tanks in and around town (including 4Gs)and our own armour was almost non-existant. Certain people were organising a huge para drop on town. Given the state of the battle a para drop at this time is the sign of the incompentently desperate. You just can't tell people that.
However we got a MSP up extremely close to town (thanks Bigass) and the paratroopers who had all just died began to spawn into it enmasse. A few minutes later KC23 reported we had a friendly tank in the AB.
Where the hell did it come from?
I personally was above the battlefield in aforementioned spit IX and was noticing that the LW had gone completely absent. I flew to both Brussels and Antwerp and couldn't russle up anything more than a Stuka.
It just goes to show that sometimes you can never tell whats going to happen. I would guess that a drop in Axis numbers combined with some sheer BEF pigheadness/fortutious placement of MSP turned a lost cause into a succesful capture.

Well I'm sure we'll have lost it by this afternoon.

Apologies to Killer I guess..

On September 29th I wrote:

'And for a parting gift, which I'll link one of these days when I stop posting from work, Killers crack comment of the day where he said that he'd like to see spawning from trucks...

Jeez Killer not like you've come out with crazy stuff youd like to see before. Howabout shit your actually going to CODE in the next MILLENIA?!'




Whoops.

The comeback post.

I'm back. Yes I've been extremely lazy but I've decided to have a go at resurrecting this blog. First off I changed the crappy title of it.

The other important aim here is to improve my writing. The fact that Im 28 years old and write like a 13 yr old on a sugar high is embarassing to say the least.

Looking at my last post to this blog is certainly an eye opener. The Red Sox were losing the ALCS (we know how that ended.) , I was unsubscribed from ww2ol and my computer had blown up.

Well I bought a new motherboard, and resubscribed during the World Series. So much for financial restraint.