#1 and #2 of the following:
Hope this explains it for you.
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Noticed you forgot a disable_reuse on that option.
Missing a quotation mark at the beginning of the second choice
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So basically, New Jersey is what we would get if all the SCPs were consolidated in one place?
I guess gay men would have to be much more circumspect than the rest. I know from the older members of the gay rights movement in my own country back when I joined up (many who have now passed away, unfortunately) that gay love letters were basically coded messages (and over here, unlike in the US gay sex itself has been decriminalised since 1813, but unless you were independently wealthy or had a very understanding family and employer openly being a confirmed bachelor could land you in dire straits nonetheless) and more often than not you had to pretend like your lover was your best friend instead.
And I know Americans of that era were even weirder about very close male friendships than we were as at least over here life long male best friends were a socially accepted thing whereas Americans of the era seem to have been sort of expected to put the lion’s share of their social life into their opposite sex spouse and strive for that idealised family with 2.5 kids and a picket fence.
Anyway that’s what I know at the top of my head, it’s mostly literal hearsay from talking with the older members back when I was a kid though.
As far as the game goes the absolute riskiest but also the most thrilling situation I can think of is if the mc’s lover isn’t just a fellow soldier but an officer…which adds the extra officer enlisted taboo.
Plus I’ve of course always wanted to romance a cute flyboy. 
I have to admit that it sometimes feels random which stats increase from certain choices (like wondering to oneself why a tank is called a Stuart boosting delegation). Also, it would be nice to view the starting stats at least from my folks.
@YHGS - Both of those are excellent catches. There is actually a third bug that gets fixed to as it is tied to the first *disable_reuse flub. Thanks.
@moonfungus - SCP? Now I’ve got to ask… 
@idonotlikeusernames - All good points. Yeah, realistically, the letters would have to be coded in some way for same-sex relationships. Will probably have to allude to that but not make it a big deal. This isn’t a game specifically about that challenge, and it is less I have to write. 
Or… maybe you have an agreement with your officer concerning this. They don’t censor or pretend to know what you are indicating in the letter, and you fight the enemy as hard as you can.
@kckolbe - Some of the stat changes will probably be modified over time. I do like the idea of the PC’s background mattering more initially. Perhaps we’ll even make this explicit at some point. “You could say I’m from a talkative family.” versus “Words are worth gold.”, etc.
Certainly something to consider, though the introduction is heavily packed as is. We’ll see.
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That only works if the recipient lover of the mc has the same deal with his commanding officer. That being said if the potential romance can be an officer flyboy I believe officers had a bit more lenient regime as far as that goes. 
True, but it means I can’t have my super cute officer and gentlemen flyboy fantasy which is about as close as you can get to the proverbial prince on the white horse given the setting, but then my two favourite archetypes aren’t the gentleman and the bad boy for nothing. 
That said it is the author’s decision on what works best and as romance seems to be very much a secondary or even tertiary aspect in this game I won’t complain too much as long as my mc gets to sorta romance a cute guy…
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Or the lover can be an official within the home government … an aide to a State Department Secretary or such a worker within the Defense Department.
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@idonotlikeusernames - Yeah, it’d be tricky to work out. Probably best we stay away from such a romance here. I’m already drifting into story creep in places because there is just so much room to cover.
But hey, sooner or later someone will write a romance you’re looking for. It is that strong a genre.
@Eiwynn - I like that. The official is within their home government with either access or influence to ignore censoring. As you indicated before, it is probably a bad idea to let the story sprawl in that direction, but still, a neat thing to consider.
Okay. We’re at the trading portion of The Crossroads. So, what does a tank crew like/want/need?
Right now the list is:
Better rations.
A bottle of wine.
A better medical kit.
More gas.
Radio parts.
Good maps.
Tank parts for an upgrade of some kind.
No gyroscope or telescopic sight. I want those to be rare.
Let me know your thoughts because this is where rubber meets the road for the scene. They have invasion script and/or other things they’ve picked up. Now what can they trade for?
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What about advanced intelligence – either from the now friendly French (maybe sharing knowledge of fortifications and hazards like minefields) or chatter from field agents that arrived with the latest scuttlebutt?
My crew took the barrels of gas and have improved the tank whenever possible , so they’d be very interested in the maps and maybe the stealth tank parts you spoke of in the vid.
We’ve traded everything we could, unless we break out the sweets from the rations… one of the disadvantages of getting eggs from the Arab merchant I guess.
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I hope this doesn’t make things more complicated, but is tank camouflage a thing for 1942 American forces?
I assume the M3 Stuart is colored green, and the desert is beige? Or khaki? Since light tanks are gonna be for reconnaissance, I figure we have to blend in with our environment.
I think the scene where the tank crews cannibalize the Little Red Wagon with Lintz show the importance of the gyrostabilizer and telescopic sight. I’m torn between getting either of those or the rubber dampeners.
The gyrostabilizer would be very useful for shooting while moving, perfect for combat; while the telescopic sight and rubber dampeners would help in reconnaissance by either seeing the enemy at a further distance or by getting closer without being heard.
Yes please. We really need that!
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@Eiwynn - Advanced intel… Nice. Aerial photographs, raw intel reports, accurate road maps, in-the-clear radio transcripts, or the holy grail of things… the ULTRA intercepts. Probably not that last one.
Perhaps this would also either give a first-time player an indication of what lies ahead, or it will set, the moment the intel is purchased, what sort of randomly determined enemy surprises await in later chapters.
Of course, that means I have to write different surprises at some point, but there we are.
@NJG - Camouflage… Yeah, good camo. Probably British at this point in the war. Let me check.
Yep, American forces apparently used Olive Drab number 9 and had some issues with camo in general until the Sicily campaign.
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@AllenGies, I have a dumb suggestion; a harmonica, for musical pass time (was originally going to suggest compass, then kinda realised the futility of that idea).
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I don’t think the in-game model of M3 light tank has smoke dischargers? In that case, smoke grenades might be handy if they’re not standard. On a similar note, flares/a flare gun.
These two are more modifications to the tank:
- A pintle-mounted .30 cal might be useful if there’s infantry around to man it, or using it as an anti-aircraft deterrent when stopped for the day. I guess you could cannibalise one from a broken-down M3?
- Sand skirts - I don’t believe the M3s have them, and the Brits later mounted them on theirs. I’ve no idea where’d you get the sheet metal from, perhaps again cannibalising other vehicles? However, I hear that this was controversial - it reduced kick-up of dust and debris somewhat, but was a pain regarding track maintenance.
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Would recommend against the sand skirt. In terms of stat checks, you are trading a maintenance check boost for a maintenance check penalty, so not really a trade off. MAYBE if you take some liberties by saying the sand skirt helps your maintainer but makes it more difficult to drive? Now there’s a meaningful choice.
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I don’t think the sand skirt (sand shields, I think they’re properly called?) was meant to help maintenance, but rather to reduce the amount of dust trail behind a tank, so as to reduce its signature. It probably did something to help in deflecting debris, but probably not much (they don’t go far down enough to cover the wheels, though they might help in protecting the air intakes).
Higher-ups thought well enough of the idea to have them mounted as standard on M4s, though they were often taken off by crews who thought that wasn’t worth the trade-off in maintenance time, and a 1943 report apparently called them “superfluous”. But it’s 1942 and nobody really knows that yet.
Edit: As per the Google Books preview of British Battle Tanks: American-made World War II Tanks (Fletcher and Zaloga, 2018), the British mods were as follows:
By October 1941, the list [of modifications to the M3 light tank] had grown to more than 26 changes, and to further complicate matters, the modifications carried out in Middle East workshops did not coincide directly with those carried out in the UK. The most noticeable external changes were the additions of sand-shields, a water container rack, a ration box, a blanket box and a cooking set box, blanking-plates over the sponson machine-gun ports and a folding frame to make it easier to close the turret hatch while standing in the cupola.
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Allen, the MC needs the following items:
- Bottle of Unreconstructed Southerner Bourbon
- Carton of Lucky Strikes Cigarettes
- Something to trade for the local coffee like a USNA goat.
- A cool set of tools from the factory because the tank needs to get fixed out in the field.
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I’m pretty sure we’re good guys. We are fighting Nazis after all.
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That is not what Zen was talking about. Zen was talking about how it didn’t appear there were any moral choices that would question whether or not the MC is in the right. See Allen’s response for reference;
Just cause we are fighting Nazis does not mean the PC is inherently a good guy. A lot of the Allies did questionable acts during WWII against the Axis, so it’s reasonable to ask Allen about implementing similar choices for the MC instead of being just a tank commander fighting in Africa.
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Yups what migsey said is correct, that’s what i mean. Migsey thank man👊🏻
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