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More Newb Questions - 6/21/2003 12:18:31 AM   
MelonHead

 

Posts: 14
Joined: 6/21/2003
From: Utah
Status: offline 		First off, I love the game, but am not very good at it-I've been looking around the forums for a while but haven't yet posted anything (some errors with my first account :( ).

So I have some questions. First, what scenarios/campaigns should I play to learn how to play better? I'm going to try that Munda campaign in the next few days, once I bother to figure out how to install/play user-created campaigns.

Second, how do you guys manage to do recon? My reconning consists of buying bunches of kubelwagons, motorcycles, jeeps, and/or recon troops, then just running them forward along the whole front until they get shot at. I've tried to send them forward within forest/rough hexes slowly, but then my main force is slower than I would like, considering I'm not terribly patient and waiting 5 or 10 turns for my forces to see the AI's in a meeting engagement gets a little tedious. It's fine the first time, but as a teenager, I've been reared on games like quake, age of empires, battlefield 1942, etc. A while ago I did play Panzer General I and II (fun times, fun times) and actually did play Allied General (...not that wonderful, but still decent). Additionally, how do you guys recon in open terrain? I would assume the procedure would be the same, just using vehicles instead, but again, how do you stop your kubelwagons from being destroyed by the enemy tanks/infantry?

Third, I'm getting a bug when I try to play a campaign; I cannot buy a core force with more than 200/201 units. By units I do not mean formations; I can buy as many of those as I want. But when the units field on the buy screen reaches 200/201 I cannot buy anything more for my core force (units as in a single infantry squad or one tank). This is primarily a concern because I wanted to try purchasing a fairly cheap & large force then upgrade later. (again influenced from earlier training forum posts).

Finally, I'm wondering if anyone knows how I could fix my other account. I created it over a year ago, (played SPWAW for a month then got other games and played those for the rest of the year, till a few weeks ago) and never made any posts. Now when I try to post a reply or create a thread, I get a message saying I don't have the priviledge/access to do so.

_____________________________

Nothing is as important as it seems, and everything matters.
Post #: 1
- 6/21/2003 12:31:13 AM   
LordCucumber

 

Posts: 268
Joined: 5/17/2003
From: Holland
Status: offline 		Ummmm from what I have gathered here at the boards, using vehicles as scouts is a big no-no. You can load up a jeep with a recon infantry units and race it forward.. but in real open terrain someone WILL spot the jeep. The best and most sneaky way is using small infantry units. They are oft not seen by the enemy untill it is too late and you spot them first, and THEN you move the rest of your force up behind them to deliver that pounding whack to your enemy's jaw (you ca use recon units for this, but that exposes them.. and they usually don't really pack a punch against most things).

Just my 2 cents..

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My Let's Play channel

(in reply to MelonHead)
Post #: 2
- 6/21/2003 1:13:01 AM   
rbrunsman


Posts: 1837
Joined: 1/31/2002
From: Phoenix, AZ
Status: offline 		1st) I always suggest that people start a long campaign and learn the units from the beginning (i.e. 1939). That way you gain a real appreciation for the upgrades in technology that occur. Playing with the big katz and Easy 8s is nice, but it doesn't help you develop the combined arms tactics you need to be a really good player. The Germans had some serious problems to deal with early in the war (e.g. their tanks couldn't kill the Allied tanks).

2nd) You need to learn to use the "willy" meter. That's the "*" you see next to your unit info at the bottom of the screen. It means you've been spotted. When you get spotted, look around and determine where you would be hiding if you were the enemy. Motorcycles are great at fast scouting. They can take many hits and can move quickly. Also, do the spin dance with your recon units. You'll spot more that way. Keep at it. Intel wins more games than having bigger guns. You deny intel you your opponent and gain as much as you can about them. Also, quickly moving scout teams are spotted easier than slow moving teams. Run when you are in cover, but creep when you are near suspected enemy locations.

3rd) That's not a bug. You're playing way too big of a campaign if your buying that many units, IMHO.

4th) Dunno.

_____________________________

Everyone is a potential [PBEM] enemy, every place a potential [PBEM] battlefield. --Zensunni Wisdom

(in reply to MelonHead)
Post #: 3
- 6/21/2003 5:31:24 AM   
Goblin


Posts: 5547
Joined: 3/29/2002
From: Erie,Pa. USA
Status: offline 		Welcome to the trenches, Melon!

Goblin:)

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(in reply to MelonHead)
Post #: 4
- 6/21/2003 9:29:50 AM   
fullmetaljacko

 

Posts: 18
Joined: 6/13/2003
From: Louisiana, USA
Status: offline 		Welcome and it's okay to get your butt whooped for awhile.. i know i still am. German long campaign i faced off against the Poles, easy huh? Yeah but they have armor! Lost that one heh.

Read a bunch and come CHAT! yeah talk with people and all, and practice. And trust me that first Decisive victory will feel like gold! I whooped the germans 13672 to 1585 and I jumped outa my chair and yelled, yeah i get emotional. :)

(in reply to MelonHead)
Post #: 5
- 6/21/2003 10:21:54 AM   
Irinami

 

Posts: 746
Joined: 9/4/2002
From: Florida, USA
Status: offline 		Welcome to the only version of crack that's legal, MelonHead!! ;) I can only reiterate what the others have said... except about installing user campaigns, 'cause I don't think anyone has said anything.

All you have to do is unzip the .zip file directly into your

C:\Matrix Games\Steel Panthers World At War\Campaigns

folder. Yours may not be located exactly there, but there ought to be a sub-folder called 'Campaigns' in your SPWAW folder. Once it's extracted there, you can just boot up SPWAW and select it in the Campaigns button.

As for scouts... Set every scout's Range to 0 (use 'change entire formation' option in the unit info screen (accessed with the space bar) to change all of the units in a letter formation (eg, hit space on R0 and select 'change entire formation', and R0-R5 will all have their ranges changed to whatever you change R0's to) at once, this works for Stance too).

Why?

Part of the spotting routine for a unit appears to include code from the unit being spotted's targetting. In short, if your unit is targetting out to 40 hexes, then it will be astronomically easier for enemy units up to 40 hexes away to spot him.

After you get used to doing that, you can plan assaults, ambushes, and even work with moving units one hex per turn on those occasions it's unavoidable. Trust me, I hate doing it too.

_____________________________



Newbies!!
Wild Bill's Tanks at Munda Mini-Campaign. The training campaign for comb

(in reply to MelonHead)
Post #: 6
- 6/21/2003 1:52:55 PM   
MelonHead

 

Posts: 14
Joined: 6/21/2003
From: Utah
Status: offline 		I'll have to try those scout techniques once I get to my other computer :) .

I still have a question about that units thing though. While I may be trying to play large campaigns (apparently 5k core force is big), I've seen people post about playing campaigns with 8k core forces or larger, and I'm just wondering how they got around the unit limit. (BTW Irinami, I'm not talking about formations-I mean individual units. i.e. I can only buy 200 kubelwagons, even though that would only cost 600 pts, IIRC) Admittedly, I could just buy more expensive units...but...I like to have some semblance of numerical equality with the french in sept. '39 :D . I started one campaign and in the first turn my kubelwagons saw approx. 4 companies of french whatchamacallits. They were infantry and I think just ordinary ones, but they had wierd names.

Anyways I have another question; how do you guys scout open terrain? For instance, if I need to take some victory hexes located just beyond a hill (reverse slope), what's the best way to scout that hill/behind it, considering the hill is plains and there's a good 5-10 hexes of plains in front of and behind the hill. I've resorted to sending kubelwagons/221's up to the top of the hill and seeing what kills them (fortunately they're support not core) but that seems a bit bloody...

Thanks for the great response, everyone! Besides, it's nice to have a game I know for sure will run on whatever laptop I'll take to college (the fact it is more fun than any other games is just icing) :cool: .

_____________________________

Nothing is as important as it seems, and everything matters.

(in reply to MelonHead)
Post #: 7
- 6/21/2003 2:53:15 PM   
VikingNo2


Posts: 2918
Joined: 1/26/2002
From: NC
Status: offline 		Smoke, with small infanrty units, loaded on fast small vehicle, run the vehicle as close as you can and then drop the scouts off. Make sure the vehicle has movement points to get out of the area after it drops off the infantry

(in reply to MelonHead)
Post #: 8
- 6/21/2003 11:04:56 PM   
Irinami

 

Posts: 746
Joined: 9/4/2002
From: Florida, USA
Status: offline 		If VikingNo2 says it, it's almost certainly true. There is, however, one more way to scout over open terrain in certain situations. Actually, two.

1.) You can ALWAYS creep undetected up to the visibility range. Problem being you don't know if you're in someone's visibility range if you haven't spotted them, and to do that you have to be in their visibility range. So it's a semi-moot point. ;)

2.) If your units are experienced and theirs are inexperienced, then you may be able to move over open terrain within their visibility. The odds of this succeeding are increased some by your experience, but mostly by their inexperience. If you have a 150 experience scout unit sneaking up on 30 experience Chinese units (seriously, they're about the only people who get that crappy), you could possibly waltz right up to them. Otherwise, though, you'll have to creep one hex a turn and PRAY!!! (Too bad they don't have Chaplain units in this game. ;) :D :D )

So, for my money, I'll blow smoke. Oh! Almost forgot. Sometimes there's not enough smoke to obscure your unit completely. But this partial-smoke seems to play a part in spotting, so that can help too.

Too Many Units Answer! (I bolded it because I talk so much you're probably asleep by now. ;) )

I have a hunch about this. Could you tell me your computer's specs? Of particular importance are RAM size (eg, 64M, 16kb, etc), free Hard Drive space, Operating System, and Video Card, though your processor would be nice to know.

You may be hitting your computer's limits.

_____________________________



Newbies!!
Wild Bill's Tanks at Munda Mini-Campaign. The training campaign for comb

(in reply to MelonHead)
Post #: 9
- 6/22/2003 1:50:06 AM   
junk2drive


Posts: 12907
Joined: 6/27/2002
From: Arizona West Coast
Status: offline 		after u have played a while, go back and do the training scenarios. they make more sense the second (or first) time around. find and read the sp1 tactics guide (todd brady?)

when u unzip directly into scen or camp folders, u might replace an existing one if it is numbered the same. this is ok if u are tired of the preinstalled scens or camps.

i unzip into a separate folder first and rename them. i have winxp and this is easy to me, but u need some computer knowledge for this.

read these forums every day!

enjoy

(in reply to MelonHead)
Post #: 10
Re: More Newb Questions - 6/22/2003 7:48:55 AM   
john g

 

Posts: 984
Joined: 10/6/2000
From: college station, tx usa
Status: offline 		[QUOTE]Originally posted by MelonHead
[B]
Third, I'm getting a bug when I try to play a campaign; I cannot buy a core force with more than 200/201 units. By units I do not mean formations; I can buy as many of those as I want. But when the units field on the buy screen reaches 200/201 I cannot buy anything more for my core force (units as in a single infantry squad or one tank). This is primarily a concern because I wanted to try purchasing a fairly cheap & large force then upgrade later. (again influenced from earlier training forum posts).

[/B][/QUOTE]

The game has an absolute limit of 400 units for both sides added together. By taking up 200 you are already limiting the ai to no more than 200. If you had a defend scenario there is no way the ai could buy enough units to assault you.

You need to keep your core small enough that by wars end after it has multiplied in value due to upgrades and experiance gains that the ai can still buy enough units to give an even battle.

For example, when I did a German WWII campaign, the tanks that started out as PzIb's with normal exp ended up the war as Kingtigers with upwards of 130 exp, each worth over 300 exp, about a 10 fold increase in value. My core in that campaign was 56 units, by wars end I could remember each unit and how well it fought. Even with that small a core I had an infantry company, an engineer company, 3 platoons of tanks, a couple of pair of 88's and a couple of snipers for recon.

Try keeping your core force about 3-5 dozen units, you might actually be able to finish the campaign, I have yet to read of anyone with a 10K core force that managed to finish the war, or even the first battle.

Only with prebuilt campaigns is there a reason to purposely buy junk to upgrade later. With the WWII and long campaigns you can adjust the buy points in the pref screen to buy what you want anyway. The ai will always just buy a percentage of what your forces current value is, no matter what you start with.
thanks, John.

(in reply to MelonHead)
Post #: 11
- 6/23/2003 9:24:18 AM   
MelonHead

 

Posts: 14
Joined: 6/21/2003
From: Utah
Status: offline 		Thanks for the answer, John. That makes much more sense (wish there were a way to change the game code though :) ). A moot point, anyways, because I started another campaign with a smaller force (like you, Irinami, many others suggested) and am working on practicing my smoking and recon techniques; I'm still horrible at both, primarily because I never used smoke before talking to you guys...now to figure out how to play with fewer arty units. :D Some of my favorite games have been ones where I play a 6-10k battle with the AI, and buy 2 or 3 batteries/battalions (whatever it is) of offboard 150mm arty, along with 4/5 of 75mm on-board howitzers. Those, coupled with a few motorcycle companies, 88's, mg's, and koenigstigers make for a very easy game against the soviet hordes :cool: . (Stupid T-34's though...grrr)

VikingNo2, your recon hints also helped me make sense of everyone's fear of armies of bazooka teams on .50 cal jeeps-run those up, drop em off, then fall back with the jeeps to opp fire any inf...ouch.

_____________________________

Nothing is as important as it seems, and everything matters.

(in reply to MelonHead)
Post #: 12
- 6/23/2003 10:11:50 AM   
Irinami

 

Posts: 746
Joined: 9/4/2002
From: Florida, USA
Status: offline 		Cool! Glad you like the game.

If you want to learn to live with limited arty, try Long WWII, 1939, Germany. Buy a single PzG Mot. Company (under Infantry, about 634-850 points, depending on loadout), and a single Light Recon Company (under Misc, about 256-403 points, again depending on loadout). That's it. Nothing more. You could get away with setting the Player Preferences' Battle Points to 1100, and you could JUST afford this and a scout or three. Not only will this teach you how to deal with limited artillery (3 50mm mortars and 2 81mm mortars, 2 75mm Infantry Guns (which are direct-fire only), and 3 37mm ATG's), and with limited armor (nothing heavier than an 8-Rad, and 5 SdKfzw 221's, which are just MG-loaded armoured cars).

You won't be impotent. You have 5 indirect-fire pieces, but they lack punch--that should teach you how to fight with artillery supporting infantry, not the other way around. ;) It's also a very flexible force, which can go from a heavy recon force at the start to a heavy infantry with strong tank support by mid-war.

Keeping the points this low will seriously limit your support points. If you want to control yourself even more, buy recon, air formations, or cargo planes with those points instead of arty. (Nothing like air-dropping some PzG's into the backfield to spice your game up!)

Now... GO KICK SOME @$$!!!!! :D

_____________________________



Newbies!!
Wild Bill's Tanks at Munda Mini-Campaign. The training campaign for comb

(in reply to MelonHead)
Post #: 13
- 6/24/2003 12:50:18 AM   
rbrunsman


Posts: 1837
Joined: 1/31/2002
From: Phoenix, AZ
Status: offline 		[QUOTE]Originally posted by MelonHead
[B]VikingNo2, your recon hints also helped me make sense of everyone's fear of armies of bazooka teams on .50 cal jeeps-run those up, drop em off, then fall back with the jeeps to opp fire any inf...ouch. [/B][/QUOTE]

Public Service Announcement:

No one thinks it's very nice (i.e. sporting) when they see an M9 bazooka team moving 156mph right next to their heavy tanks. You've obviously leapfrogged your team from the other end of the map and have seriously played fast and loose with the game mechanics to do what you just did. Try to resist the temptation to do this and instead try to win the game legitimately.

_____________________________

Everyone is a potential [PBEM] enemy, every place a potential [PBEM] battlefield. --Zensunni Wisdom

(in reply to MelonHead)
Post #: 14
- 6/24/2003 1:16:57 AM   
VikingNo2


Posts: 2918
Joined: 1/26/2002
From: NC
Status: offline 		:confused:

Was just trying to tell him how to get them to the front, not leap frog.


:confused:

(in reply to MelonHead)
Post #: 15
- 6/24/2003 7:04:43 AM   
rbrunsman


Posts: 1837
Joined: 1/31/2002
From: Phoenix, AZ
Status: offline 		I was afraid that would come off wrong. I wasn't implying that your suggested tactic was bad. It is just the next inference for newbies to make to start leapfrogging when Melonhead mentioned massed M9s on jeeps. I didn't want anyone reading this thread to think it was right to do that.

V2, you are, of course, a very clean player.

I think that if everyone spoke up when they see "funny" activity by their opponents that everyone would gravitate to the fairest way of playing. I always tell my new opponents to let me know if they don't like something I do. I'm more than happy to not do it again. This makes for fun games and not annoying games.

_____________________________

Everyone is a potential [PBEM] enemy, every place a potential [PBEM] battlefield. --Zensunni Wisdom

(in reply to MelonHead)
Post #: 16
- 6/24/2003 9:13:44 AM   
bchapman


Posts: 302
Joined: 3/30/2000
From: Oklahoma
Status: offline 		Hi Melon,
Welcome to SPWAW. If you want to improve your artillery tactics, read the thread at the top of this forum,
"Artillery Management, TOT" Very good reading, with lots of tips on artillery strategy.
Cheers,
:D

_____________________________

"A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have."<br />- Gerald Ford

(in reply to MelonHead)
Post #: 17
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