Comments from a Newbie

Kanon Fodder · Post by **Kanon Fodder** » Thu Feb 07, 2002 12:43 am

I'm not a total newbie, because I did play SP1 a few years ago.

Generally I like what has been done with the game between then and SPWaW. I would like to post a few commments/suggestions. Sorry if I am rehashing old ground, but because there is no search feature in this forum it is too time-consuming to try to read all the old posts.

Opportunity Fire:
I like that the game now questions whether or not to use Opportunity Fire, rather than wasting Anti-Tank rounds on infantry, for example, just prior to the appearance of a valid target.

I would like if the hit% would show as well, so as not to waste shots on very low possibilities.
(and could it be written in larger type for we older guys ?)

Fast Artillery:
I wish there was a speed in between "fast" and "normal" - the fast speed is so fast that it is impossible to see what is happening, so I end up turning the option off.

Auto Rally:
This is where something similar to "Fast Artillery" would really be a benefit. It takes a long time at the end of a turn. Failing that, it would be helpful if the screen would highlight the unit attempting to rally.

Confirmation of Questionable Moves:
I wish the game would prompt for confirmation before performing a move that may damage the moving piece. e.g. entering a building or stone wall hex.

Moving/Firing:
I wish there was a way to have the system jump to the next piece with movement/fire still available, rather than just the next numeric piece.

Those are the main points I have thought about in the last week or so of rediscovering this game.
I am looking forward to feedback from the "veterans" out there.

[ February 06, 2002: Message edited by: Kanon Fodder ]</p>

Bing · Post by **Bing** » Thu Feb 07, 2002 1:01 am

You haven't said what your system is - so we can't comment on why a turn would be taking so long. Anything upstream of an older P2 450 such as I had ought to do the turns with no problems and a minimum of wait time.

Why don't you post the detals and also let us know what you've done to optimize performance - Cacheman, terminating all background apps before starting SP, that sort of thing.

Bing

Kanon Fodder · Post by **Kanon Fodder** » Thu Feb 07, 2002 1:28 am

PII/266 320Mb RAM

Game speed itself is not a problem - just the end of turn rally I would like to speed up.

I use RAMBooster and have nothing else running in the background when I am SPWaWing.

Svennemir · Post by **Svennemir** » Thu Feb 07, 2002 1:53 am

More MB RAM than MHz! <img src="eek.gif" border="0"> <img src="confused.gif" border="0"> <img src="smile.gif" border="0"> <img src="biggrin.gif" border="0"> Yikes!

Uhm... sorry... to the point:

Our Saviour Paul Vebber, one of the Grand Old Men when it comes to SPWAW, has earlier issued the statement that no more "big" patches will be released, since efforts are now concentrated on Combat Leader. I don't think any such changes as you are proposing will be likely, though some of them would be very nice (especially the "Semi-Fast" Arty setting!).

The 7.1 will probably be the last patch if I have understood correctly, and it will change the Armor System and a lot of OOB stuff plus some b**'s.

Bing · Post by **Bing** » Thu Feb 07, 2002 7:52 am

Fodder - Try enabling "Auto Rally" in the Preferences screen, that might help.

Also make sure you aren't slowing down anything in the game via Preferences settings - its easy to do this and as long as I've played this fine game from time to time I forget I tried something to see how it worked and never reset the Preference. Execution times can be altered drastically in the Preferences screen and it pays to know your way around it.

Utilities that free up RAM - I have used several of them in the past including Ram Idle - are not the same as Cacheman, a utility created to deal with Windows vcache settings. Until I started using Cacheman on my former system - a P2 450 - I had problems. Cacheman took care of most of them - I was directed to Cacheman by people here on this board who use it regularly. It is the one and only utility I run in the background, nothing else loads when I boot.

The latest version of Cacheman also frees up RAM, so I no longer use Ram Idle - and it does a superior job in this area also.

Which OS are you running?

Bing

Kanon Fodder · Post by **Kanon Fodder** » Thu Feb 07, 2002 8:00 am

I do use "Auto Rally".

I realized after posting this that because I slowed down the messages in general that the auto rally messages will be slow as well.

Rather than discussing my system, I was hoping for more feedback on the suggestions I made, but if 7.1 is to be "it" then I suppose that will be neither here nor there.

swagman · Post by **swagman** » Thu Feb 07, 2002 12:22 pm

Opportunity Fire:
I would like if the hit% would show as well, so as not to waste shots on very low possibilities.
(and could it be written in larger type for we older guys ?)

<img src="tongue.gif" border="0"> We've all wished for this one... <img src="tongue.gif" border="0">

Fast Artillery:
I wish there was a speed in between "fast" and "normal" - the fast speed is so fast that it is impossible to see what is happening, so I end up turning the option off.

<img src="tongue.gif" border="0"> most PBEM players use fast artillery off, but set the message delay to 10 or so...the shells fall separately but with minimal delay. <img src="tongue.gif" border="0">

Auto Rally:
This is where something similar to "Fast Artillery" would really be a benefit. It takes a long time at the end of a turn. Failing that, it would be helpful if the screen would highlight the unit attempting to rally.

Confirmation of Questionable Moves:
I wish the game would prompt for confirmation before performing a move that may damage the moving piece. e.g. entering a building or stone wall hex.

<img src="tongue.gif" border="0"> We've all dreamed of this...every player has his nightmare story of a favourite elite unit in a long campaign suddenly driving straight into a house and being immobilised right infront of a big 88...the painful part is that when a vehicle enters a building nex it is treated as a single building, but conceptually it is a 50 metre wide composite of half a dozen houses...any tank would be able to drive around the house rather than through it! <img src="tongue.gif" border="0">

Moving/Firing:
I wish there was a way to have the system jump to the next piece with movement/fire still available, rather than just the next numeric piece.

<img src="tongue.gif" border="0"> The "N" and "P" keys (next and previous) can be used to cycle through your units, and you can see in the information panel the number of shots left and if there are any targets...an asterisk in the bottom left shows if the vehicle has been spotted, whether or not you can see them - there's also a hash but I forget what that indicates - if you want to check for units that haven't fired, use the unit manaifest, which lists that and much more for every unit...if you click on the unit you are taken to it on the map, and so can select a target and fire...same applies to suppression (in order to manually rally all your troops) and remaining movement (to make sure you have moved all your units) <img src="tongue.gif" border="0">

Hope this helps

Those are the main points I have thought about in the last week or so of rediscovering this game.
I am looking forward to feedback from the "veterans" out there.

[ February 06, 2002: Message edited by: Kanon Fodder ][/QB][/QUOTE]

Kanon Fodder · Post by **Kanon Fodder** » Thu Feb 07, 2002 1:45 pm

Thanks for your feedback, swagman.

At least I know I'm not alone with my wishlist.

I still enjoy the game - a few modifications would just make it all the sweeter ...

But I still don't understand the scoring:
I just played the "Kufra" scenario (Free French vs. Italian in 1941) and finished in 28 of 35 turns. I totally wiped out the Italian force and captured all the victory hexes. Score was 1901 to 713 and was still considered a draw.
<img src="rolleyes.gif" border="0">

Alexandra · Post by **Alexandra** » Thu Feb 07, 2002 8:00 pm

You need a 3 to 1 point ratio for a MV, and I think it's 5 to 1 for a DV. Or is it 6 to 1? It also is lower, I think, when you play vs another human.

A Proud Fan of the World Champion New England Patriots,

Alex

Bing · Post by **Bing** » Thu Feb 07, 2002 9:24 pm

Alex - What I'm seeing now - under the newest 7.1 patched mech.exe - is 6:1 required for a DV, plus the player had better take all the VH's, preferably on or before the halfway point plus one turn (viz. in a 12 turn battle, that would be by the 7th turn).

The problem in LV has been the game routine sometimes won't allow the player to continue no matter what has been going on. I understand work is underway to correct the premature termination "insect".

Fodder - The game runs faster if your system runs faster. Up to you as to whether or not you want to attempt to juice up an older system. I would, but that is just me. I ran a LOT of SPW@W on a P2 450 and never had a problem with execution speed.

Bing

campekenobi · Post by **campekenobi** » Thu Feb 07, 2002 11:33 pm

Well since you listed a "WISH - LIST", here's my ONE big one:

I wish you could have a SCROLL bar to scroll up the MESSAGES that are listed during combat (in the lower right of the bottom gray bar). So many times several things happen (like listing 80mm bombardment 16 times) and I miss the casualty listing because the scripts push the info up into oblivion.

(Close Combat from Microsoft lets you scroll up on messages)

Tomanbeg · Post by **Tomanbeg** » Thu Feb 07, 2002 11:57 pm

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Sniper-for-hire:
[QB]Well since you listed a "WISH - LIST", here's my ONE big one:

I wish you could have a SCROLL bar to scroll up the MESSAGES that are listed during combat (in the lower right of the bottom gray bar). So many times several things happen (like listing 80mm bombardment 16 times) and I miss the casualty listing because the scripts push the info up into oblivion.

Are you using the <f5> key? that will repeat the list that scrolled by on the lower right. I suppose you could run that list off the screen also, but I play with 400 units quite a bit and haven't seen the list run off the screen. I suppose if I was getting my a$$ really whoped, and had to do a lot of Rallys, It could happen. But my normal reaction to that is <f9> and start again, with a better plan.

T.

campekenobi · Post by **campekenobi** » Fri Feb 08, 2002 12:02 am

Originally posted by Tomanbeg:

Originally posted by Sniper-for-hire:
[QB]Well since you listed a "WISH - LIST", here's my ONE big one:

Are you using the f5 key?

T.
OOOHhhhhhhh!!!! Well, then... the game IS perfect! Thanks <img src="smile.gif" border="0">

Kanon Fodder · Post by **Kanon Fodder** » Fri Feb 08, 2002 12:16 am

Originally posted by Sniper-for-hire:
Well since you listed a "WISH - LIST", here's my ONE big one:

I wish you could have a SCROLL bar to scroll up the MESSAGES that are listed during combat (in the lower right of the bottom gray bar). So many times several things happen (like listing 80mm bombardment 16 times) and I miss the casualty listing because the scripts push the info up into oblivion.

(Close Combat from Microsoft lets you scroll up on messages)

Actually that reminds me of another thing ...

I don't believe you should get any enemy casualty notifications from artillery poundings unless you have an FO watching the target.

Bing · Post by **Bing** » Fri Feb 08, 2002 3:37 am

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Sniper-for-hire:
[QB]Well since you listed a "WISH - LIST", here's my ONE big one:

I wish you could have a SCROLL bar to scroll up the MESSAGES that are listed during combat (in the lower right of the bottom gray bar). So many times several things happen (like listing 80mm bombardment 16 times) and I miss the casualty listing because the scripts push the info up into oblivion.

===========================================

If you are running v7.1 you can use Alt + L - thats the letter "l" and doesn't have to be in uppercase. All the action and I do mean ALL the action will be written to a text file called"combat.txt" which you will find in the SPW@W root directory. This will not work for the very first bombardment when you leave the deplpoyment screen, it does work thereafter.

I have found that if I save and quit the game, I have to enable via Alt + L when I load the save file. Thats a small price to pay so far as I am concerned. I just found out how a PzIIIj took out two of my T-34's with two successive rounds - APCR, that's how. Plus some pretty good shootin', pohdner.

Bing

tracer · Post by **tracer** » Fri Feb 08, 2002 10:19 am

Originally posted by Bing:

If you are running v7.1 you can use Alt + L - thats the letter "l" and doesn't have to be in uppercase. All the action and I do mean ALL the action will be written to a text file called"combat.txt" which you will find in the SPW@W root directory. This will not work for the very first bombardment when you leave the deplpoyment screen, it does work thereafter.

I have found that if I save and quit the game, I have to enable via Alt + L when I load the save file. Thats a small price to pay so far as I am concerned. I just found out how a PzIIIj took out two of my T-34's with two successive rounds - APCR, that's how. Plus some pretty good shootin', pohdner.

Bing

Whoa! I didn't know about this...what a godsend. Alot of times during VCR playback of a PBEM turn many of the messages don't appear at all; having a text file takes care of that. Hats off to whoever came up with this one. <img src="biggrin.gif" border="0">

Bing · Post by **Bing** » Fri Feb 08, 2002 10:36 am

The action text file was - for me anyway - one of those really nice unanounced, undocumented features one can suddenly find is there one day. Works great, I don't see as anyone would want more detail and thanks again to whoever was nice enough to answer our long standing requests for this item.

We really do have the greatest crew workng on W@W.

Bing

Tomanbeg · Post by **Tomanbeg** » Fri Feb 08, 2002 11:41 am

Originally posted by Sniper-for-hire:

OOOHhhhhhhh!!!! Well, then... the game IS perfect! Thanks <img src="smile.gif" border="0">

I didn't say THAT! Wait 'til you hit the'T'Key to target something and it draws a line to a victory flag, tells you the range is 999 and your hit % is 0. WTF? I tried to take that shot once, Just for the hell of it. wouldn't shoot. And not everything shows up on the little scrolling screen either.
T.

Kanon Fodder · Post by **Kanon Fodder** » Fri Feb 08, 2002 10:40 pm

Originally posted by Bing:
[QBIf you are running v7.1 you can use Alt + L - thats the letter "l" and doesn't have to be in uppercase. All the action and I do mean ALL the action will be written to a text file called"combat.txt" which you will find in the SPW@W root directory. This will not work for the very first bombardment when you leave the deplpoyment screen, it does work thereafter.

[/QB]

Where would Juan get 7.1 ?

Downloads page only goes up to 7.0

Tomanbeg · Post by **Tomanbeg** » Fri Feb 08, 2002 10:56 pm

Word on 7.1 is 'pretty soon now'. How is 'action defined? When my opponent drives across my LOS and I have my range set to 1 will I be informed that an Mk-IV just pulled into the woods behind the Barn north of the crossroads. How about when my opponent takes a shot at me and misses. Will the list contain what shot at me? Right now I only find out if it was a 75L48 or a 75L70 by dying, which seems backwards to me. I mean, if my tank crew is a collection of body parts inside a flaming steel box, it doesn't seem reasonable that they would tell me what 'kilt dem'. On the other hand I can imagine getting a radio report that "a long 75 just went by my ear".
T.