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Okay, I have a lot of these but lets try to tackle them one at a time as I come across them.

First one on my list is the following.

I am revising and updating my SPI War in Europe scenario (I don't think I have ever released this). The first version (1.15) after I updated it to work with TOAW IV, covered 1939-1943. I have since changed that to cover 1939-1945.

One of the fist easy things I did was to set the fonts for the map, so the map looks mostly spectacular (I used SPI's board game War in Europe for the default map source, plus also DG WIE board and computer game for the map sources as well). Next using the most excellent TOAWXML thing, I was able to expand the lame US 1st Army to now 5 Armies in about 15 minutes (this would have taken a month at least in the in game editor).

So some of the things I need to fix are supply and Reentry points.

I think I have most of the supply issues worked out but do one question on that.

Supply
1. Question: I was wondering about what this means when I added the Supply Point the map:

But I think I found it here in the manual:

9.1.7.4. Variable Supply Points

This section talks about it can be 1-250%. When I 'converted' my scenario over to TOAW IV, it does not seem that any of the supply points I placed on the map have any values. Does that mean they automatically get the 100%? Or if I leave it as empty it gets 100%? Or should I set each and every one to some value?

Re-Entry
1. Question: I answered this one myself.

In the manual under 17.10.5. Reconstitution? Fixed x, y sounds exciting and a way to fix units from say Russia being Reconstituted in the default Re-Entry point I set (which happens to be in the general location of the USA for the Allies and Berlin for the Axis). But I don't want Russians units appearing in the USA nor Italian or Hungary units in Berlin. But I don't see how I can set this yet for the formations. What am I missing?

Wait! I think I figured it out.

Does this seem right?



So this does seem to be the way to access this. So I'll leave this post here for others.

Per the manual I'll make a note of this in the briefing.

I have more questions, I'll have to dig more into the manual, but any tips, tricks and or advice is welcomed.

Also, at one point I'll need another set of eyes from an experienced scenario Designer to maybe help guide and mentor me (still getting up to speed from a design perspective on TOAW IV).

So not sure if anyone could or would help in this area. My WIE will be a pretty good size monster when I get done with it.

Also, at one point I'll need another set of eyes from an experienced scenario Designer to maybe help guide and mentor me (still getting up to speed from a design perspective on TOAW IV).

So not sure if anyone could or would help in this area. My WIE will be a pretty good size monster when I get done with it.

I'd be more than glad to help you. You're asking the right questions and unfortunately I don't know all that much about the editor but it looks like you've found a way to discover the right things you need so far. I like to watch over your shoulder this way. It's illuminating seeing you determining what you need to do and finding a way to do it. I'll bet there's a lot of people that would be willing to lend a hand. What say you community?

Thanks Larry, I have several things going for me.

In no order.

When I originally created this back in 4/06/2002 I did put a lot of work into it. Both in research and development of it. I was also part of the Decision Games CWIE2 project as a play-tester, scenario designer and some light artwork (the SPI counter colors) so making the map was fairly easy (except TOAW does not use rivers that cross hex-sides so I had to make judgement calls. I did make all the divisions (much like the board game) 'cookie-cutter' in that the early war German Infantry divisions all look basically the same with regards to TOE, and as the time increase I changed some of the TOEs, same with all the other nations and forces and types (for example in the board game WIE all German standard infantry divisions are rated 6-5, all Panzer 10-8, etc.).

When I created the TOE's I used a lot of sources including WitE 1st edition (board game from 74), a lot of books (which I sold off), the internet.

This great community.

The internet and that one TOE collection.

The AWESOME TOAWXML Editor>

My notes.

One thing about this WIE for TOAW I am remaking, it's very playable and it gives you the feel of that grand campaign as a whole, I think its a fun one to play. Currently I have upped it from 1939-1943 to 1939-1945 (301 turns) and am filling in the gaps for forces, starting with the US Army.

For this scenario I created armies and assigned the divisions to the army (no corps, sorry), so the 2nd US Army for example has:

and the Germany 16th Germany Army (formation):

Looking back or at this you'll notice a couple of things. One they are very cookie cutter, but it does play and give a good feel of the grand strategic nature and also gives you operational movement and combat options. I also noticed I don't have enough German HQ's so I may make some to help with command and control. Easy to do with creating one in the editor and then copying it in the TOAWXML editor or using VSCode to copy and paste.

Have you seen my Editor article?:

tm.asp?m=4387350

Bob,

Yes I found it this morning thank you.

I used both the in game editor and the TOAW-XML-Editor (it speeds up a lot of things).

There are some issues with the in game editor at times. It's still a little fiddly. For example when in Deployment Mode and you select a unit and then hit the hot key 'u' and then are adding new equipment to a unit sometimes after a slight period of time the graphics looks double criss-crossed and when you try to click a system its like taking the one underneath it and that is very frustrating. Same thing in the same editor ('u') when you try to click on an existing system it keeps selecting the one underneath it. Its weird.

It's a defect that needs addressed. Next time I see it I'll screen shot it.

Also, the Main Forces dialog needs updating it's still showing the old dialog, but you have to kind of go back to it to create new units.

My process is after the basic units and formations are created (or basically made-for example create a HQ with 36 MP squads, create a infantry unit with 324 squads, create a formation and stuff them into it) then go to map deploy them, then use the 'u' key to fine tune the units (i.e. add more equipment, it's great to see the values on the fly and then tweak for example bridging units or engineers to get the right % of that capability for that system), then use the 'formation' (that star) to tweak the formation itself and then use the forces to rinse and repeat the processes for other formations/forces etc.

This is great and takes time. Once a base formation exists (1x Army HQ, 9x Infantry XX, etc.) I do a save as XML and then I can ctl+alt+tab to TOAW-XML-Editor load that XML copy formations, edit and tweak them, set some at start hexes etc. and then save that xml load it back up into the game and work on it from their for a bit, do all that I mentioned in this sentence and then rinse and repeat.

For even faster edits or more fine-tuning, I just load the XML into VSCode and edit that (copy/paste), and I have other XML's (dummy ones), that say have 10/10 of system 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 etc, so I can copy in new systems / or add in new systems in VSCode and save that (i.e., create the base unit, then add in tanks for 2 years from start point, set them to 0/XX, set the ID tag, etc. and save). Once that is all done or in between each edit (either in VSCode or in TOAW-XML-Editor Editor) I save the XML and re-open it into the game and whalao!

Presto Magico

At least that is my workflow ever that last few days.