http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SPMBT Steel Panthers MBT © Game Guide
Last Updated 13 December, 2002 © 2002 SP Camo Workshop Just tell me how to install It!! Frequently
Asked Questions SPMBT is a tactical level modern (Post World War 2) historical wargame. Its time frame covers 1946 to 2020 AD. When we complete SPMBTv2, 90 nation's forces will be made available for historical or "what-if" experimental battles. It is hexagon based, and the game is an alternating turn based (I go you go or IGOUGO) design. One unit playing piece represents one vehicle or gun, or an infantry squad (section of up to 13 men) or a section of 1 to 4 support weapons (this is an important point some players miss, 1 machine gun or mortar 'piece' CAN represent 2 or 3 actual MG or mortars firing off a common base plate). One game hexagon represents 50 metres of terrain. One game move (player 1 turn plus player 2 turn) represents between one and 3 minutes of 'real time'. It is an MSDOS program, but runs fine under most Windows 95 or 98 installations. The game also runs under Windows ME (just follow the Windows 98 Installation) and n OS/2 as well. XP can present problems, not due to the operating system itself, but due to the lack of VESA drivers in the supplied video cards or sound drivers in the supplied sound cards.
Check out this website which may be of help http://www.minnemacs.com/manyhighways/sandbox/xp.html SPMBT is an entirely freeware game! Please check out the Game Credits to see all the good people who have worked hard and given their time for free over the last year to bring this game to you. Steel Panthers : MBT © (SPMBT) is an extension of SP Camo Workshop's Steel Panthers : World War 2 wargame.
The game now allows 135 map sizes. Maps can now go from a minimum of 20 hexes wide and 40 hexes high to up 160 hexes wide and 200 hexes high. All maps are fully playable in generated, campaign, PBEM or scenario based games. AI deployment routines for units and victory hexes have been re-written to accommodate every map size. Campaign players now have the added bonus of pre-selecting map size before every game to allow them to tailor map sizes to fit their campaign core size. Area fire can now be targeted through smoke filled hexes. No longer will smoke act as a barrier to fire however, accuracy and effectiveness is far less than aimed fire against a clear hex but this new system works quite well for harassing advancing enemy infantry. Using direct HE fire, all units in the target hex now receive splash damage while in direct fire by HE weapons. This includes the original target if missed, but the shell still lands in the target unit's hex. (The original code ignored the original target if a miss was scored). This slightly increses HE effect in direct fire. The code has been changed to favour solid shot over HEAT provided it has a decent chance at range fired, but HEAT still preferred for armoured targets with low frontal armour. The "exploding paratrooper" problem is fixed The retreat code has been altered to give more realistic retreat paths in most situations A new "Infantry colour" has been added to the game. Points changes made in the editor will now "stick" Over 300 new Icons added All OOB's extensively upgraded with four more nations "activated" (Nigeria, Eritrea, Tanzania and Uganda ) The balance of the Work In Progress nations will be issued with our next patch of the game. Our Player Community was the origin of many OOB tweaks. While we may not respond to every issue raised on the message boards, we do read and research every bit of information and opinion that the games generate. A new pricing formula has been used for all units New ammo loadouts for all non-vehicular mortars, howitzers and naval guns have been implemented to smooth out inconsistencies between OOBs that resulted in unfair advantages/disadvantages for some countries. A bug in the computer purchased forces points values was found and eliminated. The troops were bought at the correct cost but the units point value field was left the basic OOB book value rather than the adjusted cost for + or - experience/moral. Any forces bought by the AI or human player using the computer buy routines will now reflect the correct cost adjustment for Experience and Morale rating. Campaign core force points values had remained at the original purchase cost throughout the campaign thus not properly reflecting their changes in Experience and Morale over time. This bug has now been isolated and eliminated. Core forces will be shown at purchase book value for their template formation at the beginning of their first battle but will be individually priced at the end of their first battle depending on their true individual Experience and Morale rating. As they further progress through the campaign they will gain value as they gain experience and moral. There was a bug whereby campaign core forces morale jumped to the 80's after their first battle. This has been eliminated, and therefore core forces morale will now properly improve with successful battles The internal routines that calculated points value variance from the default 70 produced very skewed results when the difference was 10 or more points either way. The formula was revised to a flatter range. Six new sceanrios have been added to the game for this patch as well as 1 new User Campaign. Additional scenarios for SPMBT can be found at http://www.wargamer.com/archive/ . Look in the "Steel Panthers: Main Battle Tank" section. The SPMBTv1.01 Patch contained a large number of OOB corrections plus code changes to fix a Y2K bug in the campaign generator as well as a 26,000 point cap on defender purchases which will now allow the attacker to purchase the correct proportion of points. Plus, there was a fix for a bug that was appearing when mixed cluster and HE missions were plotted simultaneously and another fix for a bug that was not giving the correct base experience ratings for various nations. SPMBT Version 1.0 was entitled the preview version. SPMBT was supposed to be a simple extension to SPWW2 that would only take 3 or 6 months work. That was nearly two years ago and has since has grown into something much more extensive. A great deal of work has gone into the OOBs. They have, literally, been created from the ground up to be consistent with the system we set up for SPWW2. When completed, there will be OOBs for 90 nations represented in the game. Much work has gone into game graphics as well. There have been over 1000 new Icons added to what was the SP2 Modern Icon set and many more new and improved Icons are planned. Code work has also been much more extensive than we had originally planned with many new additions not found in our previous releases plus much new code to better represent modern weapons as well as improved AI performance
Please refer to the credits section at the end for those involved in the production of this game over the last couple of years. SPCamo is an uncompensated, voluntary group of 18 hobbyists committed to improving the Steel Panthers game system for the benefit of other hobbyists to enjoy. It has now been over 4 years since our original game SP2WW2 was conceived and developed. After releasing several upgrades and putting in several thousands of man-hours into this project, we still have many new ideas to implement and will continue to develop this game further. We hope that you enjoy playing the game as much as we have enjoyed creating it. On Behalf Of The SP Camo Group: Don Goodbrand, Andy Gailey Producers/programmers This Guide is designed to be Viewed on 1024x768 wide or wider monitor display settings. If you have trouble reading the text at this display size or to view the guide without a scrollbar at the bottom you may need to adjust the "Text Size" in the "View" Tab of Internet Explorer. To use it in a 640 wide mode, it is best to open the guide up, then use the "open in new window" trick mentioned below to view the right pane only, keeping the original 2 pane view for navigation. If you do not know how to set your monitor display, refer to your Microsoft Windows Help documentation. Point at the heading bars in the left frame with the mouse, on clicking there the sub headings list will drop down, click a sub heading to go to that section. (IE 5, right click on the subtopic, select 'open in new window' , should you want to open up a second window, e.g. to compare 2 sections of the guide). To find a particular word in the main text, use your browser's search facility, with IE5 this is under 'Edit/Find on this Page', but ensure you clicked on the right (this) pane first, or it will just search the left (Table Of Contents) pane. Important Point, The majority of this guide is written in English, with some exceptions, therefore if you are used to some variant on English spelling (American or Australian dialects, say), remember to search using English spellings [e.g. 'armour' not 'armor', 'colour', not 'color' and 'ised' not 'ized'] first, obviously American designations will be used where American units are being discussed (e.g. armored cavalry). Remember that your browser's 'Back' button will take you back to where you were previously, e.g. after jumping to a new section. (Please note that to link to any external URL link in this guide, you will require to be online at that time, as this HTML cannot start up the Windows Dial Up Connection - this is subject to your Windows setup on your own machine). Game Requirements This game is a complete stand-alone product. It is not a patch to be applied over any other SP series game. It is set up to ignore Video by default. If you are not interested in video, or have no SSI Steel Panthers CD to play or copy the files from - skip this section and continue with the next item. Should you desire to play the game video sequences, you should have one of the following SSI product CD ROM's in your first CD drive (if you have several, the game will only work from CD ROM No. 1 if >1 are present) when playing the game if using method 1 below, or copy from the sound strewam folder of your SSi CD if using method 2 (Hard drive):
Method 1) In order to play the video from the CD, you will require to rename the file 'SPMBTAV.INI' in your \data directory - to say xSPMBT.INI so the game will not find this file, and hence will look for a CD in drive 1. If you do this you now require a CD (any CD will do but the above ones will be needed for video) when playing or you will get an error message (twice) as the DOS routines try to read the CD. If this happens - hit F for fail each time and the game will start. Method 2) In order to play the video from your Hard Drive, copy your video files from the SSI SP CD sound/stream folder to either a new folder under your MBT folder (a) or better (b)- simply copy these to the sound/stream folder. If you copied to a new folder - now put the path in the SPMBTAV.INI file remembering this is a DOS path - 8 characters max, no spaces etc. (otherwise you will need to use the Windows mangled file name format such as "Progra~1"). Method a is more complicated, but allows easy deletion of the entire video folder if you need to reduce space without deleting any of the required files in the game sound/stream folder by mistake!. With this method the game will randomly pick a video number from Vid0000 to Vid0072, if the chosen file is not found it is not played. You should therefore pick the movies you like from the selection on your SP CD and rename to vid0000 through vid00072, and if you love one of them to death - by all means duplicate under several file names so it appears more often. In order to do this, you will need a smacker file viewer to make the task easier!. Go to http://www.radgametools.com/smkdown.htm for this utility and download the appropriate utility. If you want to make a video that SP will run you will need "The Old Smacker Tools [1.9 MB] ". If all you need is a viewer, the new version works OK in windows for viewing (but not making SP compatible movies) - "The RAD Video Tools [1.2 MB]". No support from SP Camo is provided regarding smacker file making!. NB - only utilise the smaller sized videos as the large ones are designed for full screen modes and will overwrite the end game status screen!. Note that the video files can easily exceed 150MB of hard disk space, so only do this if you have enough room. Ensure that you have correctly downloaded the game installation program and that it is the correct size (see the information on the download site). Should the download not be the correct file size, download it again from the web site. If running the installer produces some nonsense about a password, your download was incomplete or corrupted so try downloading again, perhaps using a download manager utility such as gozilla! or Getright, available from e.g. www.tucows.com. (If you received the game on a CD, then obviously you have bypassed any download problems!) You can place the installation program anywhere on your hard drive(s) you like, once you have installed, you may wish to move it to somewhere you archive things, or given its size, move it onto a backup ZIP drive or similar, to save the need to download a second time should you need to reinstall the product, or perhaps install a second version of the game for special use with say non-standard OOB files. (Store your distribution CD in a safe place if received by that route) Double click on the installation program, this is an Install Maker scripted install. Read and follow the instructions presented to you by this program. Also, ensure that you read any late breaking news in the readme.txt file which will be presented to you as an option by the installer. After running the installer program This game is an MSDOS game. It is based on source code originally written in the early 1990s, so it only recognises certain older sound cards. However any decent windows sound card has a DOS SoundBlaster emulator available for it. It will run happily under Windows 95, 98 or ME in most circumstances, so long as the appropriate steps are taken. One of our playtesters runs the game in OS/2. Windows XP can present problems but in this case it seems mainly to be lack of VESA support in some "modern" graphics cards supplied with the machines, and not XP itself. Many SPWW2 players are happily running on Windows XP once they have installed the correct drivers, so running SPMBT on Windows XP is perfectly possible. Contact your sound and/or video card manufacturer or visit their home pages for the requisite drivers. Also see This is a primary failing with newer PCs and especially XP systems, in that the manufacturer assumes that new users are not going to use DOS, and do not install or provide the correct drivers for the graphics card, sound card, or mouse. If you are in this situation, contact your PC supplier first, then try the web sites of the appropriate card manufacturers if necessary. Also - check the discussion on XP at the SPWW2 Yahoo group - there are some files available in the download section that may be of help. These may be copied across to the SPMBT Yahoo group as well so check there as well for folk's experiences of this O/S. Here, we will consider only well behaved Windows machines, such as my Dell PII 450 W98 Dimension, and not the awkward squad, like my Watford Aries PI 200 W95 laptop with its ESS integrated sound chip. Modern 3D accelerator video cards can be a problem with DOS games as well, see further below for sound card and video card problems. The Dell came with an STB nVIDA graphics card, DOS friendly, and Dell had pre installed a DOS SoundBlaster emulator driver for the TBS Montego sound board at the factory. Important note, in the examples shown below, enter your own installation path details, and replace any occurrence of SPWW2 with SPMBT. 1] Setting up your Windows shortcut In the simple case all you need do first is create a Windows shortcut for the game.
Beside the icon is the name field, type what you want here Cmd Line will be from where you dragged the exe from. Use whatever you set your path to, typically C:\SPMBT if you installed to the default directory. IF the working directory is blank fill it in with the path to the executable (C:\SPMBT in this case, use your path, obviously!). Run, My video card is quite happy with 'normal window', however some video cards will not auto switch to a full screen MSDOS window and will leave a set of "squishy lines" at the top of the screen. Often, all these cards need is for this line to be set to 'maximised' in order to work properly. Close on exit, I leave this unchecked, so that I can see game error messages such as complaints about no CD in the drive before windows nukes the screen! However some cards will not hold the DOS screen on exit, always auto terminating it, so if you are getting errors, try running the game from a DOS prompt (open a DOS window, navigate to wherever SPMBT is installed then type SPMBT, some folk like to write their own DOS batch file to do this). Now hit the 'Advanced' button
This is all my PC, and most, will need as Dell set up a decent set of config and autoexec files at the factory, including DOS mode CDROM stuff. However, you may need to check the MS-DOS mode item, to use custom Autoexec.bat and Config.sys statements (e.g. If your DOS mode MSCDEX is NOT loaded by the default autoexec supplied with your PC). See the DOS and Windows help files as to how to set up these files, or contact your PC support. The old DOS help is on my win 98 CD under tools/oldmsdos. On my Win 95 CD, its in other/oldmsdos. You will need to know what you are doing to use these, the help file is not a Windows help file, so you cannot read it off the CD using Windows. You need to copy help.com, help.hlp, qbasic.exe and qbasic.hlp into a directory on your path. However, typing 'help' at a DOS prompt will give a file mode error (probably as this disk is FAT32, FAT16 may be OK?). But double clicking on help.com from windows will run the (MS-DOS) help, once you have installed the Qbasic etc. supporting files.. Now select the Memory tab:
Ensure that Uses HMA is selected ! Now the Screen tab:
Just ensure full screen is set here (stops some video cards problems detecting it) Finally, the misc tab, lots of stuff here:
Ensure that Allow screen saver is NOT repeat NOT checked!, otherwise Windows will assume after a while of playing that you are idle, as it does not detect DOS key or mouse activity, and fire up your screen saver behind the game, and performance will suffer all of a sudden! Background, set to always suspend so that if you alt-tab out to windows, this halts the game Termination, I remove warn if still active, so I can terminate the thing easier if minimised in Windows. Idle sensitivity, ram this down so that the game gets 100% of the CPU, we do not want windows tasks occurring much behind the game. 5) now we have created the shortcut for the game. It is on the desktop, however this was for ease of creation, and feel free to move this somewhere else that you prefer, drag it to the start menu and drop there for example, or use Taskbar properties/advanced to put it in a program group of your choice. A shortcut is a windows file. Drag and drop onto say your start button, there it is. Or drag it and drop it on the Windows 98 cool bar beside the Internet explorer icons etc., use the tab on the bars to resize, and you have the instant launch icon. Before you play the game for the first time, you MUST run setsound.exe to initialise your sound card or the game will be unstable. (The installation program runs this, but you may need to return here and try other options) Setsound.exe lives in your game root directory, double click to run. You will see a screen like this
Setting 'No Digital Audio' will remove all sound drivers, note that turning sound OFF on the in game preferences screen will not actually remove sound drivers, if you are having difficulties and require to turn sound off and remove the drivers, select no digital audio in this program and turn sound off in preferences in the game. Select the configure item and you will be presented with a selection of choices
All these cards are DOS mode cards from the 1990s, modern Windows sound cards should be able to emulate a baseline SoundBlaster, as it is the commonest emulation around. Some can do it with native code, others require a separate emulation driver to be installed. (An easy way to see if you have one, check if there is a line for a SoundBlaster emulation driver in your device properties, see below for how)
After hitting select, you will see the above. Try out the first option to see if you are lucky today! If you see this, then you had a problem
Try the following remedies: Firstly, you may have selected the right card, but your PC emulation does not use the default IRQ and DMA settings. Go back and try configuring your sound card manually, run through the screens and note the settings. NOW (Windows 98, 95 differs) go to your desktop and right click on 'My Computer' and select properties. When the properties dialogue comes up, select device manager
Open up the sound driver section:
Lucky me, as you can see, my Dell came with a Sound Blaster Emulator driver factory installed ! (Selected line, if you have something similar, your sound card has the driver in place) If yours does not have this, select the regular sound device and press properties In the resources section you will be able to check over the resources assigned to the device, note these down and compare with those set out in setsound which you noted earlier.
Here is the setting for the Dell installed SoundBlaster emulation, as you can see, these numbers are the default SB values, therefore they agree with setsound defaults for that device. (NB there are 2 sound blaster types in setsound, try both (Mine works with the sound blaster pro/100% compatible drivers, but not with the SB16/AWE32). Also try other drivers, your card might be able to natively emulate a Roland perhaps?. If your values here differ from setsound, you will need to change those in setsound via the manual setup method and retry. If you do not have an emulation driver and your sound card cannot natively emulate a SoundBlaster, see your sound card documentation as to whether you require a separate SoundBlaster emulation driver (you most likely will). If it is not pre-installed, check your sound card install disks, as it may be in there (read any readme.txt files!), also check out the manufacturer's web site as sometimes these are made available there (e.g. I found a DOS driver for my ESS sound chipset on my portable at the ESS web site. Drawback was it only works in pure MSDOS so if I want to play SPMBT or SPWW2 on the laptop, I need a DOS boot disk, and a batch file to set up this utility, it does not auto load). This can be a problem with Windows XP as often the manufacturer has not installed the DOS mode drivers. Check your sound card installation CD provided by your manufacturer, or look at the sound driver manufacturer's web page. Some modern video cards, especially 3D accelerated ones, are not VESA compliant. These usually need a set of DOS VESA mode drivers loaded, see your video card documentation and install disks, and refer to the manufacturer's web page if required. Some 3D cards will need a reboot should you need to use or change from DOS VESA drivers, however many can in fact work in tandem with a 2D card to handle such things as DOS and also plain windows applications, see your card documentation to see if it can work as part of a 2D/3D card combo. This may save the pain of reboots to change drivers. If you installed a new 3D card you may have your old 2d card ?. Worth reinstalling, as 2D cards handle regular Windows updates better than some 3D cards often enough. Also, see the note above in setting up your shortcut about selecting full screen in the shortcut, should you see a set of lines at the top of the screen, setting this is all some video cards need, they do not seem to accept the game's VESA request for full screen mode properly. Windows XP problems with video seem mainly to be from the fact that many manufacturers either supply a 'modern' video card that is not VESA compliant, or if it is, have not installed the VESA drivers. Check your video card documentation (this should be on the driver disk supplied with your PC) and also the manufacturer's support web pages or forums. Some particular PCs are just not set up quite right to play DOS games, it can be any combination or conflict of sound, video, or other devices, or Windows version. Each and every PC box is different. My old Windows 95 P100 desktop would only play the SP series games with a 'restart in DOS', i.e. This was the only thing it could do, but luckily no start-up disk was required. It would not play the game as a DOS full screen windows application. However, other playtesters had Windows 95 desktops, and the game worked perfectly OK from a desktop shortcut for them. My guess is the cheap SoundBlaster clone in my old machine would only work properly in pure DOS sessions. My portable is an old W95 PII 200 MMX system, and it unfortunately came with an ESS integrated chipset. I found a SoundBlaster driver for this at the ESS website, but this will only work from MSDOS, that is MSDOS from a boot diskette, not 'reboot to MSDOS' . It also needs to be run before the game, it wants answers to questions, so cannot be put into a batch file. Should you need to run from a DOS boot disk, see the SSI documentation from your SP2, SP3 or Arsenal product, these have sections on making boot disks, and a utility to create same. Also, read the readme files SSI provide on the CD. Additionally, your machine may have a poorly set up default autoexec and config files for MSDOS windows (including running from a shortcut) In particular, DOS CDROM and Mouse drivers may not be included. Look in your \windows folder as there may be other MSDOS command shortcuts provided, other than the default "command" that your desktop shortcut will use. My Dell, for example came with MSDOS mode shortcuts entitled 'Exit To DOS' (full screen mode), 'MS-DOS Mode for Games with EMS and XMS Support' and 'MS-DOS Mode for Games' as well as 'command', if your PC supplier has provided alternate DOS environments, experiment with these. In especial, right click on them, open up the 'Program/Advanced' dialogue, and check out the settings under the 'Specify a new MSDOS Configuration' sub-windows, there may for example, be DOS mode CDROM and Mouse driver lines in there, that were not in the regular 'command'. If there are alternatives, double click and open the DOS window, navigate to the SPMBT directory and start SPMBT. If it runs under this DOS window, then right-click drag the appropriate shortcut to the desktop and select 'create shortcut here', then modify its properties as mentioned above. If double clicking it now works, you have a working shortcut, so move it from the desktop to wherever you want to store it. If it refuses to work, then you will need to open the DOS box, and either navigate to the directory and start SPMBT, or better yet write a batch file to do it for you (see DOS help). 5] other points to note when running the game This game is an MS-DOS game; based on code originally written when Windows was a separate application you launched from DOS when required. In particular, its memory manager knows little of modern Windows applications, and can get into conflicts with these. Additionally, Microsoft provides no DOS-compatible mouse driver and sound card drivers with the Windows 95 or 98 CDs. (I found one for my laptop on an old install floppy for some cheap and long gone mouse which was lying about in my desk). Some folk manage simply to play the game from a shortcut on the desktop; others have problems, especially laptop users. Each computer is different, different sound card, video hardware etc. It is often necessary to play this game from a boot disk, the original SP2 and SP3 disks have a utility to do this. This solves most problems, but won't solve them all. This sort of thing was regular back in the DOS days, each game needing its own particular boot disk or menu item in config.sys and autoexec.bat. It's just that most have become used to modern Windows handholding! IF you manage to get the game going from a desktop shortcut but still experience crashes randomly; here are a few pointers to running this game successfully. (It also applies to any other 'legacy' DOS game; the problems are not unique to this product!). The major thing to recall is this is a DOS game and is not happy coexisting with Windows application programs. Always run the game after booting Windows as the first application. DO NOT 'alt-tab' out of the game and do something (e.g. read email) and go back in. Sometimes you will get away with this, often times not. It all depends on how sensitive you PC box is, all installations differ in configuration. Remember, run this game on a 'clean' Windows session only, as the first and only program, and you will tend to be OK. And that bit is in bold, as it needs to be emphasised! Above all, have no background Windows tasks, especially communication-related programs going when trying to run a DOS game. As one example of the oddities of PCs, one user had severe problems, until he turned off some form of hardware state of health monitor program that was running in windows, it periodically checked fan temperature or such like and whenever it kicked in, DOS windows died. If you use the 'active desktop' feature of windows, ditch it, especially if its trying to do point cast stuff or otherwise interrupting the CPU with web downloads. The active desktop is the kiss of death for many DOS apps, and games, and quite a few older Windows applications too. Have no email sessions going either. If your drive is shared on a network and another user tries to access your drive, or a shared printer while you are in a DOS application, this will likely terminate you with extreme prejudice. Detaching from the network is a good idea. The Windows TCP/IP stack (used in network and email apps) seems to be the kiss of death to DOS games. I find the main reason the game will go unstable and crash is having run Outlook Express, on my box, it will happily run at almost any time, but if Outlook Express has run, problems are highly likely. Also, this is especially true if Outlook Express has managed to 'lose its toolbar' as it does sometimes, the toolbar is visible, but refuses to answer, unless you exit OE and restart it. Whenever windows does that strange thing where all the icons change from the 'proper' ones to some weird selection, this is a good time to reboot Windows completely. (At any time, not just when running this app, it means Windows has its underwear in a severe twist memory wise!, plain windows programs will cause this one.) On occasions Windows explorer hangs, and requires to be terminated with ctrl-alt-delete to task manager and terminate it from there. When that happens, often the system tray icons vanish. This is another clue that Windows has gone unstable and is about to go tits up on you, save all work and restart. Again, not just this app, just something Windows happily does, all on its very own. Trying to run the game after these things is about 100% fatal, the Windows memory management system is in a mess. One key background task that can cause problems is virus scanning software, if it periodically scans memory or disk. Read the documentation for these programs, and tune or turn off as required. Also, backups if scheduled in the midst of a game session can cause problems. Some PC boxes will just slow down to a crawl, but others will lock up if a screen saver or background windows task kicks in on top of an MSDOS full screen application. (Some screen savers do not detect the activity of the keyboard and mouse in the DOS session, only Windows mouse and keyboard events!, so think you are off doing whatever and try to start up 'behind' your game). A major user of the CPU and disk space waster exists if you have installed MS Office. 'FindFast' is a program installed by default when Office is put on your PC. Periodically it will scan your entire system for new Office documents, which it then adds to a (largish) database in your c: root. If you ever wondered why your PC slows down to a crawl for a minute or five every hour or so, and have Office (or components, Word, Excel etc.) Installed, you likely have FindFast enabled. FindFast seems to trash this game when it runs so is best removed. See your MS Office help for details. If you do not make much use of the 'Find office documents' item, then its worth removing in any case, or scheduling to a more sensible scan rate at the very least. MS Office also has a start-up program in your start-up folder, this takes up valuable system resources all the time by default. It handles the Office Taskbar etc., So if you never use this, find the shortcut in the start-up and nuke it. If you occasionally use it, then cut the shortcut and paste to your desktop so you can start it when required, e.g. you plan to do a lot of Word or Access work. Otherwise it uses system resources to no purpose. Look at the scheduler for Windows 98, this can launch applications at unexpected intervals if not set up correctly, like scandisk or defragmenting of the hard drive. Anything that can fire up a pop up alert box from Windows can kill the game unexpectedly, for example Noton's firewall, if your network is running and it detects an attack and pops up its warning message dialog. Some folk have an alternative solution for MSDOS games, since modern PCs are sometimes so DOS hostile, what they do is go out to a second hand or pawn shop, and buy an old specification box for peanuts, and use this as a DOS only game machine. Or they had an old 486 or P120 lying about so utilise that machine. This game was written when a 486 66 was a powerhouse, so it may tend to be a little fast on modern processors <G!>. We have provided the slow down and accelerate keys ('[' and ']') for scrolling adjustment in game, but this really is only good for minor adjustments, with lower end chips, say PII 200 or so and below. The best way to slow a game like this down is to use a proper slowdown utility such as Mo'slo.com. (Also available at shareware sites like Tucows.com or shareware.com). Also see the INI file section about the adjustment available there. Set up your shortcut to look like this:
The command line here is 'C:\SPww2v30\mo'slo.com /70 C:\SPww2v30\spww2.EXE', Use YOUR installation path in your shortcut! The /70 says to use the Pentium at 70% speed, which seems OK for my PII 450. Note: Mo'slo is a DOS program, so where you install the game to needs to be in a path with DOS compliant directory naming, i.e. 8 characters maximum, and no spaces in there, OR, use the 'mangled' version that you will see if you use a DOS window, and do a DIR command, with all those twiddle (~) bits. Mo'slo is a shareware product, the registered version provides more functionality. It can be used for any DOS games, not just this one!, register if you pan to use it.
This game is an MSDOS full screen application, and it will tend not to be happy with windows background tasks, or alt tabbing out to run other windows programs . This game is meant to be run on a 'clean' Windows session only, as the first and only program run after a fresh restart of Windows. Some PC set-ups will be able to run this game as a regular windows session, but should you have problems, stick to the above advice. All PC boxes differ, yours just may be a sensitive set up . Unless you are running this game from a pure DOS environment (e.g. with a boot disk) then start the game with a windows shortcut as detailed in Game Installation. Do not simply double click on the .Exe file in Windows Explorer!
I bought FASCAM / MINELET arty but it's not appearing in the Bombardment menu. What's wrong? There is a three turn delay built into the game to stop all FASCAM / MINELET artillery units from appearing in the bombard menu at the start of the game. This prevents a player from using these to box his opponenet into his start line. They will be available for use after turn 2 is completed. Why do the graphics seem washed out? The reason they do not display the same way to some people is because they have not set up their monitor and graphics card to work with DOS. It is very easy to do. If you have wondered why the colours in SPMBT may have seemed a bit "faded" please follow these simple steps. 1] Load SPMBT. Set up a game with both sides the SAME nationality, and select "computer buy" for BOTH sides, and "Human deploy" for BOTH sides. In the deployment of the "rebel" force you will note that these are assigned a black "rebel" flag. Examine the map for the rebel victory hex flags. Adjust the Brightness and Contrast controls on THE MONITOR until you start to see a diagonal line across the "Rebel" victory hex flag.(fig.1) As soon as that diagonal line starts to appear, lower the brightness and contrast until the line just starts to disappear. You now have the game set up. (fig. 2 ) Fig. 1 Fig.2
This MAY now cause ALL of your Windows or Windows based programs to appear either too dark or too light. DON'T PANIC ! The solution is in your Graphics board software. 2] Go to your Windows Control Panel in "Settings". Click on "Display Properties" Almost all decent graphics boards have software that allows you to adjust colour brightness and contrast. Adjust those so that your Windows desktop looks normal again. 3}That's it. You are done. DOS programs ignore software setting for graphics boards and rely exclusively on the monitor settings. Windows programs rely on software setting as the "final say" before displaying a program and override any Monitor setting. This will usually allow you to view each equally well without having to make any further adjustments. If, after doing all of this, you find the game display too dark then by all means adjust it lighter to suit your taste. This is just a guide. Installing Third Party Scenarios Some folk seem to have problems with this process, and 'lose' existing scenarios. Each scenario set supplied should provide this basic information in its readme.txt file, but here is the process. 1) Get your scenario downloaded, these will usually be together in a zip file. If you do not know what a zip file is, you will likely need one go to www.winzip.com and download the utility, it is usable without registration, but nags you after a while. Learn how to use the utility. 2) Unzip the files to a scratch directory, not directly to the \scen sub directory of SPMBT! You do not want to unzip directly into the \scen directory as the supplied scenarios may overwrite your existing scenarios, if the designer has used the same slot numbers as somebody else. [That is why you 'lose' existing scenarios, if your old one was Scen003 and the new one from some other designer is also numbered Scen003] 3) Open up the scratch directory in Windows Explorer, and read any readme.txt file the scenario designer supplied. He should note in this how to change numbers but here is what you do: 3.1) Check the scenario files supplied against the ones already in your \scen files directory, if these use the same numbers, they will overwrite your existing files. If no clash, move them over using Windows explorer in the usual manner. 3.2) If any of the files use the same numbers, say you have a spscn019 set already, then you must manually edit the numbers used in the new scenarios to a disused number in the 000 to 999 range (with leading zeros). You may decide on slot number 42 say (and up, if it is a bundle of scenarios). Simply use the normal Windows file rename process, and change the numeric portion of the file name only entering 042 in the first (if a series) 042 in the second for each file in the set. So the set spscn019.txt (if provided), spscn019.dat and spscn019.cmt get renamed to spscn042.txt (if provided), spscn042.dat and spscn042.cmt. The supplied slot 19 scenario is now ready to be moved over into your \scen sub directory, where it will no longer overwrite the existing 019 set, and will be available in the game in the 43rd scenario slot (000 being the first index). (If you do not know how to rename files, or use explorer, refer to your Microsoft Windows help files.) Only use SPMBT scenarios and campaigns- do not load SP1, SP2, SP3, SPWW2 or SPWaW scenarios or campaign data files into your MBT \scen directory, the save files are not compatible between game versions, but attempting to load 'foreign' data files into the wrong SP version seems to be a very common error. How do I slow the game scroll speed? See the parameters of the ini file, Customising SPMBT section Also, See the game installation section about setting up Mo'Slo (or use CPU Killer or similar slow down utility, search say tucows.com) If you have a Pentium under P166 P166, use the [ and ] keys, repeatedly press to increment or decrement scroll speeds. (For CPU's of higher spec this does not provide much benefit, use a slow down program or use the ini file slowdown parameter). What is a Commando, What is a <insert Unit> See the Unit classes list in the Customising SPMBT below for a list of classes and special abilities etc. Why do generated battles
and campaigns play unbalanced when I use a very small force? What are those " ** "'s I see when I hit an AFV? When a tank is hit and a penetration occurs it does not always cause an outright "kill". Occasionally, depending on the shell size/armour thickness ratio and the survivability rating of that vehicle, you may notice hit messages ending in ***. These are not new, they have always been in SP2 but it was not widely known that this indicates that damage is occurring to a vehicle. We have reworked the code to give more of these damage results under certain conditions. If you see these when your tank is hit you are taking critical damage and/or lost crewmen which affects the number of shots available and overall vehicle/crew performance. Damaging hits can also remove weapons, immobilise the vehicle and so forth (note that unlike the original SP series games, bringing up the information screen for an enemy AFV will not show you that, for example, the main gun has been destroyed for that vehicle!). In PBEM, I never see my opponent's artillery on the playback, just new craters. Unless BOTH of you have 'fast artillery' set to OFF then no history of the artillery barrages is saved in the PBEM file. Play PBEM with fast arty off, both of you, to see the shots and messages in the replay. And ensure you have animation turned on as well, or you will not see direct fire shots either. Additionally, any pre game bombardment in a PBEM (artillery plotted to drop in turn 0), only one side will be able to see the replay, because the game replay code is only set up to replay the one player's last turn, not "both players' last turns, saving a bit of turn 0 through your opponent's turn 1 and then adding that bit on at the front of the next replay". It is therefore best not to use any pre game (turn 0 arrival) artillery in a PBEM game, unless you are willing to sacrifice player 2 playback. Agree this as part of the pre game discussion with your PBEM opponent. My aircraft seem useless, and cannot hit things with guns/rockets. If you see the message "attacking hex" then your plane has not been able to establish LOS to the target hex. This is usually due to smoke and dust in the area, but sometimes it is because the target is tucked away behind a ridge for example. Try to target aircraft, especially if relying on direct fire weapons like rockets, onto targets well out in clear air, and preferably out in the open, on a flat plain as opposed to in a town, wood, or valley. Do not target artillery bombardments and planes on the same target area, this is a major failing of the AI. If you must hit a target in smoke, flames etc., Then try to use planes with bombs, napalm, or PTAB bomblets as these are area fire weapons. Still not as good as a clear attack, but better than random cannon strafing. Remember, very big bombs will kill infantry in the adjacent hexes as well (~1000lbs and more). You will know if you got a good shot since the message will be 'attacking T-34' or similar and a percentage to hit is usually displayed on the yellow bar at the top of the screen. Note that MBT aircraft, unlike SPWW2 planes, may have night vision sights, including Thermal Imagers, which may mitigate the smoke and poor visibility problems of WW2 aircraft that relied on the unaided eyeball Mk1. To try out aircraft tactics it is best to set up a test game. Set up with both sides human player for everything, and give the side you are testing planes the advance, especially if you decide to let the AI run the targets, then it wont move! Go to the Preferences Menu and set up the air strikes item to at least one to ensure you can buy air. Then when setting up enter no passwords, and for the delaying (target) side, buy the sort of targets you want to test against. Set the target side up in interesting arrays, and its often best to set these up as preplanned bombardment targets ('gold spots') for the advancer to save time waiting for strikes to arrive. Now play the game; try out various plane types as desired on target types and arrays as desired. Because you are playing left hand vs. right hand, you can inspect the damage from the target's viewpoint. This method is also useful for testing out AA tactics and units as well. Or pretty much anything for that matter, before jumping off to a bulletin board, try a few experimental tests of your own. Many folk just do not seem to realise that they can in fact play both sides, so as to try things out. I bought a 90mm AA (AT) gun formation with trucks but they cannot pick them up. Some AT gun formations were provided with integral trucks, but the picker will let you choose any legitimate AT gun, howitzer or whatever. In this case there is usually a separate 'Heavy AT Gun/T' formation with 7.5 ton heavy trucks or similar. What can be picked up is a vexed question in SP. Look for the '*' after some guns, read the manual. But the best way to see what fits what is to set up a test game, buy one of about every type of transport and load item, and try it out in the set up phase of the game, then quit before playing. This is especially true of some things like say USA mech. Infantry. You should be able to fit most combinations in to the vehicles some way but do not buy 76mm AT guns for example. If offered mortars, you should stick to the correct 60mm sections, as 4.2 inch mortars are both ahistorical, and likely will not fit, or not leave room for that final bazooka team. There is no real easy way to screen out inappropriate choices (though the new classes for V3.0 will help), learn by experimentation, do not plunge into a game and then find out what lifts what when it is really embarrassing. I cannot spend all my points/ buy any more support troops in a campaign game. There is a limit to the number of units you can buy in total, this has been increased to 500 units per side in version 3.0, over about 130 before. In addition, there is a limit to the total number of formations (platoons formations, and a 1 man sniper formation is a platoon!, not companies). Also, in a beach assault you are limited to about 400 units, as the game needs space for the automatically bought landing craft, and in a river crossing assault, we have left about 90 free units to provide assault raft unit space for deployed infantry assault boats and deployed barges off barge carriers as these need to be created on deployment. In a campaign core, you can have 200 units now. Once you reach either limit, you cannot buy any more units, even if you have a lot of surplus points. The formation limit means that it is best to buy in reasonable sized platoons of 4 or 5, not sections of 1 or 2. However, avoid things like the 10 tank Soviet 'Company in a Platoon' since when things start going bad for this unit, the leader is unlikely to be able to rally that many subordinates. There is an 8cm-mortar platoon and a 12cm mortar platoon, what is the difference? Usually, just the number of mortars (but with the new expanded mortar classes, the OB designer may have utilised these so the heavy mortars are in their own units, now). For example, 6 tubes in a German WW2 8cm platoon and 4 12cm tubes in that platoon, one off each in the battalion support company. Also, the designer may have provided formations using mortar section units (several mortars firing off the same baseplate) as well as individual mortars per unit type mortars. The 'All Formation' key produces unusual results when I try to move a platoon. This button has never really worked since SP1. Do not bother with it. Its only use is when setting an entire formation's range with the 'Y' key. Select 'all', select any unit of the formation set the range, and all the formation uses the range setting. It saves a few extra clicks. Then remember to turn the all mode off before moving anything or you will get a rude surprise. That's the only practical use for the ALL key in SP. By all means try the all formation key a few times for fun in a scratch game, the results are often interesting, but not what you desired even on flat ground. Note that the button was removed, and only the 'A' hot key remains. I think artillery/infantry is too powerful/too weak See the section on 'The Preferences Screen'. Experiment with the values till it suits your idea of 'reality'. How do I call a quick repeat artillery mission? Once the artillery unit has completed its mission it tends to keep its last x,y target location, unless it was manually cancelled, or was an aircraft. Go to the bombardment screen, and press the ID button for the unit. Do NOT click on the map, or you are calling a brand new mission in! press the HE icon (or smoke if that was what was wanted), and the symbol will appear at the last x,y location. Adjust if required, but the time will be much less than a new fire mission from scratch. This is how to do a 'creeping barrage', plot and fire, letting the battery finish, then call a repeat using this technique, and adjusting the line of fires forwards a bit. How do I fire counter battery fires on enemy off map batteries? You (the player) do not, your gunners will attempt to locate off map batteries themselves, and allocate any units in range to CB fires. For a battery to fire CB missions, it needs to be idle (not plotted to fire missions), it needs its crew quality to be good (better than 60 or so, and the higher the better), have HE ammo to hand, and to have equal or better range than the enemy battery in order to be able to reach the target. It also has to pass a chance roll. Off map artillery units range is shown as a number usually in the 200 series or more, 209 is longer range than say 205. Range information is found in the encyclopaedia entry for that battery. How do I recrew my vehicle/Gun etc. ? Once the crew has stopped running away, walk them or transport them back to the same hex as the gun or vehicle they abandoned, and leave them there for a while. Provided their morale is good enough, and the item to be crewed is not too badly damaged, they will mount up. NB, the original crew for the abandoned unit is the only one which can recrew it. How do I get things into the same hex as one containing another unit Whether friendly, enemy or wrecks, select the unit to be moved, then hold the SHIFT key and click into the target hex containing other units. (Enemy units in the target hex may object to this!). Barges will allow you to load from the hex alongside, otherwise units would have had to drive into deep water!. How do I get an enemy squad to surrender? Enter the same hex as the retreating or routed squad, and blaze away, when approximately 2/3 of the crew is gone it will tend to surrender, depending on nationality and morale, though occasionally a squad will run away even from such a pinning attack. Alternatively, provided you are shooting the unit up, and it cannot find a hex to retreat to, it may surrender, i.e. Typically it is surrounded by your units which have shots left AND are in good morale, an enemy squad may run into a hex containing a retreating unit of yours, or just may panic and enter an enemy held hex regardless. Note that rivers for example, can block retreat paths, as can minefields. How do I turn a unit in place? Select the unit, then RIGHT click into a hex which is clear of wrecks, friendly or enemy units in the desired direction then the unit turns, and the unit LOS in that direction is shown by dark and light hexes. Use the clear dark function to remove the dark hexes. Some units like pillboxes cannot turn (other than when being placed in deployment) and barges and other watercraft need to be moved to turn, they cannot turn in place. What is the LOS from this unit? Please refer to the question 'how do I turn a unit in place?' above. How do I destroy a bridge? Use typically an engineer unit with satchel charges, anti tank mines (can represent hollow charge demolition munitions) or a Churchill or centurion AVRE with demolition gun fitted (165mm), and area fire onto the bridge hex. (Z key). It may take several attempts, especially for stone bridges. Very large artillery can destroy bridges, as can aircraft using large bombs if they drop these onto the bridge hex (bridges are valid aircraft target hexes, give a plane a bridge target hex and it will tend to attack that in preference to any bystanders). Generally, crater causing artillery (about 120mm up) is needed to drop wooden bridges, and 8 inch or greater artillery to have a chance on stone bridges. When a bridge collapses, all units on that section are destroyed by falling into the river, and this can be very satisfying when you catch a massive traffic jam of the opposition's units on a rickety wood bridge with some 122mm... How do I deploy a barge or raft? When beside the water, with some MP left, attempt to 'drive' the barge carrier into the water, or 'walk' the infantry squad into it (if it is carrying a raft!). A barge carrier will appear in the water or the squad will transform into a raft carrying itself and armed with the squad's primary infantry weapon. To unload, 'drive' the barge or boat onto the river bank or beach side. If in -1 depth water, barges can now unload into the water if desired. What sort of forces and maps will the computer player pick? The AI pick list code is adaptive, and randomised in places. This gives a far richer AI force structure than in SP2 and SP3 where it got to the point that you could pretty much predict the AI force, given the points allocated. MBT AI pick will be affected by some or all of the following: Battle type (Different if assaulting than defending), points available, the battle date, the particular opponent (e.g. Russian AI pick vs. a NATO country will differ in structure from playing against Mujadeen), air strikes available, AI Tank Heavy switch setting, and sometimes the battle map (may de-emphasise long range ATGW in a city fight and buy more leg infantry and mortars, and less tanks perhaps). The best way to look at what the AI buys is to experiment with test game setups. Select your points, air points if desired and the date and players and also battle type just like a normal battle generator battle with the following exceptions. 1) Set Computer as the player in both cases 2) Select computer buys forces for both sides 3) Set both sides to human deploy Now hit continue. Select human deploy or computer deploy for side 1, and examine what was bought. [If you want to look at AI deployments - use auto deploy, repeat several times to see several alternate deployments] Now exit this side's deployment and examine the second force as above. Finally - in the second force, choose exit game, or you will get to watch an AI plays AI game!. If this happens - hit the space bar and the game will allow you to break in at the next end phase. Repeat the process of examining AI picks at various dates and force levels as desired. When you have done this a large number of times for any opponent pairing, you should have a good idea of what to expect. Also each battle will select a new map and these can be examined as well, as for many nation pairings we no longer limit you to but one battle location as with the old SP2 and SP3 games. Some of the possible maps can be quite rare as well, so you may need to run quite a few test games before seeing these.
This game is a variant on SSI's Steel Panthers II. You may have the original SSI game documentation with your copy of SP2, SP3, or SSI Arsenal, which can provide a useful starting point if you recall that this game is a highly extended version of the original SSI product. If you do not have access to any of these, the basics of the game system are easy to figure out or ask or look at the messages archive at the SPMBT egroup (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SPMBT) for help. The best way to learn the game is to load up a simple scenario and have a go. The following sections are laid out on a screen by screen basis as a rule. Main Screen
Select the 2 nationalities involved by clicking on the appropriate flag on either side of the dial (the green indicator will light to indicate which is current) and then click on the required nation's flag from the palette on the left-hand side. Next page of flags button, this cycles between all three pages of available nations in SPMBT. Battle date, use to set the year and month of the battle. Note that some nation's flags will appear and disappear as time changes, or will change due to political circumstances (Soviet flag to Russian national flag for example). The game restricts the time frame to the lesser period of the 2 nationalities selected, so if you simply want to cycle through from 1946 to 2020, it is best to set both the initial countries to 2 available right from 1946 to 2020, say UK and USSR or USA and USSR, then set the 2 'real' players after setting the battle date. Player 1 goes first, and is normally the human player when playing against the computer. Player is either human or computer (it is possible to play computer AI versus computer AI, if so, use the space bar to break into such a game at the next move end). A human versus human game assumes a Play By EMAIL (PBEM) game, but it is perfectly possible to play on the same PC versus a friend by this method. See PBEM games section. The purchase button determines whether the computer selects the force, or the human player does. Usually left at human for human players. Deploy, selects whether the computer or the human deploys your forces at game start, again it is recommended that the human deploys his own troops. Note that if you take computer deployment, you may find troops deployed outside the legal areas for a human deploy. The auto deploy uses the AI deploy, and it is allowed this. Note that in a human plays human game (PBEM or on the same PC), setting human player 2 as 'computer purchase' does not work, player 2 will always be asked to manually buy his force. Water Conditions, this selector becomes visible if you select an assault type battle, and allows you to select the water conditions (replaces the old water button), including river width where 0 is a sort of part dried up river bed. The Battle Dial. This confuses some new players, click on the red increments to turn the dial icon. This is used to select the battle type. The default is the meeting engagement.
(Note that if you selected the computer to buy your units, naturally you will skip the purchase screens and go straight to deployment)
Select the available units from the list on the left, unit data will be shown only if there is room (some larger companies need much more room in the central column to list their items). The formation's title is shown at the top centre, and its cost in buy points, and how many pennies you have left, if it costs more than the remainder, then only as much as can be bought will be added to the unit list. Note the 2 fields, Morale mod and Experience mod. Some formations (like guards units) will have positive values in these fields, better morale than average or better general experience, or both. These are elite formations, and naturally enough, will cost you more than the same equipment if bought for a line formation. Some formations will have negative values in these fields, such as reserve units. These will be poorer quality than average, and so will cost you less money. These numbers are applied as variations on the current army Base Experience. Units actually purchased will vary both above and below this benchmark figure (see Force value above). So an army with BE of 70, and an elite unit of +10 experience will be about 80 experience level. Aircraft when displayed may have a strafe number (S:N), this is the number of gun passes, a variable introduced for WW2 to allow aircraft with rifle calibre and .50 calibre MG to strafe, SP games only consider 20mm and above cannon rounds remaining for strafing, this overrides it for planes with small MG. Not required for planes with 20mm plus cannon, but some OOB designers may have entered the variable.
Important note. The game knows about 2 types of formation, companies and platoons. A company is a formation that can contain platoon type formations under its command, whereas a platoon is 'flat' and cannot have sub formations. Some OOB designers may have made formations they have titled 'platoon', but used a company type formation in order to have this allowed sub units which operate at distances from the HQ element, Recce units perhaps. Off map artillery is an example of the other way round, often a 'battalion' of artillery is 3 batteries in a platoon type formation. See the cross attachment section for more details.
Once you press done, you will see this screen (unless you chose computer deploy in the main battle generator screen!). The pretty pictures are randomly selected, just to make things more interesting. Your nation is displayed (in case you save and come back later on) at the top of the screen.
In turn 0 of a game (but not a scenario, where the scenario designer has deployed your troops for you as well as planning any pre game bombardment for you) you deploy the forces allocated to you inside your deployment area, and plan any pre game bombardment missions, as well as plotting your artillery quick reaction fire hexes or 'gold spots'. Your forces will be laid out in a line along your side of the map. Pick up and place your troops as desired, however, note that paratroop transport planes get stripped off the map immediately at the end of the deployment turn, so be sure you load those paratroops who will be jumping, or they will just be walking to battle!. You may deploy from your map edge to the deployment line of darkened hexes. Enter the bombardment screen to place artillery QRF points, you have up to 10 of these. Select a deployed QRF point a second time to delete it and then replace elsewhere if you change your mind. Any artillery you plot here will drop in the initial turn, just after deployment (end of your turn 1 for some air missions, such as spotter planes or para drops). Note the delay key available for use when plotting pre game bombardment, you can delay the appearance of missions after the initial opportunity if desired, say if you want your para drop to arrive around turn 10. As many human players get into the habit of lining the roads in their deployment area with convoys of vehicles, in PBEM it is a good idea to liberally dose such obvious assembly areas with a deluge of artillery. (The AI now also knows about this, so those of you new to MBT from SP2 where the AI never fired a pre game bombardment on assembly areas - you were warned! :) Plotting your level bomber and para or glider missions in this phase is a good idea as these can have long delays if called for in an impromptu manner. If you are the defender, use the mines key to lay any mines, dragons teeth and fire trenches you desire using the fortification points you spent in the purchase phase now, or they will be wasted!. Use the X key to show current dug in states, troops do not get to dig in in some places, like marshland hexes, and moving a unit may leave a 'phantom' fortification behind, on deployment end the game will automatically 'press' this for you in any case, marrying the dug in graphics with units. (Remember that infantry who enter a slit trench hex get the benefit, vehicles which move from their initial dug in place cannot reoccupy these, but they can get cover if driven into a fire trench, at the risk of becoming stuck in that hex). Do any cross attaching of platoons in this phase, or reassignment of individual units to other platoons, as you cannot change the command structure after the deployment turn.
Note that you can now unload barges and amphibious transports into the water in the deployment phase of an amphibious assault mission. This allows you to move your troops into the desired carriers pre-game, should you prefer to do this (cross-decking, in naval parlance). Remember to ensure that all are actually in a boat before you finish deployment, troops left in the ocean will eventually drown! Also note the set range button, this can be useful in the deployment phase, especially if you are the second player and do not want your ambushes to give away their positions if defending or delaying. You can now deploy units stacked in the same hex in the deploy phase, should you so desire. Select the unit to place, then shift-click the mouse pointer onto the hex containing another unit in which you wish to stack with. Special note about User Campaigns and deployment, remember that a unit moved to the far right or far left rows will exit the map! User campaign maps are generated from scenario maps, which allow you to set up in the 2 grey exit rows (free deployment), remember to move any troops you deploy there into the main map area on turn 1 or they will depart the battle!. (You can do this with on map forces in order to save them in really bad situations as well) We have made the game preferences button available in the deployment phase as this can be handy sometimes. The Help (? key hot key) will list the deployment basic help, including hot keys.
Note: it is in the deploy screen where you set out your 10 pre planned artillery target hexes (gold spots), and also any artillery plotted now will fall in turn 0, i.e. as a pre-game bombardment (or later if you use the delay key). Any such artillery fires, when complete can of course be fired with minimal delays even if adjusted, later on, select the firing unit on the bombard menu in game, then hit the appropriate ammo button and the battery will aim at the last spot fired on. Therefore, any pre game bombardment is a prime candidate for say a creeping barrage, adjusting each mission minimally and avoiding long delays for impromptu fire requests later. Use the B key to go to the bombardments menu and set these up. Use the B key to plot your air drops here, if you have bought transport planes, once they have been loaded, and also you can now time your barrage or air drop missions,- see New Bombard Screens, and Air Unit handling changes. Note on loading and unloading : Select the unit to be transported, hit L, and then click on the unit to load onto is the best method to use. You can select the transport and hit L, then point at the unit to load as a passenger but this only works for one (1) transported unit! (as if you hit L on a loaded transport, it will firstly unload all its passengers, L is also the unload key for transports, recall!). Therefore, select the unit to load, then L, then point at the intended transport, as this allows multiple passenger units on a single transport, assuming that the intended transport has the lift capacity. Also, in the deploy menu, there is no distance checking from the loader to the transport, unlike in the game itself. Thus, in the deploy phase only, you do not need to place the unit to be transported into the same hex as the transport (alongside for barges and rafts).
This is new to SPMBT from SPWW2 In the deployment turn, when you call up the company structure display, when selecting a platoon type formation (a platoon or a section formation class, not one merely with 'platoon' in its title, in other words, one which shows a 'P' in the HQ display page, not a 'C') you will be allowed to cross attach this platoon under a different company command group. Note that A0, your Battle Group commander, directly commands any independent platoons not currently under other company HQ commanders in his role as commander of the HQ company (A Company).
Main Map Window, where the game action occurs, this can be zoomed (+ and, keyboard keys). Move mouse to edges of the screen to scroll this window. Force Broken text message, if this appears at the top of the button screen, your force has suffered 50% casualties, or 50% are in retreat or rout, or a combination. Your command is in a bad way, and when force morale is broken, morale and rally chances are reduced. Status window, the black window at the bottom of the Main Map, shows the basic data for the selected unit , shots left, maximum range setting, remaining move points, and how many enemy seen. Also printed here is the current game turn and length of the game (funnily enough, we get lots of queries as to 'how to find the game length' or 'what turn it is', here is this information that many players seem to miss..). Game maximum visibility level is also displayed here in hexes. Info Window, at the top, usually red backgrounded, is used to post informational messages. Note that the value of an objective hex is also displayed by hovering the mouse over it. Mini Map Window, Bottom right, shows an overview of the map area. Click on this map to move the main map window focus. If the map size is greater than 80 hexes in Y (North/South) and 100 Hexes in X (East/West), then click on the top 1/4 of the mini map to move up, the bottom 1/4 to move it down, the left 1/4 of the mini map to move left, the right 1/4 to move it right Button Window, at the right hand side. Contains the game action buttons. Flag at the top tells you your nationality, and if an action replay is available from previous activity the LED beside the map turns green. If it is green, clicking it will run the replay. Not all game functions have buttons, and are provided or duplicated with hot keys. Unit Communications Status, On the unit information pane at the bottom of the screen, the unit's comms link status with its superior HQ is now noted. The selected unit shown is 'In Contact' and so will be able to be rallied by its HQ, however if it is out of contact (shown in red) then it can only be rallied by its own leader. Radio contact is OK, but the link is not 100% reliable! Water Speed, Water speed in hexes is now shown in blue alongside normal movement points, as this avoids confusion when a unit with swim speed of say 4 hexes, and land speed of say 12 hexes 'stopped' in water, many users did not realise that swimming speed differs from normal. If swimming, points used for normal movement are considered first, so a unit running cross country 12 hexes to a river, with swim speed of 2 will not be able to cross as it has gone more than 2 hexes before meeting the water. It can move 2 hexes over the water obstacle next turn, provided that it does this as its first 2 MP expended. Units can ford some water hexes (-1 depth) at reduced rate, non swimming vehicles may however bog down. You may therefore be able to unload your assault barges in shallows in a beach assault without going right up to the water edge however the offloaded passengers may take some time to wade ashore!.
Loading and unloading, now, you must be in the same hex as the transport, unless it is a barge or raft which allow alongside loading, as they are typically in deep water. Users often ask how to move a unit into the same hex as another. The answer is to firstly select the unit to be moved, then shift-click onto the hex with unit(s) in it which you want to move into. Users often ask how to turn a unit in place, select the unit and right click in the desired direction on a clear hex and the unit will turn and the visible hexes for that unit will also be highlighted. (Right clicking on an enemy unit will bring up the statistics for that unit, hence right click on an empty hex or one containing friends only to turn or inspect the visible hex region for a unit). Note that we have removed the old 'cheat' whereby if you right clicked on a hex containing an unspotted enemy unit, your unit 'refused to turn', thus giving you 'free' information you should not have had. (Hint, forts can turn in the deployment turn, use this to set up crossing fires from your pillboxes and bunkers in turn 0) Note also that the end turn button is now highlighted in red, this is mainly to make its use more obvious, and for ease of questioning end users who email us for support, as some often get confused between the end turn and exit game buttons. Especially in a PBEM game where the 'exit game' button is actually a 'suspend my current move, I will finish it off later' button, a save in other words. Confused players would sometimes exit with the suspend (up arrow) button, and then send this save off to their opponent, thinking they had 'completed' their turn, nope, requires the RED end turn button to complete a move! We have gone back to the SP1 method of reporting firing ranges as so many yards, (or indirect fire) rather than so many hexes, as a lot of users have asked for this feature to be restored. Also, many new users did not seem to realise that '20 hexes' is a kilometre in this game, 2 hexes are about the length of a football pitch, though the units seem to be alongside. The reporting in hexes, metres or yards is an ini file setting, see the Customising section. For long range SAM and Artillery, ranges of 200 hexes and above are an abstraction of long range, a field gun with range 203 outranges a field gun of 201 hexes range in counterbattery fires. What 201 actually means in terms of actual range is irrelevant. 200 to 255 is the available spread for artillery allowed to be off map units, LR SAM, Anti Radiation Missiles, other long range air missiles allowed stand-off attacks etc. The game will report a range in metres or yards if the ini file setting is not set to 'hexes'. New Bombard Screens, and Air Unit handling changes There have been major changes in the way aircraft are handled in SPMBT as opposed to the way SP2 for example treated them. All air units, barring the helicopter classes are now off map units no longer moved as on map units one hex at a time by the player under 100% human control. Aircraft now belong to the Air Force or higher commands than yours, so are not available in campaign cores or as upgrades. Aircraft missions are therefore now requested from the expanded off map bombardment menu. Note that transport parachute missions, bomber missions and gliders require a lot of pre battle planning, therefore if you do not plot these in the deployment phase you will find that the delays are rather long (though in no way as long as they should be in real terms!). So plot these before the game start!
There is a new Switch To: button which is used to cycle through the various pages of the bombardment menu, there is no longer a single artillery page! Artillery Page Same as before, for artillery, air strikes and the Level Bomber class and SEAD to plot fire missions with. Spotter Page Used to plot air observation plane missions. Set the binocular icon on the spot where you want the spotter plane to circle round, after setting the air entry and exit directions as required. Spotter planes enter after a short delay, as they are 'on call' and fly their mission at the start of your move, therefore any enemy units they spot will remain so during your move. They will fly to nearby the binocular symbol, then circle twice and fly off (if not killed). Note that if part of the circle takes them off map, that ends the current pass, so take care when plotting spotter missions near the map edges. Spotter planes remain available until they are shot down, or are damaged, or in some cases if enough AAA fire is received, they will "Return To Base" prematurely. Spotters will not fly before turn 1 of a game. Spotter planes can be propellor light planes in the early part of the era, or UAV icons in the 1990s or so onwards, all are the same to the game. Spotters are unarmed. Airborne Page This page is where you plot any air transport paratroop drops or glider landings. Remember to set the air entry and exit directions to your requirements before plotting a Landing Zone marker, and to load the troops onto the planes in the deployment turn 0 as well, as unloaded transports are useless! Airborne missions are plotted from turn 1 onwards. The Bombardment Delay Adjustment Buttons (+) and (-) These 2 buttons will only appear on the pre game bombardment plot (Turn 0 of the game). They allow you to plot your artillery, air strikes, spotter planes, or airborne missions to come in on a turn other than turn 0 (1 for some air types). For example, you may want to plot a large barrage of artillery onto a cross-roads that you think your enemy will reach on turn 3. To do this, hit the (+) key until delay is shown as turn 3 on the artillery page, then plot the appropriate batteries, which will now fall on that spot on turn 3, not turn 0 (with a small margin of error in timing e.g. for batteries with low experience). Note: The delay modifier will apply to all missions of all types plotted after you increment it or decrement it. Therefore, for example, after plotting your turn 3 fire mission as outlined above, you may now want to plot some batteries for turn 1. If so, remember to hit the (-) key to reduce the delay back to 1 before plotting these missions. This feature provides an important new tool for the scenario designer that allows for the creative use of fireplanning. One could, for example, reserve smoke screening until just the right moment before the attacking AI force needs it rather than firing on turn zero only. Air Transports And Gliders Transport aircraft and gliders are shown on map in turn 0 pre game deployment, so that you can load the passengers into them. After deployment is finished, they will be stripped off map, therefore remember to load up the appropriate troops, or you will not be able to in the game! Note that we have provided some 'ready made' glider and Airborne units with the appropriate aircraft included, these will be shown on the purchase screen as say 'Para Co. [G]' or 'Para Co. [A]' where [G} stands for glider borne and [A] for Airborne, and perhaps [H] for helicopter transport. Any infantry unit can be put into a transport plane and dropped by parachute, however unless the unit is a proper paratrooper class (class type, not unit name, like 'Para Inf-AT'), then expect horrible casualties on landing as these are not properly parachute trained troops. When plotting Para drops, try to drop your men in clear open hexes, not in woods, on slopes, or in deep water for example or casualties will be bad. Gliders will also prefer to land in wide open spaces as well. Remember that gliders, transport planes (and level bombers) will drift 'off target' depending on troop quality (experience) and particularly in low visibility, less than 2 KM, 40 hexes, getting worse down to dark night or fog type conditions (2 or 3). gliders are more likely to have a rough landing in poor conditions, or to crash land, and also recall that smoke is treated as fog, landing gliders blind into smoke is not a bright idea! gliders do not like to land in minefields, and treat dragons teeth as anti glider obstacles, which are rather fatal to them. Parachute dropper planes, and bombers make one pass and then "Return To Base", gliders are considered destroyed after landing. Transport planes which are shot down may manage to get some paratroops out the doors, and aborts due to damage may simply drop the troops as they exit. Transports with multiple Para squads will not always drop these all in one 'stick, there may be a 'hang up' and therefore a gap. Note : Air transport formations do not reduce the number of available air strikes, but you will need at least 1 available air strike to buy them. Therefore if all your air transports 'disappear' it is likely because you bought all the air strikes you were allocated as fighter bomber, spotter or bomber missions, delete one of these, then your transport plane units should return, finally when done, re purchase that last air strike!. New air types: SEAD aircraft (Wild Weasel), A new class formed to split off those air units armed with Anti Radiation Missiles from those strike aircraft not so equipped, mainly to aid the AI use of same. In the SP game engine aircraft equipped with ARM will automagically launch their ARM at any enemy on map AAA unit equipped with an AAA radar (FC 100 and above), even if the player plots them to attack any other target, then run in to strafe that unit. If the enemy has no AAA radars, these are of limited use. Splitting these off to an SEAD class ensures the AI does not fleet buy them, and helps end user select planes by type. Hint, if buying SEAD planes, buy these before any other air strikes, as the bombardment starts from the top of the listing, therefore your SEAD planes will enter ahead of the strike planes if plotted together. SEAD planes will however do better against located enemy radar equipped AA units than if plotted 'blind'. Circling Gunship, This is armed with cannon and MG type weapons only. It circles the target hex in a similar manner to the spotter type, but area fires several times into the target hex (with some scatter) as it circles twice. Only of use against enemies with no serious AA defences!. Level Bomber, This class goes to the area selected and then offloads its bombload and goes home. It does not select individual enemy ground units to target, it is an area weapon. It flies at very high altitude, above some light SAM, and AAA. Bombers only use iron bombs, napalm/FAE or CB type weapons with range of 1 hex . In other words, used for area fire only (arclight missions), bombers with PGM like JDAM would be normal attack aircraft in game terms.
This is the screen that comes up when you select one of your units, and then hit the space bar. At the top in green is the unit ID, formation letter (s) followed by the unit's number in that formation. Then the unit's actual name, you can click on this and change to whatever you want. (NB, the name is what is reported to the other player in PBEM games, e.g. when a hidden unit of yours fires, so creative use of this facility can provide misinformation!, hint: the reported firing weapon info stays the same, so rename to something with a similar weapon). The '0' unit of a formation (platoon) is the commander, but in campaign cores, should the leader have been destroyed, a subordinate can take over, see the formation info screen and note the 'H' beside a unit for the HQ unit. A is the first formation, and A0 is the battle group commander, you! Beside the name is a graphic representing his skill level, a set of 'corporals stripes' indicates that he is an average experience unit, sergeant stripes for veterans (80 experience) and USA type 'top sergeant' icon for elite units (100 experience). In the columns below the unit name is some primary game information:
The unit leader's name is shown under the picture, pressing on this with the mouse lets you rename the leader, if desired. Also shown is his statistics:
If this unit is in a campaign core, these variables will tend to increase over time, or if the leader was destroyed, a new leader will be generated, or one of the subordinates will take over the formation command. Kills help experience to rise in a campaign, so it is worth 'blooding' even those units which normally live in the rear, if you find the opportunity in a campaign for them maybe to go forwards and sweep up a few stray crews etc. NB, firing your weapons at a real enemy is a major help to experience increases, as is being shot at 'for real'. Campaign core units switched to a new speciality keep their old statistics, so a tank traded to an SPA 105mm indirect piece is less good at that job till it has tried it for some time. Air unit height is shown for planes, you alter altitude for these items on this screen, for on map air units (helicopters) Changing altitude costs MP, so you may not have enough to climb. Press continue to exit this screen. Formation-Related Screens & Info The Headquarters Screen (HQ Screen)
This screen gives you an overview of your force composition. A button is listed for each formation, pressing this or selecting on the list of units on the right shows basic formation data in the white panel on the left hand side of the screen. A button allows you to put certain formation types under computer AI control, should you so wish, and another allows you to assign waypoints for this formation to follow, if subsequently set to computer AI control. Ignoring organisation of your forces is a common beginners mistake. New players sometimes wonder why their units run away a lot, and when you examine their forces, they have individual squads off a platoon spread randomly over the map, often kilometres apart!. Remember that an SP hex is 50 metres, about half a football pitch. 20 hexes is a kilometre. Units which have no radio will have to keep within 250 metres or so of their commander. Radios will work across the entire map, but are not 100% reliable. Remember that for radios to be useful communication aids that each party to the conversation requires a radio set!. (NB as time goes by in a campaign, your more experienced veterans will tend to pick up radios someone left lying about, even if radio chances are low for the unit in the OOB). Formation leaders get a higher chance of receiving a radio, as do artillery observers. In SP, radios can represent field telephones (in fortifications for example). Keep your formations together, and keep your platoons close to their company HQ so that he can rally them if required. Consider moving the company HQ nearer to an ongoing battle to rally the troops better, or to provide leader skills to subordinates. Consider the same for the battle Group HQ unit as well as he can rally anyone else, or provide skill rating boosts to anyone else. Do not risk higher level HQ more than necessary, however. LHS Info Panel
The Central Pane
Right Hand Pane This shows the details of the formations whose buttons are currently on the page. Shows a letter beside the leader unit showing his command level. Shows damage status for all units in formation. Use the next or previous buttons to scroll the listing. Click on a listed formation to make it the currently selected formation (show details in the LHS pane). We have increased waypoint count from 10 to 125 per formation. Waypoints are normally of more use to a scenario designer than a human player, as only formations under AI control follow the waypoint list. However, a human player can sometimes find limited usage of AI control, and waypoints, useful. Waypoints are useful for plotting long approach marches, for example in a winter assault when your leg units have a long march ahead of them before contact can be expected. Use of waypoints to march your units across a tedious approach and into a forming up area where you will take over control. This can be useful to save a lot of tedious unit shuffling. They also can be useful to move a reserve formation across the back of your area sometimes in defence or attack. Or to set up a unit to "patrol" an area. Waypoint usage Toggle to computer control then set your waypoints for that formation There are a few very important things to remember when setting waypoints 1] The AI will GENERALLY try to move your units over TWO waypoints and stop just before the third waypoint IF it has enough Movement points to cover that entire distance. 2] if you space the waypoints too far apart so that the AI is unable to fulfil all the requirments of 1] the AI will start the next turn by removing the next Waypoint from the route you have created then try to catch up to where it "should" be. 3] Do not spread the formation you are setting waypoints for all over the map ! 4] ANY change to the formation structure of either side of a scenario WILL CANCEL ALL waypoints for both sides so waypoints must be the very last thing that is done. A change to even one unit of either side cancels ALL waypoints 5] When you initially set you waypoints the "first" waypoint to the game is the one right in front of your formation leader. When it moves, that first hex that will count as 1 waypoint crossed. However, tests have shown that the first turn does not always follow the "rules" so experiment on your own. 6] You can place more than one waypoint in a hex. The AI will "generally" count three waypoints per turn as "movement" so if you want a unit to stay in one place for a few turns before moving, a useful "rule of thumb" would be 3 waypoints per turn in one hex. 7] If enemy units are encountered along the route you have planned the AI WILL engage in combat rather than follow the waypoints. When the threat is over the formation will attempt to catch up.( See 2] above ). A long delay coupled with waypoints that are far apart may mean that your formation does not end upfollowing the route you originally planned. We are still finding out new things about the way waypoints are handled by the game so please experiment. One thing to remember is that this system ensures that no two games will be exactly alike and this is a good thing as it keeps scenarios "fresh" longer when the same thing is not happening over and over.
This screen shows the company organisation in more detail. The company HQ platoon troops are shown at the top of the screen, with a button underneath for al platoons under the company's command. Use the platoon buttons to show the details of that platoon on the RHS of the screen. Platoon HQ leader units are highlighted in higher intensity white. Unit current status is shown in coloured highlighting, red for bad states!. Use the Exit button, or escape key to exit this screen. The cross attachment button appears for any currently selected platoon which can be cross attached to another company commander if you so desire, but only in game turn zero (deployment), hence, not in scenario games which are fought in the organisation as set up by the designer. A list of available company HQ to which this platoon can be transferred to is displayed (if any). Press the desired CHQ button to select as a target, then press the Assign to this CHQ button to transfer the currently selected platoon under command of the selected CHQ and automatically return to the company details screen. Press the Exit button, or hit the escape key to exit without cross attaching the currently selected platoon. Platoons that are part of your campaign core cannot be assigned under command of support troops CHQ, but support platoons can be attached to your core companies (for this battle only). You cannot assign away the HQ platoon of a company. Some Company designated formations (especially artillery) will be actually platoons for game purposes, but you may find some formations titled platoons that use a company structure, for example large recce platoons which need to operate widely spread in sub-units. These 'platoons' cannot be assigned under another company HQ as they are themselves companies in game terms, though thier subordinate sections can be. There is a limit of about 60 units in a formation in the OOB data, however this relates to the game build formation code (purchasing a company). You can cross attach any number of units under a company commander using this facility once actually inside the game. Individual units can be also cross attached to other formations on the deployment turn zero as well, see the deployment screen for details. There is a limit of 10 items in a purchased platoon, but again, once inside the game you can attach individual units to a platoon beyond the 10 unit buy limitation, however it is highly not recommended as the platoon commander may have problems rallying that number of subunits if disaster happens!.
This screen is available from game turn 1 onwards. It is used to show current details of all units. Press the unit button to jump directly to it on the game map. Only weapon 1's data is shown here. Red is generally bad news or off map, yellow for warning and white for OK with green for passengers. Destroyed units show their full points value, which will be credited to your opponent as part of the Victory Point Calculation at end game.
All SPWW2 and SPMBT maps are interchangeable. Any SPWW2 maps can be brought over to SPMBT and SPMBT maps can be used in SPWW2 Terrain Types
With all bad terrain, the faster the vehicle has travelled before hitting this, or the more MP expended whilst in such terrain, the greater the sticking chance. Aircraft ignore underlying terrain, except when helicopters try to offload passengers in some hexes, woods and buildings. Helicopters expend MP to climb or descend. Paratroops landing in terrain other than flat or easy going types tend to suffer more landing accident casualties than normal. Trained paratroopers (proper Para Unit Classes) suffer less accidental casualties on landing in any terrain than ordinary non para trained troops. Troops air landing in deep water tend to drown, as do gliders landing in deep water. Gliders landing in obstacle type terrain tend to get smashed up, destroying themselves and passengers, try not to land gliders in woods, buildings and so on. Para and glider landing zones therefore should be plotted in large flat areas of open ground.
"The battlefield is a scene of constant chaos. The winner will be the one who controls that chaos, both his own and the enemies.", Napoleon "Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence.", Buddha : Last Words "The principles of war, not merely one principle, can be condensed into a single word--`concentration.' But for truth this needs to be amplified as the `concentration of strength against weakness.'. . . Here we have a fundamental principle whose understanding may prevent the fundamental error (and the most common)--that of giving your opponent freedom and time to concentrate to meet your concentration.", Liddell Hart - The British Way in Warfare (1932) "Choose the line (or course) of least expectation. Exploit the line of least resistance. Take a line of operations which offers alternative objectives. Ensure that both plan and dispositions are elastic, or adaptable. Don't lunge whilst your opponent can parry. Don't renew an attack along the same line (or in the same form) after it has once failed.", Liddell Hart's maxims "The way to avoid what is strong is to strike what is weak.", Sun Tzu One main point to note is the game scale, which is 50 metres (yards) per hex. That is half the average football field, and just because a tank or squad looks 'very close' that is just the scale of the unit icon. 2 units even in the same hex can be well over 30 yards (metres) apart, nowhere near point blank! Look at 2 tanks in adjacent hexes in the game, they appear to be 'side by side', however, place them about 10 hexes away from each other to see what the actual 1/1 scale of 2 vehicles 50 metres apart looks more like! 2 units in the same hex can be 50 yards apart, not necessarily at hand to hand combat ranges. Players often get confused since the vehicle scale and the ground scale differ. In the SP series games, you are organised into units (called formations in this game) of platoon strength, or sub platoon sections of detached tanks or support weapons acting as a platoon for our purposes. The commander of this unit is the '0' unit of that formation (In campaign games if the original leader dies, this is not always the case, look for the 'H' telltale in the unit list screen). This leader provides rally opportunities for his subordinates but when 'command' is set to on in the preferences (and only absolute beginners turn this reality setting off!) then he must be in contact with his subordinate in order to command him. For units with a radio, this can be anywhere on the map. Provided the radio is working at that point in time. All radios have a chance not to be in contact, and so are never as reliable as voice range communications. Some units (especially infantry) have no radios and must keep voice contact, this is only reliable to 3 or 4 hexes (200 metres). A common fault many players have is to spread their units in a platoon formation kilometres apart, they are then out of command control, and if they get a reverse, they will then tend to run away a lot. Therefore, keep your leaders closed up to the men as much as is possible, "A piece of spaghetti, like a military unit, must be lead from the front.", General George S. Patton Frontage for a leg infantry platoon (or tank platoon without radios) when advancing would be 150 to 200 metres (3 to 4 hexes), a tank platoon (with radios) might stretch to 400 to 500 metres (8 to 10 hexes). Keep to these sorts of frontages and you will be better off. Also, bar the Russians who tended to advance a complete company in a single line, platoons would tend to advance either '1 up' or '2 up' in UK parlance, though 2 up is normally kept for the assault. With a typical UK platoon of 3 rifle sections ('squads' in US English) and the platoon HQ group, '1 up' means that the point section is at the tip of a triangle pointing at the enemy (the axis of advance of the platoon runs through this unit), the other 2 at the base of the triangle, sides of the triangle about 300 to 400 metres long, platoon HQ in the centre of the triangle, behind the point section. This is a good formation for the phase of the battle known as the 'Advance to Contact', as if the lead section comes under fire, the platoon commander, who is following behind, but not too close as to become involved in the fire fight has 2 uncommitted sections in reserve to bring up to the firing line, or outflank the enemy with as he sees fit. Also, the front section might put a 2 man patrol scouting 150 metres or so ahead of itself, these guys could come from the point section, but most likely from one of the held back sections in order not to reduce the strength of the point unit. (In SP terms, buy a patrol or scout unit as we cannot split sections) 2 up is the reverse of this with 2 sections out front, the platoon HQ behind the centre of these, and one section behind the platoon HQ as the reserve. This formation is the normal assault formation used to fight through an enemy position, more firepower to the front, but the platoon HQ and rear section available as reserves. In the actual formal assault, as opposed to more open battle, the platoon frontage would be 100 metres or so (2 hexes) but the platoon HQ would hang back 100 to 200 (2 to 4 hexes) metres from the front sections, the reserve section a similar distance behind the platoon HQ section. Platoons are put together under the command of a company. This is an HQ unit (which is itself a platoon formation in game terms, but which cannot be cross attached), and the company commander, if in contact with platoon units, can also rally these if required. Organising yourself in companies, rather than buying lots of individual platoons, is therefore a good thing. Now that MBT allows you to cross attach platoons in the deployment turn, you should utilise this to assign a reasonable company structure, lots of independent platoons under the A0 will have problems if many of them need rallying, as they have no company commander to provide rally before calling on A0. Again, UK companies of 3 platoons tended to advance in a triangular formation of platoons '1 up' if advancing to contact, 2 up if fighting through a position. Distance between rifle platoons could be 300 to 500 metres (6 to 10 hexes). Company HQ again central to the triangle, any support weapons attached would be deployed as required where their weapons would give the best cover. Tank squadrons (companies in USA terms) would tend to have more troops (platoons in USA) and these tended to operate paired up, A troop would hold still to cover B troop advancing, then A troop would 'bound' through (or by) B troop's new position while B troop returned the favour by halting and providing covering fire (if required) but at least 'overwatch' (reaction fires in SP terms). Tank squadrons would therefore advance as a parallel set of moving paired troops, any spare troop(s) and the Squadron HQ following behind, at a distance close enough to provide support, but not get involved in the initial firefight when the front troops bounced the enemy. Rifle sections in a rifle platoon would bound forward covered by the rest of the platoon at the halt as well. This is what the military call 'fire and movement', where one (or more) stationary subunit covers the movement of another subunit, either by being ready to fire, or in an engagement, by actual fire. If the formation adds something a bit more 'fancy' to this mix, like using the fire and movement together to aid the placement of an assault (or flanking fire) sub unit off to an enemy flank, you then have 'fire and manoeuvre', where the fire and movement is used to gain some form of positional advantage (usually to the flank and or rear) of the enemy, rather than merely closing straight at him. Back to game detail, still on command and control here. Your commander must be in a fit state to rally subordinates, if he is retreating or worse, then he has no command influence, so you may need to rally him first! Also, before you do rally subordinates, check the commander's status, as if he fails a rally on a subordinate, that is all his rally chances gone for this turn, it can be embarrassing to have rallied all your men back to 'ready' status, and be about to move forwards to find the platoon (or company!) commander is 'pinned' because you forgot to rally him a little in the process. Do not just select units and hit the 'R' key is the motto really, look at all the subunits of a formation, and their current state and plan your rallying. Also note that rallying comes from the top down, hitting the R key on a squad will use the Company Commander's rally attempts then the Platoon Commander's before trying the squad sergeant's. This may not be what you wanted, again, think a bit before poking that R key. When a unit fails to rally itself or its subordinate, its rally chance statistic is set to 0 until next turn, this confused some end users who thought the unit was a hopeless rally case, no, zero just means that it has failed a rally attempt, and so cannot rally again this turn. The number returns at the beginning of the next move. The A0 unit represents you, it is the Battle Group Commander. A0 can rally any subordinates in the chain of command if in contact, just like a company commander. You may therefore want to keep your HQ close to the main action, without exposing him to too much danger to add heart to the key part of the fight. If you buy too many independent platoon sized units, apart from their own platoon HQ units, then A0 will be the only source of rally (if in contact), and will soon run out of rallies, another good reason to buy companies as these have the company commander in the chain of command (and usually nearby) to provide rally opportunities. Marry up most independent platoons under any company commanders you have by cross attachment in the deployment turn, or AO will run out of rally fast. I mentioned fire and movement up above, and the fact that the cover unit would be at the halt. In WW2, with primitive fire control equipment compared to today and no real stabilisation systems that were any benefit to moving tanks, firing from a halt as almost a necessity if you wanted to hit your target ( unless the gunner was very, VERY good ). Even with modern stabilisers firer movement severely penalises chances to hit, if you move too far. If you want to hit, especially at long ranges (over 1500 to 2000 metres, 30 to 40 hexes) then you should fire from the short halt (having moved the move before, not this one), and if you really want to hit, fire from the full halt (having been stationary the entire previous move as well as being stationary in the current move). In SPMBT, you are considered fully stationary only if you neither moved this turn, nor the previous game turn (in technical terms, if you expend >= half your MP in a previous turn, a 'moving fast' flag is set, you need to spend a complete turn not having expended half or more MP to reset this flag). Movement will also break any fire control solution you have made on the target ('target lock') unless you have a tank with a stabiliser, which can move whilst keeping target lock, so long as the LOS between the firer and the previously engaged target is not broken. Charging to point blank range (1 hex or 0 hexes) can help, but do not expect some sort of 'gun to the head' shot, your chance will be better, but you will have movement deductions, and if the target tank itself was moving fast then the speed of his travel is taken account as well (even if the target appears to you to be 'in the same hex' for your entire move, if he was trundling along at 30 MPH at the end of his turn, he is still considered to be doing 30 MPH. If you closed on him at 20 MPH, then the speed difference calculates at 50 MPH, a fast passing shot even if at 'point blank'). Also, since movement takes fire opportunities (and vice versa), you could end up with but 1 or 2 shots at close range and end up stranded with no MP left, and your opponent can repeat the medicine on your tank. However, if no enemy is expected, then you can operate a 'travelling overwatch' where the 2 units merely move relatively slowly, thus leaving some shots for opportunity fire if the enemy reveals himself. Leave full speed (half or more MP expended) travel for when out of contact with the enemy, as it severely reduces shots, and accuracy too and makes infantry more vulnerable to shell or direct fires. In combat, everybody slows down and becomes more cautious about movement. This is especially true for your infantry, for,unlike vehicles, infantry travelling fast are more vulnerable than those at the halt (who are considered most protected, by taking use of the available cover, and going prone), or at least travelling prudently (1 hex or less). When needing to advance infantry under fire, or you expect at any point that hidden enemy will likely open up, do not move over 1 hex if you can possibly avoid this. Do not run around with your infantry at full speed when being indirectly shelled either, fast moving infantry is more vulnerable to HE fires. Slow down to 1 hex in shelling, if you must move at all. Moving 1 hex covers both a short quick dash, or a cautious creep, in game terms. In especial, note that troops who have just dismounted from a transport are considered to be bunched up, and moving fast, especially if the transport has moved a lot. An enemy burst which hits a squad dismounting in a hurry will tend to do a lot of damage, so it is best to dismount in a covered location from fire, and close in on foot with the APC providing close cover. Only do a charge and dismount into an area you can guarantee (as much as anyone can in warfare, brown stuff happens, in combat more so than in any other aspect of life) that there is no real enemy resistance! If your APC has smoke dischargers, consider using these before dismounting. If you need to advance infantry under enemy fire, to close or to retire or whatever, then you should first use (hopefully) stationary squads (or better yet AFV in close support) to fire covering fire at all known enemy infantry and MG, in the hopes you will shut these down, before you move the squad. Even if you do not pin the enemy or worse, the added suppression all makes it more difficult for him to hit the squad(s) you later intend to move. Use the Z key to fire suppressive fires into hexes you suspect have unlocated enemy infantry in them, if you have shots to spare (it is not very effective). If you have MMG or HMG, then when advancing, wait till these are set up and ready, and try to keep them outside rifle range whilst using them to hose down any located enemy (or leave with some unexpended shots for opportunity fires on enemy firing in their turn). Infantry do better at close quarters combat, 1 hex or hand grenade range, but the problem is getting them there when advancing, especially if the enemy infantry is dug in. Simply walking up to an enemy defence line tends not to work that well, as WW1 proved. To advance against an enemy line, you must gain fire superiority over him, 'winning the firefight', or use a small force to pin him while some others approach by an indirect route round a covered flank, say. Or use smoke as a form of human made cover. If your opponent is a human, surprising him can be very good as it can demoralise him (your human opponent), the AI is not subject to emotions. (Human players can be fooled too, try dropping smoke and artillery on a spot you do NOT intend to attack a human opponent at, and maybe a 'feint' probe to back the deception up, then once he is focused on the wrong location, come in from elsewhere with the main strength). The British army uses a rule of 3 when it considers what can advance on what, if all is equal (in other words before you throw in massive doses of supporting artillery, and factor in a supporting platoon of MBT, say). Thus a single enemy section (squad) is what a rifle platoon of 3 sections is expected to be able to take out, an enemy platoon therefore requires a company to remove, and an enemy company defending is a battalion level target. So, to advance against 1 defending enemy squad, you will need roughly 3 of yours in the firing line pumping away at it (if this is a pure rifles versus rifles battle, 1 supporting tank in the mix, if the enemy has no effective AT helps the attack marvellously, this is what tanks are for in reality). However, assuming no support or little, form a firing line at about 400 metres (8 hexes) and start shooting, and inch 1 squad one or two hexes forwards at a time as the enemy allows, and repeat till the firing line has advanced 1 hex. Repeat this process until you have closed with the enemy squad and then assault it, or it runs away, or your troops all get pinned down if the enemy had a good battle and not you. If the enemy is isolated, perhaps fire on him with the base firing line whilst moving one section round his flank if there is cover to eventually close assault him with bayonet and grenades. With an enemy platoon in the defence, you will need a rifle company. Consider a tank troop (platoon) about half a rifle company if it is acting in close support and there is no enemy AT defence, but only if the tanks keep their distance from the enemy, or they may get brewed up. This especially the case when longer ranged infantry AT weapons like the RPG became commonplace, prior to the introduction of Chobham and ERA type armours. In this case, dismounted infantry support is a must for your armour, and you should try not to approach your tanks or APC within about 5 hexes (250 metres) of healthy unsupressed enemy riflemen equipped with RPG or Carl Gustav type AT launchers. In real life, for a platoon to eject 1 enemy squad from its position can be expected to take 20 to 30 minutes (10 to 15 turns), and an hour if it does not go too well. In SPMBT, this will not take quite as long. Modern armies have more APC available than was the case in WW2, just remember that the main thing an APC brings to the infantry is increased mobility, and some protection against bullets and shell splinters. APC are not MBT, and if hit by serious AT weapons they will brew up and the passengers will be toasted. APC should try to advance via covered routes as much as possible, and if used for fire support, keep beyond effective enemy infantry hand held AT weapon ranges if possible (>5 hexes). APC are very useful in the defence if you use shoot and scoot tactics, firing on the advancing enemy and then breaking the contact and motoring off to a new position further back. When defending or delaying, if your infantry have APC mobility then consider advancing into no-mans land in the initial phase of the battle and setting up ambushes there, if the terrain and/or visibility permits, then using delaying fall back tactics to win time, after all, time is the key thing in defending, try to slow the attacker down as far away from the objectives as possible. When attacking, use this mobility to avoid and bypass the defence as much as possible, try to get into the enemy rear and then fight your battle as a defence of the objectives you have now taken. "There is one kind of robber whom the law does not strike at, and who steals what is most precious to men: time. ", Napoleon. "Go Sir, gallop and dont forget that the world was made in six days. You can ask me for anything but not time.", Napoleon. "Time is everything. Five minutes makes the difference between victory and defeat.", Nelson. Tanks should take out enemy MG positions and bunkers first if they can. This is of course what the tank was invented for in the first world war, and it is the same in AD2000. The tank's part of the job is firstly to neutralise the infantry killing weapons, while staying clear of the AT guns. The infantry side of the bargain is to neutralise the AT weapons like ATGM and RPG. They also provide close cover for the tanks against infantry assaults. In close country, infantry should move first, and keep a hex in front of the close support tanks. Use artillery to plaster all suspected enemy long range AT weapon firing areas, or place smoke between these and your troops provided the enemy has no access to TI sights. Tanks tend to attract fire. If you ever see pictures of infantry huddling close behind an AFV for its cover, then these are likely to be inexperienced troops (or conversely the experienced sort who know exactly when a tank is useful to use as cover, and exactly when to not go to close to the thing!). On the battlefield, tanks are very visible things, and everyone pops off at them. They also tend to draw indirect fires, which is a very good reason for supporting infantry not to bunch up close to the things. In SP terms, 'collateral damage' gets handed out to units in the same hex as a target, both extra suppression, and also casualties. It is therefore not a good idea for a squad to try to cohabit the same hex as another unit, especially an AFV. (It is also not a good idea to stack squads on top of each other either). If a miss occurs, then there can be a near miss situation where the weapon 'sparkler' goes off in an adjacent hex to the intended target, and this causes collateral damage to any squad in that hex. Collateral damage is mostly on soft targets like trucks and squads, but the occasional hit may button up an AFV not directly targeted. Pure tank units can do reasonably well in wide open desert or plains country, especially if enemy infantry obliges by moving around so they can be more easily spotted. However, tanks charging around where the infantry is waiting for them will tend to suffer, even a squad with hand grenades can manage to get on top of a tank and drop some where it hurts! Infantry with RPG type AT weapons can mince pure armoured units up for breakfast, especially in close terrain like cities and woods. Even if the tanks have ERA or Chobham type armours, the infantry will eventually break tank treads or shoot into weak spots, like into the top armour. Even if you are a 'tankie' you will need some infantry about to help you out in the close stuff, and to help find infantry ambushes. A tank with an infantry squad spots better with the extra eyes provided by the riders, and if it does blunder into an ambush then the riders may be able to defuse the close assault, by acting as a form of 'reactive armour', but usually at a severe price to the riders, who are an easy target bunched together on top of an AFV. Any hit on the AFV, especially an artillery or aircraft strafing attack, is very unhealthy for the infantry dangling off it. Infantry are only given protection by proper APC type classes of vehicle, riding a tank or SP gun, they are outside waiting to be turned into 'people pate' by any stray HE round or MG burst. Infantry is your main arm of decision, and artillery is the second. Armour is just self propelled close support or AT artillery, after all. Your tanks are there primarily to help the infantry take and hold their objectives, by removing any enemy armoured threat, then beating up the infantry killing weapons with main gun HE and MG fires. A tank with no main gun HE is an extremely limited item, as the British found out in the Second World War with no HE ammo issued for their earlier vehicles. This is especially the case if the enemy in question does not oblige by bringing armoured vehicles along to the party, and relies mainly on light infantry. Armour however comes into its own as a weapon of exploitation. Tanks real targets are the soft and juicy rear echelon troops found deep in the rear of the enemy lines, after the armour has exploited a breach in the enemy defence to run riot as much as possible. Again, these tend to be soft targets, so any MBT with no HE round is limited use, though HEAT and AP can kill soft vehicles. If your opponent allows you to loop an armoured force round his flank then you should utilise that opportunity to overrun his artillery lines, destroy his ammo dumps and trucks etc, before attacking into the objectives from the rear. Mobility is a prime asset of armour, just like the horsed cavalry of olden days. Stationary horsed cavalry was useless cavalry, and in modern era, stationary tanks will tend to find themselves plastered by the enemy artillery, which in the later part of the era will have armour piercing bomblet type rounds as well. If your enemy operates tanks which are significantly better than yours in the tank killing area then you should not plan to fight his tanks head to head with yours. Use other means, such as dropping large quantities of indirect fire on his armoured formations, both to get some effect on his tanks, but mainly to drive away the important pieces, his supporting infantry. Once his infantry has been separated from his tanks, they become vulnerable to close infantry assault from yours.. Cover him with smoke if he has no TI, and close with engineers or AT equipped infantry, even squads with no decent AT capability can make tanks unhappy (retreat) with unsuccessful close assaults. Meanwhile your lesser armour can utilise the indirect approach, most tanks have weak side armour, so manoeuvre or tempt him into defensive 'fire sacks' where you can engage him in the flank or rear, preferably at close quarters. . If your infantry assaults cause enemy tanks to flee, you will often find this opens his rear arcs to parting shots from your overwatching armour. If all else fails, pour lots of non penetrating shots onto him, this can cause his tank to run away, and if you get a disabling track hit, a crew with bad morale will often bail out when the tracks are shot away. When planning a breakthrough assault, the Soviets use one gun tube per metre of frontage as their 'norm' for an effective level of artillery neutralisation of the enemy defences, and this would be over a front of 4 to 10 kilometres. That is 50 howitzers or mortars per SPMBT hex! However, these 50 tubes would not all fire on the one target hex, as there would be a mix of fire blows on enemy positions and suspected positions or forming up areas, as well as a barrage on the front itself. The British would consider a defending enemy rifle platoon a battery level target, that is 2 troops (platoons), and would plan on at least 5 minutes, but more like 10 of fire before considering the target neutralised. Therefore, assuming the platoon is all inside the artillery battery's fire zone (say a 200 metre circle, 4 or 5 hexes) plan on one battery of 6 to 8 guns, firing for effect (ie on target!) for 3 to 6 turns or so to neutralise (not destroy, just neutralise, reduce in combat efficiency by 50-75%) the enemy before sending the infantry in to sweep the mess up. Of course, the assaulting infantry has to be able to get in within a move or so, so needs to be close to the falling shells. In war, safety distances are less than in peacetime, be prepared to take some 'friendly fire'. Naturally, mechanised infantry or tank riders can attack from further out, but will suffer if not all the enemy in the target area are neutralised (in game terms, pinned or worse). If the enemy is dug in, budget in a factor of 3, either 3 times as many guns (i.e. a British Artillery Regiment (battalion to other armies) of 3 batteries), or 3 times the time of fire preparation for the same result. In other words, where artillery is concerned, quantity is what counts. Artillery is a brutal, club like weapon, and if you have it, lay it on thick if you want a useful effect. Dropping one SP howitzer on one spot and another on another spot 300 yards away, and so on, through an entire M109 battery of 6, is only going to provide harassing levels of fire. If the target is worth shooting at, drop all 6 M109 on the same target hex. Mortar sections of 2 or 3 tubes are not therefore killing weapons, but can be useful especially if the fire is observed, to pin an individual squad, or annoy enemy ATGM teams. Once ATGM become common, your artillery becomes a prime method of neutralising these weapons, especially if primarily infantry types fired on foot, but ATGM vehicles tend to be lighter armoured and so more vulnerable to HE fire, and get slaughtered by AT bomblets. Do not bother to wait for these to fire, identify likely good firing positions for long range AT weapons, and smoke these off from your advancing troops or shell likely firing positions as policy. In SPMBT, observed fire will drift less off target, Observed means the directing officer can see the impact hex, so try to have observers in the correct position to overwatch the fall of shot. Observer teams and FO vehicles also have shorter artillery delays when calling for fires, and thier high skill in artillery means the scatter will be less than say an armoured platoon commander controlling the fire. When you get access to ATGM, these outrange the old WW2 AT guns considerably. In the advance, use these to overwatch the defending armour and pick them off at long ranges. In the defence, pick off enemy armour at long ranges. Do not tie yourself to one position, as the enemy will eventually bring indirect fires in on you. Use shoot and scoot type tactics, provide APC or even jeeps to relocate foot ATGM teams to new firing positions, or use light vehicle ATGM units (and helos are just extremely fast ATGM equipped tank destroyers). ATGM supply is limited, so consider ammo resupply units up near the front line to cycle ATGM missile units through for replenishment. Later MBT with Chobham armour or ERA and so forth reduce ATGM effectiveness considerably, but advanced top attack ATGM and double charge ATGM redress the balance somewhat. When fighting against a human, assume he has ammo trucks somewhere behind his ATGM line, or near to his gun lines, and plaster around these with artillery, as an exploding ammo unit is a satisfactory thing to see, and the collateral damage may take out units alongside them whilst in the process of recharging their ammo. "The power of an air force is terrific when there is nothing to oppose it.", Winston Churchill: The Gathering storm, 1948. Just remember that planes are flying artillery, quantity is a big factor here as with tube artillery. Having a flight of 2 planes will not tend to tip the balance much, but 12 flights can be dangerous, especially if you bring them in in large wave style attacks to reduce AAA factors, do not use planes in penny packets except to annoy another human player, or to gain recon information from the pass. Aircraft with cluster bomblet ammunition can be extremely devastating, provided you select the right sort of bunched up group target. Hold these in reserve till you identify a bunched target array, try not to waste them on individual targets surrounded by open space. Modern aircraft with missiles can be very dangerous indeed. All air strikes increase in lethality with little or no credible enemy AA weapons, e.g. guerilla type armies were severely outclassed by small COIN type planes, until shoulder fired SAM became more readily available. Modern anti air guided missiles can be very dangerous to your planes, so plan on suppression of enemy air defences (SEAD) as the first few missions flown, try to locate his SAM and remove these, if you have time, use artillery to shoot into areas where enemy SAM were located or suspected, to keep their heads down before flying more missions. Use scout planes, helos nosing around the battlefield and on map ground recce units to try to spot the enemy air defence locations. The best anti SAM weapon is a tank overrunning its position, just like the best AA weapon is a tank parked on the enemy runway!. LR SAM ammo tends to be limited, so as with any other weapon, assume the enemy human player has invested in ammo trucks to reload these, and has them handy, so search around the position with artillery barrages, looking for secondary explosions as these blow up. Consider holding back your fixed wing air in a game till later on , when ground troops, artillery and helo units have reduced the SAM threat for your air force. Attack helos, or troop carrying helo units used properly are very effective anti SAM assets. Of course, a human opponent may assign some rifle units (and perhaps shoulder fired MANPADS) to guard his rear area artillery park against helo desant tactics!. If the enemy is weak in AA defences, you may have a field day with your planes. "Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.", Sun Tzu "A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.", George S. Patton, Jr. Your most effective weapon is always your battle plan. Any player with no plan, who just dumps things on the board and pushes them about is merely reacting to events, see what Sun Tzu had to say about that several thousand years BC in the quotation above!. A player who has a plan can impose his shaping of the battle onto anyone without one, a human opponent with no plan is rather like the AI! You require a plan, even a simple one like 'I will go around the left flank, then down the objective line', or you are putting yourself at a severe disadvantage even against the AI, which does have a rudimentary plan of its own. "Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy.", Sun Tzu Attempting to ascertain the enemy's strategy, and then foiling this is a primary way to win especially against the human opponent, the AI has a very simplistic 'plan' if it can so be labelled at all !. A few units running loose in the human enemy's rear zones can cause severe distraction, with this perhaps dislocating some or all of his strategy, should he not have prepared a reserve for such an eventuality. Doing the unexpected to human players can put them in 'shock' which you can then exploit. A good ambush deployed forwards in 'no mans land' ahead of your front line in turns 1 or 2 when delaying or defending is good for this as many human opponents will consider that area 'free passage' and charge along at full speed in it. "Passivity is fatal to us. Our goal is to make the enemy passive.", Mao Tse-Tung Against a human player especially, try to impose your plan onto his, in order to make him reactive to your actions, in other words you get inside his "Decision Cycle". Being reactive instead of active is not good, the AI is a good example of a mainly reactive player. However players who defend by simply sitting dumbly in place and not manoeuvring will become passive even to the AI, which will start to gain advantage from this, by bypassing your positions, and ranging its artillery in onto your immobile forces. Always keep a reserve of about 1/4 to 1/3 of your force held back and uncommitted, hopefully a reserve of mobile hard hitting stuff, this is a good tasking for tanks, especially fast 'cavalry' tanks like the Soviet ones. Use the reserve to exploit any gap your front line forces create, as a counter stroke to any unforeseen enemy action, to counter attack, or to flank around the main battle and come in from an undefended direction. Try not to commit the reserve too early in the battle, wait till the enemy is fully engaged and cannot easily move to counter it. If you do use the reserve, try to pull another formation back to create a new one. Against human opponents, invest in some cheap dismounted rifle units to provide security by guarding your rear area artillery and SAM parks from enemy helicopter desants, or fast forces running loose after outflanking your troops. "The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes but few calculations beforehand.", Sun Tzu Above all, never fall into the trap of under rating the enemy in your mind, even the lowly AI can pull an occasional rabbit out of the hat. A human opponent may deliberately be playing dumb at game start, in order to lull you into a sense of superiority that he intends to take advantage of later. A human PBEM opponent is quite capable of playing a few battles against you in 'dumb' mode, simply in order to learn your style, without giving his own away. When playing in a competitive league or ladder, consider registering as a second 'persona' and playing this one as a 'newbie' against regular league players before the next ladder starts. Play at that level, to learn their styles, rather than to win. Use that knowledge when the league or ladder is started. Unfair?, recall Sun Tzu says that all war is based on deception. One person I knew playing SPWW2 PBEM would rename say his Nashorns as 'Tiger 2' as these both had 88 L71 guns, so when firing from a hidden location and still unspotted, false ID was given to his opponent!. "Despise the enemy strategically, but take him seriously tactically.", Mao Tse-Tung "Pretend inferiority and encourage his arrogance.", Sun Tzu. Various Military Quotations, in no particular order "It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations", Winston Churchill: My Early Life (1930) ch. 9. Some random sayings, which may contain a pearl or two of useful knowledge!. Use for learning purposes, or to bore your acquaintances (or both)!. "Engines of war have long since reached their limits, and I see no further hope of any improvement in the art.", Frontinus, 90 AD "It is right to be taught, even by an enemy.", Ovid "Adherence to dogmas has destroyed more armies and cost more battles than anything in war.", J. F. C. Fuller "Every art has its rules and maxims. One must study them: theory facilitates practice. The lifetime of one man is not long enough to enable him to acquire perfect knowledge and experience. Theory helps to supplement it; it provides a youth with premature experience and makes him skilful also through the mistakes of others. In the profession of war the rules of the art are never violated without drawing punishment from the enemy, who is delighted to find us at fault.", Frederick the Great "Man is the fundamental instrument in war; other instruments may change, but he remains relatively constant. . . . In spite of the advances in technology, the worth of the individual man is still decisive. The open order of combat accentuates his importance.", US Army Field Manual 100-5 "Man is the fundamental instrument in battle. Nothing can wisely be prescribed for an army . . . without exact knowledge of the fundamental instrument, man and his state of mind, his morale, at the instant of combat.", Ardant du Picq The human heart in the supreme moment of battle is the basic factor , Ardant du Picq "They fail to consider as a factor in the problem, man confronted by danger. Facts are incredibly different from all theories.", Ardant du Picq "War is not an affair of chance. A great deal of knowledge, study, and meditation is necessary to conduct it well.", Frederick the Great "The difference between the professional and the conscript-based army is that the former half-train their officers and then give them to a highly-trained sergeant to finish off officer training. The latter, lacking in long-service sergeants, train their officers to the point where they can train the sergeants.", N°113, August 1996, p.94. British Army Review "No state has an inherent right to survive through conscript troops and in the long run no state ever has. Roman matrons used to say to their sons: "Come back with your shield or on it." Later on, this custom declined. So did Rome.", Robert Heinlein "The patriot volunteer, fighting for country and his rights, makes the most reliable soldier on earth.", Stonewall Jackson "It is impossible for Westerners to understand the force of the peoples will to resist, and to continue to resist. The struggle of the people exceeds the imagination. It has astonished us too.", Pham Van Dong "Men are seldom born brave but they acquire courage through training and discipline, a handful of men inured to war proceed to certain victory; while on the contrary numerous armies of raw and undisciplined troops are but multitudes of men dragged to the slaughter.", Vegetius (3rd c. AD) "No plan survives contact with the enemy.", Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke. "[Blitzkrieg is] The art of concentrating strength at one point, forcing a breakthrough, rolling up and securing the flanks on either side, and then penetrating like lightning deep into his rear, before the enemy has time to react.", Erwin Rommel "Tanks are easily identified, easily engaged, much-feared targets which attract all the fire on the battlefield. When all is said and done, a tank is a small steel box crammed with inflammable or explosive substances which is easily converted into a mobile crematorium for its highly skilled crew.", Brigadier Shelford Bidwell "All action takes place, so to speak, in a kind of twilight, which like a fog or moonlight, often tends to make things seem grotesque and larger than they really are.", Carl von Clausewitz. "Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. The difficulties accumulate and end by producing a kind of friction that is inconceivable unless one has experienced war.", Carl von Clausewitz. "The difficulty of accurate recognition constitutes one of the most serious sources of friction in war... War has a way of masking the stage with scenery crudely daubed with fearsome apparitions.", Carl von Clausewitz. "The military machine--the army and everything related to it-- is basically very simple and therefore seems easy to manage. But we should bear in mind that none of its components is of one piece: each piece is composed of individuals, every one of whom retains his potential of friction. ... A battalion is made up of individuals, the least important of whom may chance to delay things or somehow make them go wrong.", Carl von Clausewitz. "Many intelligence reports in war are contradictory; even more are false, and most are uncertain.", Carl von Clausewitz. "It is even better to act quickly and err than to hesitate until the time of action is past.", Carl von Clausewitz. The art of war consists, with a numerically inferior army, in always having larger forces than the enemy at the point which is to be attacked or defended. But this art can be learned neither from books nor from practice: it is an intuitive way of acting which properly constitutes the genius of war., Napoleon "Intuition is often crucial in combat, and survivors learn not to ignore it.", Col F.F. Parry, USMC (Ret.) "Intuitive decision-making and mastering this profession are one in the same.", Lt. General Van Riper, USMC. "The enemy resembles us. Therefore, he needs to be approached not as an assembly of 'targets' to be destroyed one by one; but as a living, intelligent entity capable of acting and reacting.", Martin Van Creveld "The inevitable never happens. It is the unexpected, always.", Lord Keynes "Nine-tenths of tactics are certain and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pond and that is the test of generals. It can only be ensured by instinct, sharpened by thought practising the stroke so often at the crisis it is as natural as a reflex.", T.E. Lawrence: The Science of Guerrilla Warfare. "No matter how enmeshed a commander becomes in the elaboration of his own thoughts, it is sometimes necessary to take the enemy into account.", Winston Churchill "When the enemy advances, withdraw; when he stops, harass; when he tires, strike; when he retreats, pursue.", Mao Tse-Tung "Hit hard, hit first, hit often.", Admiral Halsey "New weapons require new tactics. Never put new wine into old bottles.", Guderian "Whether in attacking, counterattacking, or defensive tactics, the idea of attacking should remain central, to always keep the initiative.", Nguyen Giap "In all honesty, we didnt achieve our main objective. As for making an impact on the United States, it had not been our intention-- but it turned out to be a fortunate result.", (General Tran Do, on the 1968 Tet Offensive) "A piece of paper makes you an officer, a radio makes you a commander.", General Omar Bradley "The terms leadership and command are often used as interchangeably, which does disservice to the understanding of each concept. Command is a functional process and, therefore, unemotional, calculating and analytical. Leadership on the other hand, is a lot like love, because it deals with personal relationships, and these must be lived to be developed. Command is not an art or personal style, but a military science and process, a synergistic and cerebral application of equipment, tactics, weapons and men to achieve a defined military aim. Leadership, on the other hand, could be expressed as visibility and contact. A platoon commander is 95% leadership and 5% commander; he should really be called a platoon leader. A company commander is still highly visible and in direct man-contact, but he also has command tasks such as organising fire support, co-operating with tanks, controlling logistics, reporting to higher headquarters, etc. Let's say he is 50% leader and 50% commander. A battalion commander has restricted opportunity for direct leadership of men, but he is certainly a visible authority. Let's say he is 20% leader and 80% commander. Above this level, leadership is less than 5%.", Major-General N.G. Wilson-Smith, PPCLI (paraphrased) "Ubi concordia, ibi victoria" [Where is the unity, there is the victory.], Roman proverb "Never lose contact with the enemy! An objective, at junior combat level is usually a geographic feature that tactically is advantageous to own. In attack, when captured, it is not a resting place for tired, frightened soldiers. It is a base from which to exploit the success of the assault. By continuing movement toward the enemy, he is compelled to disclose his reserve defensive position and the pattern of his defensive fire. Such knowledge is essential to higher commanders if your initial success is to exploited. If contact with the enemy is not maintained, a program of patrolling to find him must be developed and a long drawn-out and costly process that is. It was most apparent in Korea where "bug-outs" rather than "planned withdrawals" were the order of the day.", Colonel J.R. Stone, DSO and Bar, MC, CO of The Loyal Edmonton Regiment in World War II and CO of 2 PPCLI at Kapyong "Never lead forth a soldier to a general engagement except when you see that he expects victory.", Vegetius MESSAGE FROM THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON TO THE BRITISH FOREIGN OFFICE IN LONDON,- written from Central Spain, August 1812 "Gentlemen, Whilst marching from Portugal to a position which commands the approach to Madrid and the French forces, my officers have been diligently complying with your requests which have been sent by H.M. ship from London to Lisbon and thence by dispatch to our headquarters. We have enumerated our saddles, bridles, tents and tent poles, and all manner of sundry items for which His Majesty's Government holds me accountable. I have dispatched reports on the character, wit, and spleen of every officer. Each item and every farthing has been accounted for, with two regrettable exceptions for which I beg your indulgence. Unfortunately the sum of one shilling and ninepence remains unaccounted for in one infantry battalion's petty cash and there has been a hideous confusion as to the number of jars of raspberry jam issued to one cavalry regiment during a sandstorm in western Spain. This reprehensible carelessness may be related to the pressure of circumstance, since we are at war with France, a fact which may come as a bit of a surprise to you gentlemen in Whitehall. This brings me to my present purpose, which is to request elucidation of my instructions from His Majesty's Government so that I may better understand why I am dragging an army over these barren plains. I construe that perforce it must be one of two alternative duties, as given below. I shall pursue either one with the best of my ability, but I cannot do both: 1. To train an army of uniformed British clerks in Spain for the benefit of the accountants and copy-boys in London or perchance, 2. To see to it that the forces of Napoleon are driven out of Spain. Your most obedient servant Wellington" "A risk is a chance you take; if it fails you can recover. A gamble is a chance taken; if it fails, recovery is impossible.", Field Marshall Erwin Rommel "He, general or mere captain, who employs every one in the storming of a position can be sure of seeing it retaken by an organised counterattack of four men and a corporal.", Colonel Ardant du Picq "Gentlemen, you may be sure that of the three courses open to the enemy, he will always choose the fourth.", Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke to his staff "Never interrupt the enemy when he is doing something wrong.", Erwin Rommel "What difference does it make if you have two tanks to my one, when you spread them out and let me smash them in detail?", Erwin Rommel, to a captured British officer in Libya, November 1941 "When the situation is obscure, attack.", Guderian "Only study of the past can give us a sense of reality, and show us how the soldier will fight in the future", Ardant du Picq 1870. "The study of history lies at the foundation of all sound military conclusions and practice", Alfred Thayer Mahan 1914. "Theoretical knowledge is of no use if it is not supplemented by positive practice. You must train yourself to select terrain and make dispositions; you must reflect on this subject; and then theory, reduced to practice, makes all of these operations skilful and easy., Frederick "The important thing is to see the opportunity and to know how to use it., de Saxe "Tactics, the evolutions, the science of the engineer and the artillerist can be learned in treatises much like geometry, but the knowledge of the higher spheres of war is only acquired through the study of the wars and battles of the Great Captains and by experience. It has no precise, fixed rules. Everything depends on the character that nature has given to the general, on his qualities, on his faults, on the nature of the troops, on the range of weapons, on the season and on a thousand circumstances which are never the same.", Napoleon "History is a catalogue of mistakes. It is our duty to profit by them.", Liddell Hart "The purpose of history, is to learn how human beings react when exposed to the danger of wounds or death, and how high ranking individuals react when submitted to the onerous responsibility of conducting war or the preparations for war. The acquisition of knowledge concerning the dates or places on which certain events transpired is immaterial . ", Patton "To learn that Napoleon in 1796 and 20,000 men beat combined forces of 30,000 by something called `economy of force' or `operating on interior lines' is a mere waste of time. If you can understand how a young, unknown man inspired a half-starved, ragged, rather Bolshie crowd; how he filled their bellies, how he out-marched, out-witted, out-bluffed, and defeated men who had studied war all their lives and waged it according to the text books of the time, you will have learnt something worth knowing.", Field Marshal Earl Wavell "For heaven's sake don't treat the so-called principles of war as holy writ, like the Ten Commandments, to be learned by heart, and as having by their repetition some magic, like the incantations of savage priests. They are merely a set of common sense maxims, like `cut your coat according to your cloth.' `a rolling stone gathers no moss,' `honesty is the best policy,' and so forth.", Field Marshal Earl Wavell
The game ends at about the number of turns given for a game or scenario. Consider the number of game turns an indicator only, except for PBEM games and scenarios. The game will end early if one side is thoroughly routed, or completely destroyed, and the other side has gained all the victory hexes. The game (apart from PBEM games and scenarios) will if the number of turns has been met, check the objectives held and grant victory, but it first makes an 'engagement check' to see if healthy forces of the enemy are reasonably close to any disputed hexes. If it decides the objective is in dispute, it can add extra turns onto the notional game length. This is an added feature that SSI put into later builds of SP2, please do not write in reporting this as a bug, it is not, it is a design feature, and is mentioned in the SP2 readme files. End Game Map Review
We have added an additional button to allow you to view the map as it stands at the end game, viewing both players' units. (This information is withheld if you surrender (not PBEM) as otherwise it would have provided a wonderful 'cheat', save game, 'surrender' and review the enemy, then reopen with this intelligence of his forces and deployment).
"REVIEW' is shown at the top of the map, your opponent's units and minefields are all now displayed (note the mass of red symbols on the right of the mini map). You can select enemy units and view their stats, the next and previous keys will cycle you through the side you have chosen, so if the British player here selects a Russian unit, it will cycle through the Russians as and until he reselects another British unit. If you open up a 'finished' save game you will be able to see the end game display, however if this is a PBEM game, please remember to zip up the game files and send to your opponent before reopening the save game to gloat over it <G!>, as otherwise the game can 'forget' who was playing who for the purposes of the end game messages and video sequence play.
A scenario is a pre made game, ready to play authored by someone else (it could be you!) in the Game Editor. (If you have not yet read how to play a normal game, refer to In-Game Play above for how to play, and read all sections between there and here.) When you select the scenario page on the main menu (this is the default game entry) you will see a list of the available scenarios, there can be up to 999 of these, so use the next and previous buttons on the screen to scroll through them. When a designer creates a scenario, he can produce an explanatory text for this, if so, it will be displayed in the centre of the screen, and if long again you will be able to scroll through the scenario description. Read this, as the scenario designer may have important information in there, for example he may have set the scenario up only to be played by one side as the human, the other always as the computer. Or he may have designed this scenario to be played between two humans, in this case the balance of the game will likely be poor if played with one side as the computer, as it has insufficient advantage over the human in terms of points, say. Or, he may have some suggestions as to which reality settings to use for this game, using different ones may destroy the scenario balance. (See the preferences screen for how to set preferences). He may also note which version of the OOB files should be used, for example he may have designed using a custom set. Important note, using different OOB files from those the designer used can have unpredictable effects! The designer may also give you some hints as to how to achieve victory conditions, as the maker of a scenario can alter the victory points achieved for taking objectives, or even the game pieces themselves. For example in a convoy scenario, do not be surprised if the designer has made your trucks worth say 300 victory points each, and not the regular 3 or 4 points, for these items will in this case be items to keep preserved from loss. The designer of the scenario makes all the decisions about forces available for all sides, their placement, reinforcements and so forth. He can edit individual game pieces as well. Do not be surprised if the game starts with a pre game bombardment that he has programmed in, both artillery and air strikes. Note also that the scenario designer decides the type of battle, just because your mission in a scenario is an 'advance', the scenario designer may have deployed the AI forces dug in. Your input here is to choose sides, unless the designer has stated for the human not to play one particular side, and then play through the situation the designer has made for you. Scenarios are available in many places on the net, such as at the Wargamer www.wargamer.com , or at the many other Steel Panthers and wargames sites available on the net, do a web search on 'Steel AND Panthers AND scenario' (read your search engine help to see how to do an AND search, otherwise you will get lots of sites on metallurgy!). In addition, the new SPMBT discussion forum at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SPMBT is a place to find scenarios as well as discuss the game. In a campaign, you select a starting core force of units, and command these, with the help of support forces, through a series of battles. As you progress, your core troops will gain experience, and you may be able to purchase better equipment for them as time progresses, and success brings you purchase points to repair or upgrade your veteran troops. In SPMBT there are now 3 campaign types. The campaign generator, which is the old SP2 style campaign. Here, you chose your nationality, up to 3 opponent nations, start time and number of battles, and terrain category. Although seemingly limited, this engine is good for a short campaign on a particular theme. The Long Campaign. Here you fight a campaign based on a historic war, with the enemy forces determined historically by front and date. (None implemented in Version 1 preview edition) User designed linked scenario campaigns. Here a scenario designer links a series of scenario games to cover a specific campaign. In this game we provide a campaign editor, but unlike the one in SP3 , which was restricted to a dozen or so battles in a linear sequence, ours allows multiple campaign threads depending on the result of the last battle. Unlike in SP1 and SP2, where campaigns were written into the code, you can design campaigns of your own. (No user campaigns supplied with the Version 1 preview edition).
When you choose the campaigns button on the main screen the display changes to one as shown above. Saved games and scenarios buttons will take you back to the main screen at those sub screens, in other words exit you from campaigns mode, same as the cancel button. Encyclopaedia will take you temporarily to the encyclopaedia screen. Help will bring up the in game help text. Preferences will take you to the preferences screen. Cancel will return you to the main screen. Generate will take you to the campaign generator screen Long campaign will take you to the long campaign menu when implemented in later editions Edit Campaign will take you to the user campaign editor. Start will run the selected user linked scenario campaign on the campaign list shown here. There can be up to 999 user campaigns in the list, these are linked scenario situations created by scenario designers, or yourself, via the campaign editor. Use the next and previous buttons to scroll the list. Explanatory text comes up in the centre of the screen.
This screen generates an SP2 type random campaign where you select the nation you wish to play, time frame, approximate number of battles and up to 3 historical opponents. Select default to use the SP Camo generated battle locations for the appropriate opponent pairs, or one of the 'generic' terrain types if you wish say always to fight on the plains or in forests. Be careful not to use an enemy or friendly force beyond or before it historically appears. This generator does not perform much of a 'sanity check' as it is for what ifs or for fighting in a specific small sub section of the war, really, or to play 'what if' campaigns, say Finland vs Japan. Player 2 will be your primary opponent, you will see more of that nation, less of player 3 and less battles against player 4. Player 2,3, and 4 can be the same or differ at your whim, but selecting out of area opponents will give you a ping pong type campaign where you may be say, fighting on the North German Plain one battle, and in deepest Vietnam the next (USSR with VC in your opponent list, say!). Default, you can select only a terrain type of a limited type, but this is highly not recommended as the SP Camo battle location code is designed to generate different battle locations, for example, the USSR versus the Mujadeen between 1979 and 1988 will produce historically appropriate locations, taken from the chronology in Lester W Grau's book 'The Bear Went Over The Mountain', USA versus the Warsaw pact generates Southern German and Bavarian battle locations, UK vs the Pact in Northern Germany. Note that the number of battles selected for the time available affects the 'jump' between battle dates, selection say UK plays USA with start of 1946 and end date 2020 with 10 battles, will have skips of several years between battles more than likely, with the AI forces buying new up to date equipment each time, but your core having to upgrade antique kit from the buy points you earn. However, maybe 15 battles in a given single month long campaign would truly reflect a Warsaw Pact vs NATO hypothetical WW3 scenario!. Campaign Difficulty Level setting. This toggles between various difficulty settings to allow you to set the campaign more to your liking, here it is set to 'harder', with a reduction in 10% to the amount of buy/repair points you will be allocated after a successful battle. (Does not apply to user campaigns as these are set by the designer of each such campaign) Important Note, the date maxima and minima are 'locked' by the maximum and minimum date of the short timer nations, if any are selected as one of the 4 participants. For example, if one of the 4 is an OOB that stops in 1967, then the end date will not advance beyond 1967. The default pair of UK and USSR are both 'long timer' OOB, it is best to set your campaign time using 2 long timer nations so that all eras may be selected, and then, once you have determined the campaign date, select your opponents and player nation. National flags will turn on and off and change graphic as you change the date, if a flag is not present, you have gone beyond that short timer nation's start or end date. Insufficient time to develop for version 1. Should be some in place in version 2.
Note that there was insufficient development time to provide any user Campaigns in Version 1. Version 2 will have some, and it may be that data files for user campaigns appear on the Wargamer or at the MBT Yahoo group before version 2 is released. Select the desired user campaign from the list on the left, then press start, just like playing a scenario battle. You have no input as to force or nation selection, just in buying your core. Note that the designer can write a 'locked' user campaign, where the upgrade and support and core points are not able to be overwritten by the user preferences you have set, he should make you aware of this fact in the campaign intro text that appears in the centre of the screen on selecting the campaign list item. If the points are locked, this helps the designer to ensure that if he designed for say a 400 point core at the start, then users cannot ruin the campaign by deliberately starting with say a 2000 point core to have a 'cake walk' i.e. To deliberately wreck the campaign balance. (Since the scenario forces are fixed, unlike in the generated campaign games where the force is chosen per battle as a ratio of your core plus support troop points). Note that the designer can write the messages on each exit condition for each battle, and introductory text for each scenario. Pay attention to these messages as they could convey useful information. Also note that in user campaigns, the victory points left remaining unspent at the campaign end may be part of the overall victory allocation as well as the number of decisive victories, drawn battles and so forth, to further reward skilful players who do not suffer massive losses that require massive repair, and who do not spend too much on upgrades or new forces. The scenario designer will note this in the introductory text for the campaign, if it applies. Campaign Games, General Points The repair and upgrade screen appears at the end of every completed battle, but it does not appear after special battles, counter attacks and so forth, which you must fight with your core in its battered condition, but special battles are better to win, your core troops gain more experience from these, and you get more buy points.
Now, in SP Camo campaigns, you do not repair and upgrade your core forces at the end of the last battle unlike in SP1 and SP2, you upgrade and repair as part of the start process of the new battle. Thus, unlike before, you are buying kit which is in date for the battle, and not possibly having bought old stuff being transported forward in time with outdated stuff. (The WW2 long campaigns could jump over long inactive periods, e.g. Germany from France 40 to N Africa 41, less of a problem with the post war historic long campaigns, when implemented). The repair screen has been upgraded. Your true force value is shown, remember that a veteran core force tiger 1 at say 110 experience will be worth much more than the book value of a tiger just bought at 70 experience points. The encyclopaedia points values are only valid for 70 experience crews! The time line is shown on screen to give you an idea of when you are at in the war. Fix all, fixes all units, as before, should you have enough repair points. Change, as before, but with enhancements. The upgrade paths for campaigns have been changed, and some troop types are allowed to 'cross over' the boundaries, unlike before. For example, a howitzer can become a SP gun, and an SP gun, being an armoured type, can be transformed to a tank. So a tank can become a SP gun, then an anti tank gun, should you so desire. Aircraft types are not allowed in cores. Expand Core, you can now spend repair points on buying new forces to expand your core. There is no longer any requirement to buy a load of cheap armoured cars or trucks etc, to hide in the rear and upgrade to 'real' combat units later. Buy a core that can contribute from battle 1, and add new recruits later. Review, this allows you to bring up the in game statistics screen for a unit so you can look at its data, and also change its leader's name and so on. Encyclopaedia, new, to let you refer to this in this phase. One point that needs explaining, when you change a unit it tends to lose several valuable experience points as this equipment is considered new to it. If you change a unit several times in one session, you have sent it away on far too many conversion courses, and it will be dazed and confused by all those instructors, so lose experience several times! Moral : only change a unit once in this screen, do not run around changing your mind, you will also lose the buy points as well. Remember that experience gain is not linear in campaigns, low experience goes up relatively quickly, but higher experience is hard won. It can therefore be a very bad thing to upgrade your best troops after each and every battle, as they may not have regained the points lost in upgrading for several battles to come. Special campaign battles, at the end of the game, you may be ordered to counterattack, and sometimes you are allowed to decline, sometimes you are not. Also, the enemy may counterattack you, and again you may not be given the option to avoid this. In a special battle, you do not get the opportunity to repair and upgrade, nor will you get as much support points. The gain in winning such a battle is that you get a larger handout of experience points and also build points at the successful conclusion of the special battle. The extra chance of experience can be vital if your core is mainly very high (100+) experience veterans, as these will usually progress upwards at a slower rate. But remember that you will have damaged units in play, you may wish to leave these 'cripples' on your base line perhaps so that they do not get wiped out, for example any rifle squads depleted down to 2 or 3 men, especially veterans. Air strikes and battle points in scenarios, Air strike preference is totally ignored by all scenario games, and is determined internally, the air strike preference value is reset to XXX on starting any campaign type game (including continuing with a saved game). For non user campaign campaign games, the preferences buy points for player 1 are used as the total max buy for your initial core, and are then reset to XXX for both players before your support troop purchase in any campaign game set up. Therefore the AI buy is always in the correct ratio to the value of your core plus any support troops bought, you need not spend all the support points if you do not want to, for example in a defend scenario, every support point you spend will grant the AI 2.5 times the amount spent, a 200 point rifle company bought by you in support in the defence grants the compute 500 purchase points. User campaign points are determined by the designer, he may 'lock down' the initial buy points, as well as determining the support points for and buy points rewarded for each battle scenario node. In a user campaign, air strike determination can be entirely decided by the designer, or left to use the normal determination. Experience is hard won, protect your experienced men. Playing By EMAIL, or Against Another Human You can play another human player, either remotely (via EMAIL) or on the same PC ('head to head' or 'hot seat' play). There are 2 versions of PBEM, secure and unsecure. The difference is that for a secure game, you enter a security password, and for an unsecure game, you do not enter a password. That is it, but a secure game has a few extra implications which we will touch upon later. A secure game is used to play another person, usually remotely via an exchange of EMAIL, or is useful in a head to head game on the same PC if your friend and yourself need a 'no peek' game as the game is to be played over several visits to your place by your opponent. By using a password, the owner of the PC cannot sneak a look when his opponent has left. An unsecured game, without a password, remember, is useful mainly for a local head to head session where the 2 players will be together through the entire session, e.g. a game done in one evening. Unsecured games can be sent via EMAIL as well, should you trust your opponent not to sneak a peek! An unsecured game can be saved in any of the regular game save slots. An unsecured game can be saved in several slots, should you so wish, just like a normal game against the AI. Transmission of Files to Your Opponent (Remote Games-Unsecured) Non secure games are saved in the SPMBT\Save folder.
Each game consists of 3 files, spsvNNN.dat, spsvNNN.cmt and spsvNNN.aux. These 3 files MUST be transmitted to your opponent as a group! It is best to open a windows explorer session and to navigate to the \save directory, ensure that you use 'view/arrange icons/by name', this will keep the files grouped together by filename, thus making your task of selecting the correct set of 3 easier.. Here we select game number 12 but, since the files are indexed from 0 (zero), this is the 11th save game slot in the actual game, remember to deduct 1 from the number used by SPMBT. Ensure that explorer is set up to always show the extension of files as well. Of course, it can be difficult to decide which game is the correct one, note that I have associated the cmt files with notepad using the normal windows procedure to do so. You can then simply open the cmt file by double clicking on it as it will contain the game title, never edit this, just look at it! (on the first time, associate the cmt extension with Notepad in Windows) Also, note that I have set explorer to show all extensions, not to hide these, again, normal windows stuff, see your windows help file if unsure.
These 3 files are what we transfer to the other player, however, these can be rather large, and so it is best to zip (compress!) these up using winzip, ensure that both of you use the same file compression utility, whichever you choose (negotiate this between yourselves as part of your battle setup emails). Winzip comes on the front cover CD ROMS of most decent computer magazines usually under the utilities section. It is the premier zip package, also at www.winzip.com. With winzip installed, there is a right mouse click extension to zip the files, select the 3, right click with mouse, select zip and enter a file name. In case of crashes, it is a very good idea to keep all your zipped up moves for the entire game until it is completed, in case you find you require to retransmit a move to an opponent who has corrupted his move. Therefore, for each game it is useful to use a standardised zip file naming convention. I tend to use gamenameNNN.zip, where NNN is the move number, so DonUSAGE194400.zip would be my setup initial move, DonUSAGE194401.zip would be move number 1 after deployment and setup (the 0 move, remember!). I tend to put who I am playing, the 2 nations (player 1 on the left) and date in the name bit, to help tell the zips apart. I keep all the moves sent to me by my opponent as well to aid in any disaster recovery, as if I keep his then should he make a mistake (say he deleted one on his PC), I have the backup on mine. Once you have finished the game, then delete the zips. PBEM (or Head to Head) Procedure Set up a generated battle the following way:
This looks just like a normal battle versus a computer, but note that ALL the settings buttons are set to human player. (It is possible to set up with computer purchase etc, but in most human versus human play, both will want to buy and deploy without the computer's help). In any case, in a human plays human game, the setting for 'computer purchase' is ignored by the game for player number 2. For a scenario which one wants to play human versus human, just start the scenario and set both players as human, then continue as for a normal battle generator game, but there will be no purchase or deployment as this is already taken care of in the scenario design. You just exchange files for password (if secure) or start (if unsecure). Player number 1 is responsible for setting the pre game settings, battle type, map size, date and visibility and so on. In especial, he is responsible for setting up the preferences screen to what the 2 players have mutually agreed before the game. Player 1 now hits the continue button when he is satisfied with the set up parameters and continues to the normal buy screen where he now buys his toys. Once he has done this, he hits the done button in the purchase menu, just like for a game against the AI. However unlike a game against the computer, he now sees the password entry screen:
OK, this is where a secure and an unsecure game diverge.
It is this action by player 1 which determines if the game will be secure or unsecure, if secure (player 1 entered a password) then player 2 will be presented with the password entry screen, if not, player 2 will not see the password entry screen. Now, player 1 will see the save game screen. If this is an unsecure game (you never entered a password, recall!), then you can use any of the save game slots from 7 onwards, like a regular game. (Slot 6 is the auto save game slot, including non secured games). as an unsecure game, you can save later saves to any legal slot, just like regular games. Or even into another copy of SPMBT on the same or a different computer. However, if this is a secure game (password was entered), then you must select one of the first 5 save slots, as these are for secured PBEM games only. Secured games encrypt the save game data, so your opponent cannot open this up in a hex editor and peek at things. In addition, secured games will autosave at the end of the game turn to that slot only (you have no choice to move a saved copy elsewhere), and also, the save game notes the path to the game as well, so you cannot move a copy to another install of SPMBT to try to 'break' it, it just will not play. Secure games are saved in the \email sub directory as well, not in the regular \save sub directory. This example shows the files for the second PBEM save slot being selected ( remember, the slots are numbered from (0) ZERO and not (1)ONE.
One thing that confuses some folks with secured PBEM is that, when playing a secured PBEM game the normal 'exit game' button (the black one that points upwards) is now used to save your secured PBEM game at that point, in order to come back and complete it later. Recall that you must use the same save slot, this will store your game at the current point in play. It is not, repeat not an "end game" button, just a pause and save my turn button! But, we have found that some users are confused by this and used this button to as they thought, finish the turn off, then bundled the files and sent these to their opponent, whereby his game choked on the files, naturally enough, as they are a save of the first player's current point in the game uncompleted, and he is still the active player, not the opponent he sent the partially completed move to. You use the end turn button to end your turn. I will repeat this, you use the end turn button to end a PBEM game move. Also, this button used to be black, but to help PBEM users who got confused, the end turn button is now coloured red. Please press the red button at the bottom of the buttons to complete your turn. Don't send your part move save off (black upwards pointed button) to the other player, he cannot play it! In a remote game, player 1 now sends the 3 zipped up files to player 2, who places the zip file somewhere safe (remember to keep all the zips in case of need to reload) and unzips the files contained in this to his \save or \email (if secure) directory under windows. He then starts the game, and goes to the 'saved games' screen. There he loads the appropriate save game, and continues with play. In the setup, player 2 buys his forces, is presented with the password screen (if a secure game), and then he deploys his forces. On hitting the end turn button (red button!) at the end of the deployment, the following happens: If this is a secure game, the game is automatically saved in the appropriate slot in the first 5, no user action required to select a save slot as this is already known. Player 2 now exits to windows, and zips up the 3 files for this game and transmits to player 1. REMEMBER ALSO, the 5 secure encrypted game saves live in the \email directory, and not, repeat not in the \save directory with all other game saves! If this is an unsecure game, player 2 will see the normal save game menu screen, and can select any legal save slot. Player 2 now zips up the appropriate 3 files (as he can change the slot, he should remember which he used!) and transmits to player 1. In unsecure games, you must remember to save manually, unlike in secure games. When presented with your opponent's start screen, save and exit. Note that in an EMAIL game, player 2 is the one that deploys first, so he is the one who can set the game length using the '.' key, unlike a game against the AI where the first to deploy is the human player, player 1. Player 1 now receives the zip file from player 2, unzips to his save (or email for secure games) directory and saves the zip file for backup purposes. He then starts the game, goes to the save games screen and selects the appropriate slot and starts the game. If a secure game, you get prompted for a password, if not, no password is asked for. Player 1 now deploys and plays his first turn, on finishing his first turn (end turn, red, button!) he then zips the appropriate 3 files and transmits to player 2. This is now move 1, so he should name his zip file <name>001.zip. Remember to save all the zips in case you need to come back for disaster recovery! Player 2 and player 1 now repeat the process of receiving, unzipping, playing, zipping and transmitting until the end of the game. (Though in PBEM games, often the 2 players decide at some point what the victory will be, and mutually end the game early with an agreed win or lose). Important point for secured games, part of the anti cheat method is that both spob files are checked to see if they have changed so your opponent cannot place an improved one in place with say wonder weapons. This is for your protection against cheats, but what it means is that on both player's PCs the 2 spob files must not ever change during the lifetime of the game. Any changed spob file will result in a complaint about a corrupt OB file from the security code. If you are playing a set of PBEM games, say for a competitive ladder, that use a set of modified OB files, perhaps provided by the organiser, then it is best to install the entire game into a second directory and use this second copy of SPMBT (with the appropriately changed OB files) for the competition games. This is the best way to handle games with user OB files, rather than say, trying to remember to load spob000 (original) to play 2 games, spob000 (competition) for 2 others, and spob000 (Fred's version) for the PBEM with Fred, who insists on his particular changed OB set. It is also a way to play more than 5 games concurrently, disk space is cheap these days, just install a second, third or fourth SPMBT game in their own directories. And remember that secure games are saved into the \email directory, not the regular \save sub directory! Head to Head, is exactly as outlined above, but no file transfer is obviously needed as the same PC is being used. Player 2 just goes to the save game screen when required, as does player 1. But, after the initial deployment process, an unsecure head to head game on the same PC will not autosave, and will present the other player's start screen between moves, that is when you swap players. Save in unsecure is up to the current player. (Remember, player 2 goes to the save game list to open his first turn when playing on the same PC, some folks playing a scenario head to head were somewhat confused,as player 1 set up, then player 2 set up and saw player 1's start, because player 2 was trying to play the scenario, not the saved game generated by player 1, the game thought this was a brand new attempt to start this scenario!) PBEM Security Info During turn execution in secured PBEM games, press the 1 key to see statistics on how many loads and saves of the game were done by both sides. (If you have a crash, and have to load the game turn again from the received zip, let your opponent know you had this problem, as the load counter will be increased). If the loads and saves are not equal, perhaps your opponent is having severe technical difficulties?, ask him about this. PBEM Misc NOTE: If you find that you cannot complete a move in one sitting in secure (passworded) games you can save off the game with the " Auto Save the game and Exit " button ( this is above the " Auto save and quit the Orders Phase " button and is the black one). You will be asked " Do you want to exit and finish your turn later Y/N? " Press " Y " and you will be able to complete your turn at a more convenient time, starting where you have left off. Remember that this is not a game completed turn button, that is the red button!, do not send a part completed move to your opponent, it will cause security violations. This button is to save for you to come back and complete your turn later when convenient, is all! Should both players want to see the action replay of the artillery, both sides must have set fast artillery to 'off' in their preferences screens, or no artillery replay info will be saved for a PBEM game. Both players, not just one or the other, both must have this setting set to off to see the guns fire in replay. If one of you has it off, then both remember to set it on, it can sometimes take a move or so to get in synch, so ensure this setting is set before the game on both player's PCs. Also, if the "fast artillery" control is ON you will NOT see any of the graphic animations OR sound effects when you attack a hex with the " Z " key. ( This is also true in any kind of game or scenario, Z key is area (artillery) fire). (In very large PBEM games, you may wish to set fast artillery on, as the artillery 'packets' compete with normal in game replay 'packets', you may go over the maximum limit, also, even if you do not overrun the replay buffer, switching fast artillery on can reduce the size of the data files you exchange, should you have problems with large files, e.g. if you use a European teleco which charges by the minute for connect time and/or you are on a slow dialup connection). If your replay goes over the buffer size, that part onwards is lost. Replay is only of firing events, remember. NB, for remote games, it is probably better to stick to a reasonable points value, remember that as games get bigger, the size of the save game data will expand in proportion, as the game replay is also stored, with up to 9 shots per piece, this gets big, quickly. It is the number of actual pieces that determines save game data size, not the points, 200 infantry squads will generate a much larger save game file than say 15 M1A2! One last thing about PBEM: When the game ends, it will be with player 2. However, the result is phrased for player 1 so if player 2 did very well, he may be upset to find he has been "totally defeated". That is player ONE that has been totally defeated! Also, the videos that play are for player 1 so you may see German Video footage etc. If you were playing as the USSR. Player 2 gets the score, and can view the 2 force lists as per a normal game. The game ends THERE, the move is no use to player 1 if returned. Player 2 MUST write the scores down to report to player 1, and the result etc., this is the ONLY way player 1 finds out the result, as a written report from player 2. (or, if the player is running with the spcap screen capture utility, save off the end game key with spcap (available for download at most SP2 web sites as shareware) and send the bitmap (better yet, open the bitmap with a viewer like say irfanview and convert it to a much smaller GIF file before sending that!) PBEM or head to head secure games store the preferences set up by player 1 and overwrite the preferences on the received player's computer, this is deliberate. With unsecured games, you may need to remember to set the preferences to the agreed values before starting your turn. PBEM End Game Review When the game ends, you will be able to review the map, as normal, however, for PBEM games now immediately after you exit the game, zip up your files as normal and send to your opponent, who can now review the end game data as well, unlike before. Once you exit the game, you can reopen its save game slot to review the end game, but before you do this, zip up the game files to send to your opponent for his end game review, or the end game video sequence can be put out of synch..
This game cannot be all things to all people. There are far too many differing opinions on what is 'realistic' and what makes a fun playable game. Satisfying one segment of gamers is sure to alienate another. Also, please define 'realistic', that is one of those 'how long is a piece of string' debates. To some folk, realism is micro details of millimetres of armour and exact slope angles, or how much extra water an Italian division needs to boil pasta (as factored in one actual cardboard wargame!), or the exact model of bolt action rifle carried. Generally, those who worry about micro details like armour angles and exact thickness in millimetres tend to be from the civilian 'armchair general' side of the fence. Those with real military experience tend to define realism in terms of command and control, and how much intelligence is given away for free, 'fog of war' factors. Military-experienced folk worry less about exact rifle type, and more about morale, training and leadership of their men. Armchair types worry about exact TO&E charts, and declare a game 'unrealistic' if the supplied formation is not to the exact field regs, and not at 100% strength. Military folk would be amazed to find a unit anywhere near 'paper' strength, and with all its vehicles present on the battlefield as 'runners' rather than being in the repair shop, broken down in a ditch on the approach march, or just plain lost or skiving! During playtesting we encountered this on more than one occasion where some would say a game feature was too little, some would say too much and some would say it's just right. (We knew we had finally reached middle ground when 'angels on pin heads' type debates started). When SSI originally released Steel Panthers 2 they included a Preferences Screen to allow the end user the ability to modify various elements of the game to suit individual tastes and abilities. We have noticed from our e-mails that many people quite simply do not understand the functions of this screen or how it can change the game to suit your particular style of play, or even that it exists, in some cases. We have had a multitude of 'suggestions' for code changes that can actually be made simply by adjusting a control in Player preferences. We have made the preferences screen available from more points in the game now, this is both because it can be handy to turn some things, say individual unit ID tags, on or off, but also, some end users may just notice the new buttons :-> ! Reality settings are your call, not another person's. Tweak these settings until you get the game performing the way you like it, should you find the default settings unrealistic, or too easy or too hard. Of course, in a PBEM game, you may find you may need to discuss these matters with your prospective opponent! General Preferences
Player Preferences NOTE: These controls seem to be the most misunderstood and underused controls in the game. This is where you dial in what you feel suits your concept of game play and 'reality'. These controls allow you to alter settings and achieve the balance that suits you. Many people would like to leave these alone but these are the controls you need to use if the game 'feels' wrong to you. Right now our recommended setting for player preferences are the default settings but really, it is your decision to decide what works best for you. In addition, these are useful settings to use to adjust how the games AI plays, if you are new, then try lowering some of these values for the AI so as to have an easier time of it. If you are experienced, then try setting some values higher to get a 'tougher' computer opponent. The prime one to try for the AI opponent is the TROOP QUALITY setting. Set this 10 or more points above yours to give the AI better experienced troops which will spot better, shoot better, rally more often etc.
Realism Preferences
This screen is used to inspect game unit data, rather important stuff! Select a nation from those active at this date by pressing on the appropriate flag, and a list of the available units is displayed in the screen centre. Hovering the mouse over each button will show the short data on the right hand panel. Pressing the unit's button will show the full page data view for that unit. The Exit button will take you back out of this mode. The Next button and previous buttons will cycle through the units available. The line at the bottom of the page shows the version information string for the OB file loaded, this is very useful if you are in the habit of loading user edited OB data files, to ensure you have the correct one loaded, for example for a PBEM game or a scenario which requires a specific OB file set to be loaded. The red backlit section at the top shows the unit name, and if as here the INI file debug setting is shown, the OB slot number for the unit (very handy for debug purposes!). Refer to the section on the INI file if you are a OB designer and need this info. Regular users can ignore as the debug flag will be off. Data items on this page, shown when the mouse is hovered over the unit's button are:
The second page shows more unit data, Weapon
NB, the 'sabot' round in WW2 was normally Armour Piercing Composite Rigid (APCR) ( Also known as HVAP, High Velocity Armour Piercing), but can also represent true sabot rounds, APDS (Armour Piercing Discarding Sabot) where the sabot (=shoe) surrounding the sub calibre penetrator is dropped after exit from the muzzle, which improves drag coefficient no end, only Britain used true sabot (APDS) ammo in WW2. For the British, sabot tends to be APDS from 1946 on, the USA only adopting proper APDS ammo instead of the inferior HVAP in the 105mm L7 British designed NATO standard tank gun in the M60 series (M68 when in US Service). The AP round can represent APDS ammo in some units, with the sabot round being used to represent some form of uprated shot in lesser supply, perhaps. For example, a tank with APFSDS main load, with some sabot ammo representing a few APFSDS(DU). If the OB designer has produced descriptive text for a unit, this is displayed under the unit picture.
![]() The following is a list of improvements in this game (MBT), as compared with the original SSI post war wargame Steel Panthers II : Modern Battles (SP2), as some players will not have experienced the changes in the SP2 game engine that is SPWW2 version 5. Enhanced secure Play By EMail mode, this makes cheating rather more difficult than the original SP games, where an opponent could simply re load the turn and replay it as much as desired before returning this to you. We provide a non secure PBEM mode for those who do not need the encrypted secure mode. You can now play scenarios against a human opponent in PBEM or in hot seat mode (handled like PBEM, but on the same PC), not just being limited to the AI. Dates can run from 1946 to 2020, SP2 only ran 1950 to 1999. Availability dates work on month as well, SP2 availability dates were by the whole year only. Space for up to 99 Nations (OOBS), SP2 was limited to 1 page of flags, about 40 nations. MBT has 3 pages of nations to choose from. MBT national flags change to the appropriate one for the year when necessary, e.g. from USSR to Russian flag. Nations appear at the appropriate time (e.g. Ukraine, Zimbabwe) or disappear (e.g. Rhodesia, ARVN). Expanded OOB files, MBT can have 599 units, and 399 formations in its database, SP2 was rather smaller than this, the expanded MBT OOB size allows designers to produce a much richer palette of forces for you to command. Expanded maximum units in a game. SP2 was limited to around 200 units per side, and about 49 formations. In campaigns, core size maximum was about 100 units. In MBT, you can have up to 500 units per side, in up to 200 formations, and cores of 200. Thus much larger battles are possible. Expanded unit classes. SP2 was limited to about 40 unit classes, MBT has about 220 at this time. This enables OOB designers to assemble much richer OOBs, and to handle mixed formations much better. Expanded terrain types. We have added mud, impassable to vehicles terrain, orchards, hedgerows, fire trenches, volcanic sand, railway and tramway terrain tiles. Fire trenches may be bought and laid out by the defender similarly to mines and dragons teeth. Expanded terrain heights. SP2 was only capable of maps of 3 terrain height levels. MBT maps can have 15 levels, 5 times more. Truly mountainous maps can now be generated, for example in Afghanistan. Enhanced terrain map generation routines. We have nearly tripled the number of variables used in computer map generation compared with the original SP2 code. MBT maps can be custom tailored with for example, tree lined roads, paddy fields inside bund walls, or to generate urban sprawl or villages, and a new town type of map intermediate between the old full map city grid and the villages. Enhanced battle location generation. In SP2, when 2 nationalities fought each other, only one default battle location was used. This soon grew tiresome after a few battles!. MBT generates historically believable battle locations for the major conflicts post WW2 that occurred, or had the potential to occur (such as a NATO v WARPACT WW3). The battle location code for the USSR V Afghanistan is 1286 lines of 'C' code for example. New Aircraft classes, SEAD planes to perform wild weasel strikes, Level Bombers to perform arclight missions, Transport planes to drop paratroops, spotter planes and UAV for scouting. New heavy transport helicopter class. Parachute drops and Gliders can be used for air landing of troops. Many new unit classes allow richer OOB designs. Some specialist infantry classes have additional abilities in close combat, or in crossing impassable terrain, or are trained paratroops. Some APC may be more resistant to mine explosions. Formations may have morale and training bonuses both positive for above average troops, or negative for less elite groupings. Appropriate points cost modifiers are made here, unlike SP2 which charged the same points for a T72 whether crewed by experience 60 conscripts or by experience level 90 veterans. New weapon classes and defences. Top Attack missiles attack the thinner top armour of MBT, multi charge ATGM help defeat Explosive Reactive Armour defences. Autocannon can engage low flying planes and helicopters. Advanced ERA such as Soviet Kontakt can deflect AP shot. Visual and Infra Red Screening Smoke can defeat incoming ATGM, and Soviet Arena active countermeasures systems can hard kill them. The unit information screens now show much more data than before, when purchasing units, you get to see the full ammo loadout, whereas in SP2, you were often in the dark as to how many missiles a TOW jeep carried for example. New armour information lets you cycle through the 3 armour types for vehicles, steel, anti HEAT and ERA, with the ERA values being current reflections as to how many charges remain on a face. Informational text is made available for units, and also at the formation level. New cross attachment code lets you reorganise your companies, platoons can be moved under command of different company commanders. In campaigns, you can attach support troops bought for this mission under your core troop companies for the current battle. You can still attach individual units as with previous SP games, but we now ensure that the command unit cannot be attached away, leaving a 'phantom commander' as was the case in older versions of SP games. More information about your troops is now available in the new headquarters and company details screens, for example which platoons belong to B company. In campaigns, you can use your repair points as buy points to expand your core force. Therefore you do not require to buy lots of cheap armoured cars and trucks at campaign start in order to change these into useful units later on as in older SP series games. You can set up user or historic long campaign difficulty levels, either making it easier by granting yourself more repair points, or less so as you wish. Air parity is allowed now, just because you have been granted a few air strikes does not automatically mean your opponent has none as was the case in other SP games, he may have a few, or even a few more than yourself. You will always have to guard against the air threat, unless the opponent is completely bereft of air, e.g. the VC. Your artillery fire now lands at the end of the previous enemy player turn, as opposed to SP2 where it landed at the end of your turn, thus allowing your opponent to rally away the suppressive effects. You can now take advantage of your artillery's neutralising effects properly. All fixed wing assets are off map assets, only helicopters are under hex by hex player control. Units with smoke dischargers can pop these in response to enemy incoming fires. Units when fired on from the flank will often turn to face the firer, thus presenting thicker armour and/or locating previously unspotted firers. Infantry when fired on can hit the ground, and possibly take cover perhaps even breaking LOS. Infantry can suffer from tank panic and flee from AFV if not equipped with AT weapons. When infantry fight in the same hex, melee combat may occur, and some troops such as commandos and paratroops are better at this form of close combat. Sometimes in close quarters combat, troops especially if low morale or experience may be panicked and hence produce less accurate fire than would normally be the case. The AI is considerably enhanced as compared with the SP2 version. It is not as objective obsessed, and will attempt to flank your entire position as well as bypassing round strong points. It is somewhat more cautious than the 'tin lemmings' of SP2!. The AI uses an adaptive purchase routine which uses points remaining and chance die rolls in buying its forces thus you will find enemy forces bought by the AI more varied than in SP2. The AI no longer assumes that if it is granted air strikes that its opponent will have no aircraft, so it buys AA assets even in this situation. The AI will use opening barrages in non assault games now, and it will often target the roads inside the human deployment area as human players tended to get into the habit of forming a traffic jam here against the old SP2 AI, which did not fire such missions. The AI will often plot interdictive missions on approach roads, bridges and cross-roads in no mans land as well, unlike previously. It also now knows about the smoke hexes that indirect fire of on map artillery leaves in SP series games, so will counterbattery your on map artillery assets more than you may have experienced in SP2 games. You will therefore have to learn shoot and scoot artillery tactics. It will now sometimes launch a patrol into enemy territory when defending, to locate your approach, or launch a spoiling counter attack. When defending, the new AI knows about the old human trick of running an end run along the top or bottom map edges, where the old SP2 AI would often not lay mines. The new AI will often lay edge of map mines, sometimes several layers deep. It now lays random individual mines or groups of mines on road hexes in its defended zone, and on bridges these may be backed up with a barrier (represented by a dragon tooth hex). The new AI knows that defending forwards when defending a river crossing is a good idea, it wants to shoot up those vulnerable rubber rafts now!. It will lay dragons teeth when defending a beachhead as well in some cases. In MBT, it knows about helicopter transport, it will use these in all battle types, not just when assaulting you, and it will try to get into the rear of your half of the map sometimes, even in a meeting engagement. If these transport helos are well armed, it will use them to cause annoyance to you as well whilst ammo remains. It may begin the game with SEAD strikes on your AAA systems. It may hold reserves, especially of attack helicopters and desant airmobile units to launch into the battle later on, perhaps to retake some objectives when the human player has moved on from these. Expanded tools for scenario designers. Troops may be designated as reinforcements which arrive later, and this mechanism can be used e.g. for pop-up partisan units in certain scenario types. You can change the map side of the 2 players from the default game assigned setup. Scenario designers can set the various water variables for river crossing and beach assault missions. In user campaigns, pre determined auxiliary troops can be granted to the player, and if desired these can be in fixed positions which the player cannot alter on his deployment. Scenario designers can now add descriptive label text to hexes on the scenario map. As we now allow 125 waypoints to be plotted instead of the 10 of SP2, scenario designers are free to be more creative in setting up AI movement on map, for say patrol paths. We provide the Mobhack windows based data editor. This allows the skilled end user to adjust unit, weapon and formation data to his liking (but incautious use of this may affect scenarios). SP2 of course provided no such utility.
The USA and USMC have their own OOB. It may be that for version 2, that we produce 1 or 2 separated Vietnam USA OOB in order to separate the peculiarities if that conflict from the normal OOBs, which would focus on the NATO central front. The Green OOB is a generic Central American OOB. The RED OOB, prior to the break-up of the USSR is a sort of 'Balkan' OOB, using Soviet kit. After the break-up of the FUSSR, it becomes a generic stand in for those FUSSR states which do not have their own OOB, when playing against Russia or Turkey. Playing against Poland, it becomes Byelorussia, as it does against Ukraine. Playing against China, it represents an Eastern FUSSR state, with rather flatter terrain, and less chance of urban areas. To the rest, it remains a 'Balkan' OOB. The UN OOB is ONLY for scenario designers, it merely provides an headquarters under which the scenario designer can add troops as Allies (own ID flag) or as 'captured' for troops using the NATO ID tag. Do not try to fight random battles or campaigns against this OOB under AI control, though you could use it as a human player force, buying constituent items with the ALLIES facility. 20 Nations have not made it into the preview version 1, though they may be visible in Mobhack and in the game we have not included any OOB data at all. These are: Australia, Bosnia-Herzogovina, Canada, Cambodia, Croatia, East Timor, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Laos, Lebanon, Macedonia, Myanmar, Pathet Lao, Slovenia, Thailand, Japan, Somalia, Tanzania and Uganda. Some of the minor nations in that list will be subject to change for V2, and this item will likely be debated on the MBT discussion forum. Should you have any opinion on the matter, join up and have your say!. Version 2 will be a bug fix, with some minor additions codewise, such as long campaigns. The main change will be the finalisation of the nations used, and addition of more scenarios, and user campaigns. The game engine will not be subject to great change, no requests for NBC warfare please!. Unit Class Names & Numbers, any special abilities
Non technical types might ask why so many classes are just clones (copies) of base classes, well, it is mainly of use in designing formations. The multitude of new classes allows the OB designer to write far more realistic OB files. Note also that any 'elite' or 'poor quality' comes from the formation that is used to hold the units, not the class, a Guards squad has no inherent elite nature, this comes from the 2 fields shown in the formation purchase screen. OB designers, note that anything marked as unused or not yet implemented should not be used for custom OB files!. A Word about
OB Customising Just remember the following about custom OB files:
Basically, change the OB files at some point where all your games are finished. Check any scenarios for odd weapons appearing, if so, contact the OB or Scenario designer, not SP Camo Workshop, unless these are SP Camo products! Editable Player Files
The 9 means the default month is September. The 51 means the default year is 1951. The 7 means the first default combatant is UK and the 11 means the second combatant is Russia/USSR . A list of the countries and their corresponding OB number can be found by running Mobhack, it is on the front page of the program. So the progression is: If you put the following numbers
in: The defaults would then be June 2002, USA vs. Mujadeen. Parameter # 5 is used to slow map scrolling, in addition to the [ and ] keys (the [ and ] keys are not recommended beyond about a P200, use this parameter for preference) and any external slow down utility such as Mo'slo. The number is used as a divisor, 0 does not slow down, 1 a bit, 5, somewhat more and so forth. If you have too fast a scroll in the game, try higher numbers here. If it gets too large, then the scroll may get a bit jerky, but this is something to experiment with to suit your individual PC boxes' setup. Parameter #6 controls the usage of the new shotgun style victory hex which SP Camo Workshop introduced in version 2.2 of SPWW2. Here, instead of the 3 clusters of 7 victory hexes, you get all 21 spread as individuals shotgun pattern over the battlefield, for a more wide ranging conflict. The 3 victory hexes at the rear of each player's side are worth more victory points than the others. Turn it to 0 if you just want the clusters of 3 victory hexes or 100 if all you want to see in the meeting engagement is the shotgun pattern, or an intermediate chance to suit your tastes. Parameter #7 controls the reporting of fire ranges in the game for those who prefer yards/metres (SP1 style) over the hex notation introduced into SP2 and SP3. Parameter #8 is for OB design only, and very useful for tracking duplicates and so forth in that process.
If your name is Bloggs, you can now have unit leaders called Bloggs in the game.
Other Text Files In the data\text directory you will find encyclopaedia text files and the in game help files. These use the normal SP series format characters, see scenario editing section for the details. When making these, as with the Scenario introduction text, you will have to experiment with the text as it sometimes lays the text out quite oddly, practice makes perfect!. etNNNIII.txt, the encyclopaedia text entries for each unit in OB NNN and unit slot number III. Note that the code is not very good at deciding the right side cut off for text on screens, so you will probably need to try several times until the right side cut-off is correct. ftNNNIII.txt, the formation information text files that appear in the purchases screen, OB NNN and formation OB slot number III., NB leading zeros used to pad these items for both et and ft text file names. I.E. France is 006 for the NNN part of the file name, formation slot number 12 would be 012 for the III part. HelpNNN.txt, the in game help screen files which come up in the game itself when the ? button or key is used. Help000.txt is the main help file, others cover other help sub topics by number.
The scenario editor is where you design scenarios for the end user to play. We will cover here the basics of scenario editing and design, the subject really requires a complete guide of its own, which we may well publish. Important note to scenario designers, remember that any scenario you design should be with the human as player 1 (the one on the left in the picture below) and the AI (computer) player as player number 2 (on the right). Reversing this can cause weird problems with your scenarios, never ever design a scenario with the human as player 2 and the AI as player 1!. (this does not apply to any scenario played PBEM between 2 humans, it is only the case when the AI is playing as player 1). Basic scenario design process is to firstly design your map, this is the most important element of any scenario, and you should therefore make this element first, and above all, save it off separately from any other scenario work. Having the map saved off separately means that you can easily reuse this element for other scenarios using the same terrain, or simply to start over if the design was a wash out! Once happy with your map, then buy and deploy the required troops. Have an idea of what you want to do as well, research the scenario from historical documentation if it is a historically based one, rather than a 'what if'. ( The scenario editor will now object if you press the 'deploy' key for a force which you have bought no troops for. You must buy some troops to deploy troops for a side! )
The main editor page is where you make some critical design decisions. Underneath it live the map editor, and the scenario deployment sub routines. As mentioned above, make your map first, and save it off somewhere safe well before you start dropping troops onto it to create a scenario. One major point to consider at the outset is if you are designing a game where the player takes on the AI, or one where a human can play either side. In the former, the AI needs to be given consideration, and it will need to be given advantages of force size, or position, or more likely both. Or the game length can be reduced so the human must make a quick rush at it. Scenarios designed for the computer to play one side should not be played by the human as the other side, it will be a walk over for that player. Therefore, advise the player in your introductory text not to play the computer side. Scenarios designed for 2 humans to play will be usually very difficult for the AI to win, so again state up front that a scenario is designed for 2 humans to play each other head to head. A rare minority of scenarios can be playable by the AI as both sides, or give a human player a challenge if he plays the non-default set. In nearly all circumstances, the human player should be the player No 1 in a scenario, unless you are an experienced designer. And we may as well take some time here to note some points about scenario purchase and design, your scenario will be reported to the end user as whatever mode it last was in (advance, say). this does not mean that you require to edit the scenario in that mode. For example you may want to set up a meeting engagement, but you need to entrench some units, or buy a pillbox. Fine, build the scenario as an assault, dig the defender in and buy pillboxes, then switch to a meeting engagement. Then buy the second player troops, or they may get the dug in status that you get as an assaulter in a regular battle! Changing the battle type in creative ways during the design can be a useful tool for the experienced designer. For example, to get rafts for a non assault battle. Or simply to get the user off on the wrong foot, dig the defenders in and tell the user it is a mere advance mission, he may not expect mines lying about then.. The date of the battle determines the 2 sides involved. Note that it is perfectly possible to use a different date, should whatever you want not be available at that point, enter the desired date and buy troops at that point in time, then reset the date to the scenario date later. Only the last date used during the design process is the one reported by the scenario, so you could try a what if of 1940 French versus Germans with 1945 equipment, Just whizz the date to 1940, buy the required French kit, whizz the date to 1945 and buy the German stuff. Mainly this is of use in special circumstances for a scenario, the introduction dates of equipment in the OB files tend towards 'general service' dates, if you have a historical scenario where say some pre-production Tigers were used this is how to get them (and also to surprise the human player who may not expect to meet tigers before the 'encyclopaedia date' <G!>). The map editor is reached via the edit button, but before you hop off and start editing, select the map size from the button on the left. (You can come back later, and select a larger map size, and then add stuff to the South part, or a smaller map size to 'crop' it into a narrower strip in the North, but it is better to start off with the correct size first to save hassles). You can save off the map separately from the scenario inside the map editing subroutine. Note that selecting the date and the opponent pairing will determine the map used for random maps from the normal SP Camo selection, this ignores the climate of the map (desert, summer or winter). The climate buttons determine the basic map colour, desert gives yellow tiles and desert features (like soft sand), summer is the regular green background (toggled to 'jungle' if you select the palm trees inside the map editor), and winter gives white tiles and access to the winter extra tiles such as snow drifts. Note that the editor does not care about dates regarding winter, you can make a winter map in august, should you so desire. A BIG note to map designers is that the map will be one of these types only, Summer, Jungle, Winter or Desert, depending on what mode it was last edited in. Why say this?, well some map designers go in and use say a green summer map, then come out to the main screen, flip to winter, and then go in and place a few white tiles for what they think will be a few patches of 'snow' on a green map for extra 'colour'. Nope, if they last edited the map in 'winter' mode, as far as the game is concerned the map is now entirely a winter map! The colour of the basic clear terrain tiles has no in-game effect, the season of the map is a global variable which affects the entire map. Only the special 'feature' tiles (such as snow drifts or soft sand) have inbuilt special effects. 'Clear' terrain tiles do not. Any tile that gives out 'clear' when you hover the mouse over it is a 'basic' terrain tile, of the type of terrain you last edited the map in, so if you say started with a summer map, exit and changed to desert and laid some 'yellow' clear tiles, then exited again, changed to winter and laid some 'white' clear tiles, this is now a winter map, and all the yellow, green and white 'clear' tiles will be basic snow (winter) terrain, because the last map edit mode was winter. Select the visibility in hexes for the scenario with the visibility control. Give the scenario location a name with the name button, this is NOT the scenario file name, it is the location name reported inside the game, like 'Sword Beach', 'St Lo', i.e. the geographical place name. The save button here saves a scenario, a scenario is a map plus troops deployed. A scenario can be played, and a separately saved map can be used in battles. The Load button by the maps loads a pre made map into the scenario. The Random map button generates a random map using the SP Camo map generation code, based on the 2 players involved and the date, but ignoring the climate, so a German vs French 1940 'desert' map would tend to look like a 'yellowed' France 1940 map. However, random maps are not a great deal of use in scenario design as you will be crafting your own from scratch mainly. The 2 main players are selected as for a normal battle. However unlike other battles, in the scenario editor, the map sides each use as home base is reported here, as this is very important stuff for scenario design. In scenarios we often need to be able to have the 2 sides fighting in a different direction. The side that you play from determines the retreat direction for routers, and where off map artillery comes from. If you just lay your troops as desired, but on opposite sides from the given, routers will run to the enemy and artillery will come from the wrong direction as well. Note that the directions are given in map terms, left and right, as there is no compass direction in any SP series game, Left side of the map can be North, South East or whatever you desire to call it. (Many players mistakenly think of the Right of the map as 'East' say, not so. Just a convenient convention which fits most cases. If you need North to be at the 'bottom' of your map, just design it that way, and note where North is in the scenario introductory text, you can even put the direction to North on the map with Map Text). The Map Sides buttons are what allow you to exchange the default map sides, and it is a very, very good idea indeed to set the map sides before you buy a single unit of either side should you need to exchange sides. When you enter the editor for the first time the map buttons are 'free', press Swap to exchange sides. The map side buttons will then be put into 'locked' state and the Swap button will be hidden. You can unlock the Swap button if required. Also note that loading a scenario into the editor will take the map sides you set up while editing that scenario, and place map sides into locked state. Just so you do not make a mistake. If you like the map side setup, then press Lock to lock the sides in, should the map sides be in free status. The preferences button allows you to set preferences as you desire. For scenario design, points are of course unlimited, you just buy the 2 sides regardless of any notional points values (But, the points values of the various units will be counted as part of the scoring process at game end!, some scenario designers have in the past placed some 'destroyed' tanks etc. as 'scenic effects', a 'destroyed' Panther on the map will still be about 40 victory points to the opposite side!, if you do not want this, remember to adjust the points value for such a creation to 0 in the deployment subroutine!). The end user will be able to override your preferences, should these be important for your design then put a recommended set into your scenario introduction text. What is effected here is basic troop quality, if you want this to be other than the default, set as desired before buying your troops as this will save time editing later. You can go through them all and individually change morale and experience, but if the default for a nation is say 60 experience at this point in the war, and you know in advance that you want an elite bunch with say about 80 experience, set this up here and most of the troops bought subsequently will be nearer what you want on purchase. The map editor
subroutine of the scenario editor is where you create maps, naturally
enough. Generally, it is just a case of laying down tiles, but see above about the climate. A couple of other game global variables require to be mentioned however that relate to water borne scenarios. The first is the gBeach global variable, this one determines if it is a beach assault, and whether landing craft are auto bought for your troops. This requires to be set before you buy any troops, and it is determined by building a beach in the editor with the appropriate key. Simply drawing in a lot of 'lake' tiles will not suffice, you must use the map editor beach key to have a beach built, though after the game has put your beach down, feel free to edit whatever it placed on the map of course. If you set the gBeach variable then all the assaulting side's troops will have landing craft bought for them by the AI buy routine, and added to their formations. You can of course edit the AI bought craft later, should you so desire. The gBeach variable is also used by the game purchase routines to make naval artillery available for purchasing. It is quite possible, should you desire, to ignore the gBeach variable and just lay down water, however it is then up to you to buy trucks (say) and convert to landing craft manually, and to buy artillery and also convert these manually. Also see the '&' key below.. The Second Global water variable is the gWideRiver variable. This is used to indicate to the game that this is a river crossing assault, and that the assaulter's troops that qualify will be issued with rubber assault rafts. This is the only way to have squads issued with rafts and to be able to carry these, a separately bought raft will need a truck to move it, it cannot be placed on a squad. Once again, just laying a few lake hexes manually to create your own wide river will not do to tell the scenario it is this type. Use the 'convert all rivers to wide rivers' key. Now this key will convert all the rivers on the map to wide rivers, so it is not a brainy idea to use this at the end of map design, should there be a need for minor streams and so on. Do this at the start, lay a stream about where you want your wide river to be, then convert this stream to a wide river. Lay your normal streams later, and edit whatever the AI did to widen the initial river to suit your map. Should you need both sides to have rafts, after setting the wide river variable, buy side 1, with the battle dial set to assault for that side!, and their squads get rafts issued. Now, go back to the main screen, save the scenario!, and flick the battle dial to the other side, so it is the 'assaulting' player now and buy its required forces and they will have rafts as well, see the '^' key below.. Note that if you need jungle terrain, then edit a summer map, and first thing, toggle the palm trees icon to use palm trees, not European ones. Then jungle features arrive, paddy fields, high grass becomes tall jungle grass (or bamboo etc.). There are 2 map design pages, use the '>' red button to toggle between pages. Some features will change depending on climate (such as winter snow drifts). There are now 15 hill levels as opposed to the other SP series games, which had a mere 3 hill levels, but only 1 through 4 are there all the time on dedicated buttons, use the '+' Cycle Level key to cycle the max hill button, this starts at level 5, one press of '+' Cycle Level key and you get level 6 and so on, cycling back to level 5 after 15. This method saved a lot of extra terrain level buttons.
Scenario troop deployment and editing OK, you have made and saved off your map. This is where you buy your troops and deploy them for the battle. Purchase is as for normal battles, but points are unlimited, as the troops on the table are what you decide Deployment is basically similar to normal battle deployment with loads of extra features added on Placement of troops is pretty much standard, it is the editing that differs The first thing you will want to do is to place the victory hexes, it matters not which of the 2 sides you are editing when you do this. Use the edit victory objectives button, and lay your victory hexes where you want them to be, and what nationality they will start as. The big decision here is what points value to make them, victory points are part of the score, and what you grant here is relevant. Low values will mean VP for destroying units is most of the end game score (approximately half the value of a destroyed unit is given as VP, remember, and abandoned units are counted killed to the side which has most score and/or holds all the objectives). High victory hex points will tend to skew the end score towards holding of victory hexes, especially where the overall points values of the 2 forces are on the low side, less so if this is a monster 12000 points a side scenario. If you do not require all 21 victory hexes, simply leave some at 0 value, and stack these with other scored victory hexes. Never leave a victory hex with zero value out in the open as it were, unless you are an expert. Recall that on initial entry, the victory hexes will have zero values!, the AI will not steer to victory hexes worth nil points that much, this is a common complaint from some new scenario designers 'I laid out the victory hexes but the AI would not advance on them it just sat still', please give the victory hexes a VP value greater than zero, bar the unused ones that you stacked with a scored one should you need less than 21 locations. Do not leave any victory hexes on the grey map edges as this causes the AI to have fits, ensure all are on the playing surface. Also, ensure that there is some way that the AI especially, and the human player less so, has of getting to these. A victory hex in a lake hex will only be reachable by swimming, ensure the AI has such units, and several ,as the first few may be killed. Better still, always place V hexes on terrain that any infantry or vehicle can reach. (Remember that even a stone bridge could be dropped, if a victory hex is on this it will probably now be in a lake hex, if it was crossing deep water, therefore now needing something which can swim to get at it, and if the AI has no swimmers it can have a case of fits! :) We have added a new button to the victory hex placement window to clear the victory hexes down and/or set all of them to a common value. The first question will allow you to move all victory hexes to the 0,0 position, and the second allows you to allocate a value to all simultaneously. The Victory hex placement 'shapes' your scenario, for both the layout of defenders, and the likely approaches of the attackers, especially moving AI troops. Get it right and you have the basis of a good scenario, get it wrong and you have started your design off on the wrong foot. If this is an attack and defence game, then you probably want to lay the defence side out first. Then place the attackers where you want them, determined by the defence layout and your scenario requirements. Note that in a scenario battle, the only pre registered artillery targets that the player will get are those you set up for him here, in the deployment phase. Be creative with these, if you place too many right on the other sides defended locales, you will give the defence away! Place them 'near enough' to adjust from, and blame that on faulty intelligence staff work <G>. Also, you may really need only 2 or 3 gold spots, place the others at misleading places on the map, again to mask the AI deployment. If you do not place any pre registered gold spots, all artillery calls for impromptu fires will be at full delay. This may be what you actually require in your scenario, if so, do not grant any pre registered targets. Any pre game bombardment you plan will also fall as well, with nothing the player can do to alter this. A scenario starts at the beginning of turn 1, the turn 0 artillery plot (including pre registered targets) is up to you, the scenario designer. See the section on the bombardment screen for the new information, e.g. about timed missions and aircraft deployment. The normal deployment hot keys are made available to you, with some additions we detail here.
The next and previous keys have a major difference here, in that they allow you to choose off map units (including passengers), as you just might want to be able to edit their characteristics. Note that as you can see passengers, you will see things like 'M10, passenger M10' which you don't normally see as you cannot select passengers, worry not, this is how SP points to its internal linked list of passengers, these M10s will likely be on a amphibious barge. Normally hidden from you as passengers are in normal games, unelectable. But, to be safe, it is best not to edit any unit that is a passenger as the game could possibly lose track, unload passenger units, edit them, then replace. Auxiliary troops These are introduced for user campaign scenarios mainly. Auxiliary troops are best seen as reinforcements given by you, the scenario designer to the player. Auxiliary troops will be added to the player's force, just like support troops, but they are additional to any support points allocated by you for this campaign node. They will appear on the list to be deployed as normal support troops if Aux status (placement hex is then irrelevant). Fixed auxiliary troops (status=fix) will remain in the hex and with the facing you design in the deployment phase, the user cannot move these troops in his deployment, they are useful for troops outside the normal deploy zone, or for critical units you do not want the player to mess with the deployment of, due to your scenario's design. Fixed and auxiliary troops are NOT meant to be loaded with passengers!, see the Q & A at the end for a work around for that desired loaded up truck convoy!. Notes on changing unit type and editing data The D key and button, give you access to most of the statistics of units. You can add on a point of armour for some of your units, say to represent sandbags, layered on tracks, or logs, if desired. You can remove armour, say to have a unit without the anti bazooka side plates, or to represent a particular tank at a certain point which was known perhaps to have brittle armour. Whatever is required for your scenario. You can increase or decrease crew experience, moral, and play with the leadership values. You might want to increase the Range Finder and Fire Control values of some known elite unit, say Wittman's Tiger 1. Do not add armour to an infantry unit, gun or whatever, that is silly, but feel free to armour vehicles, say a truck with improvised plates. However, be aware that armouring some soft vehicles can cause unexpected results, so be prepared to test your changes as part of your scenario design process to ensure they work as intended. A major field for the scenario designer to play with is the points cost. Recall that approximately half the cost of a destroyed unit is granted as part of the final score, so playing with this value can be most useful. For example, if the scenario is a convoy situation, you may want to make the convoy trucks worth 300 points or so, so that losing one will hurt the player's score. A particular pillbox may be the desired point of a commando raid to blow it up with satchel charges, if so, point it high so the destruction of the thing is the point, not any victory hex it is placed on, as a victory hex belong to whoever last walked into that hex. Then the commandos can destroy the thing and withdraw, without some enemy straggler flipping over the hex it is placed on after they depart. Remember also that this editor when allocating ammo will allow sabot rounds even if there are none for weapon 1, no check is made. Only weapon 1 has HEAT or SABOT ammo (bar those with an internal 222 code, see Mobhack for details), and the smoke ammo is related to weapon 1. (Main weapon smoke ammo is editable for scenarios, but not in Mobhack, it is data generated inside the game, like the leader name and statistics, not from OB files). Scenarios save most information, so that changed OOB formations and unit types tend not to cause too many problems since the original data is saved in the scenario. However, this is the original data, if all T34 are changed from say speed 21 to speed 18 in a new OOB version, the scenarios built with the old OOB will still have speed 21. The main thing that can cause problems when OOB data is changed in a subsequent release, or by a user editing things inappropriately in Mobhack is weapons data changes, as weapon data is reloaded into a scenario from the appropriate OOB databases. A weapon change to remove say sabot from some gun can leave scenarios with units having a load of now completely useless sabot rounds. If an existing weapon OOB slot is overwritten with a completely new weapon then extremely weird things can happen to scenarios!. For example, changing the M16 rifle in the USA OOB to a new howitzer class will result in existing scenarios using USA troops having howitzers instead of rifles. Scenario Waypoints We allow up to 125 waypoints per formation HQ now, the old limit was a mere 10. This gives you as the scenario designer a much richer tool for crafting the AI force reaction. Set up patrol paths, flanking moves and so forth using this facility. Refer to the section on waypoints for more detail. Use of waypoints with reinforcement troops is not determined, it may work or may not. Use with caution. Making Your Scenario Introductory Text No proper scenario is complete until you have made a text file which is the text that the user sees on selecting your scenario on the main game scenario page. This file is a plain text file that you create in a text editor, such as notepad, not a word processor which stuffs a lot of extra nonsense into the data, a plain text only editor. It is called 'SpscnNNN.txt' and lives in the scen sub directory of the game. NNN is a 3 digit, leading zero number and is the same as the slot number you saved your scenario to, with 000 being the first slot and 999 the last. It uses special characters to format. The code will wrap paragraphs, but is not very good at this, so it is best to manually place the CR/LF character yourself in text files. You will probably have to experiment a few times until the right hand side cut-offs appear exactly as you desire as the code is not very good at automatically wrapping the RHS of text strings correctly. The '*' (asterix) character is used to indicate an end of line CR/LF pair. The '_' (underscore) character is used to space titles etc, the underscores are not shown. Generally, it is best to lay out your introductory text along the following lines:
Naturally, feel free to do it your way, but the above is a useful template to start off with. Note the underscores used to lay out headings, and the asterix used to end lines (=CR/LF). Distributing Your Scenario A scenario is simply another form of save game, it therefore consists of the 3 parts SpscnNNN.txt if you provided this (and you should do so, it is the only way to talk to the end user!), SpscnNNN.cmt and SpscnNNN.dat. Remember that NNN is the slot number you saved to. As with PBEM games, you can open the .cmt file to see the game title in notepad but do not edit this, should you forget which is which, and select 'sort by name' so all the appropriate files are shown together in Explorer. Read only! Zip the 3 files up, add any text file you need to the zip (assume the end user will not read this, they hardly ever do, heck hardly any read game manuals like this one!, consider yourself a cut above the average end user for having actually opened the game guide <G!>). Send to a friend, or post at sites which have SP scenarios. Include your email address in the end section of the intro text file, assume as I say that nobody will read any readme.txt file you supply in the zip. One point, if you use slot 19, and someone else has already used slot 19 in their installation, your scenario will overwrite the existing number 19. The end user should know that he should manually renumber the scenarios as desired, but most do not, even though it is in the manual.. But remind them of this in your 'never-ever-readme.txt' file. And be prepared for complaints from those who never read these things, and toast their existing scenario.. SPWW2 and SPMBT scenarios are not compatible with each other due to database differences. SPWW2 version 5 maps can be brought over to SPMBT however, and perhaps vice versa (but that aspect was not tested). Scenario Question & Answer Section Q: In the
User Campaign when I design a scenario using vehicles with passengers
in fixed/aux status, I find those passengers standing around in various
locations on the map during the Deploy phase. Q: What is the 'Fix Cmd Button' used for? A: This
is only to update scenarios built for versions prior to SPWW2 version
5, to input the correct command level details so 'P' for platoon etc appear
on the roster list. Use if upgrading an old scenario, otherwise ignore.
(It was really only introduced for the SP Camo scenario design team and
was going to go, but then we realised some of you may have scenarios built
for old versions which need this small data massage!).
SP Camo user campaigns will utilise the first few slots on page, and advance downwards, so you may consider using higher campaign numbers for your own user campaigns. In Steel panthers 3, you could link up to 12 scenarios in a strictly end to end linear succession to form a user campaign. In SP1 and SP2, there was no way at all to make a campaign of your own design. As you may have gathered from looking at the above screen shot, the SP Camo SPWW2 and SPMBT user campaigns allow a lot more flexibility than that! :-). We allow up to 999 scenario nodes in a user campaign, not 12. Our campaigns are also not linear, the battle result is used to determine the next scenario node to play, hence our campaigns can be 'threaded'. User campaign editing is not for the faint hearted, it is for experienced scenario designers only. The following is aimed at that target audience, and as a general guide, you will require to experiment to get your campaigns right, much more so than you would with scenario design. This is a 'live menu' screen. Live menus have 'live text' whenever you put the mouse over the text, most of these text fields are in fact 'buttons'. Campaign Name, click the campaign name field and enter a new one, default is 'A campaign with no name'. National Flag, click the flag to change the player's nationality. Save, Saves the campaign data Exit, leaves without saving VICTORY these fields are used to determine the campaign end result in victory points (VP) At the moment 3 VP for a decisive battle victory, 2 for a win, 1 for a draw. (SSI campaign default) [We may change these values if designers think say a 0 1 2 4 8 type sequence is better, in a later release] ML LEVEL enter the VP score needed to be met to gain a marginal loss of the entire campaign (failure to meet this level is taken as a decisive loss of the campaign) == LEVEL enter the VP to be met for a draw of the entire campaign MV LEVEL enter the minimum VP score required to be met to win the campaign marginally DV enter the VP level which if met or exceeded results in a decisive level of victory for the entire campaign. As a rule of thumb, count along the 'straight path' through your campaign, and assign perhaps 2.5 to 2.8 points times the number of battles in a row, all at DV exit level to reach the campaign end. So if the quick path through your campaign was say 10 battles, then a VP level of maybe 25 to 28 (out of a possible 30 VP) would be a useful first approximation of the DV level needed to win the campaign decisively, and scale the rest from there, here at 1 point for a draw, perhaps 15 for that level, and the win, but not decisively about half way between the draw and the decisive level. BPR DIV This stands for 'Build Points Remaining Divisor'. This field gives the designer the ability to reward a player who has a surplus of build points left over at campaign end with a bonus amount of VP. Only unspent Build Points left in the player's 'kitty' count to this total. A player who completes the campaign with unspent Buy Points may have had an easier or more successful run than someone who goes the same set route of battles, but has spent all his points as he went along, either in repairs or upgrades. This bonus therefore rewards the more prudent player (or perhaps the one who uses a smaller core force, and does not expand it much) or the one who completes more missions with less loss, and hence less repairs required. If this field is left at 0, excess Build Points are ignored, only the basic VP are used to determine campaign victory level. If, however this field is set to a positive number, then the amount of Build Points remaining will be divided by this number then the factor is added to the VP total for battles won. For example, entering 1000 here will add 1 VP per full 1000 remaining BP at end of campaign to the VP already gained for winning battles. Scenario Nodes each node (battle location) has a set of fields: The Number, At the left hand side, this denotes the node number, But it is also a LIVE FIELD. Pressing a node number field results in that number being entered as a selection, This number is then automatically pasted into any of the Exit fields you then left click on. This saves an awful lot of typing!, simply select node 123 by licking its number field, then fill all the EXIT fields which need 123 in them. A note is placed at the foot of the screen showing the value of the current selection, for your information. Click on this field to clear the selection. A live field is also provided at the foot of the page with 1000 as a value, select this to enter a selection value of 1000, the terminator node number. 1000 in an Exit field of a node is the signal to end the campaign. Node 0 (the first one on the list) is the Start battle location for the campaign. Scenario Name, to the right of the Number field. Press this and If the scenario is 'No Scenario' then the list of available scenarios is displayed. 1) The scenario name appears at that battle node number 2) The original scenario is copied as a template, then it is saved off as a campaign scenario file, with a note displayed confirming this. (See campaign files later). Therefore you can reuse the one scenario several times at different node locations, provided that the dates are correct!! The end user does not require the scenario file to be installed in his scenario directory, you will distribute the scenario data files which contain your nodes scenario data. IF there is a already scenario name, then pressing again clears the name. (But does not delete the node files generated, you may need to manually delete these if not overwritten with new game data) Scenario Exit Branches, there are 5 of these for each scenario battle node. From left to right, DL, go to this battle node if the battle was a decisive loss for the player ML, go here if the player lost marginally ==, go to this location if the battle resulted in a draw MV, goto this location if the player has won a marginal victory DV, goto this location if the player won a decisive victory NB, remember that 1000 is the magic number for termination of the entire campaign at that exit point. These numbers act differently depending on whether or not a selection is 'live' (see Number above). If a selection is live, then the value of the current selection is automatically entered on pressing the exit link field, but if there is no selection currently live, you will be asked to manually enter the number. Build for Node 0, this will be the initial buy points for the entire campaign, as node 0 is the starting battle. For subsequent nodes, this field is the repair/upgrade points received at the start of that battle. Leaving this field at 0 results in whatever game defaults are in use being used as the basis of calculating the build points for the battle or campaign (if node 0). Entering a positive number results in this amount of points being granted to the user as a maximum, i.e. this is a 'cap' to the number of points granted (if the user has set preferences to a lower level, or his core is small for example, so the game generates a lower number, he will get less than this. If the game generates a larger number, this cap value will be used). Entering a negative number results in what I call a 'locked points' campaign. The user is given this amount of points (returned to him as a positive value!) and this overrides any user set preferences (so if the game decided on say 49 points, but you had entered,55 the player gets 55 whatever the game thinks). Thus a value of,1200 for node 0 gives the player 1200 start points to buy his core, and a value of,123 for battle node 1 will result in him being granted 123 buy points on starting that scenario to build or repair with. This method gives the designer the most control, and removes the problem of someone say selecting 3000 points at the outset of a campaign you designed to start with say 600 points and so destroying your careful balance of battles. (You should mention if a campaign is 'locked' on the introductory text screen for it to notify the end user of the fact.) Support This field controls the amount of support points granted for each battle to purchase non-core units. Again, leave at 0 to use game defaults, a positive number for your 'recommended' level which the user preferences can override, and a negative value to use as a locked value, which the end user will not be able to override. Flights This field is used to determine the number of flights made available to player 1 (The human), player 2 (the computer's) flights are whatever you put into his force in the scenario design. -1 uses the current game preferences setting (XXX or whatever the user has entered), 0 is no planes at all, positive numbers allows that number of air strikes. Variable start lines in user campaigns, when designing the scenario, you can enter a start line which deviates from the normal 25 or 50 of the default battles, use the '%' key in the map editor to assign a start line for usage only in user campaign battles, and only for the human (player No 1). This allows the user campaign designer a latitude of freedom similar to a scenario set up. Overall though, the best way to find out how the campaign system works is by making and experimenting with a few small test ones, even 2 battle ones. Only a foolish person would dive right in and try a 50 battle mega campaign as a starting point! When using a scenario for a campaign, take care to note that the human player will ALWAYS be player number 1 (i.e. his flag is on the LEFT hand side when the scenario is in the editor).. This does not mean he plays on the left side remember! The player 1 forces for the scenario are REMOVED to be replaced with player bought forces. Player 2 forces will remain. Best to buy an HQ unit anyway for safety. The name given to the scenario in the Scenario Editor, number of moves, and visibility etc. will all be used. ABOVE ALL, the scenario date will be used for the battle date!, do NOT use a 1939 scenario after a 1944 one, or you will warp back in time! Another date related item, certain nations will use different sides of the battlefield depending on opponent and date. If you use a scenario as a battle location where say the original designer has 'swapped sides' then you can end up with both sides having the same deployment side of the map! The key one that causes confusion is where a scenario was designed for one nation (say USA) as player #1, and you use a different nationality (say USSR) from the original scenario player #1 as the human player nation in the user campaign. It is therefore best to test each scenario you intend to use in a 'test rig' campaign consisting of precisely 1 battle location, you can use this in succession, replacing the scenario with each of the set you plan to use. Load the scenario to test, save the test campaign and start it, you should quickly determine if it is one where the enemy is on the wrong map side at that date and time. You may need to redo the scenario. You can reuse a scenario several times over, say if you place it on a different 'thread line' depending on earlier victory or loss situations in the scenario line of progression. If all the parameters stay the same, fine, just use it as it stands. However, you may need to adjust the battle date if the time line for the scenario differs in the new thread. Just load the scenario into the editor, change the date (you could change the name too!), and save in a scratch file, then use that scratch file in your user campaign. It is not a very good idea to loop backwards in the campaign flow. This could create endless loops, and going back to battle 0 is not likely to be a good idea either. Probably the best idea is to lay down your 'decisive victory' main thread as the first sequence of battles, this will be the series of battles the end user plays should he win decisively in all battles to the campaign end. Use that as the backbone to your campaign design. Then, say, write a thread of battles from the marginal victory of battle 0, and lay this down after the main backbone thread. This thread may rejoin the main thread after a decisive victory, say. You cannot easily enter (insert in between, rather) new nodes, so do not write a campaign 'on the fly' as you make it up, otherwise you will end up with a tangle of 'spaghetti code' which will be nigh on impossible to maintain. Plan your campaign, and write your battle flow as a proper flow chart on paper first. Also, there are 999 locations here, and most user campaigns will not use anywhere near that number, one idea would be to space your initial nodes apart say 3 or 4 lines, thus leaving space for last minute additions to be inserted later on, without as much grief. Any of you who ever programmed in one of those BASIC compilers which had no 'renumber' command in the editor will know why the default was to number lines with an interval of 10! The campaign data is saved in the /scen directory in the format UCAMPNNN.DAT (User campaign 999 would therefore be Ucamp999.dat) Each battle file for each scenario is saved off in the form CNNNSXXX.DAT (Battle 1 for campaign 0 would therefore be C000s001.dat) Note,
once you have used the 'advance of the guards' scenario as a template
in say node 123, the data will be saved off into a separate copy for the
scenario, there is no need to supply 'advance of the guards' to
the user (unless you really want to You can write an introductory text file for the scenario, which is displayed on selecting the campaign on the main game selection screen. Use a text editor like notepad to generate a file and save it with a filename of the format UcampNNN.txt, and that text will display when the user selects your campaign on the game menu. Ucamp0001.txt would therefore display for campaign slot 1 (recall these are indexed from zero!). Do not use a word processor, and ensure your text is USA ASCII compliant (no umlauts, stuff like that). For each scenario you can write both introductory text and exit text files. All take the form UCCCLNNN.txt where:
The introductory text file for a scenario is displayed at the entry to the scenario, it is scrolling text, and I have tried a 25K file. The exit texts can be used to taunt or congratulate the user on his progress, and give campaign progress info etc. All the text files are optional, but really should be prepared for a professional campaign. If the intro texts are not provided or not found, no adverse effect. If the exit texts are not found or provided, the default SSI exit texts are used (Scendd.txt etc. from the \scen directory). Note, use the SSI text formatting characters, as with any scenario introductory text:
Distributing Your User Campaign bundle up: UcampNNN.dat, UcampNNN.txt (if used), all the generated CNNNSXXX.DAT scenario files, and any UCCCLNNN.txt files you created. Wrap these up in a ZIP file, and instruct the user to extract to his \scen directory. Better yet, use some form of self extracting executable file installer, we have found that simple things like ZIP files, even PDF document files, confuse many less computer literate end users. Also, a decent install program will at least put the readme files in front of your end users eyes at least once, should you have readme files. Assume the end user will not read the readme files in any case, 90% will not, from our experience. Go to www.clickteam.com for a shareware install maker (which we used for this game ). Note, if the end user has a campaign NNN installed already. In this case,- instruct him to extract to a temporary directory and rename NN1 to whatever new NN2 he desires that is unused in his \scen directory. Or just to overwrite the existing campaign. It is perhaps best to hint to the end user to keep your (and every other campaign's) distribution files in a safe place, then he can extract from these as required.
ORIGINAL SP SERIES DESIGN AND PROGRAMMING BY Gary Grigsby, Keith Brors and SSI
SPMBT Version 1.5 PRODUCERS: Don Goodbrand, Andy Gailey. DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand, and the Playtesters. OOB DESIGN and QA CO-ORDINATION: Edward R. Mortimer ADDITIONAL DESIGN: The Playtesters, and end user's suggestions. PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand. RESEARCH AND OOB DATA DEVELOPMENT: Edward R. Mortimer, Bill Wilson, Boris Ajdukovic, Tony Englesen, John Turesson, Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand, Helge Bertram, Dick (Boomer) Burleigh , C B Blackard, Nick Hyle, Dale Hight, William Hutchison. ADDITIONAL OOB CONTRIBUTORS : Jarkko Vihavainen, Tong Yan, Daryl Noonan, Rami Sihvo, Eurico Viegas, Jim "Troopie" Nutter , Halstein Sjølie and Fernando Giorlando. As well, special thanks to the SPCAMO Yahoo listmembers for ongoing discussion, support and research. MOBHACK OB DATA EDITOR PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey. ART AND GRAPHICS: Don Goodbrand, Fernando Giorlando. SPCAMO PLAYTESTERS:( SPWW2 & SPMBT ) Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand, Edward R Mortimer, Bill Wilson , John Turesson, Helge Bertram, Ken Sharman, Dick (Boomer) Burleigh , C B Blackard, Dale Hight, Zoltán Zajonskovsky , Nick Hyle, Boris Ajdukovic, Tony Engelsen, William Hutchison and Claus Bonnesen SCENARIO DESIGN CO-ORDINATION: C B Blackard . SCENARIO AND CAMPAIGN DESIGNERS: C.B. Blackard, Bill Wilson, Doug McBratney GAME MANUAL AND DOCUMENTATION: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand . GAME MANUAL HTML DESIGN and Graphics: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand CONSULTANT: Dale Hight ADDITIONAL SOUND F/X EDITING: Scott Littleton, Alessandro Bonanni.
SPMBT Version 1.0 and 1.01 PRODUCERS: Don Goodbrand, Andy Gailey. PROJECT CO-ORDINATOR: Bill Wilson DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand, and the Playtesters. OOB DESIGN and QA CO-ORDINATION: Edward R. Mortimer ADDITIONAL DESIGN: The Playtesters, and end user's suggestions. PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand. RESEARCH AND OOB DATA DEVELOPMENT: Edward R. Mortimer, Bill Wilson, Boris Ajdukovic, Vincent Roiron, Tony Englesen, John Turesson, Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand, Helge Bertram, Dick (Boomer) Burleigh , C B Blackard, Nick Hyle, James Quinn, Dale Hight, Umberto Comella, Kodkod Eitan, Donald Nelson, William Hutchison. ADDITIONAL OOB CONTRIBUTORS: Jarkko Vihavainen, Tong Yan, Michal Derela, Chris Shaw . As well, special thanks to the SPCAMO Yahoo listmembers for ongoing discussion, support and research. MOBHACK OB DATA EDITOR PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey. ART AND GRAPHICS: Don Goodbrand, Joe Reiger, Umberto Comella, Zoltán Zajonskovsky VIDEO DESIGN AND LAYOUT: Don Goodbrand. SPCAMO PLAYTESTERS:( SPWW2 & SPMBT ) Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand, Edward R Mortimer, Bill Wilson , John Turesson, Helge Bertram, Ken Sharman, Dick (Boomer) Burleigh , C B Blackard, Dale Hight, Zoltán Zajonskovsky , Nick Hyle, Boris Ajdukovic, Tony Engelsen, James Quinn, Vincent Roiron, Umberto Comella, Kodkod Eitan, Donald Nelson, William Hutchison, Claus Bonnesen and Joe Reiger SCENARIO DESIGN CO-ORDINATION: C B Blackard SCENARIO AND CAMPAIGN DESIGNERS: C.B. Blackard, Dick (Boomer) Burleigh, Helge Bertram, Boris Ajdukovic . GAME MANUAL AND DOCUMENTATION: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand GAME MANUAL HTML DESIGN and Graphics: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand CONSULTANT: Dale Hight ADDITIONAL SOUND F/X: Scott Littleton WEBSITE HOST: Mario Krolls "The Wargamer". www.wargamer.com Thanks Mario !
A VERY SPECIAL THANKS goes to Fred Chlanda who's SHPEdit program first allowed Steel Panthers Icons to be edited and put back into the SHP files. Without Freds SHPEdit, none of this would have happened.
First thing to do is to read this manual thoroughly, try using your browser's search utility to look for a word, if you cannot find what you require from the links in the left pane. See the section on using the guide at the start of the document.. If you have questions, register at the SPMBT group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SPMBT, you can browse this through the web interface, or elect to have the messages emailed to you. Look through all the message traffic, as your question is quite likely to have already been covered, if not, then post a message and someone will try to help you out.
Users of these programs must accept this disclaimer of warranty: This software is supplied on an AS IS basis. The authors specifically disclaim ANY warranty, expressed or implied, as to the fitness for any particular purpose of the software. Under no circumstances will the authors be liable for any direct, consequential, special, indirect, or other damages including, but not limited to, loss of data, profit, or the use of the software arising from the distribution, use, misuse, or inability to use the software. USE OF THIS SOFTWARE IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. BY USING THE SOFTWARE, YOU AGREE TO THE TERMS OF USAGE SET FORTH IN THIS DISCLAIMER. Neither the revisions to the game code, nor the data editors and utilities used to create these revisions are in any way connected with, endorsed by, or supported by Strategic Simulations, Inc.
The authors are releasing this product as honourware. It is NOT public domain! You may use the program freely for personal usage. You may distribute it to whomever you like (e.g. by making it available on a web site) but (unless express written consent is negotiated): 1. Do NOT distribute
modified versions, you must distribute the entire fileset unchanged.
If you wish to distribute this game on a collection CD, or game magazine cover CD, please contact SP Camo No other limitations are placed on the usage of the software. TRADEMARKS AND COPYRIGHT INFORMATION .
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SPMBT Dulce bellum inexpertis [War is delightful to those who have no experience of it] (Erasmus)
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