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?

[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

[Mobhack]

The blast circles work on a 50 meter hex, of course.

And there is no way to change that item to work with a 7.5 metre hex.

Cheers
Andy

[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.

[PatG]

Mobhack said:
The blast circles work on a 50 meter hex, of course.

And there is no way to change that item to work with a 7.5 metre hex.

Cheers
Andy

Thanks for looking in - You too Don.

As a nasty hack requiring no code change, one could reduce the HEK value but increase the ROF letting a larger number of weaker rounds scatter over a wider area.

[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.