Sandbox battles

[pcelt]

May I first briefly make it totally clear that I fully agree with Steve that this is a quality product--there is no dispute there.
And re the Sandbox Battles there seems to me to be a false and unnecessary argument--clearly some prefer the prepared "balanced fair" setup whilst others prefer an historic openplay situation where you and your opponent are of historic Gettysburg strength and quality and selected by chance.
Surely this is not an issue where in a game of this scope only one of these preferences can be satisfied.Why would it not be possible to have the Sandbox Section as it now with matched forces and to add another section featuring "Open Play" where all brigades,Divs etc are of historic size and morale and you might be matched against any opponent in whatever type of battle you select.
This seems to be a situation where both groups could have their preference met.

[Old Soldier]

.... but it is sort of hard to admit that I'm a very bad general!

When you can't blame yourself - you must blame the computer !

Or at least that works for me, but only for a little while!!!

davinci[/quote]

I'm a great general. In fact I may be the greatest general of all time ... until I run into obstacles like buildings, trees, fences, enemy troops or my own troops.[p][/p]
Yes sir, I'm a legend in my own mind!

[honestabe]

norb wrote:

I have to laugh because on TC2M people were always upset that the battle could be so unfair

Try changing the difficulty. Go into the options and choose custom and up the reg strength and other factors and you'll get a tougher battle.

I have to laugh with you Norb because you don't know how many times in Open battles I swore the NORTH side got a lot more units than I did as the confederates in TC2m. But, you know as well as I do you always have WHINNERS with every game release and those that aren't happy about something and wanted YOU to design the game the way THEY think is best. )

[pcelt]

Honestabe---I think you are really missing the point--I am not requesting the changing of the current Sandbox formula --but an additional section of "open battles"similar to TCm2 --then both forms of battle will be available and you can use whichever you personally prefer.
More choice should satisfy more people and whichever approach you prefer will be available.

[Monty]

I think that's an entirely reasonable request. I would suggest the following:

1) You pick your side and SoW:GB picks a matched formation for you to play against (as is the case now).
2) If you then go on to select units in your opponent's OoB you override SoW:GB and those will be the units you play against.

[Amish John]

Could it be possible in a future patch to be able to pick and choose from any of the units listed in the OOB for your side so for example you could have 1 brigade from the 1st Corp 1st Div, 2 brigades from the 3rd Corp 2nd Div, 1st Div 5th Corp, etc.?

[pcelt]

Monty thanks for our suggestion --but personally though that would be certainly feasible-- in "Open Play"Id rather face a randomly selected historic enemy force with the uncertainty factor and fog of war factor than to select my specific opponent in advance.

[norb]

The problem we faced was that we had so many arty only units in the oob that we kept ending up against all arty over and over.

My original screen design did have something like you asked, but it was determined too confusing. There was a seperate difficulty level on the sandbox screen that would determine how tough we made the mix.

I will add what you ask onto our feature list.

[Davinci]

Old Soldier wrote:

I'm a great general. In fact I may be the greatest general of all time ... until I run into obstacles like buildings, trees, fences, enemy troops or my own troops.

Yes sir, I'm a legend in my own mind!

Now, that was pretty funny!!

davinci

[pcelt]

Norb I agree re the problem of arty only units but for "open play" these can just be eliminated from the choice for player and the random opponent selection.Though less of a problem in TC2M, I did successfully delete the pure arty units from the Openplay OOB in that game.