Just finished listening to the Podcast - Great job as usual and hope that thunderstorm didn't damage that jeep of yours, Greg!
Really interested in hearing about all the new releases around the place; I'm very impressed that "Heart Of Leviathan is not going Kickstarter. Probably a wise move as there's a huge amount of negativity toward projects on KS these days among the commenters on various fora ( TMP especailly, which should come as no surprise )
Now my own thoughts, pretty randomly arranged - The demarcation between the Historical Naval gamers and the "Gamer" Naval gamers is very sharp as you say, and I think it possibly is the same in other tyeps of games as well. "Flames Of War" was the great crossover between the hard-core WW2 similators for land and air warfare, and "Wings Of war" and now "Blood Red Skies" is/are doing the same for aircrcaft simulation players ans peopel who just want to gaem with aircraft models. "Dystopian wars" in its earlier forms did just that as well in addition to being a unique game area ( As you said, apart from "Aeronef" which was really an entirely air warfare game, there was nothing like it and no way for readers to play the steampunk novels like "The Warlord Of The Air" for one ), and the great problem with Warcradle's 3.0 as it seems to stand is that it is moving entirely to the "game-y" side of the matter. Whether this waorks as a game or not ( And looking at "Cruel Seas" it just might ) is up for deabte; Whether it has lost a lot of original players in the fanbase and might even lose more, is a given I'm afraid.
On the gaming side, the points value thing is always going to split the community; I don't have a problem with points values myself and happily play games with scenario-based forces for both realism but also as a challenge for one player versus another. it's where the points system becomes a combat tool or weapon in and of itself that it irks me; Particularly prevalent in "Full Thrust" at one stage, the idea some gamers have of designign the most effective ship/fleet for n numbe rof points lead to some outrageous ( To some of us ) designs coming into use, like "soap-bubble" carriers, scatterpack submunitions gunships and "Arsenal ships" of MTMs. I imagine any survivors of the US/Canadian International fights at the GZG East Coast Cons will attest to that period; It was in fact one of the driving forces to the rewrite of the design rules for FT for the "Fleet Book" era. "Dsytopian wars" really avoided that to some extent, and managed to bridge the gap with a system of fleet design that avoided the gaming of the rules while still allowing a customising ability for fleet operations. So, I have to agree with Andy there.
"Aeronautica Imperialis" was indeed a game that was around for too short a season, as it were: I believe that it's elegnat yet complex rules and play style was possibly attrcative to older players which tends to be a 'Red Flag' to GWdrivelling idiots powers that be, and so might explain it's withdrawal/. nevertheless, it was pretty popular fro the tiem it was aroudn and if iot had been available a few more months I believe it would have been at least as popular as Epic was at one stage and even rivalled WH40K.
That pretty much does me; I have been busy on some little projects for, and playing of DW 2.5.
