Newbie questions

Gloo · Post by **Gloo** » Thu Apr 05, 2001 4:06 am

Hi there everybody!

Here are a few things I'd like to understand or know better.
First, is there any way to play a more realistic long WW2 campaign? I mean somtehing more real with that minor nations OOBs; ie: I played yesterday a battle against the Belgian army and faced a LOT of FT 18 and 47 MLE!!! Where are the T13, T15, Vickers utility trucks, the 47mm FRC ATG and the like... ?
Second, who own the licence for the game?
Third, I have some units visually linked to their x0 leader, himself linked via radio to a higher HQ; despite that, I can't get the rally orders from the highest HQ; why?
Fourth, am I wrong or there is no way to have REAL upgrades for my units between battles? I mean, playing SPWW2, you can use the new PzKw IIIJ for your core unit BEFORE the battle begins instead of only being able in SPWaW to buy it for your support units.
Well, thats all for now

) and thanks in advance for your enlightenments.

lnp4668 · Post by **lnp4668** » Thu Apr 05, 2001 4:09 pm

1. Version 5.0 is supposed to fix the problem with AI purchased lots of high price tanks
2. An administrator may know this
3. Once a leader unit fail to rally a unit, it lost the ability to rally for the rest of the turn. That is why it is important to decide which unit needs priority in rallying. Also checks the manual on this.
4. Upgrades are available after the battle for the month that the unit become available, thus you maybe able to purchase it for support before it becomes available for upgrade.

Gloo · Post by **Gloo** » Fri Apr 06, 2001 1:27 am

Originally posted by lnp4668:
...Also checks the manual on this.

Thanks for your answers. Just one more thing on this one (I'm a bit confused ); I checked the manual and it states that a commander can rally any unit as long as he is in contact. If my unit leader and his formation commander fail the rally check, I supposed my force commander should be able to try in time as long as he is in contact, right? If I'm wrong on this, does that mean that a force commander can only rally, via radio, a formation commander but CAN'T do the same with that commander's units even if there's a radio linkage? I think so 'cause it works when my force commander is visually in contact with a suppressed unit! I think I'm missing somtehing )On the other hand, it's a bit strange that the same units are able to use this force commander's orders points to move or perform any other action!
I can recall the rally orders while in radio contact was working fine whith previous releases of the game; am I still wrong?

4. Upgrades are available after the battle for the month that the unit become available...

You're right. It's a bit strange cause not clearly explained in the manual but you're right. I still may be wrong but it seems to me that SPWW2 allows to upgrade units in "real time" accordingly with the coming battle. I think it's better that way; what do you think?

McGib · Post by **McGib** » Fri Apr 06, 2001 1:42 am

As I recall SSI still owns the license on SP

lnp4668 · Post by **lnp4668** » Fri Apr 06, 2001 4:28 pm

I think rally works from the bottom up. First your unit commander rally, if fail and in contact go to next higher level and so on until it hit A0 unit.
I think that if there is a break in command chain, the rally stop there. So if your company commander is out of contact with your A0 unit, the unit below it will not be able to rally by the A0 unit unless the A0 unit is within physical contact.

On the second question, I think that reinforcement should be available a random number of months after it is historically available to simulate the effect of new units slowly trickle to the front. I think 5.0 will simulate this by having upgrade limited by scarcity of the unit (don't think that it will affect campagin, only generated battle)

john g · Post by **john g** » Fri Apr 06, 2001 11:21 pm

Originally posted by lnp4668:

On the second question, I think that reinforcement should be available a random number of months after it is historically available to simulate the effect of new units slowly trickle to the front. I think 5.0 will simulate this by having upgrade limited by scarcity of the unit (don't think that it will affect campagin, only generated battle)

I agree for the most part with this, what makes the player's kampfgruppe so special that it would be the first to be assigned new equipment? It would be more likely that a new unit fresh from training would bring with them the new equipment fresh from the factories, while the players unit would have to wait until they were pulled back from the line before they had equipment swapped out.

In my WWII campaigns I never sweatted the 1 month delay in getting new equipment to my core, and most of the time I skipped upgrades when I knew a much better model would be coming out several months later.

One of the few times this might bite you is the 6/44 availability of funnies, your core won't get them until d-day is over. However, you can almost always get a new model in it's month of introduction as a support unit.
thanks, John.

Gloo · Post by **Gloo** » Sat Apr 07, 2001 11:52 am

Originally posted by lnp4668:
I think rally works from the bottom up. First your unit commander rally, if fail and in contact go to next higher level and so on until it hit A0 unit...

Right. I understand that point. The problem is: how comes my force commander rally via radio any suppressed unit, at the end of a turn, BUT can't when I manually request him to do so??? If the formation leader fails his rally check, it's over! No matter there's a radio contact! I don't understand why for I'm almost certain it works with SP3!
Isn't it a bug? I also noticed that the game sometimes states a unit is out of contact when it's 2 hex close from it's leader! Maybe they lost visual contact due to the smoke between them? I'm puzzled

On the second question, I think that reinforcement should be available a random number of months after it is historically available to simulate the effect of new units slowly trickle to the front......[/B]

I agree with that and I also think the system used to "purchase" upgrades is a bit deceptive. I guess there's no easy way to modify that system but I'm always disapointed when it comes to "buy" some new toys. That would be much more fun to have something connected with the kill levels for each combat group leader and his rank. Some sort of reward for a good officer who could be the first to be allotted with Tigers, for example.

lnp4668 · Post by **lnp4668** » Sat Apr 07, 2001 8:33 pm

Right. I understand that point. The problem is: how comes my force commander rally via radio any suppressed unit, at the end of a turn, BUT can't when I manually request him to do so??? If the formation leader fails his rally check, it's over! No matter there's a radio contact! I don't understand why for I'm almost certain it works with SP3!
Isn't it a bug? I also noticed that the game sometimes states a unit is out of contact when it's 2 hex close from it's leader! Maybe they lost visual contact due to the smoke between them? I'm puzzled

Do you mean the auto rally that available at the end of the turn? The auto rally would go through and rally any unit that needed rallying, this doesn't mean it will be successful. Also, what do you mean by "manually requested him to do so?" If the force commander's suppression is 1 or less, he can't be rally any further.

Gloo · Post by **Gloo** » Mon Apr 09, 2001 6:10 am

Originally posted by lnp4668:
Do you mean the auto rally that available at the end of the turn?.

Yes. That process is working fine. The company leader does his job then it passes to the force commander.

Also, what do you mean by "manually requested him to do so?" If the force commander's suppression is 1 or less, he can't be rally any further.

Yes. what I meant is: he (the force commander, A0)can rally any suppressed unit under his command but when his subordinate leader(say B0) fails, why does the higher HQ (A0) isn't able to perform a rally order via radio the way it's done automatically at the end of a turn? That process is working perfectly when the A0 is in visual range of the suppressed unit BUT doesn't work if he's only in radio contact! Why?

lnp4668 · Post by **lnp4668** » Mon Apr 09, 2001 5:18 pm

Also, what do you mean by "manually requested him to do so?" If the force commander's suppression is 1 or less, he can't be rally any further.

Yes. what I meant is: he (the force commander, A0)can rally any suppressed unit under his command but when his subordinate leader(say B0) fails, why does the higher HQ (A0) isn't able to perform a rally order via radio the way it's done automatically at the end of a turn? That process is working perfectly when the A0 is in visual range of the suppressed unit BUT doesn't work if he's only in radio contact! Why?

[/B][/QUOTE]

Lets me do some testing and lets you know. Hopefully someone else in the forum maybe able to help you. I always assume that once there is a break in command chain, the radio rally would stop at the highest level, in this case your B0 unit. My question is whether your says B1 unit is in contact via radio with the A0?

Gloo · Post by **Gloo** » Tue Apr 10, 2001 4:13 am

Originally posted by lnp4668:
...My question is whether your says B1 unit is in contact via radio with the A0?

Yes; B1 is suppressed but in radio contact with B0 (no suppression) who is in radio contact with A0 (no suppression).
Thanks for your patience

Gloo · Post by **Gloo** » Tue Apr 10, 2001 2:14 pm

Originally posted by lnp4668:
Lets me do some testing and lets you know

Hi all.
I made the following serie of tests:

* A company B of soviet infantry supported by a HQ tent B0. Each platoon in radio contact with the HQ tent which is also in radio contact with the A0.

* A company C of soviet infantry with a leader C0 in radio contact with A0. Two platoons are in radio contact with their formation leader C0 and the third one is only in visual contact (no radio equipment).

I shot at each platoon with assault guns to suppress them (real fun

then I checked the rally phase for every soviet unit.
Every unit in company B despite being in radio contact with the B0 HQ tent, itself linked via radio to A0, was unable to rally except by it's own unit leader (no radio contact can be made with the HQ tent!).
The units of company C were able to use the rally orders of their formation leader C0 but when he failed, no contact can be made with A0. Even the C0 using the rally order for itself is unable to contact the A0 via radio!

My question is simple: why, and what the hell is the usefulness of these radio equipments in the manual rally phase... ?

lnp4668 · Post by **lnp4668** » Tue Apr 10, 2001 4:09 pm

Thanks for the test. Now it makes sense.

For the C group, the rally have to go through the C0 unit. Since in spwaw, rally go upward, and if the command chain is broken, you can't get further than that. Think of it as a lieutenant of a platoon would have contact with the captain of the company, but unlikely to have the equipment or the status to reach the colonel in command of the battalion. Thus rally could only be passed from the colonel if the captain is not himself suppress.

On the case with the HQ tent, I don't think the game right now consider it as a unit, thus it can't pass on rally as shown by your test.

These are just my assumptions based on my observations. More accurate information will have to be given by the people working on the game.

Silvarius · Post by **Silvarius** » Tue Apr 10, 2001 4:27 pm

Hi Gloo,

Radio has no effect on rallying. The rallied unit must be within 3 Hex of the rallying unit.

As far as I know, the only usefullness of radios is when you play with Command & Control on. In that case, when a leader gives an order (stance or objective change for exemple), only the units of its formation that are in contact receive the order. Moreover, if a unit needs to use order points to achieve a task, and that unit has already used its own order points, it can "tap" the higher leader by radio, if this one has any points left. You can move that way up to the top of the command chain till you find the requested order points.

Silvarius.

Paul Vebber · Post by **Paul Vebber** » Tue Apr 10, 2001 5:46 pm

HQ tents automatically remove suppression points at the end of the turn, they do not "rally" but reduce each units suppression by something like 10-20 points.

Gloo · Post by **Gloo** » Wed Apr 11, 2001 1:39 pm

Originally posted by Silvarius:
Hi Gloo,

Hi Silvarius

Radio has no effect on rallying. The rallied unit must be within 3 Hex of the rallying unit.

That's what I deduced but it's a bit strange because radio contact DOES matter when it comes to rally at the end of turns... !

Gloo · Post by **Gloo** » Wed Apr 11, 2001 1:45 pm

Originally posted by Paul Vebber:
HQ tents automatically remove suppression points at the end of the turn...

Thank you for these informations but don't they (HQ tents) actually rally between turns and then use radio to do it? The same way, why the higher HQ does only use its radio to rally between turns and can't do it when a rally order is requested during a turn?

queribus · Post by **queribus** » Tue Apr 24, 2001 4:56 am

I think something's wrong with reinforcements and upgrades after a WWII Campaign battle. I play with a 4.2 version. I began a campaign with german troops in 39. I'm driving my tanks on fields on 1941 now, et i noticed something strange. I couldn't ever upgrade or change my Panzers to a Pz III. Pz III, and even Pz 35/38 or others don't appear on the upgrade list after a battle, even after several months they have appeared on support lists. Neither can I change my old Opel to Prime Mover. Is it a bug ? Is it special to 4.2 version.
Second point. I read that you can upgrade SPWAW from 4.2+ to 5.0 soon. What is exactly version 4.2 "+". Do i need to download a v 4.4 or 4.5. I'm lost with all the versions.

Voriax · Post by **Voriax** » Tue Apr 24, 2001 8:27 am

Queribus, several new classes of tanks were introduced in an earlier version of spwaw, and this caused upgrade problems because the new classes were 'not acknowledged' by the upgrade code. Also as some existing units changed classifications it caused problems with formations. So I'd hazard a guess that a 4.2 version still had these problems, so an patch to higher version would fix that.

As to your second problem. The way I understand it the 4.2+ means that if you have a game version 4.2 *or higher* you can use the same and single patch to upgrade to 5.0 without any additional 'middle' patches.

Voriax

queribus · Post by **queribus** » Wed Apr 25, 2001 2:19 am

[So I'd hazard a guess that a 4.2 version still had these problems, so an patch to higher version would fix that.

Voriax[/QB][/QUOTE]

Thank you for your answer Voriax.
but now, where can i find a site where i can download a higher version ?