Two Items: Line of Sight and movement
 

Hi,

I am new to SPWW2. I have played Wargames for 50 years and the closest to SPWW2 would be SPWAW. Line of sight seems too extended and through solid objects. My units can see 40 hexes and through forests. In SPWAW you are not able to do this. Is this a bug? And when you click on a unit with the intention of moving it sometimes the unit movement range is not highlighted and some times it is. I found out by accident that if you click on the reduce suppresion button you regain some movement but the range is still not highlighted until you move one hex and then the remaining movement range is highlighted. I am playing the long campaign. And the 40 hex visibilty is really unrealistic. I am patched to v3.0
While I am asking I might as well throw in a third question. I see that v7 is advertised on the Shrapnel website but I don't see any patches for that. Is taht a commercial version only?
Thank you for any clarification you can provide. I did try a search for line-of-sight but I got a lot of weird replies.

Re: Two Items: Line of Sight and movement
 

1) I would love to see a 40 hex LOS through forests. Please point me out an example of this, and I'll see what is wrong.

Though you can see up to 2-3 or so hexes into forests in high-visibility maps - more into orchards which are less dense. SP maps have always been so, in that LOS penetrates further into cover the higher the visibility setting for the map is. But never 40 hexes, not even in MBT with thermal imaging.

2) The move radius is only shown when you first select a unit. Should you rally that unit, thus regaining some MP - it will not redraw the highlighted area. It will only update on a redraw event triggered by movement or if you select some other unit and move back. It probably never has ever redrawn itself after a rally, as the code for that routine will be the basic SP1/2 stuff. It also gets highly confused by mixed water/land/bridge possibilities, and still does even after some remedial work was done a few years ago by us. So it is (and never has been) anything other than a rough planning guide to what's available, possibly of some use to beginners though?.

(I must admit I turned that feature off after the first game of SP1 I played back in whenever - 1997? - and have never used it since. I prefer my map to be in natural lighting, and not some sort of "LOS shadow" fog effect)

3) What version 7 is advertised on the Shrapnel website, and where?.

The old MSDOS game had reached 7.01, but is of course no longer supported - as being redundant after the port to windows. Hence the change of name to WinSPWW2 v1.0 after the DOS SPWW2 v7.01.

See the Game Guide "Development History" section - the old MSDOS versions are listed after the Win versions, and the details of the changes in reverse order in there under the "What was New for Version X.X" headings, back to 3.0.

Cheers
Andy

Re: Two Items: Line of Sight and movement
 

You can also just select the unit again after rallying and the movement radius will be displayed. I think the 'u' key does the same, since it redraws all highlighted hexes.

Re: Two Items: Line of Sight and movement
 

Welcome


Check your elevation.

One of the differences between those two games is the elevation factor.
WinSPWW2 has 5 times more elevation levels than SPWAW and this gives you a more complicated line of sight model.
Also as Andy told you there are times that high visibility will give you the ability to see through 1-2 forest hexes.

cheers,

Re: Two Items: Line of Sight and movement
 

Hi,

Re: Two Items: Line of Sight and movement
 

Hi,

First of all I would like to say thanks for the replies. It may be the elevation factor. I am in the second scenario of the long campaign with me being Germany and Computer is Poland. First scenario was 40 hex visibility and current scenario is 35 hexes. I get shot at from clear across the map, including through trees. Makes it very difficult to move. If I knew how to send you an example of the map I would do it.
The movement is a little awkward(relax, I'm not knocking the game, just making an observation) because, yes I do like to know how far a unit can move using the highlighted hexes.
I did a screen shot of the SP:WW2 v7 which displays when you first access shrapnelgames.com but I don't really know how to display that here. It says "New in SP:WW2 v7" on home page right near the top.

Re: Two Items: Line of Sight and movement
 

Check the save slot where you have this saved then go to the "Save Game" folder and select the .CMT and .DAT file for that save slot ( for example you would need SpSv012.dat and SpSv012.cmt if slot 12 was your save slot ) then zip them up and attached them to your next post. You do this by clicking on "Preview reply" then follow the instructions on attaching a save file where it says "You may attach a file if you like (no bigger than 30000000 bytes please"


That's the old DOS game. Ignore it. I will look into having that removed. You can attach a JPG of that screen shot you took in a separate post the same way as described above becasue I have been unable to locate it

Don

Re: Two Items: Line of Sight and movement
 

Here is the zip file with the screen shot referring to SPWW2 v7

Re: Two Items: Line of Sight and movement
 

And here is an attempt to place the two saved game files into this post.

Re: Two Items: Line of Sight and movement
 

The page is in the archives but we have no idea how you found a link to it. In any event, these old archive pages will not be moved to the new server when the site is upgraded and that will be very soon.

Don

Re: Two Items: Line of Sight and movement
 

Now I need the map co-ordinates of the area you think is a problem

Don

Re: Two Items: Line of Sight and movement
 

If you have unit on a hill, you will be able to look over trees placed at height 0. And as you have a high visibility situation (visibility is 65), even a few trees placed at higher elevations will not block the view entirely, as Andy explained.
In case of you map, a unit placed on the height 20 hill at 6,24 can see units on the height 10 hill at 35,51, even though there are plenty of trees between the two positions. That is because the trees are at height 0. There is also a patch of ground around 54,19 that can be seen from 6,24 throug several rows of trees. That is partly due to visibility but also because some of those trees are at lower elevations.
So there will be spots and patches of ground scattered around on a map which can be visible from advantageous positions, even if there are trees between.

Re: Two Items: Line of Sight and movement
 

Thanks for your attempt to help but I am just going to mark this down as a lesson learned and move on to a game that is a little more realistic and user friendly. I went on to another scenario and the visibility is 81 hexes. They can spot me from miles away now. On the preferences screen I have to tone down the Polish army to it's minimum of 30% in all categories just to keep from losing every tank I have. The Polish Infantry fires one round of rifle fire at my FLAK36/ZUGKRWGN's and destroys them EVERYTIME. I can't conceal any movement or troops from the AI. Not much fun.I am going back to SPWAW at least the siting is damage is closer to reality.
Thanks

Re: European Weather & LOS
 

[img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon45.gif[/img]Are you aware that visability is easily amendable?[img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon45.gif[/img]

Yes 4kms vis in Europe on less than a crisp winters day does sound out of touch, I never play Europe at that time of year with more than 2.5 kms max usually around 1.5 km or less depending on what time of day I think it might be and weather conditions. Heck a rainy new moon night you are looking at (or not http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif) 50m or less.

Hate to lose a potenial fan over weather.[img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Lightning.gif[/img]

Hope this helps. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

I think you are giving up rather fast on WinSPWW2.

Even though SPWAW and WinSPWW2 look a lot like each other, they are very different games in many ways. They are based on two different platforms (SP2 and SP3) and the game design philosophies of the two groups involved are rather different. This means that going from one game to the other means that you have to un-learn a lot of what you know from one game and re-learn a lot from the new one. That takes a while.

With regards to the enemys ability to see you, there is very few places on the map you presented where the enemy have anything like a 40 hex LOS to you units and there are plenty of places to hide. But those places might be different from SPWAW and "safe" movement is an art that has to be relearned. And that is not something you do in a game or two!

The Flak36/Zugkrwgns is an open topped, unarmoured unit that should obviously be kept far away from enemy infantry. It would obviously be shot to pieces together with the crew if falling victim to small arms fire. Particularily if it is one of those 19-man Polish rifle squads blasting away! I doubt it would be any different in SPWAW - and if it is, I know what I would consider the more realistic :)

As for the 81 hex visibility, that has to be a fluke for Poland in September 1939 - I ran through a series of generated battles for that period and visibility was 50-69.

cbo