The A2A Simulations Community

Reading Peter Townsend's Duel of Eagles has put me in the mood for a BoB game. I tend to prefer the strategic over the sim. I own Uncommon Valor and WITP. And can even find my old copy of Grigsby's Pac War if I need to. I also still have my old copy of the board game "RAF August 1940 The Battle Of Britain" by West End. I am looking for something that will fit somewhere in that overall operations master control genre, without perhaps being quite so micro-management intensive as WITP. Something a little more big-picture. I realize that for most gamers who own BOB2 it's the sim is that appeals, but can anyone offer an opinion as to how well the campaign does as a stand-alone game? Is the campaign really just there to give a context to sim actions, or is it worth the price of admission as a game on its own?

Also, does it play nice with Win 7 Home Premium? Looks to me like the consensus is that if you actually install as directed on an up-to-date version of the OS with current drivers and apply patches it does, but anybody care to differ with or confirm my read of existing BB posts on that topic?

Finally, looks like we are up to patch 2.11. Have to DL that from Gamershell? No DL direct from Matrix? Or is it one of those games currently released full patched. Yeah, I wish. Well, I have bought a few games near the end of their release cycle that were re-issued fully patched.

Or maybe you can suggest an entirely different title that fills the bill as a BOB campaign/strategy/ops game a bit better than BOB2? And that will run on Win 7...

Thanks

Aloha! BC.



Then you are like me. I'm more of a War Gamer than a Flight Simmer.
I bought BoB1 in 2000 as it claimed to be a Combat Flight Sim and a War Game.
Had to see if this was true, and was not disappointed with this unlikely marriage. BoB1 was buggy and un-polished.
BoBII v2.11 is a vast improvement over the original BoB1 in the Flight Sim Department. The Campaign (War Game) part of it has been changed
very little since BoB1, nevertheless, as a war gamer I think it is a pretty good Battle of Britain war game.

Last July we finally recruited a talented man to tackle the Campaign code.
Others have tried before, but saw the code and cried "Oh my God!" quit and ran away. I think this is what is called "Seeing The Elephant."
Anyway, two27, our intrepid Campaign coder has been working to improve the Campaign in a big way, with a critical eye on history, a professional understanding of the military, and a hatred of code bugs.
Much has he accomplished, to our great pleasure, and for v2.12 we will have a much better Campaign than before.
v2.12 not quite ready. The rest of us BDG guys have other non-code work that better reflects true terrain and history, and yet unfinished.

Is BoBII v2.11 the best war game for the Battle of Britain? I don't know, as I have never played any others.
That said, it is good enough to have kept my loyalty and full spare time for 10 years to it.

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Other folk may answer your other questions better than I.

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"sniff.. sniff.. Snort! ARF! GGRRRR! ARF! (Tod der stinkenden republikanischen Partei, diesem ignoranten religiösen Monstrum.)" Toto

Regarding BoB2 and W7, I have W7-home-64 and it runs just fine,
following the requirements noted in the patch release notes.
Only the latest patch is required to bring the game up to date.
I think the game as issued in download form from A2A is at patch
2.06, not sure about Matrix, but I'm pretty sure it is back there
somewhere.

Official A2A patches stopped at 2.06, subsequent ones are all our
fault.

Thanks guys. BTW PV, that avatar... Jack Bruce from the cover of Fresh Cream? ..."I have never been so moved."

The campaign's viability as a stand alone is one of the considerations I keep in mind while working on the campaign project. If the campaign is treated only as a platform for the flight sim, then it is too easy to disregard errors. On the other hand, looking at the campaign as something a player can run without ever venturing into the 3D, changes how it is viewed and lowers the tolerance of errors. I've only been investigating the code and making changes since the middle August 2011. There is much more to be done, but I think you will see in the differences between the campaign in 2.11 and 2.12 solid indications of the direction I want to go with it.

Enjoy.

Yes! At one point I enquired if anyone recognized the avatar and got no response - ah, how soon
they forget. I have become quite a JB fan, over the years, and have about 20 albums now. The
guy manages to consistently be weird enough for my eclectic taste. High points for me are on
Wheels of Fire, Songs for a Tailor, the Kip Hanrahan collaborations and A Question of Time, but
they're all good. It was a happy happenstance that an image of his made a perfect WW2 flight sim
avatar.

OK So... The only BOB DL I see is from the Matrix store. There is no separate A2A DL page, right? The choice is either buying the boxed set or downloading straight from the Matrix store? (http://www.matrixgames.com/store/353/Ba ... of.Victory). I got that straight? Either way it's the same game I suppose.

Another factor in my deciding it's time for a new game is that I may be looking at ACL surgery soon. Looks like I'll spending a long slow summer with lots of down time. My PC will be a more constant companion than my backpack.

Started Walter Lord's "The Miracle of Dunkirk" A nice companion to Duel of Eagles.

Another to add to your list is "Duel In The Dark" - Peter Townsend's sequel to Eagles.

Best of luck with the upcoming op Sir


Cheers!
Rob

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Happy reading,hope the op goes well,wife spent 12 weeks over Christmas with a smashed ankle,fibular,tib,ligaments yuech.
If you have a library near you make the most of it.

Thanks guys. Have about 25 books waiting in the wings. Quicker and easier to buy than to read, esp at the used bookstore. So they can pile up.

Have an old Thrustmaster Topgun Fox2 Pro joystick. Wonder if I can use it with the game, or perhaps more of an issue, with Win 7? Looking for the strategy game, but I'm sure I won't want to sit out the entire air-war.

Almost feel like buying but not playing till I have 2.12. More likely I'll load it up and get it going as soon as I finish my current campaign though. Anyway, the ultimate war game has always been getting the SW to run properly.

I believe this is a direct DL from A2A:

http://www.a2asimulations.com/store/ind ... ex&cPath=5

I didn't realize Matrix had a DL, at one point they were the sole source for the
hard copy. I think the A2A DL makes A2A a few more pennies than going through the distributor...

Randy is quite right. Couple of years ago, I had a laptop for work which had no dedicated gfx chip so I used to just play BOBII campaigns on it, in 2D.

It is an entirely self contained game, which does not require you to run it in 3D mode at all to enjoy it.

And with the improvements, especially to campaign info and escort behaviour, which Randy et al have achieved, it will be even more enjoyable!

H

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Looking for BOB missions, campaigns, and historical resources?

http://bobgamehub.blogspot.com

Thanks Heinkill. Exactly what I want to hear. Have not pulled the trigger yet, but my mind is about made up. Any opinion about whether my old Thrustmaster stick is worth dusting off should I decide to go get shot down once in a while?

I'm the worst one to ask! I use an old logitech attack stick - not even sure if it has force feedback- don't think so! I've never been too much into the kit such as super joysticks and pedals and throttles - I don't think it would reduce the number of times I get shot down, I think it would just cost me more to get shot down!

_________________
Looking for BOB missions, campaigns, and historical resources?

http://bobgamehub.blogspot.com