words from a veteran WIR wargamer

panamajo · Post by **panamajo** » Tue Feb 12, 2002 6:10 am

Hi,
I played WIR 1st on my ATARI XL (8-bit) AFAIR 15 years ago. It was clumsy, the graphics really sucked (e.g. the rivers did not survive the C64 port and were only vaguly visible), but I had a hell of a good time.
WIR in that time was strictly strategical: there were no tank types, only tank strength aka numbers of tanks per unit.
Partisans did attack the rail hexes and could cause a rail hex to be destroyed, which was a horrible thing since due to the lower resolution, rails weren't as redundant as they are in the current map. To prevent partisan action, man had to keep an increasing amount of men in OKW acting as police troops.
There were no features like a HQ reinforcing an attacked unit with its reserves.
Economics/productions wasn't changeable in any positive way, as stated in the manual.
There was naval transport! One Div per turn could be transferred either in the baltic or black sea between 2 owned, fully supplied ports (most used to reinforce the finns).

There was a WIR version for the Atari ST, but AFAIR it sucked like hell and I didn't played it through even one time.

Then I got the WIR PC edition with the SSI No. 1 bundle. I was pretty amazed by the new features and at first really liked it, but soon disliked the apparent bugs resulting in Italian Front collapsing while being full of units, losing units when saving game and reloading etc.

One month ago I got DSL and just for the fun of it, I searched for SSI updates and found SSI dead. Most links to SSI still refer to pages which are now offline, but one link lead me to Matrixgames. Gosh! A dream become reality. An update of WIR!

I checked out the Readmes, tried around a bit and started the Barbarossa campaign (as AXIS). By now, I have successfully won the first game on beginning of 1943-10. Seems WIR is like riding a bicycle <img src="wink.gif" border="0">
FYI:
My 5 VP came from (in that order <img src="smile.gif" border="0"> Leningrad, Moscow, Gorki. Soviet forces are encircled, without supply and doomed in the north (around Vologda), in the south (Maikop) and my forces are 3 hexes from Stalingrad.

As I said: 1st completed game. Next will be the soviet side...

Some questions I have:
- Documentation. I only know the changes mentioned in the various READMEs, but there have been changes in the gameplay which apparently happened, but are not mentioned. Is there an updated manual available?
- Equiptment changes (Panzer/Airforce specs and availability). They changed. How do I know?
- "how to keep western/italian from from collapse" rules are still obscure (In the PC/SSI version, it was said to be necessary to keep an increasing number of SS Pz units in OKW. Myth ore reality in MG WIR?).
- Still obscure things: is it better to let a shattered/new unit grow up in a HQ or as a new unit? According to manual, it should stay in the HQ, in reality, a new unit gains supply/reinforcement faster.

Anyway, it seems I can stick another 15yrs with this.

Cheers, Jo

Lokioftheaesir · Post by **Lokioftheaesir** » Tue Feb 12, 2002 9:23 am

Panamajo

Greetings

*I dont know about an updated manual.

*During the Soviet or German turn use Alt-R to produce a report for that side (saved as a text file in your wir folder. I has a lot of usefull info.)

*Right clicking on Italy or west front gives you a CV comparison between axis/allies before it changes to HQ screen. I find that keeping the axis 1000 Pt's above the Allies(on each front) seems to work OK.

* Depends how desperately you need the unit but i usually keep them in HQ's till they are above '150' for infantry. '250' for Mot and 500 for tank/Pz.

All the best

loki

panamajo · Post by **panamajo** » Tue Feb 12, 2002 11:16 pm

Originally posted by Lokioftheaesir:

* Depends how desperately you need the unit but i usually keep them in HQ's till they are above '150' for infantry. '250' for Mot and 500 for tank/Pz.

At least for ger troops, I'd say troops with such combat values should not be pressed into front line service, unless desperately needed.
I consider troops combat ready with the following figures:
Regular ger Inf: ~200 (max: > 250)
Mot: depends on type/attached Pz Bn, but at least ~300
Pz: ~600
SS Pz: ~700

Ed Cogburn · Post by **Ed Cogburn** » Wed Feb 13, 2002 10:56 am

Originally posted by panamajo:
Hi,
- Documentation. I only know the changes mentioned in the various READMEs, but there have been changes in the gameplay which apparently happened, but are not mentioned. Is there an updated manual available?

No, the only manual we have is in PDF format, but Matrix doesn't have a PDF editor to update the manual with.

Denniss · Post by **Denniss** » Wed Feb 13, 2002 2:38 pm

A simply update.txt file will be enough !!

panamajo · Post by **panamajo** » Thu Feb 14, 2002 6:05 am

Originally posted by Lokioftheaesir:

*During the Soviet or German turn use Alt-R to produce a report for that side (saved as a text file in your wir folder. I has a lot of usefull info.)

THX for this. The stats are all there. Boy, the guys at matrix did push WIR forward.

panamajo · Post by **panamajo** » Thu Feb 14, 2002 6:13 am

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:
No, the only manual we have is in PDF format, but Matrix doesn't have a PDF editor to update the manual with.

What exactly is the plan: maintaining the documentation as an PDF document or porting the existing SSI manual into another format (eg. html) and adding the changes?

Another question: in the SSI manual it is written that an increasing number of SS Pz Div is necessary to stay in OKW in order to prevent collapsing of western front. Same scheme applies to Italian Front with Pz Divs.
Does WIR:Matrix (is there any standard naming convention here?) requires the same?

TIA, Jo

Lokioftheaesir · Post by **Lokioftheaesir** » Thu Feb 14, 2002 10:46 am

Originally posted by panamajo:

What exactly is the plan: maintaining the documentation as an PDF document or porting the existing SSI manual into another format (eg. html) and adding the changes?

Another question: in the SSI manual it is written that an increasing number of SS Pz Div is necessary to stay in OKW in order to prevent collapsing of western front. Same scheme applies to Italian Front with Pz Divs.
Does WIR:Matrix (is there any standard naming convention here?) requires the same?

TIA, Jo

Panamajo

I think it all revolves around the CV comparison between allies and axis. I have never in any game put those so called required SS pz divs in West/Italian fronts. I just keep the CV 1000 or so ahead of the allies and things seem to follow history (or i even get latter allied events)
However i use only german formations in west/front and german-italian in italian/front.

Loki

Ed Cogburn · Post by **Ed Cogburn** » Thu Feb 14, 2002 3:59 pm

Originally posted by panamajo:

What exactly is the plan: maintaining the documentation as an PDF document or porting the existing SSI manual into another format (eg. html) and adding the changes?

Currently, there is no plan. <img src="frown.gif" border="0">

The manual is only available in the PDF format, and no one is volunteering to type it all in manually. I volunteered to do the editing if Matrix would let me use a PDF editor, but I never heard back from them, so I assume that's because they don't want to buy a PDF editor.

Another question: in the SSI manual it is written that an increasing number of SS Pz Div is necessary to stay in OKW in order to prevent collapsing of western front. Same scheme applies to Italian Front with Pz Divs.
Does WIR:Matrix (is there any standard naming convention here?) requires the same?

Yes, in our version the game prints the current strength of the Axis fronts and the Allied strength the fronts are facing, so you now have a good idea when its time to add more strength to the fronts. The current system is only slightly different from the old one.

There is no special naming convention. WiR v2.0 and above are of Matrix origin. We're currently at v3.1.

[ February 14, 2002: Message edited by: Ed Cogburn ]</p>

panamajo · Post by **panamajo** » Fri Feb 15, 2002 6:42 am

(Man, this BB sucks on double quoting)
anyway:

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:

Currently, there is no plan.
The manual is only available in the PDF format, and no one is volunteering to type it all in manually.

How about getting rid of PDF and export the whole manual to XML? Could be done (maybe losing the pics, but who cares...
Then it could be reimported to eg. html, I think most people wouldn't object having a maual in html.
If you state that there are maintainers for an WIR3* doc, I woulöd spend a weekend on this exporting/importing stuff.
I volunteered to do the editing if Matrix would let me use a PDF editor, but I never heard back from them, so I assume that's because they don't want to buy a PDF editor.

Would you volunteer if it's not PDF? I dont't have a destiller and am not a fan of PDF anyway...

Yes, in our version the game prints the current strength of the Axis fronts and the Allied strength the fronts are facing, so you now have a good idea when its time to add more strength to the fronts. The current system is only slightly different from the old one.

Ok, but my question was: does it have to be _SS_ Pz Divs left in OKW or does the avg. strength count at all?

There is no special naming convention. WiR v2.0 and above are of Matrix origin. We're currently at v3.1.
[ February 14, 2002: Message edited by: Ed Cogburn ]

THX, Jo

Ed Cogburn · Post by **Ed Cogburn** » Fri Feb 15, 2002 2:54 pm

Originally posted by panamajo:
(Man, this BB sucks on double quoting)
anyway:

Yes, it does. Don't do what you did, your response was treated as if it were part of my old quote and left out. I had to cut-n-paste it back in. Generally, just don't try multiple levels of quoting.

How about getting rid of PDF and export the whole manual to XML?

I wouldn't mind doing that either, but I don't know XML. <img src="smile.gif" border="0">

Its possible to cut-n-paste from a PDF viewer to a text file, but then you have to decide in what format to keep it. Plus a thousand little decisions on what to keep and what to throw out. Its a scary job, especially if you don't have graphics to illustrate things here and there.

If you state that there are maintainers for an WIR3* doc, I woulöd spend a weekend on this exporting/importing stuff.

....

Would you volunteer if it's not PDF? I dont't have a destiller and am not a fan of PDF anyway...

Let me bring this up for discussion among the beta testers and see if there is a consensus on what should be done about the manual.

Ok, but my question was: does it have to be _SS_ Pz Divs left in OKW or does the avg. strength count at all?

As I understand it, no, SS is not required. In fact, at the time this was discussed, the code only counted tank battalions.

panamajo · Post by **panamajo** » Sat Feb 16, 2002 5:23 am

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:

Its possible to cut-n-paste from a PDF viewer to a text file, but then you have to decide in what format to keep it. Plus a thousand little decisions on what to keep and what to throw out. Its a scary job, especially if you don't have graphics to illustrate things here and there.

That's the reason I brogth XML up. XML isn't a document format itself, it is a standarized language to decribe documents layout and content. Without getting to technically, it can be used to maintain content with the attributes (image, headline 1, chapter, etc.). Export utils to standard output formats like html, plain text, postscript are available.
We deal a lot with stuff like this at work, and sooner or later we'll have to try this on PDF.
Wether it is possible to maintain complicated document structures like tables is not known, but it would definitly be an alternative to copy & paste <img src="wink.gif" border="0">
This is getting pretty OT, maybe just email me if there is any interest.
And THX for answering my other questions.

davewolf · Post by **davewolf** » Tue Feb 19, 2002 8:42 pm

Posted this at the Wir fan site topic and do it again here because this is what both of you were talking about, just in case it might not be noticed otherwise.

I added at davescorner.de for testing purposes the Wir manual converted to rich text format and then converted to html. Some of you talked about updating the manual but not to have a pdf editor. So I did it and you can see the result. I could edit the pdf myself but the converted files can be edited by everybody and a html for example would be handle in the future. But see yourself and let's discuss what we'll do. (All the unit and weapon changes of all the scanrios could be added...)
There is also the map extracted from the manual pdf so it's complete.

Don't know if it will help. We'll see.

Dave

p.s. Grüsse aus Mannheim nach Stuttgart.

Ed Cogburn · Post by **Ed Cogburn** » Wed Feb 20, 2002 4:26 pm

Originally posted by davewolf:
Posted this at the Wir fan site topic and do it again here because this is what both of you were talking about, just in case it might not be noticed otherwise.

Thanks! I didn't know someone had already done this. I'll take a look.

To panamajo: Because the recent release of 3.2 discussion on supporting a manual has not begun yet among the beta team, I'll let you all know if anything good comes from it.

davewolf · Post by **davewolf** » Wed Feb 20, 2002 10:34 pm

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:

Thanks! I didn't know someone had already done this.

You're welcome! It's a five-minutes-work if you got Acrobat.
I didn't yet edit the files a bit. It's just that you can see what it's like after converting and estimate how much work will be left to do.
When it will be clear what to do I may help too. An up-to-date manual would be worth it I think.

Dave