What every member on this MB / ladder should know!

[Dog Soldier]

Welcome gamers to the HPS OPS MB. This part of theblitz.club is dedicated to the operational games in the HPS gaming company line up.

• We discuss all aspects of the games here.
  
• Find other players for live opponent gaming.
  
• Strategy and Tactics
  
• New ideas to enhance the games' enjoyment or historical interest.
  
• Modification and scenarios developed by other members.
  
• Tournament information.
  
• Responses to queries from folks directly and indirectly involved in HPS game development.

A great community awaits you here on this forum. If you have any questions about this forum, or just need a helping hand, contact myself or my associate Foul. and we will respond.

Below is some great links and other information about what our community has to offer. Thank you to Foul for all his hard work in keeping this thread up to date.

Regards,
Dog Soldier

All the text in green are links to other pages/sites, all the text in blue are email addresses.

Supported Games (All HPS).
All Panzer Campaigns Titles,
All Modern Campaign Titles,
First World War Campaigns, France 14,
Total War In Europe, The First Blitzkrieg and War On The Southern Front.

PBEM Etiquette
Make sure you and your opponent have the latest patch (available from HPS site link below) and you either use the default optional rules or discuss which ones you will be using before you start the game.
Other than the default,never agree to use optional rules that you don't fully understand the effects on play, it is a favorite tactic of "sharks" to use optional rules that slant the scenario in their direction, so beware.
To help further here is a article on the optional rules that you will useful Optional Rules Article .

Active/Inactive Status
Any player who has not reported a game for a year becomes inactive and his stats are archived on the DB, the best way to regain active status again is to play and report a new game!

CG bonus.
Any players who reach the last turn of any stock campaign game or other large scenario (SM8 or larger) can apply for a 25 point bonus, please send the final turn file (with password) to Dog Soldier.

Player Profiles (Survey).
Player Profiles are now called Survey's at the new site, to complete one you need to click Control Panel-> Blitz-> The Survey Form your survey will then show up from time to time in the Survey box located at the bottom LHS of the Blitz screen.

Old Player Profiles.
#1 RickyB, #2 Mike Bowen, #3 Al, #4 Bushman, #5 Volcano Man, #6 Hadge, #7 FLG, #8 Engelbrekt, #9 Hog Of War, #10 Tide1, #11 mirrorshades, #12 Belisarius, #13 Sgt Fury, #14 Landser34, #15 Foul, #16 CptCav, #17 Typhoon, #18 Airedale, #19 Krak, #20 TeT2, #21 PK Powers, #22 Dog Soldier, #23 Kharkov, #24 Marquo, #25 paulj, #26 Vaevictis,

Smolensk ’41 XP1 and XP2 packs.
Two scenario packs are avaliable for S41, the XP1 pack includes 10 extra scenarios avaliable from the HPS site here...
XP1 scenario pack
The XP2 pack contains 6 scenarios including a revised campaign game, all the info is on this page...
XP2 scenario pack

Useful links to PzC/MC related sites.
Glenn Saunders Unofficial PzC site.
Volcano Man Art/Alt scenario download site.
HPS site.
HPS PzC patchs.
HPS MC patchs.
HPS WW2 In Europe The First Blitzkrieg patchs.
Duchet Games (for purchasing HPS titles in Europe)
Jison's MapMod site. ***new home***
Matt Thompson-Moltzen's PzC Stab v1.4 update 5 (zip format).

Patch updates
Not all titles are patched to the same level, the attached file [attachment=2069] list's each title and the level they are patched to, many thanks to Rui Valente for this excellent piece of work.

PzC/MC Strategy Articles.
PzC/MC Articles
PzC/MC articles at Glenn's site.

Design Articles
Fancy trying to design a new scenario? Check out these excellent articles..Scenario Design Article

New Game Categories for Ladder Profiles.
The ladder game lists are getting too long if players only own all games in a single series. The HPSOPS ladder supports three series from HPS.

OpC: PzC ALL - all Panzer Campaigns Games,
OpC: MC ALL - all Modern Campaign Games,
OPC: WW2IE ALL - All WW2 In Europe Games (for future use)

I have created three sub-categories for players who own all the games in a series listed above. This should make the ladder more easy to read.
Go to you member profile. Deselect the individual games you have. Replace them with the series ALL category today!

Tournaments
There is a PzC/MC tourney sub forum Here which will announce new tourneys that you can join in with, this section is run by Sergio who will be happy to help you out.

Anyone wanting to participate in a tourney should read rule #21 to understand the commitment you are making. It should also be noted that players who break these rules are risking future involvement in tournaments.


After Action Reports
Make sure you check out the AAR sub forum Here for some great AAR posts and links to other great AAR's on the Blitz site.

There are bonus points on offer for any completed AAR posted.

What is the H2H?
The H2H (Human vs. Human) section is run by Foul. , it is a area of the club where scenario designers can upload their new (or modified versions of existing scenarios) to be tested by Blitz members. It has been proved that this system produces very balanced scenarios for PBEM matches, which is not always true for the default (or stock) scenarios.

When the tested scenarios reach the required standard they are moved to the Approved list where they can be downloaded by the whole Blitz community, these scenarios can also be reported on the Blitz ladders just like a stock game and for the same amount of points.

There are never enough PzC/MC testers, if you would like to test a scenario you should contact Foul. , you will be awarded bonus ladder points for your efforts.

Got VISTA O/S and HPS games?
Connect to the two links below for the latest words of wisdom from HPS to make your games run smoothly on the VISTA O/S.

go to the HPS Website:
HPS Home
And click on the link right at the top of the page that says:
"got VISTA™?"

...which leads to the page ...
VISTA Help

Useful links for New Blitz Members
How to upload your Avatar
Site Features Guide