"FoW Movement" Setting?

[marty_01]

I tried a solitaire game the other day where I played both the Soviet and Axis sides. Still learning the ins-and-outs of the game, and I figured this was a good way to get a handle on the capabilities and challenges of both sides of a particular scenario.

I checked both "Fog of War" and "FoW Movement" prior to launching the scenario. While I totally get the function of the Fog of War setting, I'm not so clear on why the FoW Movement setting is in the game and what it's adding to the overall play experiance. With this setting selected, simple unit movement turns into a painful click-fest. Moreover, basic unit movement becomes excruciatingly slow as I seemed to have to continually right click on each new enemy controlled hex I wanted to move through. In the case of moving German mechanized units in the opening moves of the 1941 scenario I had to continually right click on the map each time a unit moves to a new enemy controlled hex.

I have only played with this setting once so take the above with a grain-of-salt. However I wanted to know what gives with this playing preference? Why should I use this setting and endure what seemed like a large amount of additional repetitive stress syndrome mouse clicking, as opposed to using just the Fog of War Setting by itself?

[Skanvak]

I understand that the system tell you where are the unseen units that will block your movement.This give you an uber recon ability.

[marty_01]

Ok thnx for your reply Skanvak.

I tried again last night to try and see what you mean by the additional recon ability, but came away scratching my head. I think I need to experiment with it a bit more to see if I can figure out the differences between the setting being on or off.

[Skanvak]

With the normal move rule, the game show you were you can go. If you see nearby hex that you should be able to go but the computer doesn't allow you to go there then the only logical conclusion is that there is an unseen unit there or adjacent. So you can detect unseen unit this way.

I don't like what they have done. They could have done like TOAW where the computer calculate the reachable hex counting only seen units. If during the movement a new unit is spotted, the movement is stopped at this point. It does save a lot of clicking.

*suggestion for developpement team just above*

[marty_01]

Ok -- thanks for the follow-up. I see what your saying now. Yes I agree, that is an important edition to the overall FoW effects. I need to weigh the benifits of FOW Movements vs. the costs to my wrists [:)]

Positive: Greater amount of game\gamer immersion via the FoW effects of the game.
Negative: Greater amount of time and mouse clicking required to move units around the map -- or I suppose when moving units about through "Indian Country".

I agree regarding Kroger's approach to FoW during unit movement in TOAW -- like WiTE it's also a great game in it's own right. I'd love to see a new approach to a TOAW like game system that is based upon what the designers here are doing with WiTE. Moreover I think what keeps TOAW relevant is the super flexible scenario editor and excellent operational level game system. However, many of the concepts developed for WiTE are definately evloutionary jumps in operational level wargaming.