Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp

Well, I like both what Samurai proposed, and your B proposal.

What could be exciting (Vista thing) would be for the flyout to be semi transparent, allowing the counters to be seen in the flyout, but also keeping the on map situation in sight.

What is needed on the other hand is for some data about the stack to be displayed somehwere. The most important of them is the total land combat strengh of the stack. It could appear in the status bar, kind of what Excel show in the task bar (bottom grey row of the screen of Excel) when you select numbers. You right click in the task bar to ask Excel to see averages instead of sums, or standard deviations, or countings, well, your choice. MWiF could have the same kind of feature. Right click on it to choose to see total land combat strength, total tactical support factors, strat factors, max movement, or whatever.

About the flyout, I could also envision it spreading fan-like, showing all the units in the stack, the units overlapping a little (fan-like), and un-spreading when closing.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Largus_Means

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp

About the flyout, I could also envision it spreading fan-like, showing all the units in the stack, the units overlapping a little (fan-like), and un-spreading when closing.

Thats a nice solution, in VASL thats exactly what you can do, you can fan it out and get a full view of what is in the hex. Then using the arrow keys allows you to move units up/down top/bottom in the stack. This is still the best solution I have used in many different wargames that have stack of units being used. Also the ability to use shift to select a few counters and pull them out of the stack is another nice option.

Cheers

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
No transparency or waving fans. That begins to sound like some sort of oriental dancing girl. And besides, there is enough work before me already without additions.

quote:

I don't think I will put any other info in either. If you are really interested in the atack values et al, just have the Units Under Cursor panel visible and you can get all that information updated as you move the mouse over different hexes. Flyouts is a supplement to, not replacement for, the UUC. I see its main advantages as: being able to find a specific unit you are looking for (the larger visual image will help for that), checking a stack to see that it has the types of units in it that you think it does (e.g., review prior to pressing the End of Phase button), a quick examination of a stack without having to flick your eyes over to the UUC.

quote:

I am still thinking seriously about splitting the unit data box out as a separate entity, which the player can position anywhere he wants. Right now it is enbedded in the UUC. As a floating box on the screen this could fulfill your request without requiring the full footprint of the UUC. I'll see how things go in this evolving player interface.

quote:

The UUC, besides having a scrolling capability, can now (added today) be resized horizontally to show as many units as your screen can display.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jimm

I had not previously given control interface much thought.

My wish would be to have as much mouse control as possible, lots of key combos can be daunting and make an already complex game potentially even more impenetrable. After all its not a flight sim!

quote:

ORIGINAL: Zorachus99

I'll give my opinion because not everyone has one

IMO...

Left Click:  Select a unit
Right Click:  Always the second most used function of a click (this is from the Blizzard dev team which I met)
Double Left Click:  Select all units in the hex (in this case the selectable ones)  OR  Unselect all the units in the hex.  This allows you to pick up an entire group easily and release them just as quickly.

That's about it.

quote:

ORIGINAL: cockney

I hope that with the mouse and keyboard you will be able to customies your own settings eg insted of space to drop a stack fwd slash yadda yadda yadda

quote:

ORIGINAL: GordianKnot

Another possibility would be to have the keyboard mappings in a file that could be edited. This has some advantages:

1) Most people will use the defaults so they won't have to bother with any settings anyway.
2) It allows a lot of flexibility in KB assignment for those that do care.
3) (Most importantly): It saves the programming staff from having to design, implement, and test yet another settings screen so they can concentrate on the important stuff (***cough*** AI ***cough***).

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

Here is another example of Flyouts, with the map at zoom level 2.

When you pass the cursor over the hex, the flyout appears.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp

Seems great !

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

Here is another example of Flyouts, with the map at zoom level 2.

When you pass the cursor over the hex, the flyout appears.

You mean "When you pass the cursor over the hex, and you double click" do you ? (it was settled to the double click wasn't it ?)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jimm

Excellent.

Does the flyout always appear to the bottom right of the hex? I'm thinking about what the flyout might obscure and if it would be good to be able to vary the positioning of it relative to the hex. Say to keep visible the hex you are planning to attack, for instance. Perhaps it doesnt matter though?

Good feature.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jimm

Excellent.

Does the flyout always appear to the bottom right of the hex? I'm thinking about what the flyout might obscure and if it would be good to be able to vary the positioning of it relative to the hex. Say to keep visible the hex you are planning to attack, for instance. Perhaps it doesnt matter though?

Good feature.

The upper left corner of the flyout is where the mouse entered the target hex. If you come in from the bottom, it is at the bottom, from the left, then it is on the left, etc..

I thought about this some, but it seemed like too much detail to add more player control. If you are serious about attacking, then zoom in on the hex using the entire map display.

A new idea (5 seconds old) would be to have a double right click bring the the menu up so the top right corner is in the the target hex instead of the top left corner. That's a major commitment for a small change though.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Zorachus99

How will the flyout look when there are 'many' naval units in the hex?  Perhaps units should be displayed : 

1) Air
2) Land
3) Naval (with the ninth unit shown as a task force marker for cases of 9+ ??)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Zorachus99

The limit of air and land units in a hex is 7 (4 air, 3 land).  If you use simple markers for presence of naval units and resources you'll never have an overload condition.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Zorachus99

The limit of air and land units in a hex is 7 (4 air, 3 land). If you use simple markers for presence of naval units and resources you'll never have an overload condition.

quote:

ORIGINAL: composer99

The actual air unit stacking limits range from 0-3 depending on the terrain of the hex and the port/city contained therein (ports & cities override the terrain limit).

You can then add +1 air unit for an HQ and +1 for an engineer.
Then you can add a flying boat on top of that as long as the hex in question is a coastal hex.

So, Gibraltar (mountain & major port), if loaded with an HQ & engineer, can have 2 corps/army size land units, 1 division-size land units, 5 planes plus a flying boat plane.

If the flyout only includes land and air units, you will never have more than 9 units.

Might I add that the flyouts look pretty nice.

quote:

Original: WiFFE-RAW-7.0.pdf

2.3.1 Limits

Land unit limits

Up to 2 land units can stack in a hex. Stacking limits are doubled in an off-map hex.

AsA/MiF/Polif options 2, 3 & 6: You can stack 3 land units in a hex if the 3rd unit is a division, artillery or supply. You can stack 5 land units in an off-map hex if the 5th unit is a division, artillery or supply.

Aircraft unit limits

The stacking limits for aircraft units not flying a mission are:

Minor port hex 2
Major port or city hex 3
Mountain, desert mountain
or swamp hex 0
Any other hex 1
Hex with HQ +1

MiF option 7: (ENG divisions) Each ENG (even face-down) increases the aircraft stacking limit of a hex by 1 (e.g. you could stack 2 aircraft in a swamp occupied by 2 ENG units). In off-map hexes, this increase applies after doubling.

Option 8: (Flying boats) Flying boats have a vertical blue stripe on their counter.

Flying boats can only stack in a coastal hex (even if the coast is only on a lake). You can only ever stack 1 flying boat in a hex, but this is in addition to any other aircraft there. For example, you could stack a flying boat plus 3 other aircraft in a major port; you can even stack a flying boat in a coastal mountain hex. Flying boats can fly missions into, or rail move through, non-coastal hexes. Engineers (MiF option 7) do not effect stacking limits for flying boats.

ATR flying boats (e.g. the BV-222) can only air transport units to or from, or air supply units in, coastal hexes.