Charles2222
Posts: 3993
Joined: 3/12/2001 Status: offline
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There are two crucial differences as far as I am concerned. The key one for me is the ease of WinSPWW2 map enlargement on the long campaigns and the control in other similar areas. For example, in SPWAW I don't think you can ever get a map over 80 hexes tall (120 at the very most) and all too often it smashes the playing field down to between 20-40 hexes on any given battle. Also very irritating is the all too often very lousy visibility, even in the summer. The game used to not be that way with the visibility, but I guess somebody complained enough and made it horrid. In WinSPWW2 you can alter both the visibility -and- map size and don't have to worry about somebody ruining that. You can get the map up to 200 hexes high and I think the width at like 160. Playing with a very tall map is a fundamental major difference in the games, as no one unit can virtually fire at all the flank positions because it both has a long range and sits in the middle. I think the same 'can' be done in terms of map size with SPWAW, but you have to know have to use the editor and every battle you will have to correct the battles that are disagreable in size, and if you're like me that will be every last one of them. WinSPWW2 will let you just point and click what map size you want very easily. There is no visibility adjustment that I had heard about, which may mean that even the editor cannot help there. Another fundamental difference is that combat system. There is a few minor differences, such as WinSPWW2 allowing vehicles to reverse without changing their facing, but the main difference occurs when you're *not* playing. SPWAW allows reaction fire directed in a limited way by the player and then the AI takes control for each "action" the enemy does. I generally liked this as an improvement over the way WinSPWW2 handled it, where there is no user input on the enemy turn. I'm not sure exactly what happened to where I started disliking the SPWAW method. I think I just got tired of having to input so much, and also how it seemed far too often the last unit I wanted to take up one of the reaction fire possibilities did so. In WinSPWW2, as in all the original SP's, there is no reaction fire directed by the user, but it is directed entirely by the AI. Generally it seems to me it works more realistically this way but there's not a lot of difference. From what I have gleamed, it seems the SPWAW reaction fire was primarily a reaction to people who would abuse fire exchange by doing things like running a halftrack in front of your lines to draw fire, while your units focused on things worth shooting at. If you don't have a problem playing like an idiot like that, you may find you wlecome the idea of your units thinking on their own as opposed to the reactive user system. I suppose most players, particularly the ones who play the AI, will have no problem playing either method during the enemy phase. Naturally the WinSPWW2 method does save a lot of keystrokes. As to things such as OOB's I cannot comment as I haven't played SPWAW in at least three years.
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