Author Topic: WinSPWW2 tutorial  (Read 16079 times)

Offline VonMudra

  • FH-Betatester
  • ***
  • Posts: 8.248
  • FH2 Betatester/Verdun Team Researcher
    • View Profile
Re: WinSPWW2 tutorial
« Reply #15 on: 30-12-2013, 22:12:48 »
Hmm not of the top of my head. If you want I could make you a nice small company sized scenario, just tell me a date and two opponent nations.

That would be awesome :o  Something early war would be nice, like Ger versus Britain, maybe a small one with light tank/armoured car combat, some infantry, and some at guns/infantry guns.  Just something easy that I can learn slowly, rather than being tossed into massive meat grinders :P

Offline Ts4EVER

  • Banner of THeTA0123
  • Developer
  • ******
  • Posts: 7.812
    • View Profile
Re: WinSPWW2 tutorial
« Reply #16 on: 30-12-2013, 23:12:27 »
OK then. Try this. To play it, just unpack the zip into the Scenario folder in the install of the game. You will find the scenario ingame at slot 456 (that way no stock scenarios are overwritten).

It is similar in many ways to the first scenario, but with these added elements:

Light armor
Truck and halftrack borne infantry
Forward Observer

Offline CHRISTIEFRONTDRIVE

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 1.448
    • View Profile
Re: WinSPWW2 tutorial
« Reply #17 on: 30-12-2013, 23:12:32 »
So as long as I only target the same hex, it will be a constant barrage, but Its the redirecting that takes time?
Are there any mods that implements height numbers on hexes so i dont need to hoover over each hex? And the number of men would have also been nice to see.
I guess FO have a good camo value and can hide easily?
Unit data is also a bit confusing. I dont understand penetration values.  They are writtten like "x : y"  for instance 1:4.

Select a unit and hit space bar and you can see information about that unit. One important value is Size: larger number = bigger and easier to be spotted by the enemy.

So for example, my conscripts division: one rifle section has 13 men, and the size is 2. But the PTRD anti-tank rifle team (of just 2 men) has a size of 0, meaning it's harder to spot for enemy. A KV-II tank has a size of 6, even blind Germans can't miss it. FO teams have a size of 0, meaning they are very hard to spot.

Here are some other tips, looking at this picture of Musti's T-34/57:



Anything in lime green writing can be rewritten. That's why I can add Musti's name instead of some default Russian name like Yashin. You can also rename vehicles and infantry, so I could rename T-34/57 M1941 to something else if I wanted to, like T-34-57 or T-34 ZiS-4 or Lucy or whatever. This can be useful but it's not really something you need to worry about if you don't want to. I generally don't bother, because if the unit you rename is destroyed, when you fix or change it, it goes back to the default name, and you would be forever renaming things after each battle. But it's useful for scenario designers like TS4Ever.

You can click on a weapon (in yellow) and disable it if you want to, and there are times you will. One technique is to disable weapons for scout teams, snipers, AOP teams so they do not fire on their own and bring attention to themselves, although this does leave them defenseless if you aren't careful. Personally I find it smarter to simply set their range to 1 or 2 hexes, so they only fire if the enemy is close by.

Speed 18:0 - the number on the left means the amount of hexes a unit can move in one turn over land. The number on the right is number of hexes it can move in water (if 0, it cannot drive in water deeper than -1). Cavalry and amphib tanks will have numbers there as will some others, it's a light blue color on the right for those units.

Men: # of soldiers in the unit or crew
Radio: 1 means the unit has a radio, 0 means it doesn't

Most of those values are self-explanatory. Carry capacity 13 means it can carry 13 men and so on.

If you hit Information you get this:



ACC is Accuracy, the higher the number the better. 18 is great, 4 is not.
KILL is the maximum number of enemy soldiers one shell can kill in a single shot. 3 is very bad, but the 152mm M-10T on the KV-II has a value of 25, very great!
PEN has two numbers: on the left is HE, on the right is AP. So for this T-34 a HE shell will sometimes go through up to 2 thickness armor, and AP will go through 11 on point-blank range.
HEAT and APCR numbers mean the amount of armor those shells will go through.

The gun has 50 hexes of range, and the warhead size is 3. The only other important number on this page is Survivability. A higher number is best and means it's more likely your crew can bail and live.

For this tank it's 3, not great but not terrible. On our Valentine II tanks, it's 4, which is better. OT-133 flame tank has a survivability of 2, which is bad. But remember, it's only a reference. A lot depends on what kind of weapon takes out your tank, and strange things happen: I've seen Panzer IIs get nailed with 76.2mm shells and all crew members bail out and live, and I've seen a tank like the KV-1 which has great survivability get hit with 50mm APCR rounds and lose the whole crew.

One note on armor values: you can roughly equate the armor thickness if you just add a 0 to the end of the number. If your tank has a front hull armor value of 8, it's for all intents and purposes 80mm, even if in real life it might have been 78mm or 82mm or whatever.
« Last Edit: 30-12-2013, 23:12:32 by Christie.Front.Drive »
Quote from: TASSER1
you suck. noone likes you. and your mother isn't pretty

Quote from: Eightball1182
Andrew.Drunk.Drive...I love u man. You get it...u get it 100%. Stay cool Canada brother.

Offline VonMudra

  • FH-Betatester
  • ***
  • Posts: 8.248
  • FH2 Betatester/Verdun Team Researcher
    • View Profile
Re: WinSPWW2 tutorial
« Reply #18 on: 31-12-2013, 00:12:08 »
OK then. Try this. To play it, just unpack the zip into the Scenario folder in the install of the game. You will find the scenario ingame at slot 456 (that way no stock scenarios are overwritten).

It is similar in many ways to the first scenario, but with these added elements:

Light armor
Truck and halftrack borne infantry
Forward Observer

That was fast, thank you!  I'll try it once I'm back from some errands :D

Offline Kalkalash

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 644
  • aka Niko1992
    • View Profile
Re: WinSPWW2 tutorial
« Reply #19 on: 31-12-2013, 15:12:47 »
Is there anyway to surrender or call for a truce? I've lost a third of my men assaulting enemy positions and I don't really feel like pushing on anymore. Do I just have to wait it out?
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” - George Carlin

Offline CHRISTIEFRONTDRIVE

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 1.448
    • View Profile
Re: WinSPWW2 tutorial
« Reply #20 on: 31-12-2013, 18:12:47 »
You can't surrender on command. Occasionally corned troops (yours or the AI's) will surrender and it can be quite epic. It depends on morale, and some forces are naturally less likely to surrender (Finland is notoriously hard to get a surrender from, the Japanese almost impossible, the Italians easier, etc.).

Any force can surrender to any other force too, sometimes you will get a tank surrendering to your rifle section :D.

If you want to break off an attack, you can pop smoke. Most but not all infantry can do this: just hit X and select the hex to between you and the enemy.
Quote from: TASSER1
you suck. noone likes you. and your mother isn't pretty

Quote from: Eightball1182
Andrew.Drunk.Drive...I love u man. You get it...u get it 100%. Stay cool Canada brother.

Offline Kelmola

  • Hero Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 2.861
    • View Profile
Re: WinSPWW2 tutorial
« Reply #21 on: 01-01-2014, 17:01:24 »
BTW, does the AI still "cheat" when airstrikes? The few years back when I last dared to install this, the AI would pick randomly one of your vehicles etc. without regards to LOS, placement on map, etc. and no matter where you moved it or how you covered it, the airstrike next turn would hit it no matter what (possibly damaging or destroying it). Saved-loaded-saved a few times, tried running away, popping smoke, hiding between buildings, in forest, etc. but this stubbornly remained the case: if the AI decided your tank (which he might not have even seen yet) had to die, the airplane would find it no matter what and often even changed entry direction to allow better aiming.

Also, the hit percentages were also weighted to favour AI so that even at 30% you would miss nine times out of ten, but even at 5% AI would hit more often than not. Which probably was kinda balance in that the AI liked to play passive-aggressive and rarely fired first, mostly using only reaction fire.

And yes, I still spent years and years and hundreds if not thousands of hours playing the SP series. Which is why I haven't dared to install it on my "new" (2010) comp at all.

Offline CHRISTIEFRONTDRIVE

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 1.448
    • View Profile
Re: WinSPWW2 tutorial
« Reply #22 on: 01-01-2014, 18:01:28 »
BTW, does the AI still "cheat" when airstrikes? The few years back when I last dared to install this, the AI would pick randomly one of your vehicles etc. without regards to LOS, placement on map, etc. and no matter where you moved it or how you covered it, the airstrike next turn would hit it no matter what (possibly damaging or destroying it). Saved-loaded-saved a few times, tried running away, popping smoke, hiding between buildings, in forest, etc. but this stubbornly remained the case: if the AI decided your tank (which he might not have even seen yet) had to die, the airplane would find it no matter what and often even changed entry direction to allow better aiming.

Also, the hit percentages were also weighted to favour AI so that even at 30% you would miss nine times out of ten, but even at 5% AI would hit more often than not. Which probably was kinda balance in that the AI liked to play passive-aggressive and rarely fired first, mostly using only reaction fire.

And yes, I still spent years and years and hundreds if not thousands of hours playing the SP series. Which is why I haven't dared to install it on my "new" (2010) comp at all.

I dunno how recently these options have been here, but these are my settings:



Everyone who plays needs to mess around with them a bit to find something they feel is realistic. For instance I have my arty power set to 50% more powerful because at default it takes about 100 mortar shells to cause one casualty but I know some other people have lowered it from default and they're happy with it.

I don't know whether plane strikes are worse now than they used to be but they are a little too accurate imo. I call this FH2 syndrome. TS4ever will know more about this than I do. But definitely, from time to time it doesn't matter whether your tank is concealed without a hope in hell of spotting it from the air, some Stuka or IL-2 will come out of nowhere and blast it while the flak battery you bought consistently has 3% chances of hitting it  ::).
Quote from: TASSER1
you suck. noone likes you. and your mother isn't pretty

Quote from: Eightball1182
Andrew.Drunk.Drive...I love u man. You get it...u get it 100%. Stay cool Canada brother.

Offline Hjaldrgud

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 1.071
  • BF2 Enthusiast
    • View Profile
Re: WinSPWW2 tutorial
« Reply #23 on: 01-01-2014, 21:01:28 »
That feeling of taking out a british tank with a 88 from 3700 meters.

Can you explain me the details of firing while the ai is moving? If i use all my shots while Its my turn, will i fire less when Its the ai's turn? Will my tank prioritize shooting at the target i selected or shoot at anything that moves?

Can i see the range of my unit visualized on the hex grid?

I can only sometimes buy planes. why?
« Last Edit: 02-01-2014, 00:01:14 by Hjaldrgud »

"Generous and brave men live the best" -Hávamál

Offline Kelmola

  • Hero Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 2.861
    • View Profile
Re: WinSPWW2 tutorial
« Reply #24 on: 02-01-2014, 17:01:58 »
I dunno how recently these options have been here, but these are my settings:
The settings look just as I remember them - I used to have defaults (100% or XXXX) otherwise but have arty cranked up to 200%. Adjusting the settings didn't affect the lopsided hit ratio or AI's reluctance to use other than reaction fire though, but remember that I'm still talking of a much older version.

Can you explain me the details of firing while the ai is moving? If i use all my shots while Its my turn, will i fire less when Its the ai's turn? Will my tank prioritize shooting at the target i selected or shoot at anything that moves?
Yes, you will get less reaction shots if you used all your shots on your own turn. Movement also reduces the amount of reaction fire.

I don't remember about target priority, however you can also set an unit's maximum firing range smaller than it actually is, so that scout/FO units will not reveal themselves by shooting, or you can make ambushes by only letting infantry fire/assault vehicles until enemy is at range 1 or tanks to fire only at range small enough to actually penetrate, etc.
« Last Edit: 02-01-2014, 17:01:54 by Kelmola »

Offline CHRISTIEFRONTDRIVE

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 1.448
    • View Profile
Re: WinSPWW2 tutorial
« Reply #25 on: 02-01-2014, 21:01:21 »
I know what you mean, there does seem to be some scripting sadly. It's like in soccer games where you're up 2-0 with 10 mins left and all of a sudden everything your players do is retarded while all the COM's actions are suddenly perfect. There's a bit of fuckery like that in WinSPWW2 I'm sure. Plane strikes are one, also arty falling on your tanks when loaded with infantry. The last campaign I did I had 8 straight battles where no arty fell on my T-34/85 company, and then I bought a desant company and with them loaded up I'm getting hit with 150mm, 105 and 75mm fire on the fourth turn ::)
Quote from: TASSER1
you suck. noone likes you. and your mother isn't pretty

Quote from: Eightball1182
Andrew.Drunk.Drive...I love u man. You get it...u get it 100%. Stay cool Canada brother.

Offline Hjaldrgud

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 1.071
  • BF2 Enthusiast
    • View Profile
Re: WinSPWW2 tutorial
« Reply #26 on: 04-01-2014, 00:01:51 »
fucking snipers are too powerful. They are too resilient! Shoots up my truck after two shots and ignore Three 88mm HE, five bursts from MG 34 Lafette HMG and twelve MG34 bursts in total from my hanomags! I fucking hate them so much!

"Generous and brave men live the best" -Hávamál

Offline CHRISTIEFRONTDRIVE

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 1.448
    • View Profile
Re: WinSPWW2 tutorial
« Reply #27 on: 04-01-2014, 03:01:40 »
fucking snipers are too powerful. They are too resilient! Shoots up my truck after two shots and ignore Three 88mm HE, five bursts from MG 34 Lafette HMG and twelve MG34 bursts in total from my hanomags! I fucking hate them so much!

Yeah they're cunts, so hard to kill. Maybe that's why in real life they were often executed when caught :D.
Quote from: TASSER1
you suck. noone likes you. and your mother isn't pretty

Quote from: Eightball1182
Andrew.Drunk.Drive...I love u man. You get it...u get it 100%. Stay cool Canada brother.

Offline Ts4EVER

  • Banner of THeTA0123
  • Developer
  • ******
  • Posts: 7.812
    • View Profile
Re: WinSPWW2 tutorial
« Reply #28 on: 04-01-2014, 03:01:53 »
Not hard to kill, just hard to hit ;)

Offline Hjaldrgud

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 1.071
  • BF2 Enthusiast
    • View Profile
Re: WinSPWW2 tutorial
« Reply #29 on: 04-01-2014, 16:01:13 »
One of my forward observers can't assign artillery all of a sudden. (C0)
It's ready and should have radio contact.

« Last Edit: 04-01-2014, 17:01:05 by Hjaldrgud »

"Generous and brave men live the best" -Hávamál