winSPww2 v4.0 coming very soon

[Walrus]

Commanders
It seems that the new patch is only days away.

Check out what it contains, that is a lot of work.
A LOT of work.
Much respect to the SPCAMO guys, Don and Andy for continuing to improve this game for us...ten years of effort, mostly for free.
A Stirling effort I say!
Hurrah!

WinSPWW2 version 4.0 upgrade patch

22 New Scenarios
52 Revised Scenarios
6 Revised Campaigns including the ANZAC Campaign
96 New photos
29 New Icons
40 New or revised Text files
36 Updated OOB files
4 Updated sound files
17 Revised Graphic files
Upgraded ScenHack
Upgraded MOBHack
Upgraded Cost Calculator
ArmourCalc
APCalc




1) There has been a new "explosives" class added to the game. In WW2 there are three types of units added to each OOB

Booby traps

These represent any type of anti personnel weapon typically built from small explosive charges or bundles of hand grenades. They may occasionally damage an armoured vehicle or destroy a truck

Demolition Charges

A charge powerful enough to bring down a concrete / steel bridge but also used to bring down buildings on advancing troops in defensive battles. They could also be used as "roadside bombs" or IED type weapons

Fougasse
Fougasse was typically a mixture of gasoline and oil with an explosive igniter. In Britain during WWII fougasse was usually a 40-gallon drum dug into the roadside and camouflaged at a location such as a corner where vehicles would need to slow down. The Russians first used 'Fougasse flame throwers' in the defences around Moscow in 1941 and in the defence at Stalingrad. They were remote-controlled cans with nozzles designed to be embedded in the ground and set off from a distance and they were the basis for a German copy that showed up in Italy. Those weapons were buried with a fixed direction discharge tube and integrated with conventional landmines and barbed wire in defence works. Weapons of this type were widely used in the Korean and Vietnam wars as well as other conflicts and are well known to combat engineers


NOTE 1: These units are set up as one per formation maximum to curb overuse. They cannot be moved so must be placed during the deployment phase of the game.

NOTE 2:These explosive devises can self detonate when enemy units are nearby and, in the case of Demolition Charges and Fougasse can be "command detonated" on the players turn who "owns" them, IF there is radio contact, by selecting the explosive charge then pressing "F"



2) Buildings that collapse into rubble for any reason will now cause casualties to anyone in the building with more potential damage if the building is stone. Previous to this there was no test in the code for such casualties.

3) Engineer type vehicles that deliberately rubble a building will show markedly less chance sticking when "bulldozing" buildings than regular tanks do.

4) Mobhack would now retain the nation when "Paste as target nation" box was selected when copying formations from one nation to another.

5) When tanks turn their hulls to face an enemy firing they no longer turn the hulls directly 90 degrees which generally increases their chance of survival by increasing the angle of attack for the shell.

6) Passengers who dismount into a hex with mines will now be tested to see if they set off a mine. Previously the only test was for the vehicle when it entered the hex. This change also applies to any passengers unloading from a helicopter or a helicopter landing in a minefield.

7) All OOBs have had every unit and formation trimmed back to 12/46 where the OOB still existed in 1946. All OOBs have been checked for units that started before 1930 and the few that were found have been corrected to 1930. All OOBs that started or ended between 1930 and 1946 such as The Slovak Republic, Italian RSI, Polish LWP and both Spanish OOBs have had their start and end dates adjusted to their actual in and out of service dates used by the game code for all units and formations that strayed before or after those dates. Any unit with a start date after 12/46 was removed. This was a holdover from the original version of the game that allowed game play to 1949.There were 86 units that started after 1946 so were wasting space in the OOBs and there were 4851 units with end dates after 12/46 which made for "messy" OOBs.

8) There was an extensive comb though of the weapons list was done to corrected deviant and erroneous entries. All weapons of one type should now have the same stats in every OOB they are listed

9) Japanese infantry units may now disperse but at a 50% chance compared to all other nationalities. This speeds up the game and eliminates the need to hunt down 1 man squads.

10) MOBHack now shows template units used by formations as underlined in the units section and in the formation section the total number of men in a formation is now reported up to a limit of 255.

11) After a campaign river crossing, your core infantry will no longer be permanently assigned an inflatable raft.

12) When playing PBEM in basic security mode the game will now simply warn players if the OOBs differ from the original without aborting the game.

13) More historical battle locations for Canada in Normandy onwards in NW Europe have been added, such as "Le Mesnil Patry", "Orne Valley", "Quesnay Wood", "Scheldt estuary", "Hochwald forest", Sonsbeck (town), and Gronigen (city).

14) In campaigns it is no longer possible to change a dead unit and retain that dead units experience and morale for the new unit.

15) Smoke is now more readily available for non x0 armoured vehicles. In the past some formations contained support units who's purpose was to provide this service but they had no smoke rounds due to code restrictions. These restrictions have now been removed.

16) The code has been adjusted so that the V hexes , both cluster and "shotgun", are more evenly distributed to both sides

17) Experience and Morale are now presented in the same order on all screens

18) Occasionally the last reported page of formations in the purchase menu would turn up blank. This has been corrected. The code was producing an extra page every 25 formations instead of at 26

19) A code change was made so that players will no longer be able to move a unit, look around, then if they don't like their LOS undo and move someplace else. This only affects battles against the AI as undo is not functional in PBEM.

20) The ratings for HEAT protection of German Shurtzen has been increased from 6 to 10 based on new information found in post war British tests.

21) Two of our game development programs have been included with this patch and can both be found in the main winSPWW2 folder. ArmourCalc is a very straightforward program. Enter the armour thickness and angle and press calculate and the answer is displayed in the Result box.The second program is named APCalc and is a bit more involved. At the top of the screen is a "Select OOB" box where each nation can be picked. APCalc reads the weapons data in each OOB and displays the potential armour penetration at various range increments for AP and Sabot. HE and HEAT have only one result as they are not affected by range. There is also a "Best" results box for each type which will give you the best possible result from 1000 calculations .Re-sampling CAN give a different result sometimes, depending on the influence of the random factors the game uses to calculate penetration. Help files for both can be found in the main game folder along with the programs

22) The ANZAC Campaign has been corrected for OOB changes and added to the patch. It and five other campaigns contain corrections made due to OOB upgrades as do a number of scenarios.

23)There were numerous minor unit , weapon and formation changes made to the OOBs .