Phantom Artillery

[Glenn Saunders]

Glenn, I'm guessing you were involved in the design of the France '40 campaign scenario.

Yes - I am the guy who placed those units on the map.

Can you tell me what the intent of the designers was? Did the designers intend that the artillery units I asked about be used, or were they intended to be in travel mode on the way to the front?

The idea is they are in T mode off the Map.
I actually had a very detailed DOC which jumped around and gave etremely detailed info about WHO was WHERE and at What time and on what date. And this I worked with to establish the releases and which units were in front or behind others units.

As volcane alluded too as well, in order to estabish AI orders, you need to have the units on the Map. Furthermore, once units go into the reinforcement list they become extremely difficult to manage viryally impossible to keep track of.

Finally - there was a suggestion that I could have done all this and then added the units to the reinforcements list after I was done.

YEs - this is possible too. However one has to understand that during development you don't get it perfectly correct on the first try. So it was important to TEST the game using ON MAP Fixed units with Releases so adjustments could be made.

I learned a lot about this process doing Sicily and in that Campaign I test with a key piece of GErman Reinforcements FIXed in Messina and releasing at the correct time. Before we mastered game I Added the unit to Reinforcements because it just Looked better. I even remembered to remove the Release so it wouldn't show up and look funny in the Command report. What I negeleted to do was Remove the FIXED status. Thus a number of people got well into Campaigns before finding my error. And with encrpyted files I can go in and fix my mistake. So I vowed never to make that mistake again.

So having a bunch of units poise at the edge of the map looks a little funny I will grant you - the possible side effects of changing it with the number of units was simply not worth the while.

Furthermore - until now nobody ever pointed out that the arty units could potenially be used when they shouldn't be able to be. But in the big picture, doing so doesn't realy affect the game outcome.

There - I think I've covered jus about every aspect of this that I can think of.

Glenn