chanman

I think one of the big changes from A Bridge Too Far to Eastern Front was the move from having limits on force composition (a certain number of slots divided between infantry and support slots) to Eastern Front's no-limit unit slots allowing the player to replace all infantry with tanks (and on some of those steppes maps, that was probably advisable). Tank machine guns also became much more potent against infantry in the sequel. In the first two games, it would still take some time for a tank to completely destroy a squad caught in the open, while in CC3, it seemed to happen too fast to attempt dropping smoke to extract the squad in trouble. Also, I was hoping for more of a discussion on the very first game which didn't even let the player choose their forces, instead streaming seemingly random reinforcements to the player after every day of fighting.

As for where next to take the series, how about a science fiction setting? I bet the engine would work well with a Hammer's Slammers or an Ogre license.

The cuts in the opening of this episode were very confusing. It took a while to realize what was going on and longer to realize it was intentional and not Michael Hermes having a seizure.

My dream is that one day, 3MA manages to round up Brian Reynolds, Soren Johnson, and Jon Shafer again along with Jeff Briggs, Sid Meier and any other civ designers to talk well... Civ. Preferably while actually playing a multiplayer round of Civ at say, PAX.

Listening to the reactions on the mechanics of receiver reminds me of the first time I handled and operated a firearm at cadets (a single shot .22 target rifle). That realization that fundamentally, it's a piece of not particularly complex and surprisingly heavy (often verging on cumbersome) machinery that hasn't really changed since the invention of antibiotics and all the implications of that - lots of fiddly bits, moving parts, maintenance needs, ways to not work. It also points to something that often gets overlooked in legislation - guns are not especially complicated compared to things like engines and are well understood machines and that also means that a reasonably skilled machinist with access to publically available information can create one from a raw billet of metal given a bit of time and inclination. (At least two Canadian makers of AR-15s for the civlian market machine them from solid aluminum billets). All the hullabaloo over 3D printing gun parts ignores the fact that computer-controlled machine tools have had the same (actually more flexible) capability for years, only working in reverse by removing material from the raw metal instead of layering polymer to build up an item. Incidentally the 1911 that you see in Receiver (and every WW2 shooter ever) is over a hundred years old now. Try finding any other designs of anything from 1911 still being made today. PS. I suspect the name Receiver has a dual-meaning. The body of a gun (the section that either contains all the other parts or that the other parts like the barrel attach to) and which the RCMP and BATF consider to be the 'actual*' firearm is the receiver *This is just like the frame of a car being considered to 'be' the vehicle because of the possibility of all other parts being removed or changed.

I'd say calling down fire from the heavens goes back to at least C&C. The GDI Ion Cannon was definitely fire from the heavens. I don't recall if Warcraft 1 had a meteor storm spell, but that was an ability of an on-screen unit as opposed to the click-o-doom of the ion cannon.

I don't remember if it was this particular episode when you guys discuss the change in RTS's with the change from resource collection to fighting for territory. (I think it may have been Episode 143 on character and strategy games), but Relic was definitely not the first with Dawn of War. Does anyone remember Z from Bitmap Brothers? I think it was published by Westwood back in 1996 for Dos/Windows 95. It looks like the original makers are trying to bring it to iPad. Anyone else remember playing this game way back when?