My first post with some questions

[tinkthank]

All right, I'll buy that, thank you!

@ Mobhack: Thanks, but I think you are referring to the sections such as these:

How badly suppressed this unit is. Suppression reduces morale, and also operating ability (e.g. a suppressed unit finds it harder to spot and to hit targets, and it can reduce number of shots available). Suppression comes from enemy fire, being out of command control, or having routing friends nearby, friendly tanks exploding around you, and so on. Rallying can reduce suppression.

An indicator as to how good this leader is at rallying unhappy subordinates, or himself. This number will reduce during a turn as rallies occur, and be set to zero for the rest of the turn if the rally attempt fails.

The rally rating of that leader. Higher numbers are better. As rallies are done in a turn, this number will tend to decrease. Once a rally attempt fails this number will be set to zero for the remainder of the current turn, signifying that this leader cannot rally himself or subordinates any further this move. Leaders who are in retreat or rout states, can only rally themselves as and until they reach a better morale state. Individual units can only rally themselves, only leaders can rally their subordinates. Company HQ leaders can rally any leaders or units in their subordinated platoons. A0 can rally any troops in line of comms including company commanders.

Believe me, I have read this. And I am sure this is nobody's fault but my own, but these terms are not self-explanatory. Defining "supression" as "how badly supressed this unit is" may be quite exact, but it doesnt tell me how it works. And things like "As rallies are done in a turn, this number will tend to decrease. Once a rally attempt fails this number will be set to zero for the remainder of the current turn" doesn't tell me a thing about how rallies are done in a turn, or how they can fail, etc.

But I think I am beginning to bore you guys with my questions. Obviously I come from a "different corner", have different gaming horizons, etc. It is like we are speaking a different language. That Game Guide was written for a much different target group. So while I appreciate you referring me to the GG, I did actually read it -- my questions are stemming from it, not being answered by it.

I really like the idea of this game, but I think the hurdles may be -- at least for the moment -- too great for me to grasp it. Thanks for your help, sorry to be a pest.

[narwan]

There are probably very few players out there who know and understand all of the gaming concepts. There are so many details worked into it in some way or other that even experienced gamers like me keep on discovering new things. The game tries to model small scale modern warfare as realistic as it can get it. Modern warfare is extremely complicated so the game by default will be complicated too. That doesn't mean you need to know a lot of things to play and enjoy the game.
As baggypants suggested, small scale units may be a good starting point. Another suggestion is to start with the earliest years (40's or 50's) as the equipment is less complicated and the units less lethal (and mistakes wouldn't be as deadly as in current era combat).
Final suggestion, find someone (experienced) to play a simple PBEM set-up with. Ask relevant questions as you go along the game and also get him to explain why/how he does certain things the way he does. You'll soon get the hang of it. Besides this forum you might also want to try the Blitz wargaming club for a PBEM 'mentor' (at www.theblitz.org).

Narwan

[Pyros]

Hi,

Ask from Narwan to play with you a pbem game.

After that game you may consider yourself a "veteran", because Narwan is a true master of the game.

Always seek to play pbem games against expert players and watch closely to see if you can understand their gameplay routines.

All these players will be willing to share with you some of their tricks (but not all of them).

I wish you good luck and I am sure that you will greatly enjoy this very fine game.

cheers,
Pyros

[Irinami]

Tinkthank, believe it or not you're doing great!! I'm not just being nice. I thought I knew about militaria when I started playing SP:WAW about 6 years ago. I was utterly baffled!! But you learn. Let's see if I can help you here:

o Suppression: If you've ever played the Cyberpunk RPG, this is like the Cool rating inverted. Basically, it's the mental and physical effects of being fired upon. Mentally, it's emotionally exhausting to have people screaming and other people trying to kill you! (I just got through USAF basic training... I had about a 10 suppression the whole time. ) You also have to think about the situation at hand, worry about your family, etc. Physically, in order to stay alive there are places you can't go, positions you can't be in, or else you're dead. This limits your ability to move, react, fire, etc.* You could also say suppression includes minor wounds such as grazes, small shrapnel, concussion, stone fragments, etc. Its effects in-game include a reduction in move points, reduction in speed (good! higher speed in infantry will increase the odds of a casualty being caused when fired upon, because the troops are sprinting more, hunkering behind cover less), change of status--Ready to Pinned to Routed to Retreating. The latter two do not allow your units to fire--they're routed or running away, after all.

* = If you've ever seen a movie, like Full Metal Jacket, and they seem to just be shooting at an area, that's suppressive fire. Use the Z-key in game to fire at just an area. Just like in real life, you can make a position untenable (un-holdable) with sufficient suppressing fire. You can also use it to cover the advance of other units. Z-fire/suppressive fire implies that the unit is not aiming as such, and makes a (slightly) more difficult target... thus, no (or little) opfire.

o Rally: No, this isn't cross-country racing. Rallying, like everything else, is an aggregate/amalgamation of many things. It is basically the commander and unit's ability to calm themselves down and react to a bad situation. For a basic rule of thumb, Rally - Suppression = % chance of cutting suppression in half. Rally is then temporarily reduced by about 0-3 points until the next turn. (The commander is busy getting his men to act like men! ) If the rally attempt is failed, Rally is set to 0 until the next turn. (The commander is trying to rally his men the whole turn.)

o Command & Control/Out of Contact: I don't play with C&C turned on. It just complicates things so much! I understand it, and I have played with it on, but--and this is just my opinion--I think it's a bit half-cocked. Units can't do this or that when out of contact, but still communicate the location of all spotted enemy units to all allied units. I know it's a limitation of the simulation/game engine, but it just bugs me too much. I want to enjoy my game! Maybe when I'm "good" I'll turn it on again. For learning, though, play with it off.

I'll continue in the next post--I've forgotten what else there was.

[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!

[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.

[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.