Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: Greyshaft

PLANNING
I would be able to save and load my Scenario Start production sequence so after I built it I could use it in other games. I could swap my “perfect” plan with other players for them to laugh and offer suggestions. I could swap out plans halfway through the game so I can switch from the “Conquer the World” plan to the “Festung Europa” build plan whenever I wanted.

I could specify that I wanted a particular force (say 2 CV, 3 SCS, 2 AMPH, 1 MAR, 1 INF + 2 dive bombers + 2 pilot available) in a defined port by turn ‘x’ and the units would be built and deployed there by that time. They would be flagged in some way so I didn’t inadvertently move the early arrivers out for some other operation – I could if I wanted to but it shouldn’t happen by accident. I could also specify the force and ask the system to tell me the earliest date it could be produced.

This kind of production could be allocated a % or fixed amount of my production. Say in the last three turns I made 14,15 & 14 PP and I figure that number won’t change much for the foreseeable future. I could allocate 10 PP to this fixed production and I would use the rest of the PP on whatever seemed good at the time.

ADVISOR
If I didn’t have a fixed plan the system would look at my available PP and offer 3-4 alternative builds (carrier heavy v. air heavy v. land heavy v. sub heavy v. whatever) and I could select one of them for this turn and tweak it as desired.

GEARING
Production should advise re: gearing limits so that if I produce 2 SUBS this turn the system would advise that I can keep that production going for ‘y’ turns. System should auto-advise if there will be a production drop up to (say) 3 turns in future eg. “if you build 4 ARM this turn, then in two turns you will waste ‘z’ PP because you will only have 1 ARM left to build and no other unit type can pick up the production slack’. This logic obviously can’t account for future battle casualties so it would be merely advisory.

ANALYSIS
Even with FOW I could analyse the enemy production. Eg. as an allied player I would auto count his units in contact with allied forces (therefore visible to me) and realise that last turn I counted 8 ARM but this turn I can only count 3… better get ready to defend against his next offensive. Or maybe as the CW I encountered 4 subs this turn and I know I’ve sunk 6 since the war begun so if I add that to the other units I have encountered then I’m still missing 12 PP from his plans. Maybe he did lay down the other battleship?

Important to be able to map all unit categories with losses against launches so at any point I can compare my current total on-map forces with my forces at start of game/ 1 month ago/3 months ago and see trends (INF up 3, SUBs up 2, FTR down 2, CV up 1)

On the note of FOW (I know you won’t like this one) how about revealing units which have been overflown by my units on any air missions “Hey… is that a Panzer down there?”

I'm not looking to get into the movable toolbar debate in a big way but if you do decide to do it then have a look at the way Lotus implemented their Properties Box. It's movable around the screen and comes in two sizes for when you still want it there but want to shrink it. The tabbed interface allows a lot of information (and action buttons) within a small space. I think its overkill for MWiF but you may as well see it before you dicard the idea.

quote:

ORIGINAL: rtamesis
Here's a little minor suggestion on the game interface. I'd like to see a little visual indicator that tells me at a glance which of my units have already been moved or initiated combat during my turn like a change in the tint or shading of the unit's counter, such as from dark gray to a lighter shade of gray or vice versa. That way, I won't forget to make it do something. When you're dealing with a lot of units, it's very easy to forget and not realize it until it's too late.

quote:

Yes, this is always a concern. The design of CWIF which I like and intend to keep (perhaps with some modification) is to have 6 small boxes above each unit. The boxes are 1/6 the width of the unit and half as high as they are wide - they are small! The colors of the 6 boxes indicate the unit's status. For instance, one box indicates when a unit is disrupted, others are for whether it has moved, has been committed to an attack, is out of supply, and so on. The boxes are maintain dynamically so if you move a HQ away from a unit such that the unit is out of supply, the unit's little box changes color. Move the HQ back and the unit's box for supply status changes color back again.

quote:

What you showed is fine. It is just a little out of date. CWIF now has 6 boxes at the top instead of 5. This makes it possible to reduce some of the potential confusion in the 4th and 5th rows of the layout you displayed.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp

quote:

What you showed is fine. It is just a little out of date. CWIF now has 6 boxes at the top instead of 5. This makes it possible to reduce some of the potential confusion in the 4th and 5th rows of the layout you displayed.

Yes, I noticed it was outdated. I couldn't find anything more current. I found this in the online help of the latest CWiF (0.7.71).

By the way, where will you resume the version number for MWiF ? 0.8.0 ? Or will you start from 0 ?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Greyshaft
Not sure what you've got planned for hover text over units, but a summary of the unit status graphic would be high on my list of suggestions "There's that light again but now its red !!! Does that mean that they need more Food in Flames or that they've just defected to the enemy... <checks manual yet again> "

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

I also want to review the choice of colors carefully. The statistics say that 10% of males are at least partially color blind and I don't want to cause them any difficulties understanding the colors in the boxes.

quote:

ORIGINAL: rtamesis

On the subject of colors in your attachment showing the counters, the black text on the dark blue counters and the dark green transports is difficult to see. They probably should be done in white instead to bring out more contrast. If it is possible to do them in bold too, then so much the better for greater visibility.

quote:

ORIGINAL: rtamesis

On the subject of colors in your attachment showing the counters, the black text on the dark blue counters and the dark green transports is difficult to see. They probably should be done in white instead to bring out more contrast. If it is possible to do them in bold too, then so much the better for greater visibility.

quote:

ORIGINAL: rtamesis
On the subject of colors in your attachment showing the counters, the black text on the dark blue counters and the dark green transports is difficult to see. They probably should be done in white instead to bring out more contrast. If it is possible to do them in bold too, then so much the better for greater visibility.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Mziln

quote:

ORIGINAL: rtamesis
On the subject of colors in your attachment showing the counters, the black text on the dark blue counters and the dark green transports is difficult to see. They probably should be done in white instead to bring out more contrast. If it is possible to do them in bold too, then so much the better for greater visibility.

2.4.3 Out of Supply

Land units

A land unit that is out of supply:
.....Cannot attack;
.....Must be turned face down if you move it (even by naval transport or air transport);
.....A face-up unit Defends with their normal strength.
.....A Face down non-white number units defends with 1 combat factor.
.....A Face down white number unit defends with 3 combat factors.
.....If you are using Option 2: Divisions
.....If you are using Option 13: Emergency HQ Supply

Out of supply land units still have their normal movement allowance and still exert a ZoC.

Some colors cant be changed

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp

quote:

ORIGINAL: rtamesis
On the subject of colors in your attachment showing the counters, the black text on the dark blue counters and the dark green transports is difficult to see. They probably should be done in white instead to bring out more contrast. If it is possible to do them in bold too, then so much the better for greater visibility.

There are example in paper WiF, of units wose background is so dark that black print is no longer possible. These are the non white print SS units. The black print SS units have their text written in Red.

MWiF could provide an option (to provide better visibility) :
(a) CW units "black text" displayed with another color. Example : Red, as for SS units.
(b) CW units displayed with another background color. For example, there is indeed lot of demand from players of WiF FE to have ADG making a print run of CW units in Khaki (Kaki). MWiF could provide this as an option.

quote:

ORIGINAL: SamuraiProgrammer
A thought about determining which units have moved or not....

It would be nice to be able to open a dialog or window that listed units that still had movement points to use. In my imagination, this window/dialog would also allow us mark units that we do not want to move this turn so they will either sort differently or even remove themselves from that display. Double Clicking a unit would take you to it on the map (this is an argument for a window instead of a dialog).

The same could be accomplised by a 'filter' that highlights units that have movement.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

quote:

ORIGINAL: Mziln

quote:

ORIGINAL: rtamesis
On the subject of colors in your attachment showing the counters, the black text on the dark blue counters and the dark green transports is difficult to see. They probably should be done in white instead to bring out more contrast. If it is possible to do them in bold too, then so much the better for greater visibility.

2.4.3 Out of Supply

Land units

A land unit that is out of supply:
.....Cannot attack;
.....Must be turned face down if you move it (even by naval transport or air transport);
.....A face-up unit Defends with their normal strength.
.....A Face down non-white number units defends with 1 combat factor.
.....A Face down white number unit defends with 3 combat factors.
.....If you are using Option 2: Divisions
.....If you are using Option 13: Emergency HQ Supply

Out of supply land units still have their normal movement allowance and still exert a ZoC.

Some colors cant be changed

Ah, but they can. Of course, it shouldn't be done without good justification. But if the change is justified, then sticking to something that doesn't work would be a poor decision.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Mziln

Unit colors brings up the question "Will the game editor still be provided with the game ".

quote:

Anyway, here is my thought for an improvement. Units to be set up are displayed in the left hand column, sorted howsoever the player wants (armor first? tactical air? HQs?). The player simply drags the unit from the left hand column to the map location he wants for the unit.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Greyshaft
A variation on your list of friendly counters is to include a list of enemy counters that are of special interest and will need a response in my own turn. I may not yet have identified the unit(s) which will meet that threat (therefore I cannot tag it) but I do want the game to remind me of the following locations:

– the german sub that just moved onto my convoy routes in the mid–Atlantic
– the weakest stack in the Russian defensive line. Having countered all of the defense factors along the line I want to ensure that I remember EXACTLY which hex I was planning to attack.
– The stack of 3 unflipped FTR units which I want to Ground strike to force them to respond.

I tend to do a couple of passes over the map in my turn. First to identify problems and mentally tag them for later attention and after I know how many issues need addressing I can look at each problem/opportunity in detail with an understanding of how many resources I can spare for each of them.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
The label PreAction refers to SOs 1- 3: Initiative, Controlling minors, Setting up reserves for minors, and Reacting to USSR claims to Finland and Bessarabia. Though technically only the first are performed before the action stage of the sequence of play, this is the best title for the group I have come up with so far.

quote:


Each box would indicate whether the air unit has a standing order to defend against that enemy mission type. Indicators would be:
(A) Unit should not respond to the mission type,
(B) Unit has a SO for the mission type, but it is from a previous impulse or turn (it’s stale),
(C) Unit was given a SO for the mission type this impulse (it’s fresh).

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp
I like the idea to have an SO tool bar with as many buttons in it as there are SOs.
However, I'd like to also have a submenu in the context menu for a unit labeled "Standing Orders" and containing all the 24 SO as well.

I say this because I think people are very used to the "right click" and "context menu" things. In one mouse operation the player would have chosen both the unit and the context menu he wants for the unit.

As usual, the toolbar would be useful for the new player, who would have displayed under his eyes all the SO (in the toolbar), but the context menu would be the most efficient way to give SOs to units.

One much more interesting feature would be to be able to select multiple units on the map (using a SHIFT+CLIC or CTRL+CLIC or else), to give them all the same SO using the context menu.

One last thing about that, one feature that may be cool would be that the buttons in the SO toolbar (and the Context Menu SO submenu items) could be :
- invisible when you click a unit unable to be given those SO,
- Greyed out when the SO is available for the selected unit, but no SO was defined (left to the defaults).
- Normal when the SO is available for the selected unit, and the SO was defined.

quote:

ORIGINAL: amwild
Will there be any provision for multi-monitor PCs?

While I would keep the main map on one monitor, having the various status and information displays on dockable windows that can be undocked and shifted to the second monitor would reduce the clutter on the primary monitor and allow a wider view of the map at a given scale.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp

quote:

There are some additional factors which could be woven into the decision rules that the AI Assistant uses: impulse number, estimated number of impulses remaining, current weather, and expected weather next turn. Rather than clutter up the decision rules though, I propose to just assume these are part of the knowledge the player has when setting the SO. Therefore, they will not be taken into consideration by the AIA.

One thing that might help the player, would be some sort of "Air Threat Calculator".
That would be an interface that the player would be able to call at any times. In this interface, he specifies an hex (or a sea area) and an enemy air threat (ground strike, Port attack, Strategic bombing, Ground Support, Naval Air, Paradrop, have I forgotten any one ?), and the game tells him (better : shows him the actual units by shading them on the map) the total factors that can threaten the designated hex with the designated attack type.
The Calculator could also tell you on a given hex the maximum potential Air to Air Combat value that the enemy can have, and better yet, also tell you own maximum potential Air to Air Combat value.
I think that such a "Air Threat Calculator" can be a good addition to the game, both for assessing the SOs and also for regular play.
Regards