Gary Grigsby’s War in the East: The German-Soviet War 1941-1945 is a turn-based World War II strategy game stretching across the entire Eastern Front. Gamers can engage in an epic campaign, including division-sized battles with realistic and historical terrain, weather, orders of battle, logistics and combat results.
The critically and fan-acclaimed Eastern Front mega-game Gary Grigsby’s War in the East just got bigger and better with Gary Grigsby’s War in the East: Don to the Danube! This expansion to the award-winning War in the East comes with a wide array of later war scenarios ranging from short but intense 6 turn bouts like the Battle for Kharkov (1942) to immense 37-turn engagements taking place across multiple nations like Drama on the Danube (Summer 1944 – Spring 1945).
We try to arrange some PBEM games now, to see if the balance is totally ruined or just altered a bit
Why not release it to public rather sooner than later, so we will be able to do beta-testing like we did for year after release
As long as balance is relatively ok publishing patch might actually be quickest way of fixing possible (and inevitable) imbalances - more people paying, more available and reliable data to assess and address problems.
carlkay58 did some good test vs AI in Smolensk scenario.
Pelton is playing GC 41 with himself 24/7 to reach First Winter before the end of the weekend.
I'm waiting for a turn from timmyab in Moscow 41-42 PBEM.
Some others offered their feedback and so must have played the game a bit too.
My laptop completed GC 41 in 43 hours.
edit: Yes, we know that public betatesting will be the best, we just have to catch worst problems first. The problem is we can't pester 2by3 and Matrix for compiling the game and publishing beta installers every two days, when major bugs or total lack of balance will be discovered. For the private beta it's up to me whether to build new exe and upload it for the testers. Sometimes I made 2-3 per day. My archive folder tells me I made ~106 versions of the game for the testers since May 18th (when the first one was made), includng 15 comprehensive versions (with updated data files, not just the main .exe). This feat can't be repeated in public beta mode.
1) Doing public betas gets too much "noise", ie errors in feedback, incomplete or confusing feedback, etc which burns a lot of time to sort through.
2) Better (more efficient) to use a dedicated cadre of experienced beta testers, or alpha testers if possible.
Some others offered their feedback and so must have played the game a bit too.
How can I get my hands on this beta?
You could volunteer for it, as for Joel's approval, sign an NDA with Matrix and wait to get access to dev forums. Might take longer than the time to publish public beta. Or it might take less time. Who knows? [:)]
In the Losses screen SP & AC losses is new along with Men Returned and Vehicles Captured. There is also 4 more Vehicle Losses categories and a total of all vehicles lost.
The combat screen is more detailed giving you the names of the commanders of both forces engaged.
The Battle report date format is different, the modified CV is now inline with with the normal CV and HQ names are now bold.
BTW, not having played WITE in a few months (and now eagerly awaiting this patch to get into it again), will it be possible to assign non-Security divisions or brigades to RHG HQs? I never understood that restriction, presumably to discourage players from using RHGs as front armies, but several scenarios have non-Security units attached to RHG
1) Different date display
2) Commander shown below the unit counter on the right
3) Motor pool changed to Vehicle Pool
4) Supply and Fuel Depots changed to Supply and Fuel Dumps
5) Panzer III L
6) Added another digit for the combat odds