WINSPWW2 Sub-Tactical?

[PatG]

Another addition to the ain't never going to officially happen pile.

While working on armoured trains I have been doing some thinking about how to reconcile the scale mismatch between vehicle icons and the map. Right now, the vehicles are about 6.67 times oversized - not a problem with stackable tanks but a bit of a visual problem for trains.

I poked around the groups a bit, looking especially at some of the one man unit work Wild Bill Wilder has done (very cool - check out his scenarios for MBT).

As a thought experiment only - Andy and Don have far better things to do - what would be the interest in a version of WinSPWW2 at a scale of 1 man, one vehicle and one vehicle per hex? This works out to a game scale of 7.5 metres per hex - the current vehicle scale. The time per turn may need to be adjusted too.

Required:
*Massive work on OOBs
*creating single man units
*multiplying all weapon ranges etc by 6.67 or
maxing out anything over 255.
*Figuring out a reasonable time per turn and adjusting
moves and rates of fire accordingly.
*creating true multihex buildings #
*reworking some if not all terrain shps for wider streams
etc.

Problems:
*No way to represent moving up and down stories in a
building. (could this be addressed by the helicopter code?)
*Current code would still allow multi-vehicle per hex
stacking.
*Other code issues like visibility

# SHPedit will go larger than 89x89 px but the preview displays get ugly. I have not tried to find the upper limit for icon size in the game.

Right now I'm comitted to working on trains but if some interested and talented soul wants to make very basic Russian and German OOBs it might be fun to play around with. Cross of Iron, [i]Stalingrad or Kelly's Heros anyone?

[Helm]

I'd play it no idea how to make it work but I'd definately play it

[thatguy96]

The only issue I can see you running up against is extremely limited OOB space for the number of units you'd then need to create, and probably limited classes too. I'm sure it could be done, but I think you'd need to create sets of OOBs for certain time periods, or just create OOBs and then scenarios around them.

[RVPERTVS]

Interesting idea. How do you think it would enhace gameplay?

[PatG]

RVPERTVS said:
Interesting idea. How do you think it would enhace gameplay?

Way back when there was an Avalon Hill game based on one man counters. It was more "personal" in a way - I found I cared more about the fates of individual units than with larger scale games. I must add that I tend to prefer smaller actions anyway.

The little areas of dead ground in a hex that are now extrapolated could be portrayed accurately. Smaller unit actions such as The Eagle has Landed, A Walk in the Sun and good chunks of Band of Brothers can be portrayed.

Earlier this week, I was at a Shakespeare play (Two Gentlemen of Verona performed by the Company of Fools) held in a converted church yard park. The original high stone walls had been "loop holed" every 10 - 15 meters by removingthe top half of the wall. Simply moving a meter or two in either direction produced radically different sight lines. So too the surrounding three story brownstones overlooked different parts of the space.

All these factors are present in the game but I see sub-tactical as a sort of WinSP-Haiku.

[Aubrey]

[quote]
PatG said:

RVPERTVS said:
Interesting idea. How do you think it would enhace gameplay?

Way back when there was an Avalon Hill game based on one man counters. It was more "personal" in a way - I found I cared more about the fates of individual units than with larger scale games. I must add that I tend to prefer smaller actions anyway.
---------------

I believe the game you are talking about was "Sniper"
You plotted the movement of your men, whether they were going to throw a grenade move & fire reload, hand to hand etc. Weapon characteristics were portrayed. Vehicles were included etc.

Room clearing tactics were interesting to learn. Satchel charges etc.

Would have made an excellent game converted to the computer and as far as I know combat at this level has never been done by any developer.

Mark

[Marek_Tucan]

Thatguy, in fact the OOB space would be less of a concern as you'll replace say 10 various squads with just "rifleman", "Rifleman/LAW", "Grenadier" and "LMG Team" and their various combinations in formation section.

EDIT: In MBT that is, in WWII the Rifleman/LAW would be rather Rifleman/AT grenade

[DRG]

I seem to recall this was tried some years ago by someone. I don't remember the details but the "1 man, one vehicle and one vehicle per hex" rings a bell

Don

[vic]

I tried something like this a while back (DOS ver). I built "fire teams" of 3-4 men so that SP "platoons" really represented squads of (usually) 3 fire teams or maybe 2 FTs and a 3 man MG team. SP "companies" really represented platoons. I did this for a custom USMC OOB and posted on the old Yahoo board. I had one request for a copy and never got any feedback.

I tested pretty extensively and here's what i found:
1. lots of small fragile units (once they get around 50% casualties they tend to "pin" permanently) led to "boggy" gameplay.
2. the code produces very high levels of infantry casualties. even with infantry "toughened up" it's very bloody and small units just can't hang in there.
3. with more units, the 360 degree, all-weapons-are-used opfire thing is just unworkable. one unit moves and gets drilled by tons of opponents. one spends a lot of time watching opfire. likewise firing a unit ("pulling the trigger" during the player's phase) resulted in a deluge of return opfire.

the bad thing about all this opfire is that the game doesn't model "real time" well. it doesn't look at fire recived IN TOTAL and then assess damage. it lets units "pile on" sequentially. e.g. three four-man squads firing rifles should have the same effect as one twelve-man squad...but they don't. the three four-man squads will produce more casualties and more suppression because fire effects are calculated after each "round" is fired. three four-man units can get in (typically) a total of 18 "volleys" where the single twelve-man unit gets in 6.

managing infantry in SPWW2 is all about postioning units to deliver opfire effectively (e.g. interlocking fields of fire). against the AI it's easy...not so easy against skillful humans.

4. the game doesn't look at the number of MEN in a hex when calculating casualties (i.e. no regard to target density). it appears as if UNITS check to see if they are in a hex that has received fire.

it is (the "individual" idea) a neat thought but based upon what i tried the underlying sfw/file architecture makes it very problematic.

best,
vic

[thatguy96]

Marek_Tucan said:
Thatguy, in fact the OOB space would be less of a concern as you'll replace say 10 various squads with just "rifleman", "Rifleman/LAW", "Grenadier" and "LMG Team" and their various combinations in formation section.

EDIT: In MBT that is, in WWII the Rifleman/LAW would be rather Rifleman/AT grenade

Except that the TO&E for basic infantry equipment changes with each of those ten squads. For each squad you replace you need to have each individual in the TO&E at that level, riflemen, automatic riflemen, grenadiers, etc. You have to create a variation for each of them every time one piece of equipment changes, which creates exponetially more variations. Whereas an equipment change of the basic infantry rifle only requires the creation of a single new unit to represent this in the current format, it would necessitate the creation of anywhere between 3-7 new units under the proposed sub-tactical format.