Fresh meat into the fray

[Turner]

As a new player I have a lot of questions. I'll introduce myself briefly first. My name is Nikolaus Türner. (sualokin backwards), live in Stockholm Sweden and 30 years of age. WW2 has always been a great interest, especially after I learned as a kid that my grandfather and his brother were directly involved in the action on the eastern front and prior to that spent about a year in a soviet gulag camp. They grew up in Tallinn, Estonia in the 1920's and 30s and were sent to gulag in the summer of 1940 because they were studying at the university. In total about 8000 students were deported that summer, of which roughly 2500 would die within a year. It was a horrible war in many respects even (or perhaps particularly) for those who survived it.
Personal mil experience, 2. AmfBat of the Swedish Amphibious Corps, rank Staff Sergeant. As a civilian I've survived being hit by a car while biking, motorcycle crashes, and a knife through my right lung. So you could say I have had my share cut out for me. What's good about it is you learn to appreciate life. I'm sure many of you can relate. It's just life, you never know. :)


Anyway... I've not been playing turn-based games since the Panzer General days. Instead I found 'Hearts of Iron', and is a great fan of the series playing the 'Historical Stony Road' mod (HSR) but there has always been something lacking. HoI is a true strategy game played at the very highest level where the smallest unit is of division size and the map is made up of provinces not hexes. So there is not any room to maneuver tactically, all movements and combat actions remain on a strategic level.
So imagine my delight when I came across the HPS titles this weekend. I figured, why hesitate (?), and ordered all the eastern front titles of the PzC series, save for Budapest '45 I'll get that one later most likely. Also ordered the air campaigns 'Defense of the Reich', 'War over Vietnam' and modern day 'Decisive Action'. I probably bit off more than I can chew atm but wth.
On that note I've been oogling Market Garden '44 as well as "the Bulge", seem to be nice titles. I'm just totally sold on the eastern front, it was there the war was won, and lost. In all honesty the western campaign from '44 to '45 look like a picnic in comparison. ;)


Ok questions, questions questions... :chin:

Installation
What is the best way to install these games. I've understood they all use the same core engine, so do you install them into the same directory or treat each title as a separate install? Is it even possible to have all campaigns using the same install?

The game & ladder
I'll need a boot camp game, but first I need to learn the game! So... any hints or recommendations of what type of game one should start off with?

Graphics
Ok it's not a pretty game, I know that. However are there any custom graphics that will fit the whole series? Or is it again, title specific? Where is this downloadable?
About the display size; The game is played in a window right? So a big screen is good yes?


More questions will come up later for sure, but that's it for now. I'm very excited about getting these titles (as you probably can tell). Expecting the PBEM games to be very challenging, but looking forward to it!

Salute!

[FLG]

A few answers, you can download graphics mods here

http://members.shaw.ca/gcsaunders/welcome.html

And here

http://www.volcanomods.com/

Volcano mans mods are the ones most people use, for the WWII stuff, and they often include modified scenarios as well

To install the games just stick the discs in and just say yes to everything. All the games will end up as sub-directories in a directory called HPS Simulations. It is all very straightforward.

To learn the game, play a few of the getting started scenarios which come with the games. They have a tutorial with them. You will need to read the manual. It is the same for all the PzC games so you only have to do it once. (Not sure about the air 2 air stuff).

Play the AI a bit to get to grips with the basics and then when you are ready just place a post on this forum and you will have no trouble finding opponents.

Good luck and enjoy yourself.

[HirooOnoda]

Welcome Sualokin.

You've made a good decision to start out with the Eastern Front games. In my opinion they are wargaming at its finest. You should have gotten Budapest'45 though, it is a great, great game.

Were your relatives in the 5th SS?

[Turner]

FLG thanks for the quick and helpful reply.

HirooOnoda, my grandfather was not SS, I'm pretty sure he served as schützmannschaft in Estonia, when that tour was over he went to Finland together with his wife to volunteer for the Finnish Army. They slept in a barn together with a few hundred other refugees just outside of Helsinki. One night a bomb fell on the barn and half the barn with all the refugees in that end blew up, painting the snow black and red with burnt dismembered corpses. At that point his wife had enough of war and they went on to Sweden.
His brother was SS and considering the 20. SS Estnische freiw. Division was encircled by the Red Army at the end of the war, it has to be the 5. SS Div. Wiking. Most likely in the Estnisches SS-Freiwilligen-Panzer-Grenadier-Batallion Narwa. He escaped Soviet captivity altogether (I'm sure that had he been sent to the gulag again, he would not have survived) and with his wife, a nurse whom he met at a field hospital when he was wounded, came to live in Canada for the rest of his life. They never had any children.

The estonians fought for their homeland, most of the estonians hated the russians and particularly those who volunteered to serve. Since all estonian officers had been shot during the Soviet occupation, no military organization existed. The SS were keen on taking on these volunteers and the officer ranks were filled by Germans. We all know that from '43 onwards the germans were in dire need of replacements and volunteers.

Personally I don't hold any grudges over what happened. I mean what happened has happened, we have a future to work for. At the same time, it's unlikely that I'll play any games commanding the Red Army. I'm a believer in the rule of "two wrongs doesn't make one right". In the end, the "liberating" Red Army turned out to be as bad as the worst SS units. I can forgive, but I will never forget. It was very convenient to lay all the blame on the Germans after the war but there is more to the story than that. It's also a well known fact that it is the victor who writes the history.

This is my truth, you may not agree but I am always open to discuss. I've met several russians who served on the eastern front and have nothing but respect for them. They only did what was required of them. War is hell, the eastern front 1941-45 was the largest and ugliest war mankind has ever seen. Let us all hope it will stay that way.

Salute!

[alaric99x]

Welcome Nikolaus

From my readings and experience, your truth is the same truth I know. Some of my family also spent time in the Gulag.

[HirooOnoda]

Sualokin,

Thanks for the information. I have the deepest respect for your relatives.

I hope you enjoy your stay here in the blitz.

[Turner]

Alaric99x, do you also have relatives who served in the german side? Or the soviet side? Many many Red Army soldiers were sent to the gulag only for what they had seen during the invasion of Germany. The living standard and civilian comparative wealth in Germany shocked the russians, so they had to be "re-educated" or "pacified".

HirooOnoda thanks, I miss my grandfather deerly. He was like a father to me, more than my own father. He never had the opportunity to go back to Estonia since he died jan 1 1991, however his brother in Canada did shortly after its independence. He looked up their old home where they grew up in Tallinn. Get this... the house had recently been sold, the new owners was about to renovate it and had put everything they'd found in the house outside for a yard sale. He found toys from his childhood in those old boxes. The emotional trip was too much for him and he had a heart attack. He didn't dare to seek medical help in Estonia because he was afraid the authorities might send him to Russia (a fear not entirely unfounded) so he flew home without medical attention. He never really recovered from that blow, and died a couple years later in '94. His wife passed away shortly thereafter.

[alaric99x]

Alaric99x, do you also have relatives who served in the german side?

My family is originally from Germany, it seems that every male relative who was an adult during WWII served, usually on the Russian front. My father is from Schlesien (Silesia), from near the city of Breslau, now it's called Wroclaw and belongs to Poland. He was 14 when he was "called" to serve in the Volkssturm, for a few months, when the Red Army got close to his city. When the front collapsed, he got rid of his uniform and headed for Bavaria. There he met my mother, who is from some tiny village (Reichertshofen, where I was also born), near the city of Ingolstadt. My grandfather was up in Latvia, somewhere safe, repairing boots. His holiday ended when he was captured in the Courland pocket. He spent some years in the camps and came home to find his wife with another man, so he went up into the attic and hung himself. I recently met my uncle after many years. He served from '42, mainly on the Russian front. He was captured in Czechoslovakia. He told me that he had been wounded, recovered, sent back to the front and then collected by some officer who was gathering returnees for an improvised unit. He said one night, a few weeks later, they could see the Soviets shooting every possible weapon for no reason. The next day they learned the war was over. He spent most of his time in camps in the Crimea, and wasn't released until 1951. I don't know why they kept him so long, he was only a junior lieutenant, just promoted from sergeant, in the Wehrmacht, but he had very positive memories of the Russians, he said they treated him very well. My other grandfather, on my mother's side, also served as a Wehrmacht officer and spent some years in the camps. Another uncle I was very close to served as a Wehrmacht sergeant and spent some years in the camps. There were many other relatives in similar situations, but I never got to talk to them about their experiences. My father left Germany when I was very young and most of them had died before I returned to Germany.

My father took us to Calgary, where I spent my first 3 years in North America. After that we lived in several places in the US. I joined the US Army at 18 and they returned me to Germany in 1973 for the first of 3 tours of duty here.

[Turner]

Yes the russian people is full of contradictions but most russians have a heartily warmth and humane way in them. Crimea has a very pleasant climate and he was lucky to work in the camps there. I mean pretty much every other possible region of gulag camps would have been a worse alternative. :)

[alaric99x]

Well, most had a decidedly unpleasant experience in the Russian camps, if they survived. That uncle was the only veteran in my family that I had a chance to speak to directly. I met him last summer, the last time I saw him before that was about 50 years ago. Of course, my father related his experiences, but he succeeded in making it to the US zone, so he never experienced the gulag. The limited information I have about other relatives comes to me indirectly from my mother and father. They told me some stories about how miserable it was for other family members in the camps. What my uncle told me about his experiences in captivity surprised me, I guess he was just very lucky.