Is it just me?

[Narwan]

Concerning clear terrain.

Troops in clear terrain are not exposed in open terrain. There is a big difference between clear terrain in the game and the expression 'troops in the clear'.

You should think of clear terrain of terrain with not enough trees to be woods, not enough buildings to be an urban hex, not enough rough spots to be rough terrain, etc.
How many trees have to be in a 50m by 50m hex for it to be a wooded hex? 5? 10? 50? 100? For aguments sake let's say 100. That means a hex with 99 trees is clear terrain. Add a few shacks and stables, a gully or two and a bunch of 4 ft high shrubbery. That's a clear hex too in the game and has a lot of cover and concealment. more than enough for a squad to make use of.
Clear terrain covers everything from completely open to an inch away from being woods, rough, etc. What the game does is take the middle ground. So if you see a clear hex, think of it as being midway between completely open and either a full woods, rough, building hex etc. Don't expect it to mean that troops in a clear hex are fully exposed.

And its a game, not a simulation. It much too limited to be even close to that.

[Weasel]

I would say a sqd in the middle of a ploughed field is in the open. If winsp is hypothetically saying "well there could be a tree (mmm...isolated cover, a big no-no in infantry combat)" and maybe a small shack (more isolated cover) but it doesn't show, well then..................:rolleyes:

[Narwan]

You may have a point if the game in fact had a terrain hex for a ploughed field. It doesn't. It's got wheat crops and green crops.

And the game doesn't say 'there could be a tree and maybe a small shack'. The game says to assume there is enough going on in a hex to provide at least some cover for troops in it so there actually are trees and/or shacks, bushes, crops, gullies, ditches, rises, bumps, statues, fences, small walls, dog houses, stables, outhouses, etc in a clear hex. Just not enough for it too qualify for another terrain status.

It's never been any different and that point has been made very often in the past. My bad for thinking it was common knowledge among gamers.
The game offers only a very small set of standard terrain hexes and completely clear terrain devoid of any cover is not one of them.

Narwan

[zeiss]

You may have a point if the game in fact had a terrain hex for a ploughed field. It doesn't. It's got wheat crops and green crops.

Hmm? WinSPWW2 does have a ploughed field; "Tilled Field" level 0.

Besides, if the infantry target is moving or non-moving is more important for the kills than the terrain.

I often have one of the sillier SP moments with multiple MG units. You fire 3 mighty MG42s and hit nothing only to have the assistant gunner(s) get the only kill with his rifle..

[Weasel]

Sure does, take a hard look at the St Lambert map you are playing AP on.

[Weasel]

Face it, winsp is far from being the "most realistic war game" that the reviews and such say it is. Is it better then WAW and H2H, in some ways yes, is it worse, in some ways yes.

What I like about winsp:

1. windows based
2. maps are beautiful and huge with lots of terrain abilities
3. oobs are huge
4. when you set a game setting it stays that way
5. new artillery delay routine

Dislike:

1. infantry
2. tanks
3. AAA (as an experiment I took every AAA gun in the Polish OOB in 1944 and added 10 to fc/rf/rof and then placed 4 of each gun on a wide open, no terrain map, vis 65 at the same time (so there were about 24 AAA guns all in a small area. I then had 10 a/c fly over them, size from fighter to bomber. The guns would only shoot once the a/c got within 10 hexes, and then they still missed all but once. Repeated flights, repeated results)
4. routed infantry that suddenly rally and close assault adjacent units.

[Narwan]

Yep, I put my foot in my mouth there. I actually looked at the different terrain tiles in the editor before that post and completely overlooked the 'add tilled fields' one.

Still doesn't mean it's coverless terrain. The Lambert map itself is a good example, it shows a number of big swanks of tilled area's. May appear as a big open pieces of land but was it that in reality? The answer is no.
Fields, tilled or not, are separated from each other physically. In northwest europe in particular (holland, most of belgium, northern france, northern germany and much of western germany) the ground water table is very high and water management very important. Fields are usually separated by water ditches which are effectively trenches. Nowadays individual fields have gotten larger but back then the average field was at most 100m by 100m (and often not square but a bit elongated) before you ran into the next ditch. In other words, on average a field hex in the game has these 'trenches' on at least half it's sides. Pretty good for cover. And that's off course assuming there's nothing else around for cover, like for example the terrain slightly rolling (you need only 1ft difference to be covered when you're flat).
The episodes of band of brothers where they're fighting in Holland are a good illustration as just about every one of those episodes has them use these types of ditches for cover and movement when in 'clear' terrain or fields.

As you go further south and deeper inland in europe ditches become less of a feature (but still present) and stone walls and lines of vegetation a more common boundary between fields (like the infamous hedgerows). They too offer cover.

An infantry squad moving slowly, 1 hex per turn, mimics a squad moving through the trenches or covered by the walls etc with only a couple of guys exposed at any one time.
Move two hexes per turn and you 'll still make use of cover but not fully and usually at least half the guys are exposed (or for example walking besides a 3 ft high stone wall, you all stick out but can get to immediate cover).
Move full speed (3 hexes) and just about everyone is exposed just about the entire turn.

4. routed infantry that suddenly rally and close assault adjacent units.

That's WaW. Doesn't happen in SPWW2.

Btw, not I nor the designers will ever claim this to be the most realistic wargame. In fact we go out of our way to illustrate the limits of the game so that players don't have unrealistic expectations of what to expect from the game.

Narwan

[Weasel]

"That's WaW. Doesn't happen in SPWW2."

:chin: HMMMMM, lets see, I have had it happen to me so many times in winsp that I lost count. Why the heck do you think that we tried dropping rout/rally to 50%, inf toughness to 50%? Because we were sick and tired of these little buggers saying "screw it that we just suffered 60% causalities in our squad, lets close assault everything". Game settings play tested and found to most make infantry react properly to their status:

Search 130%
Rout/Rally 60%
Tank Toughness 120%
Infantry toughness 50%
Artillery effectiveness 50%

So don't slam other versions, there are flaws in winsp.

[Narwan]

I'm not the one slamming a game. As far is I know it is a standard and intentional game feature of WaW that a routing or retreating squad that is being fired on can as a result of that become 'unrouted' suddenly. And return fire.

In SPWW2 a enemy squad that is retreating or routed will remain so for your entire turn. There is no chance at all that such a squad will return fire during your turn. Zero. Won't happen.

As you mentioned squads 'suddenly' becoming unrouted as your dislike I take that to mean during your own turn.
When your turn has ended there is a chance that the squad will rally in it's own turn. Every unit has that chance. I doubt that is what you dislike?
Rally factors aren't that high. Unless you're facing high quality troops, and usually just those that can call upon one or more command units too, there's little chance of them rallying back to a state where they'll close assault.

Interesting to see how our views differ. I would never play such settings as I find those to result in extremely unrealistic games. Honestly I'm baffled at how you can come to those stats as being the 'right' ones. The default settings are the ones the designers consider, over the many years they've been doing this, to give the most appropriate results. They have provide the options to change these though so players who have different opinions can adjust these to their own likings. I like to think of that as a strong point of the game.

Armor is still too powerful in my personal opinion. I think the default stats are about right but if I'd had to adjust anything it would be to make infantry a bit tougher and more durable as they're still rather easy to deal with.


Narwan

[Weasel]

I have never, ever, played WAW and I have not played H2H since winsp came out, so there is no possible way that it could not be winsp that this is occurring in. That is why when I first published the alternate settings I specifically wrote "routed units will now stay routed and when not suddenly rally and turn super human".

Nope, if I am playing Vesku for instance (since he help with the new settings) and I am targeting his routed squad, I have had his routed units suddenly turn "ready" and close assault or shoot back. So has he, and so have others of my opponents, it is just that no one else is adding in here.

This has always been one of my biggest bitches, routed units turning and killing their attacker. Yes it happens in H2H, but it most certainly happens in winsp too...no doubt in my military mind.