Is the cardinal WIR Mod possiable???

[rus_oberst]

Hello, folks!

I'm a newcomer on this forum, but started playing WiR1 long time ago. It's possible the msg subj was dicussed already. But...

I wonder if it is possible to make a cardinal WIR mod to include western allies?

The most easy part - to create new map, but I don't know the inner structure and organization of the game.

Does the map directly influence on the game processing, for example on supply system?

Is it possible to model England? How could we model Pas-de-Calais? By port-to-port suplly or we need to set geographical "unaccuracy" to link England and France by hex of ground? I think the last way would be most effective, 'cos we need to transfer ground troops. The more so this strait is about 30 miles (?) or so.

The same questions regarding Northern Africa.

Any comments, ideas?


Andrey

[Mist]

Welcome Andrey! One Russian more
Well, I don't think that they will make any serious WiR modifications because
1)Arnaud-Programmer is hell busy with bug fixing in current version.
2) there are hard memory limitations and WiR is still dos game so there are not space for new units and/or bigger map.

But game is significantly improved and it is realy good to play.

AFAIK supply is calculated regarding the map.

[rus_oberst]

Originally posted by Mist:
Welcome Andrey! One Russian more
Well, I don't think that they will make any serious WiR modifications...

You've just misunderstood me a little. I meant self-made Mod. I'm trying to imagine future troubles and possible limitations I would encounter if I'd start editing the WIR3 by my own hands.

Thus, the first and easiest way: to redesign map with mapper tool to include more territory (the game scale will retain more or less the same). And edit the scenario file to bring it correspondence with the map. Some units to pass to Western Allies and so on...


What do you think, eh?

[Mist]

Originally posted by Andrey Dikov:

What do you think, eh?

What do I think? Realy, I think that it will be extremely hard but theoreticaly possible.
Problems are
1) mapper.exe is not user-friendly in any way
2) complete map of Europe will change map scale and so alter game balance to Germans.
3) Supply rules are quite primitive and will not allow Western Allies to be supplied as well as whole German Army
2) and 3) problems can be solved only by changing of code. I can't imagine how hard is it because I didn't see one.

[RickyB]

AS Mist said, this would be terribly difficult to make work right, especially if you wanted to play out the whole war. The map scale would have to change, but the key problem would be supply/readiness issues, and the built in West and Italian front checks. By using a later starting date, you could probably work around the supply and readiness issues, with the Allies being a special case of Soviet unit, but it would still end in 1945. Thus, you could do it, but I think your best bet would be to do it with the current start date. There is room for plenty of factories to be added, which can be off map. If you did it, the invasion of France/Italy/Balkans by the west would be the problem, with a "land" bridge causing problems with AI, but maybe not in a head to head game. Having enough divisions for the sides would also make it tough.

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by RickyB:
but the key problem would be supply/readiness issues,

Supply and readiness are hard-wired into the game, and you can't tell the game to provide 2 different supply sources, one for the Soviets and one for the Western Allies. The West would be out of supply because the game can't trace their supply back to the rail hexes along the east edge of the map which is where Soviet supply is drawn from. For this you'd need Arnaud to do some fundamental changes to the game core.

and the built in West and Italian front checks.

They can be disabled.

with the Allies being a special case of Soviet unit

The game doesn't know about more than 2 "sides" to the game. It would treat Western Allied units as Soviet units, which is obviously not what you want. Western units would therefore suffer the same readiness penalties that Soviet units do till '44. This is hardwired, and not changeable except by Arnaud.

There is room for plenty of factories to be added, which can be off map.

There is only two places a factory can be "off map": the Urals and LendLease-Siberia boxes. The Urals box has no space left, except for the ones the Soviets could move on-map factories to in the '41 blitzkreig. So the factories would have to be on map in a city, except there are no slots left for cities. Sadly, I believe this blows this Mod idea right out of the water. Sorry.

Having enough divisions for the sides would also make it tough.

Extra divisions are the least of your problems. You have no extra slots for either HQ units, air groups, leaders, or corps, and as far as I can tell, there are 800 slots for divisions and they're all in use in obwir.


Sorry guys, but for doing what you want, Arnaud would be better off writing a new game from scratch, and we know that's not going to happen.

[Martinov]

With all the problems listed, I think your best bet might be a try to create a europe scenario from June 1944.

This would eliminate problems regarding amphibous landing, as the allies are already ashore. It would also solve soviet readiness penalties (in theory the unit editor does have a value for germans, russians & allies though, is this number applicable to ground units?)

I don't know how/where supply is traced, and would be grateful if someone could explain, but if its via railways you could string one along both the top and bottom edges of the map to supply allies in west and med fronts.

I think the biggest problem would be cities. In the notes it says they are hardcoded, i don't know in what way, this might make it hard to move them. If thats true then '44 is the best bet as you'd only have to shuffle the map a few hexes east.

If you go ahead i've got some great luftwaffe OB information (from luftwaffe handbook which cites luftwaffe reports) it lists group squadron level strengths at five intervals during the war, I've compared its June 22 with WIR and the strengths are very comparable, only 1% out or so.

I'd be grateful if someone could explain how to use the (bizarre) mapmaking program, I'd like to have a try at creating a sicily/italy campaign.

[RickyB]

Originally posted by Martinov:
With all the problems listed, I think your best bet might be a try to create a europe scenario from June 1944.

This would eliminate problems regarding amphibous landing, as the allies are already ashore. It would also solve soviet readiness penalties (in theory the unit editor does have a value for germans, russians & allies though, is this number applicable to ground units?)

I don't know how/where supply is traced, and would be grateful if someone could explain, but if its via railways you could string one along both the top and bottom edges of the map to supply allies in west and med fronts.

I think the biggest problem would be cities. In the notes it says they are hardcoded, i don't know in what way, this might make it hard to move them. If thats true then '44 is the best bet as you'd only have to shuffle the map a few hexes east.

If you go ahead i've got some great luftwaffe OB information (from luftwaffe handbook which cites luftwaffe reports) it lists group squadron level strengths at five intervals during the war, I've compared its June 22 with WIR and the strengths are very comparable, only 1% out or so.

I'd be grateful if someone could explain how to use the (bizarre) mapmaking program, I'd like to have a try at creating a sicily/italy campaign.

Unfortunately, I only figured out the map maker once, and it confused me and I haven't gotten into it again since. However, try this. Fire up mapper and (L)oad the sf.map. Select (C)haracter set, and assuming the top left is 0, count to the right and then down a row to get the terrain number. Then you can (T)errain change on the hex you want to change to set it to the desired number. You can also then arrow around to apply that terrain type to multiple hexes. I would guess it is very slow and cumbersome - Bill was the map expert.

I am not sure, but the only supply solution for a full Europe battle including the west would be the rail across the top and/or bottom - at least that was the only one I could think of myself.

As to cities, some locations are hard coded, but only Arnaud knows which ones, I think. By the way, for Ed there are two available city locations in OBWIR - I always guessed they could be located off map and just not be changed, but may Ed is right about them being useless. They can be offmap for sure and factories assigned, but if production doesn't show up, then they would have to be on map. Also, there are a number of cities without any factories and minimal population - they could be moved/renamed and reused, so the cities would not be an issue for Andrey's idea. Actually, Martinov's 1944 start would probably work best, but still it would very difficult to make work well.

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by RickyB:
By the way, for Ed there are two available city locations in OBWIR - I always guessed they could be located off map and just not be changed, but may Ed is right about them being useless. They can be offmap for sure and factories assigned, but if production doesn't show up, then they would have to be on map.

Ok, the last time I dealt with this situation, all city slots were used, so this must have changed since then, without my knowing it. Sorry Rick.

The interesting thing is these cities, made off-map, will add resources and oil to the total, but no factories assigned to them show up, according to a test I just tried. Also, you won't see them with Alt-C on the Soviet side, because WiR is hardwired for just 2 off-map cities (in fixed slots) for the Soviets.

Also, there are a number of cities without any factories and minimal population - they could be moved/renamed and reused, so the cities would not be an issue for Andrey's idea. Actually, Martinov's 1944 start would probably work best, but still it would very difficult to make work well.

Well, we could strip all cities with no production from the Soviets for the West, but I doubt it would be enough if we're still talking about a map from Cherburg, France to the Urals. All the lost population, oil and resources from those cities would need to be given back to the Soviets, and I'm not sure of a fair way to do this. Also, we're forgetting the Italian front. This requires yet another Allied supply source (from southern Italy map-edge going north), for Allied units fighting their way up the peninsula. Note that Western supply sources would have to be dealt with separately from Soviet supply sources, because a western unit couldn't operate with the Soviet supply train, and possibly vice-versa.

You could ask Arnaud to implement multiple supply sources for the Allies, but if I were you, I'd duck real quick after asking.

[RickyB]

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:
You could ask Arnaud to implement multiple supply sources for the Allies, but if I were you, I'd duck real quick after asking.

Yeah, real quick. However, I don't think Andrey was looking to have any changes made to the game. He was just wondering if his scenario covering all of Europe is possible/workable and what the issues would be. We have just been pointing out problems and for ones with work arounds, what they might be. I would strongly doubt that this can be done in a balanced and playable way, but Andrey may be able to work something out.