Second Front

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WYBaugh
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Second Front

Post by WYBaugh »

Anyone else looking forward to this? Second Front is releasing on Steam tomorrow:


Second Front is a tactical WWII turn-based strategy game. Craft & share your own scenarios and maps or use your strategic prowess in 48 scenarios set in iconic locations. Command over 40 types of infantry and 216 tanks, vehicles and guns. An infinite tactical sandbox experience.
From reading and watching some videos it appears to be ASL ruleset which can be odd on how game mechanics work. Also scenarios are locked for progression and no manual save.

A review perspective https://tallyhocorner.com/2023/01/secon ... ervations/
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Re: Second Front

Post by Smoove_B »

I'd put it on my wishlist a long time ago, but had forgotten about it. I'll have to see what the word on the street is, but I had no idea it was officially releasing tomorrow.
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Re: Second Front

Post by stimpy »

Hmmmm....no price?
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Re: Second Front

Post by DOS=HIGH »

This is made by Microprose!? What year is it, did I enter some timewarp? Not crazy about the Minecraft-style graphics but am interested to hear what the reviews say.
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Re: Second Front

Post by Isgrimnur »

PUBLISHED by Microprose
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Re: Second Front

Post by jztemple2 »

WYBaugh wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 12:32 pm Also scenarios are locked for progression and no manual save.
I have this on my wishlist but those are two serious issues for me. I would hate that I can't just play the scenarios I want and I want to be able to save whenever I want. So this game is now a wait and see. Otherwise I dig the computerized 3D ASL feel :wink:
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Re: Second Front

Post by dbt1949 »

I've been waiting on this one too. Have seen a few youtube videos of playthrus.
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Re: Second Front

Post by jztemple2 »

This is a bit more encouraging, just saw it on their Steam discussion forum:
From the game manual:

The scenarios are arranged in difficulty on each tab from easiest to hardest, top to bottom. On each set of scenarios, the first 2 scenarios are unlocked. The next four are unlocked by winning the first 2. The second group of four are unlocked by winning any four of the first 6, and the last group of two are unlocked by winning any eight of the first ten scenarios.
At the start, there are 8 scenarios, 1 campaign and 21 tutorials (Boot camp) unlocked. There are 4 more campaigns to unlock (at present), and 40 scenarios to unlock.

In addition to about 40 scenarios in workshop (there are more in workshop, but some of them are test scenarios and not really playable).

So from the start, without unlocking anything, you have almost 50 scenarios and 2 campaigns (plus all the tutorials) available.

And all 3 editors, but (as posted elsewhere) I strongly encourage you to play a bunch (at least 10 scenarios) before tying to build one. That way you get a better idea of what works in a map, and what forces need to be like to be playable. (huge battles, while possible, will take an incredible amount of time to play).
Also, a boatload of videos from the developers here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOxChf ... 8nlbtF6_oQ
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Re: Second Front

Post by jztemple2 »

And I didn't even think about it, the whole 106 page manual is available on the Steam store page. Damn, this one really was coming in under my radar. Well, printing the manual now :wink:
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Re: Second Front

Post by em2nought »

Definitely interested. Thought it was a year or two away yet.
Technically, he shouldn't be here.
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Re: Second Front

Post by WYBaugh »

The game saves after every turn so that sounds better. I should have RTFM
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Re: Second Front

Post by jztemple2 »

WYBaugh wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 8:40 am The game saves after every turn so that sounds better. I should have RTFM
Me too :oops:
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Re: Second Front

Post by Lassr »

Had this one on my wish list also. Not sure I'll jump on it now, probably let it season a little and purchase during the next sale.
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Re: Second Front

Post by jztemple2 »

Playing the first bootcamp mission which demonstrates different types of movement. When the lesson is over, you have an option to continue playing which I did. Something interesting is happening, the Germans are advancing to retake the VP location I captured. And I don't know if it is scripted or it's the AI thinking for itself, but the Germans are moving up through a gully to keep them out of sight of my GIs. A game like this lives or dies based upon how good the AI is, so I'm watching how it works.

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Re: Second Front

Post by jztemple2 »

Someone posted this in a Steam discussion thread. Sounds useful. I'm assuming that "Gretchen" is the name for the AI.
Advices to play Second Front

Hello,

Here are my advices to play to Second Front :

1 - If you are attacking, it's "time box" session, so you haven't an indefinite time. So be effective! Don't forget that if you fire, you can't move. You always need to select part of the troops that will fire first, and the rest must move to go closer to the strategic location.

2 - When you fire, concentrate your fire, to have better chance to kill, and try get the best leader in the stack to add bonus. But be careful, if you stack too much, every deadly enemy fire against your stack will blow up your chance to stay alive.

3 - If you are defending, you can choose to fire but be careful of the return of fire as by selecting a shoot, you need to achieve an hit on the most dangerous enemy. After this, the rest of unbroken enemy will return fire. So be careful to select the right dangerous target.

4 - If you are defending with very less units than the attacking player which can fire against you, it's better to move to hidden hex, and advance back in advance - avoiding at least the reverse fire in the defensive ennemy phase! Generally, the out-of-los hexes are used in priority by Gretchen, so try to cover all approaches if possible.

5 - If you move, do it carefully. Running in open ground is never a good idea. Select cover, progress slowly and near routing hex. It's not a problem to be broken if you have leaders and cover near you. It's just a delay in your attack. But try to not allow the enemy to surround you.

6 - Move units one by one, it's safer.

7 - When enemy has used all its fire capacity, run, run, run to block its retreat of broken units, or to reach the strategic point.

8 - Strategic locations are your target, stay focus to take them.

9 - You need to try to reduce enemy strong points one by one. Don't try to advance in a line...

10 - Break enemy units is good. Kill them are better. So by fire, or by surround them, verify every time that you can do it, without risk.

11 - Manage leader: They can offer bonus, avoid coward and add movement point - but it is good also to keep some behind front line to rally troops too. Only leaders can rally normal broken squad, so you need to have at least one on each group of attack.

12 - Run or not running: Never forget that running is moving faster but with two malus: in your fire phase and in next movement phase, you need to walk. Select the best time to run.

13 - Move to cover. As you have many possibilties to move, you need to be sure, after the advance phase, that most of your troops have good cover. Never forget also that you can be pinned and stay in open ground!

and have Fun!
Christophe
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Re: Second Front

Post by jztemple2 »

And a quick look at gameplay from the first tutorial which is from after "winning" the tutorial. I'll post more later.

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Re: Second Front

Post by stimpy »

I've never seen so much complaining about the price of a $30 game.
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Re: Second Front

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stimpy wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 3:57 pm I've never seen so much complaining about the price of a $30 game.
Yup, and if you don't want to pay that much, wait for a sale. Also the carrying on about having to unlock some missions. Sure, it's not optimal, but I respect the devs and believe they had a good reason for this. I think some of those folks need to get a life, or at least some perspective.

There's a error on the hint screen for the second tutorial, the one about moving on a narrow road. They say to select the units with red arrows, which are one squad and the leader, but I think that for the first part they wanted you to select all three units (two squads and a leader) to attempt to move them past the two broken squads. Then deselect one squad and make the move with just the two units, a squad and a leader.

Mind you, anyone who's played Advanced Squad Leader knows all about that :wink:
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Re: Second Front

Post by stimpy »

jztemple2 wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 4:22 pm
stimpy wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 3:57 pm I've never seen so much complaining about the price of a $30 game.
Yup, and if you don't want to pay that much, wait for a sale. Also the carrying on about having to unlock some missions. Sure, it's not optimal, but I respect the devs and believe they had a good reason for this. I think some of those folks need to get a life, or at least some perspective.
Wait until they add in the price of paper and ink to print the manual!!!
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Re: Second Front

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I've always thought ink was too expensive to print manuals.
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Re: Second Front

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dbt1949 wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 5:18 pm I've always thought ink was too expensive to print manuals.
That's why I do it at work....... :ninja:
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Re: Second Front

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Touche! :clap:
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Re: Second Front

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Played 3.8 hours so far to complete all the tutorials. So far so good. Graphics are good, it's a wargame after all. Controls and ease of understanding how to do what are fine. The tutorials are very well done, twenty sounds like a lot to take in but they introduce one new concept in each and have it set up so you can learn the lesson without spending a lot of time moving units.

Next step is to delve into the scenarios.
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Re: Second Front

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My first scenario, German vs Russian, "Capture Pskov factories".
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Forces involved. Note that both sides get reinforcements.
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Sheesh, check out that map. And this is a one star level of difficulty! Also, there can be enemy units completely hidden from view, so what you see on the map isn't necessarily all of them.
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These are the victory goals. Note how this works. The point value above the factory decreases every turn by ten. So the faster you capture the factories the greater your score. If any of the three factory point value goes to zero then you can never win the scenario.
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Re: Second Front

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Do you get a bonus for a higher core?
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Re: Second Front

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dbt1949 wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 7:52 pm Do you get a bonus for a higher core?
I assume you mean "score"? No bonus, but there is a top ten high score screen for each scenario.

Regarding in-game saves, there is no manual save but the game automatically saves at the end of each turn. Oddly, or maybe not, the game keeps all those saves so you could go back and restart your game at each turn.
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Re: Second Front

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Took about a half hour to win that first German scenario. It turned out to be simpler than I thought as the only unit types were infantry squads and leaders. The AI didn't do anything dumb that I could tell, heck Gretchen played pretty decently.
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Re: Second Front

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Here's a playthrough of my second German against the Russians mission, The Farmhouse. Much simpler than the first one I played with the factories. Took just over ten minutes.

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Re: Second Front

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Won my third German vs Russian scenario, "The Ford", but only after losing on the first try. The defeat took just under an hour and twenty minutes, while the subsequent victory, benefiting from lessons learned, took 36 minutes. So I'll pass on posting any videos unless asked.

This was a two star out of four difficulty. I had a number of armored vehicles, including three tanks, two scout cars, an AA half-track, plus a command car and a truck carrying infantry. Plus more foot infantry.
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Here's what the map looks like on the first turn.
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A big thumbs up on map and mission design. Without going into spoilers, proper positioning of the armor was key, as was keeping the Russians at bay. If anyone wanting more info I'll post it in spoiler tags. After three scenarios I haven't seen any glitches or bugs. AI is competent on defense and doesn't throw away units. As I mentioned above, moving and firing units was straightforward. About the only gripe I have is that when it's the enemy's turn the map zooms out and goes to the default orientation. Then when control is returned to me the camera returns to my previously selected zoom and orientation. When the camera is zoomed out it is a bit hard to see the AI actions, but it's not impossible. It's actually a pretty minor gripe :roll:.

Alright, time for the OO Effect to go into... err, effect! :horse:
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Re: Second Front

Post by Archinerd »

I played through the first Russian v. German scenario last night, and am really enjoying my time with this one.

I don't find the graphics nearly as off-putting while actually in game. The colors are maybe a little too bright, but I found the terrain and units are very readable.
The tutorials looked tedious, so I just skipped them and read (most) of the manual instead. Jumped into the first scenario and most things were easy to figure out as I went. The Germans put up a good fight, and the AI managed to beat me in the end, though I was only one hex away from achieving the last objective for several turns.

The biggest thing missing at the moment are some tooltips for terrain types, air support, and off-board artillery. According to the manual, the latter two are said to be coming in a future update.
I think this game is a steal at $30.
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Re: Second Front

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Archinerd wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 7:23 pm I don't find the graphics nearly as off-putting while actually in game. The colors are maybe a little too bright, but I found the terrain and units are very readable. The tutorials looked tedious, so I just skipped them and read (most) of the manual instead.
I think the graphics are excellent for the type of game it is and as you say, makes the map very readable. Over on the Steam forum some people were complaining about the animations of the infantry moving; I like them.

I went the other way with the tutorials, I did all of them and didn't read the manual before playing the regular scenarios. I'm reading the manual now and finding a lot of nuances that don't really make any significant difference in the game but are interesting.
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Re: Second Front

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So, here's a bit more of the game. This is a video of the scenario "Death Knell for Leningrad", but only turn 4. I wanted to give an idea of what the game is like to play in a bigger scenario. This one is still only two out of four stars in complexity, but it's got everything, tanks, mechanized infantry, AT guns, mortars, etc. I'm not doing well due to a poor first turn, but I'm still learning the game. The game really is a lot of fun.

The first minute of the video shows the opening menus for the scenario, including the units involved, to give some idea of what is going on, and then a few seconds of an overview of the map. At the 1:05 mark the video jumps to the start of turn 4. You'll be aware of it when you see the pop-up about reinforcements arriving. After that it's about twenty-six minutes of gameplay. And that, as I noted, is just turn 4.

In case anyone notices, I don't play with music enabled. I prefer to keep things quiet :wink:

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Re: Second Front

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I've noticed that some buildings have more than one floor. Can you climb into these?
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Re: Second Front

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dbt1949 wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 10:52 pm I've noticed that some buildings have more than one floor. Can you climb into these?
Yes! Buildings can have multiple levels. You can change the display to show upper levels of all buildings, one at a time. Also, units in upper levels have a color coding on their icon to more easily identify which level they are on.

Multihex buildings are assuming to have stairways in each multistory hex unless the building has one or more black squares on the roof. The black square indicates that the particular hex it is in has a stairway and hexes in that building without a black square don't have a stairway.
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Re: Second Front

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Example of multi-story building. First image is showing the top of the building, the roof which in Second Front is not accessible. Note the black squares, which are the hexes that have stairwells.
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Next image shows the top floor of the two of the building.
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And now the bottom or ground floor.
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Re: Second Front

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Did I mention that fires spread in the game? And towards the direction the wind is blowing.

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Re: Second Front

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And a couple of turns later the flames have gotten higher and the smoke is drifting downwind, inhibiting shooting accuracy.
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Finally won my "Death Knell for Leningrad" scenario, capturing the third factory after sixteen turns. I think the two star (out of four) on this scenario is for difficulty rather than complexity. I made an awful lot of mistakes during the game but still was able to attack that last factory with a bunch of squads left.
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I don't think I explained how you win a scenario. When you are in attack mode, the Victory Point locations have a VP value. At the end of each turn, for any location you don't control, that value decreases by ten. If the VP value of any of the locations goes to zero then you have lost. If you solely occupy that position then control goes to you and the VP value stays the same and adds to your final victory point total. In the screenshot below, it is explained that you need to control three locations. Also, the ratio of your strength to the strength of the enemy much be above a certain value. This is so the AI doesn't constantly keep getting a chance to counterattack or hide in a corner.
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Here's the example from the scenario I just finished, this screenshot taken at the start. There are three buildings with VP value. The one on the left has a value of 180VP, which means that if I don't gain control of it by the end of the eighteenth turn, then the scenario is over and I have lost. The center and right buildings have values of 190 and 200, which means I need to occupy them by the 19th and 20th turns. Also, the entire building is the VP location, so holding any hex of the building counts as control, as long as no enemy is in the building too.
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Re: Second Front

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Just posted this as my Steam review:
Excellent game. Well polished quality, good graphics for a computer version of a board game. After twelve hours of playing no glitches or bugs. A very comprehensive implementation of the Advanced Squad Leader game system, or at least what I remember of it from three decades ago. Scenario design is good. I do have a minor quibble with the locking of more advanced scenarios until you win some of the lower level ones, but I feel like the developer had their reasons so I don't feel that's a negative, just a design decision. I have no issues with the cost, this is a very well constructed game from artwork to design to implementation of the game mechanics. If it is not a AAA title, then it is definitely a AA title. Even the manual is top notch, with again only a minor quibble that there are no page numbers. If you fondly remember Advanced Squad Leader from Avalon Hill, then this game is for you.
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Re: Second Front

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This is a video of me playing my created scenario Test Scenario 02 (catchy title!). I made this scenario to see how the AI would react to certain defensive setups. I had altered the scenario a few times to move and added bunkers.

I'm playing as the Russians with the house rule that I can manually fire them but will not manually move them. They of course may automatically move due to routing.

The AI does quite a nice job of figuring out its initial moves and then also reacting to the changing situation. Note how some of the routing Germans move off to the right to get out of the arc of fire of the rightmost bunker.

I'm played this test scenario several times and while the Germans have won each time, this is the soonest they have clinched the victory.

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Re: Second Front

Post by hepcat »

And onto my wish list it goes! I can't justify it now considering my backlog, but when I get some more time I'm definitely giving this one a shot.
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