Here is a draft form for placing units on the map. It is taller than it will be when seen during setup. Those 6 buttons at the bottom won’t be shown and the whole form will be clipped so the Sub button will be at the very bottom. The form can be positioned any where on the screen.
I have two overriding, (and conflicting) design objectives for this form: (1) to make it as small as possible and (2) to included as many units as possible.
I want it to be small so the players will be able to see as much of the map as possible when deciding where to place units. If the form is large, then the visible map area will be small. In CWIF, this problem was solved by having the player select units for placement on the map and then having the form disappear. This required extra steps (button clicks) and left it up to the player to remember what unit(s) he had currently selected for placement and what other units yet remained to be placed. By keeping the form visible, I can streamline the amount of mouse movement and reduce the number of mouse clicks. Both of those are good things. In my opinion, it is even more important to keep the list of units being placed visible at all times.
At the same time I want the number of units visible on the form as large as possible. This gives the player a broader view of what the task before him is. It makes it easier for him to select combinations of units to go in a single hex, and place them all at once,
What you see in the draft form is my solution to this conundrum. The smallish white panel in the upper left lists the different set up areas. For the USSR in Barbarossa there are 3: (1) naval units that go in the Baltic Sea or adjacent ports, (2) naval units that go in the Black Sea or adjacent ports, and (3) all the land and air units that can go in any hex controlled by the USSR. The player selects one of these setup areas and the units shown to the right are only those units for that setup area. Essentially, you setup the units one area at a time.
The second white panel directly before the list of setup areas is the unit description panel. When the cursor passes over a unit in the last 2 panels on in this form, the details about the unit will be presented in the panel. It is the same as the unit description panel used in the Scrap Units form.
The other two panels will vary in their contents. The top right one will always have air units that have yet to be placed, and the bottom right one will contain either naval or land units. The Land and Naval buttons let the player toggle the bottom right panel between displaying land and naval units.
My logic here is that when setting up units, I want the 3 branches of service separated. Furthermore, when setting up the navy, I don’t really need to know about the army, and vice-a-versa. However, I do want to know about the air force in both cases. So, the air units are always present and you can switch back and forth between the land an naval units.
Which brings me to the little buttons - 6 in each set. These are the same 3 groups of 6 that the Scrap Units form used, though their labels have been abbreviated. The 6 lonely souls at the bottom are for the land units and will replace the 6 for the naval units when the player toggles to set up the land units. All of these buttons can be depressed and stay depressed; they can be toggled up and down with a mouse click. That means that the player can combine the unit types howsoever he desires. For example, you could have both fighters and bombers included in the list of air units or view them separately, or add air transport units to the list as well. Clicking All selects displaying all the units, or unselects displaying all the units.
This design permits the player to assign carrier air units to carriers rather easily by viewing only the carrier air units in the air panel (Car stands for carrier air units in the top set of 6 buttons) and the carriers in the bottom/naval panel (Car stands for carriers in the middle set of 6 buttons).
The only tricky bit with this design arises because the set up directions for WIF is so unusual. The carrier air units often have a wider range of placement options than the carriers themselves. For example, the US has some carriers on the east coast of the USA, some on the west coast, and some in Hawaii. The carrier air units that go on those carriers can be placed on any carrier, unrestricted by geography. I am going to solve that weirdness by listing all the carrier air units available for placement on the map when ever the Air Car button is depressed. This overrides the normal operating restriction of limiting units in the two right boxes only to those for the current setup area (upper left box).
As always, I am very interested in what you think, and will read all comments, suggestions, and criticism seriously.
