ORIGINAL: KERENSKY
What about an overlay ? that could grey out thoses non avaliable ? or write their status on them ?
It is hard to design a windows with so much elements/information/manipulation...
Well, I go back to first principles. What is the purpose of the form? Note that CWIF didn't have this form (or its companion Summary form) at all.
I created this form because I wanted to enhance the play of the naval side of MWIF. When making decsions about land moves and combats, it is easy to see all the units involved on a single map screen. The worst that happens is that there are a half dozen or so units in a crowded hex, which is why CWIF have the "Units in Hex" form and why I have added the Flyouts form - to make examining densely packed frontlines easier.
But for naval units there are two major problems: (1) the unit density often has dozens of units in a hex, and (2) the units that are likely to interact within an impulse are so far apart that they are difficult to see in a single map view.
I have made several changes to address these 2 problems:
a - I reinstated the sea box sections onto the map. CWIF had just a single stack of units for each sea area. Along this line I enhanced the WIF FE solution by splitting the Axis and Allied sea box sections so there are 10 separate unit stacks in each sea area, instead of 5.
b - I set up screen layouts so it would be easy to created multiple detailed maps, each quite small and focused on separate sea areas and ports. The idea here is to be able to have all relevant sea areas and ports visible on screen simultaneously. For instance, you can create a set of ports on the left side of the screen and a set of sea areas on the right. 5 of each fit fairly easily, This way you can look at all the points of interest in the Med from the Red Sea to Cape St. Vincent, including Gibraltar, Malta, Suez, etc..
c - And lastly, I have created Naval Review Details and Summary forms to solve the problem of there being a lot of units in a hex. Here I am considering a sea box section equivalent to a 'hex'. Indeed, internally MWIF stores each sea box section by a column and row number.
So, the purpose of the NRD and NRS forms is to:
d - enable viewing of hexes densely packed with naval units.
e - permit selection of units in a port or sea box section for inclusion in a Task Force. This works both ways, with being able to add and subtract units from a task force.
f - selection of units in ... for naval movement.
g - providing information on the location of naval units (friendly and enemy) for decision making at many different places in the sequence of play.
h - enabling a quick review of all naval units, regardless of where they are on the map, which encompasses the entire world. This is done with both the NRS form and also with the Next and Previous buttons on the NRD form.
I think we are close to complete with this form's design meeting the above goals. However, the complexity of WIF makes it very difficult to show everything. Units that have been selected as Naval Interception units or to Initiate Naval Combat are not marked. Nor is the damage status of units during naval combat. Although you can determine those things by passing the cursor over individual units. Status indicators provide that level of detail, as does the Unit Data panel, which is pretty much universally present on any forms that show a list of units.
Once I get the basics of these two forms working, I plan on making drag and drop work for placing carrier air units on carriers (or rearranging same), and likewise for loading transports et al.
