My first post with some questions

[Irinami]

Oh, some more Rally/Suppression info. You rally a unit by hitting r. Suppression seems to be based roughly (very rougly!) off of: 1/2 * (KILL+WARHEAD).

Armored vehicles can be Ready or Buttoned. Buttoned means that the hatches are all closed. This greatly reduces the crew's situational awareness, reducing their ability to spot units, their ability to return fire, and their accuracy--especially the former 2. So, a tip: Snipers firing at tanks can get them Buttoned. Then you may be able to fire from a tank or ATW (Anti-Tank Weapon--an RR (Recoilless Rifle), ATGM (AT Guided Missile), ATG (old-sk00l AT Gun) or the like) several times without getting return fre from that unit.

o Armour/Pen: At the muzzle and at a 90 degree angle, if PEN > ARMOUR then the armour is penetrated. The first number in the Pen rating (say, the 2 in a 2:10 rating) is the HE (High Explosive) penetration. This does not reduce with range, and indicates penetration by explosive force. The second number is the penetration with the weapon's standard AP (Armour Piercing) ammo. This reduces with range. HEAT (High Explosive Anti Tank) is a special kind of round that directs an explosion. This also does not reduce Pen with range. APCR (Armour Piercing, Core: Rigid) can actually refer to several kinds of kinetic armour piercers--APFSDS (Armour Piercing Fin Stabilized Discarding Sabot--it's a shell that has a tiny arrow-like penetrator in it, and this penetrator moves at ridiculous speeds due to being lighter and smaller than a standard AP round (the Discarded Sabot is the filler around the arrow that lets it fit in the gun tube and seal propellant gasses behind it), DU (Depleted Uranium--basically heavy and hard), etc. Usually it has a higher penetration than AP, but lower range (and thus a lower Pen at extreme ranges). It could be coded as superior ammo, with a higher range--or maybe just an AP round that retains energy at range, but don't worry about all that. Basically, HEAT ~=~ APCR > AP > HE. The game also takes into account impact angle. If you fire a bullet head-on at a 2mm sheet of metal, it has to penetrate 2mm of metal. If you fire it 45 degrees to that sheet, it has... a^2 + b^2 = c^2... 4 + 4 = c^2... 8 = square root of c... 2.83mm of metal to penetrate. You've increased the protection of that metal plate by nearly half again, just by changing the angle!

o Targetting: If you want to use a single weapon on a target, there are 2 ways to do it. First, you always select the unit.

Method 1: Hit the Spacebar to bring up unit details. Click on all the weapons you DON'T want to fire. This will turn them off, until you turn them back on again by clicking on them again. Don't forget to turn them on if you want them on later! Now, fire.

Method 2: Hit T, and cycle through your targets until you find one. Then hit T again! This selects the unit you cycled to as your unit's target. Now hit W, and pick a weapon. It will automatically fire at the selected target.

[Irinami]

Random Stuff:

Yeah, the encyclopedia is hard. Some units are exactly alike for the same nation... except for their Radio code. This deals with how the AI chooses or doesn't choose this unit. Other times they will have different ammo loads, or a slightly different rating like Vision, Men, or so on.

The AI isn't terribly intelligent, but every so often it will completely surprise you. I have to say, coding the AI to target artillery on intersections, buildings, victory hexes, and especially smoke (presumably from artillery fires, although... heh, heh, heh...) makes it about twice as hard as in SP:WAW (a WW2 variant, but different from winSPWW2!).

I'd say it's about on par with most game AI's--once you figure it out, it's not that hard to predict. But, then again, neither am I!

Oh, and armoured vehicles don't have hit points. In reality, you can fire at a Bradley or even an old M3 halftrack all day with an Uzi, but you're only going to rattle the crew (suppression). The bullets are too soft and too slow to do anything more. There's a tiny chance that a bullet will go somewhere dangerous, and this is, I believe, modelled! ISTR a BAR in my Japanese GSDF Police Squad taking out a N.Korean BTR. I was sweating bullets up to that point, because that stupid little AC (Armoured Car) was chewing up my men! Anyway, you actually have to penetrate the armour in order to do anything significant to an armoured vehicle, by and large. If you could just gnaw up armour, then tanks in the Great War would have been useless--there were plenty of bullets flying around the battlefield!

Oh, MG's:

MG: MachineGun
SMG: Sub-MachineGun/MachinePistole
AAMG: Anti-Aircraft MachineGun
ATMG: Anti-Tank MachineGun (I don't know if there are even any of these in the winSPWW2 OOB's!)
BMG: Bow MachineGun--placed in a fixed mount or ball on the front, or Bow, of a vehicle.
CMG: Co-Axial MachineGun--placed Co-Axially (on the same axis, IOW right next to) the main gun.
TMG: Turret MachineGun--this machinegun IS the main gun!

When in doubt, look at the ratings. If it has a VERY high Fire Control, Range Finder, and often Vision rating compared to its contemporaries, then it is probably an anti-aircraft unit. If it's got a high Pen rating--or just high enough for who you're facing--then you can use it against tanks. Never overlook AAA (Anti-Aircraft Artillery) for anti-tank/anti-APC roles!! They usually won't take out front-line tanks, but they can do a number on Reserve, Light, or 2nd-line tanks! Duster vs. AMX-13: Duster fires at range and wins.

My final advice is something I learned only after my second year of playing SP:WAW. Generate a campaign. Set the battle size to maybe, 40x80. Give yourself a good 20 or more battles, minimum! (I do 200, just in case. ) Set the game to the earliest date available for your chosen nation. Make it something around 1946 in winSPMBT. Buy a Company of Infantry. Make sure it has transportation (might be called Motor Rifles or something), artillery (mortars, Infantry Guns, etc), and ATW's (Bazookas, RR's, etc). If you need to, buy a Platoon of any of these. Also buy a Scout team, a Sniper, and a Forward Observer. Oh, get a truck-mounted section of Engineers too. That's all!!!! Now play through. At some points you'll be thinking, "Man, I wish I had some tanks!" OK, well, maybe you need to buy some! I would say, buy them as Reinforcements first, then work on changing a COUPLE of your trucks to tanks. Make yourself earn them! Same with any other unit you want.

Oh, for scouts/snipers/FO's:

Set their range to 0. Keep them on the edge of woods. When fired on, rally them, set their range to 0, and retreat into the woods. Do NOT let them opfire until they have at LEAST 90-95 exp. I'd say until they have 100. Scouts and snipers are NOT for fighting, they are for SPOTTING!! Only move them when there is a concealed approach, and preferrably only from cover to cover and only 1/2 their max movement unless you're positive they can't be spotted. When your sniper has a target with ~60%+ chance to hit, then fire... ONCE!! Don't take risks with scouts or snipers. Don't let them get fired upon, as losing one--which is very easy--means replacing them with a low-experience dork who's just more likely to get killed. Once their exp reaches the 80+ level, then you can start firing once (scouts) or twice (snipers) when only a few units can see them.

Further advice: Drop everyone's range to about 3 hexes. In SP:WAW, even if you didn't opfire, if someone was within your range, they had an increased chance to spot you! In winSPMBT/winSPWW2, you WILL opfire at that range (don't get to choose), and I can pretty much guarantee that below ~90exp you WILL be spotted. Your weapons' Acc rating is the number of hexes that their base to-hit score is a 50%. Then take in unit movement, terrain, etc. etc. etc. Keep it at or below this. Especially if your Pen ratings are close to their Armour ratings.

Final advice: Machineguns. Fire 1/2 your allotted shots. MG's are vicious op-firers! They also draw a lot of attention if you fire them like crazy. If you don't have an enemy unit with a 10% or higher chance to hit, don't fire. If there is an enemy infantry unit with about 6mph speed or more, fire on them regardless! At any rate, fire on fast-moving infantry first as a general rule. Final bit of final advice on MG's: You can pin/button an entire enemy Platoon in one turn. This is handy for holding back reinforcements if you're engaged in close fighting with the enemy. At close-range, MG's can deal moderate damage but get chewed up way too fast. Leave that to the infantry!

[pdoktar]

APFSDS has longer range than AP ammo, not vice versa, and so it�s penetration is better at long ranges, because larger AP shell loses velocity quicker.

[Irinami]

I'm probably thinking of actual APCR then.

[tinkthank]

Hey Irinami thank you very much. Lots to read and digest there, and I wont comment on that for now -- just one follow-up question if I may:

"Hit T and cycle through your targets" -- I really thought the "T" key would do that. Apparently, mine doesn't. I hit "T", and it locks me onto the *nearest* valid target, and hitting "T" again unlocks that. How are you cycling through targets?
Thanks tons!

[narwan]

The "N" key will cycle through units whether in the normal game screen or in the targetting screen.

Narwan

[Irinami]

Allright, I'm going to be extremely thorough. I'm not talking-down, I'm just trying to leave nothing unsaid. OK... you have to know how to move units.

OK, I've loaded up the tutorial and selected J0, an AH-64. First things first, I don't want him reaction-firing at the self-propelled guns that I'm going to be searching for. So I hit the spacebar, and click on each weapon. They go from orange to cyan (well, red when the mouse hovers over them). That means they're disabled. Good, I click Continue. ***Actually no. I do this to J1 as well! He's the one who's been opfiring and ruining my plan!

Back on the map, I zoom out with the minus (-) key. There's a hill with Iraqi flags on it, so there should be plenty of targets over there for our demo. I clock just past the hill--that ought to get someone's attention! Sure enough, an SO-152 self-propelled gun (SPG) opens up with its puny 7.62mm machinegun. When the dust settles, I see 2 of those SPG's. Excellent, my demonstration can continue. I hit space, click on the 30mm Chaingun (verifying that it turns orange), and click Continue. Now I press the T key on the keyboard--or click the icon with the crosshairs on the right-hand side.

A specialized screen opens up. My Apache has targetted the northernmost SO-152. Its status is Ready,Dug In. Cool. I have a 46% accuracy on it. OK. I press the N key on the keyboard. I've targetted the other SO-152. Its status is exactly the same--not surprising, since it's the same distance away. I only know I've targetted it by the line on the screen going to it, instead of its neighbor. I verify by clicking on the first button under Target, it has an N and a little arrow. Yup, that switches too. Cool. Let's say I want to target the lower one. I hit N again, then click on the T button. That returns to the normal screen. My target is now an SO-152. Well, as that's what both of the only thigns I've spotted so far are, let's fire to make sure I'm targetting the lower one. I press f, and my pilot joyfully opens fire. A miss. Let's target the northern brother. T, N, T. Fire! Yup, the "animation" shows the norhtern borther's hex outlined in red on this miss. (This guy's getting chewed out back at base, I tells ya!)

You cycle through available targets with N and P, for Next and Previous. I walked through every step just to verify that I was giving every step exactly as it happens. Hope it helps!

[serg3d]

Irinami said:
Scouts and snipers are NOT for fighting, they are for SPOTTING!! Only move them when there is a concealed approach, and preferrably only from cover to cover and only 1/2 their max movement unless you're positive they can't be spotted. When your sniper has a target with ~60%+ chance to hit, then fire... ONCE!! Don't take risks with scouts or snipers. Don't let them get fired upon, as losing one--which is very easy--means replacing them with a low-experience dork who's just more likely to get killed. Once their exp reaches the 80+ level, then you can start firing once (scouts) or twice (snipers) when only a few units can see them.

Sniper are one of the best infantry killers, so I'd advise more free use of them. Especially if you playing high-rating country, like Israel. All Israel commando snipers start in mid 80 expirience. If they are killed they could be repaced by equally expirienced unit. Also try get sniper with high fire control and at least 20 vision, so he could see through the smoke. Snipers are great against infantry ATGM(anti-tank guided missile) teams too. ATGM teams are extremly dangerous - they can see through the smoke, have long range and can shoot at helo too.

[pdoktar]

Teams/vehicles can see through thick, just laid smoke only if their vision rating is 40, representing Thermal Imaging sights and at 50 or 60 representing even more advanced imaging equipment like Ground Surveillance Radars.