Graviteam

Why do I feel like relic made the main stream game version of GTOS?  Anyone going to take this for a spin?  Something tells me the fact that it is not GTOS would piss me off. 

Are you high on drugs?

Clearly....vague response.

I played the open and closed beta a bunch and don't think I'll get it, I like Coh 1 but this one seems to lack the fine balance and thoughtfulness the first had ( not counting the expansions which is where they went wrong first).  Hardly any of the original relic staff still work there anyway.

Really?? It looks pure arcade awful..nothing at all like GTOS..two games doing the same subject but in very different ways..

OOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH relic....  i will always have fond memorys of homeworld. 

Homeworld 2 with Tactical Fleet Simulator (TFS) mod is still fun to play with friends!  :)

http://www.moddb.com/mods/tactical-fleet-simulator

TFS is what homeworld 2 should have been... with much more dynamical and "realistic" weaponry, ship movement and gameplay. One thing that makes Homeworld 2 special traditional RTS is the battlegroup system with "tactical AI" - units automatically do their role in that group, for example interceptors intercept enemy bombers. This function was further emphasized in TFS. I wonder why this is not included in other RTSs - reduces unnecessary mouse clicking tremendously.

Homeworld 2 work on win 7x64?

I got to play for an hour on CoH2.  A friend who is a WoT'er has it & in the ongoing drive to get him into GTOS a play-test was called for.

You can still see it is CoH, mechanics & style etc
Played 1st level of the campaign, quite nice, good gfx & sfx & 'amusing' commentary.
'..grenade up their zhopa!' was amusing the first 27 times I heard it, but became a bit 'Meh' after the 326 mark.
Lots of RuGlish, 1/2 & 1/2 language sentences, it's Ok but I actually like the Russian even if I don't understand it all.   ;D
Storyline seems to owe quite a lot to the 'Enemy at the Gates' movie in the way the opening level is shown.  Maybe that is because it is an 'authentic' view?

As far as gameplay goes it is still definitely CoH, & the reviews I've seen saying how realistic it now is, have left me wondering what they use as a benchmark for realism. ???

I like CoH, I have #1 & enjoyed it a lot, but by the time later iterations appeared, it left me wondering why I felt 'forced' by the game to sacrifice units in order to 'win'.
OK I could reference books like Battle Of Hurtgen Forest by Charles Whiting,
http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_battle_of_Hurtgen_Forest.html?id=mVkfIfEx0YYC&redir_esc=y (http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_battle_of_Hurtgen_Forest.html?id=mVkfIfEx0YYC&redir_esc=y)
& say 'well that is how it went', but it goes against the grain to simply throw troops away in what feels like an intentional function of gameplay.
I have grown to prefer the ToW & APOS/GTOS approach that requires more than colourful resource manipulation.  Troops are individuals that develop & realistic decision making is req'd....

Bottom-Line -
It's fun, it looks & sounds good, but it's a game & not a grogs pastime.  Maps & ballistics are so far removed from GTOS it hurts.
I was left with only one real question - When's Mius?!  ;)

COH series is just a RTS game, it is not a simulation. Every unit have a HP bar, and Relic does not set their property by following historical accuracy.

The story of campaign is very ridiculous, Relic said those are following a veteran‘s memories, I think it is not true. Relic is slandering USSR and the Great Patriotic War.

It's a childrens' game.
I like the graphics but the game play looks silly.
Screenshots look good but videos of the gameplay just looked wrong on so many levels.
You would think with the type of budget that the game has that Relic could of turned the game into something more than a childs version of war.

I guess they decided to cater to their core audience for ideas.

Lol Dane, that's the very reason they got the money in the first place...
Sad truth is gaming world is ruled by momma's wallet...

The Cold War is long over, but the ugly propaganda is still alive in the minds of some writers. And apparently it is considered that it helps make money. May be.

HAy Relic is just over the border from me about 95 minutes from where I sit up in Vancover BC.  I should go bang on there door and tell them they are full of sheet.  muhahaha


They are really following what is expected to sell.  SAD but true.  I mean people had issues with 3d space maps in homeworld for gawd sakes. Like in star trek 2 the wrath of Khan.  Capitan he is brilliant but he shows 2d thinking...  Well something like that.  MUHAHAHA.

And game guys follow movie plots not history........we see that all over the place.  Enemy at the Gates is all mid and big budget games follow for east front.  and saving private ryan is all they follow for France..........

The Game vs Sim situation hadn't escaped me, but the fact that it has been called realistic has made me wonder. 
The comments on the 'real-feel' environment likewise caused some head-scratching.  I think you could make a 'realistic' environment & yet keep arcade play.  If you really had to. 

The snowy scenery in APK43 may not have been so super-charged & hi-res etc from a programming point of view but it really made me recall a Russian climate.  & APOS really brought the Russian weather home to me in a way yet to be achieved in the arcade world.

I have been left thinking about why you'd make some expensive but effective choices for gfx/sfx & then make the events & game mechanics a farce.  Money from muppets does seem to be the mainstream business model tho.
Hopefully people who play CoH2 will become more deeply interested in the conflict & seek out GTOS for greater attention to reality, maybe it could help GT in the long run.  There must be some arcade players out there with attention spans longer than 20 seconds after all.   :D


I find the comments about the lack of historical accuracy/propaganda most interesting.  What particularly stands out?
I don't personally know anyone who fought in Stalingrad, so if you guys have any good local insights I'd like to hear about them.  I can see how misrepresentation devalues the reality of the times. 
& a bit further OT:-
You know that TV show Shtraf-bat (штрафбат)?  Didn't they show NKVD MGs placed to prevent any 'retreat'?  Been a while since I saw that show, but I can imagine that would be useful to control a penal battalion.
Was Brest Fortress (Брестская Крепость (2010)) way off?   Just wondering how far Russian film goes towards realism compared to Western productions.

Here's what frustrating. Punishment battalions (shtraf bats) were in all armies of the world. Defensive (barrage) squads in the same way in the Wehrmacht appeared in 1941 (during Moscow battle), and in the Red Army only in mid-1942 (and first came up with them in the days of the Roman Empire). The prison camps were in all the countries of the world, the largest in the world created by the United Kingdom for example. But what the heck, there is no game or movie about the prisoners in the camps of the UK, there is no game about German or US barrage and punishment battalions. But damn the same things about the Soviet Union and strive to stick in every hole. WTF
NKVD iss analogous to the military police in the U.S. Army + border guards in the same department. But where I can see games about evil US MP what murder US Army soldiers?

Andrey US punishment battalions are well documented.  ;D

Haven't you seen the Dirty Dozen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpJVlyHNn4Q

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v348/Tempest555/l_127955_0061578_55e60920_zpsff59e644.jpg) (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Tempest555/media/l_127955_0061578_55e60920_zpsff59e644.jpg.html)

Here you have a film about the POW camps in Britain:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One_That_Got_Away_(film)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_One.jpg

:-)


Txema

I can sympathize Andrey.  The Western media does still like to portray Russians as bad-guys, I've lost count of the recent movies & TV shows where it turns out the evil Russians are behind everything. ::)
It makes me laugh as it is ridiculous but unfortunately many people will just believe it & learn prejudice. 
Unfortunately a central function of Western Democracy is a need for scape-goats & witch-hunts.  How else do you 'learn' who is 'best'?

As regards penal battalions, my first knowledge of them was WW2 Germany via the Sven Hassel books that I read as a kid. Thanks to the Dirty Dozen & now CoH2 I now know it was a more popular system than I'd originally thought. :D

IIRC the WW2 British use of criminals etc ran into problems as it was found that murderers aren't killers in the soldiering sense.  Obviously discipline & combat effectiveness was limited, & the project wasn't 'successful'.

It was the Brits who invented the concentration camp, during the Boer War. 
Hearing that heroes of the Great Patriotic War were guaranteed things like heating in the winter - for free -really shows things aren't at all as they seem.  Plenty of Western veterans have died of hypothermia because they couldn't afford to pay fuel bills...

Its a low budget rare films - his shot about his. We also do "good" is. This is normal. But this not AAA game/cinema in "realistic" manner.
But in films/games "about evil russians in WWII" this ugly things in each, w/o exceptions.

Russian - bad guys its ok, yes, like COD/MW or Red Alert manner. But here's just some kind of insanity, not "bad guys" as COD/RA, but it was some shit, who also issued for alleged realism.

Of course, Andrey, you are right. This film is just a rare exception....


Txema

As Julius Caesar showed 'History is written by the victors'.  E.g. "The Truth" should show the defeated enemy as evil to justify the conflict.  Editing 'reality' is endemic.  Don't think any of us can escape   :(

Yes, but in this case the exact same Americans fought with the Germans, and were allies of the Soviet Union, it is not clear why as the greatest evil, it shows its allies. It's somehow even silly.

At this point in time it is the Cold War that must be justified, it doesn't need to encourage logical thought in popular consciousness.
Yes it is silly, but politics don't seem to rely on truth or common-sense.  Better to have a disinformation strategy.

After WW2 the western powers and defense industries needed a new enemy to justify the huge expense it would take to keep these industries alive and flourishing with free money from the government.
With Germany and Japan defeated,Communist Russia or any communists in general fit that bill as the most logical choice.

After the collapse of Russia(USSR) in the 1980s these industries and politicians who supported them needed to find a new enemy to direct their energies and govt. resources at.

War on drugs-that didn't go over too well.Toppling a couple small time dictators-There are only a few worth the effort.

War on Terror-After 9/11,that seems to work pretty well and justifies all sorts of new ideas for exacting huge expense and personal sacrifice from the population.
The govt. can get some long term mileage out of this war maybe even taking it a step further to eradicate Islam as a religion(In its present form) permenantly from the planet.

After that it would be interesting to see who our new enemies will be.I'm sure there will be some new segement of the worlds population or society in general that will warrant the puplic enemy #1 status,even if they aren't all that dangerous.

MUAHAHHA DANE.  MUAHAHAHAH.

Your take on needed boogie man is in line with my view as well.  But also a needed boogie man from the OTHER side as well. 

Hollywood makes its OWN history.  Average game company follows hollywoods history. 

Yeah,Hollywood does for history what the mainstream media does for news.

Doesn't have to be factual,just interesting,entertaining and/or somewhat believable.

Upcoming evil empires may be Oriental if the Red Dawn remake was anything to go by  http://www.movieinsider.com/m4854/red-dawn/ (http://www.movieinsider.com/m4854/red-dawn/), Kudos to China for forcing the Movie Studios to digitally edit out every Chinese element & replace it with N Korean.   :D
That must have been a MAJOR bitch job of digital editing, not to mention the dialogue getting switched to NK.
Obviously NK is the up & coming bad guy with global reach & so deserves to be demonized.

Maybe the Zhalanashkol is a more relevant conflict to be simulating than I'd previously imagined...  ;)

In a some sense, yes. In this DLC we will show events from all sides and even more. Therefore, anyone can compare and draw conclusions on their own, what like the truth, and where not.

My take on CoH2 - whenever I see screenshots of tanks firing at other tanks 20 meters away and this is how tank combat works in that game, I know it is not for me. Simple really ;)

I am sure it will sell shitloads and make buckets of $$$, thats just the way the world is...

I'm reading this thread and I can't believe what you guys are writing here. Especially Andrew's words whose country (as well as mine) has been under soviet government's yoke for so many years. Do you really think the CCCP (USSR) couldn't be considered the enemy? It was the main, worst bloody enemy here, in Poland for over forty years. If it wasn't Gorbachev's Perestroika we, people behind the Iron Curtain would probably live in a place comparable to North Korea now.
Soviet apparatus murdered a lot of Polish people - that's a pure, non-deniable fact and that's why I'll always hate this f* regime.
Not Russians, but soviets. They, with their nazi counterparts, were the worst enemies of the mankind.*

* - If not to count Mao, who has much, much more blood on his hands than Stalin or Hitler.

I think Churchill, under his leadership built the biggest prisons camps in the world, the genocide of the Indians and the people of Africa, even after the World War II. But I understand this is "inconvenient version", as it turns out that Western governments such as vile as those with whom they supposedly are fighting.

But it certainly never make films and do not make games about this. The preferred trample the corpse of the murdered bear.

Do not get me wrong, I'm not that there Stalinist, or a follower of communist ideals. But in the history of any country can be found both good and bad, if try hard, we can find more bad. But it is not clear in what sense? Stalin die there for 60 years, Soviet Union has gone 20. If you think it was all shit, so why stick to stir all the time? Live in the future, not in the past.

You may be frustrated because you have some serious misconceptions.

The Punishment battalions, as you call them, did not exist in the US Army, or the British Army in the same form they did in the USSR.  

The POW camps in Britain and in the USA were like Club Meds compared to those in Germany and the USSR.  Ask any soldier from the WW2 era, which country's POW camp he would rather be interned in if he had the choice.  I'll bet a month's pay 90% or more would say USA.  The German and Soviet(as well as Japan) camps and thetreatment of POWs stand out because they were brutal.

Neither the US nor the British army had anything like the NKVD troops stationed behind the front lines to shoot anyone leaving their position.

The NKVD is not analogous to the US Amy's MPs.  The NKVD, on Stalin's and Beria's orders liquidated and sent to the gulags Soviet soldiers who were captured by the Germans and who had starved in German POW camps.  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn called that one of the greatest crimes the Soviet government ever perpetrated on it's citizens.  Where did you get the idea that MPs, as a matter of state policy, murdered US soldiers?

Exactly what prison camps are we talking about here?  Are you talking about Prisoner of war camps or what?  He would have had to go a long way to exceed the numbers of citizens in the gulags Andrey.

I'll bet it was that often seen picture of American troops executing these German soldiers captured during the Battle of the Bulge for wearing American uniforms.

My guess is it was subtitled for public consumption in the Soviet Union as American MPs executing American soldiers for cowardice and desertion.

(http://www.offthemall.com/Military/general/thm_German%20soldiers%20captured%20as%20spies%20are%20tied%20to%20posts%20wearing%20marked%20American%20combat%20fatigues.jpg)

I had the impression Andrey wasn't defending the excesses of the USSR, just saying that popular portrayals weren't the whole story.   
That is a disservice to 'ordinary' people from the former USSR, (in the same way that automatically treating all Germans as Nazis would be.)
It is bad to devalue the sacrifice of all those millions in the GPW by showing only a politically convenient fraction of the story. 
The idea that the genuine bravery of your troops was in fact just fear of a bullet in the back from your own side is pretty demeaning.
Given that 'evil' is present in all times & all regimes, it's not a fair portrayal but it is still the predominant view.

Anyway that was how I understood what Andrey & Rostov were saying. 


**

& while I think of CoH2 I have to say I really hated the camera!!  The terrible weapons ranges modeled seem to have caused the camera movement range to be painfully restricted, meaning that if you want to see the whole battlefield you can't see anything like a panoramic view.  You effectively only see what is within range more or less.  That was what it felt like.  Don't recall CoH1 camera being so horribly constrained.
It's a relief to get back to having my M113s shot to hell from a kilometer away....   :)

Have you asked any of these soldiers? Are you really sure Brits, or US camps were so good?
http://cyberussr.com/hcunn/for/us-germany-pow.html

Someone's quote:

And a bit different topic, but somewhat related: https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/quwby (https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/quwby).

Sure, Solzhenitsyn is a great historian of the Soviet Union. Does he got some numbers how many soldiers freed from German camps went directly to Gulag? I mean real numbers, not his usual BS.

Most countries have a system of some sort for interrogation of returning POWs. There were a lot more of returning POWs in the case of Soviet Union than in the case of other allies. That's why many camps had to be built and interrogation took longer.

Someone's translation of a relevant part from Zemskov, V.N. Gulag (historical-socialogical aspect) Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia, nos. 6 and 7, 1991:

You Westerners are full of old (and modern so called liberal Russia) anti-Soviet propaganda. Don't watch Shtrafbat, and don't read Solzhenitsyn. :D

There is a country called India (now three countries India, Pakistan and Bangladesh). It was a colony of the United Kingdom during the Second World War and before, and what did the British there in this time. Typical "civilians in gulag" but during 100+ vs 10 years and in biggest scale.
Search by keyword Nehru Jawaharlal.

The famous picture of the topic:
http://dic.academic.ru/pictures/wiki/files/51/300px-vereshchagin-blowing_from_guns_in_british_india.jpg

But I understand that uncomfortable topic, and suddenly it turns out that Stalin compared to Churchill and UK in whole and almost no one tyranny.

An I can still remember where in the U.S. since the beginning of the war (1941) of all local civil Japanese. Are they planted in camps indiscriminately?
Where are the games and films about the horrors of the bloody Roosevelt?

Behold, now is the Poland. What happened in the early '20s with the Russian prisoners after the end of the Soviet-Polish war. Is the democratic Marshal Pilsudski gave them to die of starvation in the camps?
Or what happened with German civilians in the 1945-46 years in the territories of Germany, who were transferred to Poland?

As we can see if it is good to dig, you can find in every state a lot of very unsavory things.

P.S. The question arises. And why bring up the past?

I'm sorry Andrey, but you're pushing it.
You're blaming Poles for high mortality rate in prison camps during Polish-Bolshevik war of 1919-1920. This issue surfaced right after Mikhail Gorbachev admitted that the Soviet Union was responsible for Katyn massacre of over 21 thousand Polish citizens in 1940 (including 10 thousand of military/police officers). Certain Soviet groups tried to justify that genocide by improper treatment of POWs by Polish military during the mentioned war (propaganda). They claimed the POWs were executed on purpose, which was corrected by "Krasnoarmiejcy w polskom plenu w 1919–1922 g. Sbornik dokumentow i materiałow" (Moscow 2004) by prof. Waldemar Rezmer, prof. Zbigniew Karpus (both from Nicolas Copernicus University in Torun), prof. Gennadij Matvejev (Moscow University) and many archivists from Poland and Russian Federation. This position is over one thousand pages and contains 338 source documents from Polish and Russian archives. According to it, the cause of death of the prisoners were illnesses like cholera, dysentery, typhoid fever and flu. This is very sad, but the camps were overcrowded, so it was near to impossible to maintain proper hygienic conditions inside them. And that's not only a problem of Polish POW camps. Such things happened in every POW camp of any nation. And please do remember that Poland in 1919-1921 has just regained its independence. Only to be attacked by Bolscheviks. The national administration was still crawling. You blame Piłusudzki for starving those POWs. The first World War has just ended, the famine was everywhere throughout the Europe. Do you really think that Red Army POWs who tried to invade our country were supposed to have higher priority in getting the food than civilians or the Polish army? Was our country the aggressor or was it the newborn Soviet Union?

Then you mention the expulsion of Germans and again blame the Poles for high mortality rate during its course. Let me tell you this Andrey, from 14 million German citizens that were expelled from the lands that were joined to Poland (after the Potsdam treaty), ca. 473 thousand died: 200,000 were deported to USSR and never returned, 60,000 died in Polish camps, 40,000 died in Soviet camps and 120,000 died from genocide done by Red Army. And while there might have been some executions done by Polish forces like in Nieszawa or Aleksandrów Kujawski, according to IPN (Institute of National Remembrance) those executions were supposedly carried out by MO (Citizens' Militia or Civic Militia) and UB (something like a Polish equivalent of NKVD, Germany's Gestapo or DDR's STAZI) - both were under high influence by Soviet apparatus, do not forget there was a famine, cold weather during expulsions, ilnesses, etc. I've never heard about AK (Armia Krajowa - Home Army) that was under the Polish government in exile performing mass executions of Deutsches Volk during that time. Please do post a source if it states otherwise.

At first my point was to prove that Soviet Union was THE proper enemy that is (or was?) pictured in many Hollywood flicks. I respect you Andrey for the great war simulation your game studio has done, but I simply don't understand why you defend the Soviet apparatus by claiming that every nation has done its part in the genocide. What's more, you're trying to attack one of of the nations that was amongst those that has suffered the most during the WW2 (from both: The Reich and Soviet Union) by stating false accusations. Why? What's the point of this?

I could come out here with all guns blazing and post a link to photos and pictures (they're horrifying) from OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) and UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) massacres done in Przebraże, Wołyń (Volhynia) and Podole on Polish infants, women and men, but what would be the point? That would divide us further and this was not my initial intention.

You said let's don't bring up the past. I strongly disagree because we should all learn from the history so we can prevent bad things to repeat, so that our children can live in a world full of peace, not war. Because that's what history is about.

Krabb: I think Solzhenitsyn has quite a bit to say about a lot of things that were hidden.  I think he's worth reading just because how unpopular he was with the Soviet leadership.

But if you don't like him, try this writer.
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v14/Teplyakov.html (http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v14/Teplyakov.html)
Stalin's order Number 270 of August 16, 1941.  I quote it in part below.

International law states that military captivity is not a crime, "a prisoner of war must be as inviolable as the sovereignty of a people, and as sacred as a misfortune." This is for others, whereas for us there was a different law -- Stalin's Order No. 270.
 

If ... "instead of organizing resistance to the enemy, some Red Army men prefer to surrender, they shall be destroyed by all possible means, both ground-based and from the air, whereas the families of the Red Army men who have been taken prisoner shall be deprived of the state allowance [that is, rations] and relief."

The commanders and political officers ... "who surrender to the enemy shall be considered malicious deserters, whose families are liable to be arrested [just] as the families of deserters who have violated the oath and betrayed their Motherland."

Stalin hated Russian soldiers who surrendered so much he took vengence on their familes.

This is Stalin's orders, not Solzhenitzn's words.

Well, if you like to read lies about something you dislike, I understand why it is worth to read Solzhenitsyn.

On the order. Read carefully, you skipped an important part: "Commanders, and political officers who tear off their insignia and who desert to the rear, or surrender...". Not just surrender, but tear off insignia. This is a big difference, I think they should know what the consequences will be for that, even more so if they are officers. Now, the omission of the important parts is exactly what propaganda techniques do. Congrats, you mastered it (just joking). :D

Many countries stop paying grants to families of deserters. Why they should receive money for a soldier who decided to not be a soldier.

OK, I understand your position, and I don't have time to make it through the lies which surround every time the root of all evil - Soviet Union. The topic was about COH2 anyway. :D

Lemonade, calm down, please. I think Andrey wants to tell you that every country has its skeleton in the closet. This is not the place to discuss why Poland tries to convience that it was a henocide in the case of SU, but just small circumstances in the case of Poland. And OUN, and UPA were bandits, they did a lot of bad things in Ukraine, Soviet Union fought them until the end of 50s, FYI.

Yes all persons of Japanese decent on the WEST coast where sent to these moron camps.  MNAY of these people where 2 or 3 generations removed from Japan, and a lot could not even speak Japanese.  Many died from broken hearts/minds.  Some died from often less than sanitary conditions.  Despite this a hell of a lot volunteered for the ARMY.  And those units raised from here where some of the most decorated units the army EVER fielded. They killed ALOT of Germans in the war.  And Hollywood has made a few movies about them over the years.  TOTAL shame event really. 

And the Brits when confronted with Indians willing to die at British hands with little to NO resistance went complete against the British sence of honor.  Had the Indians fought back on a large scale they never would have gotten their independence  back so fast.  I thing Gondi knew the British better than they knew themselves.  BUT had either of these been Hitlers Germany, Maos China, or Stalins USSR there would have been a hell of a lot more dead people. 

BUT the enemy at the gates view on the Eastern Front is the popular view in the west.  If this where fact for the war the USSR would never had beaten back the Germans.  When your home is being destroyed its easy for the brave ones to fight and give it their all.  Does not really matter who is in charge as its pretty cut and dry on the politics. And loosing is not really a viable option.

All nations have evil in the closet.  But some have ALOT of evil in the closet.  :P

Yeah, I guess you're right, Krabb. I might have gone far too emotional with my posts. I'm sorry. :-X
I understand now what you tried to say Andrey. But the form in which you used your arguments sounded like Poland deliberately starved those Russian prisoners to death and executed the repatriated Germans. And with this I couldn't agree with, because it's untrue.
I can't deny the fact that Poland do have some skeletons in her closet. You could probably dig them out. It's just they mostly were incidents outside of government's control, unlike in Soviet Union or 3rd Reich where directives have been issued from the high command of political apparatus.

Okay and on that final note, the discussion is now closed.

If you wish to discuss CoH 2, please start another topic. It is a fascinating game in its own right - from the video it reminds me of 'Age of Empires'  ;D