One thing that I think is required is a little information form/screen that lets the player know what everyone else is doing. Here is a mock up. Though what I am showing here is large, in the program it would be quite small. That is why I have abbreviated the country names (instead of using flags). I want as small a footprint on the screen real estate as possible.
The top of the form would name the current phase. The active side would get the yellow background and the inactive side the gray background. During production, all the major powers would be active - yellow background. The words to the left of the country abbreviations display status and when there are multiple subphases, it shows the name of the subphase (abbreviated).
I was thinking of 5 players when I made up this example. The China/USA player has finished the reinforcement phase for China and is currently placing the USA reinforcements on the map. The France/USSR player started with the USSR and is currently removing air units. Once that is done he will go onto France. The CW player is still pondering which units to scrap and the other two players (Germany/Vichy France & Italy/Japan) are waiting for their turn to go through the reinforcement phase.
I could add additional information, such as which players are playing which major powers, but that doesn't seem necessary. Once a game has started, everyone will know pretty quickly who is playing which countries. I put Vichy France at the bottom of the form so it will be easy to lop it off when Vichy France doesn't exist.
Comments?
-- or at least to distinguish between players who have the MWIF process running on their pCs and those who don't currently.
