MWiF Tutorial

[SamuraiProgrmmr]

I resepectfully disagree.

IMO, The invasion of Poland NEEDS to be a small scenario.

Until a player is able to (a) throw a successful attack on Poland or (b) take a few Germans with him as Poland falls, that player will not be in a tenable situation after the first few turns of the game.

Having a small scenario with well defined goals will allow the player to know that he/she must continue to hone their skills or have confidence that they are ready to step up to the big game.

My 2 cents worth.

Thanks for reading.

[tigercub]

As a starter tutorial invasion england(sealion) gives you ship,land and air in one battle.I think it would be a good balance.

[wodin]

Voice overs did cross my mind. However pop ups and hyperlinks would be best. I'd rather read whats happing than listen to it.

I do want sound effects though. Anyone who deosnt can always turn the sound down or turn them off. A good range of sound effects aswell.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: tigercub

As a starter tutorial invasion england(sealion) gives you ship,land and air in one battle.I think it would be a good balance.

I agree except with your use of the word "starter".

It is way too much for a new player to try to absorb and understand. Either side of that combat requires an enormous amount of knowledge as to what all the numbers on the units mean, what all the different options are for using units, and how all the different WIF systems work and interact. For instance, what Action type does Germany choose on the first impulse? And on the second impulse? Are we including Offensive chits? I would expect to be using at least one if I were playing Germany. Invading England is very complicated stuff in WIF. Not the sort of thing where you say to a friend; "Hey, look at this game, this is how is works!".

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

Scenarios
The smallest scenario used in the tutorials will be the 1939 invasion of Poland, and the larger ones will be the Barbarossa and Guadalcanal scenarios. In the case of the latter two, the player will have the option of playing out the scenario from the point that the tutorial ends.

Hello,

I've had a little thought about this, and I think that Poland might not be a good idea.
Numerous German troops & planes assaulting Lodz & Warsaw may not learn anything to anyone.
Maybe it would be better to set up a short & small Blitz in France scenario, with, if not equal forces, at least something challenging.

Someone also talked about the Spanish Civil War, and I think it would ba a good idea too to start.
Just set up the troops of the Nationalists & Republicans in historical areas, and make them fight for a couple of turns.

The Spanish Civil War is not a WIF scenario. And scenarios are extremely difficult to create in the WIF system. Too many different details have to be defined precisely.

Setting up a game in progress is the best way to go. If need be, we could go in using the debugger and remove 95% of the units from the game, position the remaining units exactly where we like, and tell the lpayer to "attack" or "defend".

[JimMerson]

ORIGINAL: wodin

A quick point here.

I imagine the manual being a hefty piece of work.

This means a big expense to get it printed and with a game like this you need a manual.

HOWEVER. The idea of watching replays whilst the game mechanics are being explained thorugh pop ups is a fantastic idea.

Also hyperlinks during play to the manual is another superb idea aswell.

I agree with the hyperlink idea to the in-game manual. Yes, you will need an in-game manual. I am a fan of flight sims as well and Falcon 4.0 is a prime example of why you need the manual in-game. The Falcon manual is only about 500 or 600 pages long. I think someone went to kinko to price having it printed and it was an outrageous quote so you wind up printing it at home. With a board game you should be able to pull up the rulebook from the menu for reference at any time because nothing is happening in "real time".

Just my $0.02 worth.

Jim Merson

I have read the book but that does not mean I understood it (WiF rulebook).

[scout1]

My lack of background on the game, but why not a North African battle for the tutorial ? Not likely to have a gazillion pieces and certainly should provide some room to maneuver .....

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: JimMerson

I agree with the hyperlink idea to the in-game manual. Yes, you will need an in-game manual. I am a fan of flight sims as well and Falcon 4.0 is a prime example of why you need the manual in-game. The Falcon manual is only about 500 or 600 pages long. I think someone went to kinko to price having it printed and it was an outrageous quote so you wind up printing it at home. With a board game you should be able to pull up the rulebook from the menu for reference at any time because nothing is happening in "real time".

Just my $0.02 worth.

Jim Merson

I have read the book but that does not mean I understood it (WiF rulebook).

Access will be available to at least 4 sources of information:

1 - the official WIF Rules as Written (RAW)

2 - the MWIF Rules as Coded (RAC) a modified version of RAW

3 - the MWIF tutorials

4 - the MWIF player's manual

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: scout1

My lack of background on the game, but why not a North African battle for the tutorial ? Not likely to have a gazillion pieces and certainly should provide some room to maneuver .....

That's a good idea. As usual, it made me think of a general approach:

The tutorial should endeavor to include examples of combat from all the theaters of WW II, involving all the major powers at least once.

[scout1]

The tutorial should endeavor to include examples of combat from all the theaters of WW II, involving all the major powers at least once.

Open ended suggestions then ....

US/Japan - Phillippine Island (either 41 or 44, depends who you want to attack)
Germany/Everyone Else - Norway is always a classic. North Africa
Italy/Everyone Else - Allied Campaign for the Mainland
USSR/Axis - a Soviet pre-emptive strike on German Forces in May 1941 would be an interesting twist.

Just some talking points ....

[tigercub]

I was thinking along the lines of a built in Tutorial with sealion(ok maybe not starter), so i think you saying its to big well ok. demark & norway invasion may be better to use as a Tutorial then!maybe there are new war gamers starting to play wargames but i dont think this game will be for them!I feel your just making it for me any how LOL!

[Ballista]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

Naval
Movement
(...)
∙ Forming task forces

About this :

I seem to remember that there were no Task Forces per see in CWiF, and that Task Forces were out of the picture for MWiF too.
But, having played CWiF, and thinking about MWiF and naval movement makes me think that there should be a way to assemble Task Forces in MWiF, and have the Task Force counter on the board in place of the pile of ships.

This is because :

- Once a task force is formed, you could keep it formed from turn to turn, and so have an easier time using it again turn after turn. You would just have to check that you still have sufficient ships inside in case of previous battle damage. I found that it was tedious in CWiF to assemble turn after turn the same TF for the same purpose. You had to select the carriers, the battleships, the covering cruisers, check that you were in the right "ship number" row, check your AA or your Gunnery power, check the speed & range of all ships to verify no slow ships is included, and you could sail your assembly of ships. At the first error, you had to begin again. If you could say "Create a Task force", then choose a name, and then include the ships within it, you could keep it at will and would save lots of time for next time. Each player could reach a "Task Force" menu item who would show him the ships included in each task force. The Player could also toggle an option showing him task forces, or individual ships in the sea areas (at will), so that Task Forces counters are not a problem to get an accurate picture of the fleets strength in a given sea area.

- In the computer game, you would not be limited to the existing Task Forces, you could just create new task forces when the need arise, and the game would provide you with a list of possible names depending on your country, or allow you to enter a free name.

- It would allow for inclusion of the hidden task force optional rule (even if I would never play with it, considering that a game of the scope of WiF has no use of a fog of the war option, especially when it has no reconnaissance rules).

An excellent idea. And naming them is perfect (It will help my escort stuff for the CW MUCH easier to handle and keep me from fumbling it as badly as I seem to do a LOT... [:)] )

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: tigercub

I was thinking along the lines of a built in Tutorial with sealion(ok maybe not starter), so i think you saying its to big well ok. demark & norway invasion may be better to use as a Tutorial then!maybe there are new war gamers starting to play wargames but i dont think this game will be for them!I feel your just making it for me any how LOL!

Denmark and Norway - yes.

[Ballista]

As an aside, if we are to test the AI well enough, we may need a lot of pre-setup (or ability to pre-setup) situations so that the AI can be tested in a decent time-frame against some of the wierd things people can do- (e.g. I've been known to invade spain after France and go to war with the USSR in 42). We need a way we can throw stuff at the AI and see how it responds. From this testing we may also be able to distill some of that into tutorial stuff and kill two birds with one stone....

[christo]

Hi Guys

Another lurker who has decided to make a comment.
The whole point of the tutorial is to help those people new to the game. Often they may well have a pretty good grasp of what happened historically and surely putting the game in that context is important. Thus a North Africa tutorial may well mean more to them then an ahistorical campaign.

Christo

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: christo

Hi Guys

Another lurker who has decided to make a comment.
The whole point of the tutorial is to help those people new to the game. Often they may well have a pretty good grasp of what happened historically and surely putting the game in that context is important. Thus a North Africa tutorial may well mean more to them then an ahistorical campaign.

Christo

An idea that has been part of my decision making, without me knowing it. But now I do, since you put into writing.

This is the reason I like the idea of the 1939 attack on Poland as part of the tutorials. Why I like having something that includes battles with the Japanese in China. And North Africa actions. And Norway and Denmark. Maybe why Operation Sea Lion in the tutorials makes me uneasy too.

[Mziln]

Poland is a good start for a tutorial because:

(1) its where the campaign starts.
(2) it has air,naval, and land units
(3) streight forward basic strategic objectives
(4) it would be quick and easy to play

[wodin]

Sealion is a bad idea.

A big reason is that there is no historical situation to judge how the game works compared to what happened in the War.

Also Sealion is one of those scenarios many want to play and having it as a tutorial would be a bit odd. Its like having your desert before your dinner.

[Ballista]

My 2 cents (or pence, or somoleans),

I feel that Poland is not a good tutorial to invest time making, because you can screw it up in the big game and start another wihout having to invest hours and hours of time- unlike if you fumble Barbarossa, where you've probably already invested mucho time getting to that point. It would be better to have situations you will encounter later in the game. As a CWIF player, I've completed far more invasions of Poland in CWIF than complete CWIF games. (The same applies to the board game as well).....

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Ballista

My 2 cents (or pence, or somoleans),

I feel that Poland is not a good tutorial to invest time making, because you can screw it up in the big game and start another wihout having to invest hours and hours of time- unlike if you fumble Barbarossa, where you've probably already invested mucho time getting to that point. It would be better to have situations you will encounter later in the game. As a CWIF player, I've completed far more invasions of Poland in CWIF than complete CWIF games. (The same applies to the board game as well).....

The recommended (in WIF, CWIF, and MWIF) introductory scenario (not tutorial) is Barbarossa. The second short scenario is Guadalcanal, which is recommended as the second scenario to play. It has a lot of naval action and lets the player learn that section of the rules.

MWIF will have all 11 of the WIF FE scenarios. They let you start a game at different points in the war. Most people just play the global war scenario starting with Poland in 1939. Once MWIF is released I expect that to change. Given the ability to just as easily start immediately after the fall of France, or just before the US entry/Pearl Harbor, or just before the start of Barbarossa, or ..., many players with try out all the scenarios.

I think of the 11 scenarios as groups of 2, 2, and 7. The first two, Barbarossa and Guadalcanal, are 5 turns long and focus on land and naval operations respectively.

The second two, Fascist Tide and Day of Infamy, use only half the globe. Fascist Tide starts with Poland in 1939 and goes through to the end of the war, but is restricted to the European and African maps, plus the Atlantic. Day of Infamy starts with Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, goes through to the end of the war, and is restricted to the Pacific theater of Operations.

The other 7 involve all the major powers and include the entire world. They start at different points in the conflict. All 11 scenarios are historical at set up. There are no alternative histories here - other than what the players make happen as they play the game.