Interface Wish List

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: rhinobones


Obviously you fully understand the effect that I would like to create, and you certainly are more knowledgeable of the engine's inner mechanics, so I will defer to your position.

My thanks.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: TheBloodyBucket

I think the whole ruins thing should be a scenario designer's issue...I was bemused to find the Americans in Grenada reducing cities to ruins, something that I think they would try and avoid.

Well, if one could have the chance to reduce an urban hex to ruins off AP strengths (ignoring modifiers for PGMs) used in the hex, plus presumably some random variable, and then key events off urban hexes being reduced to ruins, it would allow us to simulate the problems of collateral damage.

[larryfulkerson]

So um.........hey Ralph, et. al.&nbsp; :&nbsp; how difficult would it be to institute keyboard macros in T3?&nbsp; By macros I mean the ability to record keyboard inputs / mouse clicks and "replay" then upon a specific keyboard input / mouse click.&nbsp; That way a player could "record" a macro for one of his units and then "play" it on any unit in his side.&nbsp; A useful macro might be to entrench a unit ( if it has movement points left ) so instead of going through the entire formation one at a time a person could just < cntrl - e > a unit and that unit would entrench and the macro would advance to the next unit and the person could < cntrl - e > again and *that* unit would entrench etc.
&nbsp;
what d'ya think?

[ralphtricky]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson
So um.........hey Ralph, et. al. : how difficult would it be to institute keyboard macros in T3?

I suspect that most people wouldn't use it, it's too limited.

I've got some other ideas that might work though.

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: Industrial

Early turn endings don't even come close to simulate anything even remotely realistic, and certainly have nothing to do with making IGOYOUGO more WEGO.

The 'away with early turn endings' faction provided more than enough _examples_ where early turn endings totally ruined a turn and leed to very unrealistic results. I think it's time the pro-early-turn-endig faction finally steps down from their high chair and instead of only monotonly repeating that early turn endings are good, should finally state some examples from history (take the last 100 years, you should find some examples there... if there are any) where a situation reesembling a TOAW early-turn-ending actually happened.

Oh, and while you are at if, try to explain why early turn endings should only hit the attacker, because that's what they do, a defender who simply arranges his lines and than dig in will never be hit by early turn endings. If early turn endings simulate stuff going wrong, than you are saying murphys law can only happen to the attacker ?? *hollow laughter*

Ok, how about every battle of every operation of every campaign of every war in the history of Planet Earth – is that enough examples? In all those battles both sides were fully sentient beings consciously in control of their movements 24-7. No battle was ever fought using IGOUGO rules. IGOUGO is an abstraction.

And under those rules, the defender’s forces can’t respond to the attacker’s movements during the attacker’s turn. If the attacker is free to elaborately divide up his turn as fine as the maximum permitted by TOAW every time, without risk of failure, the defense can literally be carved up at will. Defense becomes very difficult. Now some forces (very high force proficiency), and some situations (very high shock) should accommodate those sorts of elaborate plans. But lesser forces and more normal situations should result in greater and greater risk to that sort of complexity as the force’s abilities degrade. In those cases, players should have good incentives to simplify their operational plans.

This simplification is done by aiming for a smaller number of sub-turns. For example, if, after moving your forces in the first phase, you find you have combats in place that will start over a range of the ten phases, the most elaborate plan would be to only schedule the attacks that could start immediately. That would be aiming for a 10-phase turn – or greater. But, alternately, you might schedule those attacks that could start immediately and those that could start one round later. Doing this consistently would tend to divide the turn up into only 5 phases, not the maximum of 10. Or you could even include the attacks that could start two rounds later, thereby dividing the turn into only 3 phases. And one can also shoot for only two phases or even only one by the same method. Of course, with recognition that the risk increases as the turn progresses, the above technique could be even more refined by going for finer division of the turn early in it, followed by progressively courser division as the turn progresses. It’s a high skill task.

It all depends upon the risk of early-turn-ending your force-proficiency and shock-level impose on you. In this fashion, low quality forces can be compelled to simplify their plans. And there is nothing unrealistic about that.

[murx]

Yes fine tuning can help getting the better use of those tactical rounds at the moment -
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But besieged pockets (sometimes 10 hex behind the front and more) sometimes offer hard (turn-burn) resistance, sometimes they just full in one tactical round&nbsp;- so it's a too hard penalty trying to either fight this at the start and then move the units closer to the front if besieged unit quickly surrendered -&nbsp;with a chance to lose the turn completely - or start the siege combat at the end of turn and completely forfeit the chance to move those units towards the front.
Another problem is - how do I find my planned attacks? A nice highlight of places with combats would be nice (or even better a list of planned combats with their individual starting round)
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murx

[Bloodybucket28th]

Is it possible to tie VPs to destruction of city hexes? I'd think that the desire to avoid "collateral damage" vs. the need to win military victory would be an interesting dynamic, not to mention being very simulative of the problems that most military planners face.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: TheBloodyBucket
Is it possible to tie VPs to destruction of city hexes? .....

Another idea would be to somehow allow the high level bombers to nullify the benefit of airfields/ports/railroads, etc. as well as the bridges.

Just a thought.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: murx

But besieged pockets (sometimes 10 hex behind the front and more) sometimes offer hard (turn-burn) resistance, sometimes they just full in one tactical round - so it's a too hard penalty trying to either fight this at the start and then move the units closer to the front if besieged unit quickly surrendered - with a chance to lose the turn completely - or start the siege combat at the end of turn and completely forfeit the chance to move those units towards the front.
Another problem is - how do I find my planned attacks? A nice highlight of places with combats would be nice (or even better a list of planned combats with their individual starting round)

This kind of problem can generally avoided with careful selection of attackers, and minimise losses limited attacks.

Alternatively, you could just let the buggers rot- ensuring that your encircling forces are not out of proportion to the size of the pocket.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: TheBloodyBucket

Is it possible to tie VPs to destruction of city hexes?

Not as yet- but it could be done. At present the nearest thing is to have events trigger off "force attacks" a particular hex.

[a white rabbit]

ORIGINAL: Erik Nygaard

One simple thing, I'd like to be able to use group movement for ships.
I've designed a couple of scenarios with a lot of individual ships and its a chore moving them one at a time.
Also group movement allows escorts to move with seatransports.

Another simple (?) addition, allow most infantry-type unit icons to be allowed movement between airbases.
The units should ideally not divide when entering the new aribase.
Currently you have to fudge with using glider/para symbols to allow pure airtransport of units.

Thanks
Erik

..wot he said about boats and floating things in general..

[a white rabbit]

ORIGINAL: golden delicious

ORIGINAL: Erik Nygaard

Another simple (?) addition, allow most infantry-type unit icons to be allowed movement between airbases.

The designer needs to have a lot of control over this. Some armies (i.e. the Germans) used this a lot more than others.

..mmm, don't you mean ie the French in Indochine, where in toaw terms every infantry , and quite a few lt recon, units should use glider icons

..and also have a means to use the separate truck transport units, as they had little to no integral transport (hidden rail is the only current substitute*)

..* for celt chariots too

[a white rabbit]

ORIGINAL: ralphtrick

ORIGINAL: rhinobones
As is, I received my disk today and have other immediate needs to satisfy.

So, is this place going to be a ghost town for a little bit followed by being extremely busy, or just extremely busy as the designers get their CDs?

Ralph
.

..i was away in the bunducks, visting ma-in-law and the tribe, coconut wine tastes vile but the after effects really are divine...

[a white rabbit]

ORIGINAL: TheBloodyBucket

Is it possible to tie VPs to destruction of city hexes? I'd think that the desire to avoid "collateral damage" vs. the need to win military victory would be an interesting dynamic, not to mention being very simulative of the problems that most military planners face.

..only if you bung a civ unit on it, ref Curts Vietnam 2

[Erik2]

..mmm, don't you mean ie the French in Indochine, where in toaw terms every infantry , and quite a few lt recon, units should use glider icons

Using glider icons is a crutch.
1) The units divide and disperse even when landing on airbases.
2) Elmer will use these units as true glider units and land them outside airbases.
3) In certain scenarios like my Weserübung you have to give all/most infantry units glider icons
because you don't know in advance wich units may be transported between airfields.
The Germans used this practice a lot in the Norwegian campaign transporting infantry between the capital Oslo in the south to Trondheim in middle Norway.

Erik

[Captain Cruft]

Apologies if all this has been mentioned before.

Scrolling issues:

1) The main map and the mini map do not synchronise when scrolling. The mini map should ALWAYS show where you are on the main map. This is the main bugbear.
2) It would be much easier if scrolling the main map was done at the edge of the screen, not the edge of the map. That's how every other game I've ever played works.
3) On the mini map the "edge boundary" for triggering scrolling is far too thin. It feels like you have to position the cursor on the exact pixel sometimes to get it to move.

[MarcA]

ORIGINAL: Captain Cruft

Apologies if all this has been mentioned before.

Scrolling issues:

1) The main map and the mini map do not synchronise when scrolling. The mini map should ALWAYS show where you are on the main map. This is the main bugbear.
2) It would be much easier if scrolling the main map was done at the edge of the screen, not the edge of the map. That's how every other game I've ever played works.
3) On the mini map the "edge boundary" for triggering scrolling is far too thin. It feels like you have to position the cursor on the exact pixel sometimes to get it to move.

I was just about to post this myself. In large scenarios, like FitE, it is cumbersome to have to scroll around the micromap all the time. If the micromap centred on the current main map location you could navigate from one side of the map to the other in only a few clicks.

An alternative would be to be able to call up a micromap which covered the entire main map and then you could click any location as required.

[Erik2]

ORIGINAL: Captain Cruft

Apologies if all this has been mentioned before.

Scrolling issues:

1) The main map and the mini map do not synchronise when scrolling. The mini map should ALWAYS show where you are on the main map. This is the main bugbear.

I would prefer a jump-to command. Sometimes it nice to have the minimap centered on a specific part of the main map when you order air/seatransports to move long distances. The main map centers on the on-map unit and you would have to scroll to the drop-zone manually if the minimap didn't stay put.

Erik

[geozero]

ORIGINAL: mantill

ORIGINAL: Captain Cruft

Apologies if all this has been mentioned before.

Scrolling issues:

1) The main map and the mini map do not synchronise when scrolling. The mini map should ALWAYS show where you are on the main map. This is the main bugbear.
2) It would be much easier if scrolling the main map was done at the edge of the screen, not the edge of the map. That's how every other game I've ever played works.
3) On the mini map the "edge boundary" for triggering scrolling is far too thin. It feels like you have to position the cursor on the exact pixel sometimes to get it to move.

I was just about to post this myself. In large scenarios, like FitE, it is cumbersome to have to scroll around the micromap all the time. If the micromap centred on the current main map location you could navigate from one side of the map to the other in only a few clicks.

An alternative would be to be able to call up a micromap which covered the entire main map and then you could click any location as required.

How about a keyboard command to center the mini map on the current seleceted unit? Like Shift+C or something like that.

[jimwinsor]

I'm a huge fan of the alternate suggestion...some way to implement a full-size, non-scrolling minimap.
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I note that the weather map that pops up would be ideal for this purpose.&nbsp; Can that be made clickable?