From: "William Van Fleet" Subject: Soldiers at War Comments and Thoughts Having played a fair amount of SAW over the past ten days, including attempting to finish the campaign game, I thought I would weigh in with my views of the plusses and minuses of the game. A big caveat to what follows, though--as I mentioned in another post today, SAW doesn't pretend to be the most researched and historically accurate simulation of WWII squad level tactics ever designed. Rather, it was and is designed to be the grunt's view of the war as envisioned by Hollywood and foisted on the public for generations as the real thing. So, my criticisms of the game's historical aspects are few, and those relate to how the game conveys the "feel" of WWII combat, as opposed to the hard reality of it. (1) Interface: The biggest problem with the game graphically is the slide in-slide out interface ("SOI" as it's called in the manual). It's just too big, covering over a third of the entire game screen. In some ways this couldn't be helped, as there is a lot of useful information to keep track of for each soldier contained in the SOI. But I think the most pertinent information could have been placed far less obtrusively in the game's action screen itself. For example, one of the most important elements of the SOI is its designation of the enemy troops within your current soldier's line of sight. Surely, these little markers could have been programmed to pop up at the bottom (or top or side) of the action screen as you move your soldier about. Similarly, the type of weapon currently held by the soldier, as well as the amount of ammunition in it, could also be graphically displayed on the edge of the screen. Most, if not all, of the remaining information conveyed by the SOI could, and should, have been available from a pull-down menu activated by right-clicking to bring of the so-called "menu on demand interface" (or "MODI"). (2) Movement: This is pretty intuitive--just select the soldier and click on the cell (or square) you want him to move to. And I really like having three movement modes (walking, running or crawling), each with its own benefits and disadvantages. Personally, I almost always put all of my soldiers in running mode on the first turn and leave them in that mode throughout the scenario since the doubled movement allowance, IMHO, more than makes up for the rather slight degradation in the to-hit percentages of the soldiers (only some 4% to 6%). But this brings up another criticism I have about the "feel" of the game--there is no penalty to having your squad double-time it constantly. Seems to me even the movie goer is going to wander if your entire squad is made up of marathon runners. (3) Line of Sight/Opportunity Fire: I lump these two facets of the game together since they involve related, and the most troublesome, issues. The Romans had a saying: "All passes as magnificence to the ignorant." I suspect the converse is true in SAW. Perhaps the most disconcerting aspect of the game is trying to figure out the intertwined problems of (a) why your soldiers will occasionally get a 0% chance of hitting an enemy they have spotted, even though the enemy seems to be able to hit your guys well enough, and (b) why your troops can wander into an enemy's line of sight and sometimes shoot first while other times getting blasted (and vice-versa, of course). As I mentioned in a prior post, I suspect that the latter issue arises from a program routine involving some sort of mathematical equation taking into account such things as the remaining action points of each soldier, the experience level and/or modifier of each soldier, etc., with a random number modifier thrown in for "luck." But because neither the manual nor the readme.txt even hint at what is involved (other than a reference to the "reaction" ability of the soldiers during opportunity fire), we are left with nothing more than exasperation and the vague (or even concrete) feeling that this has got to be some sort of bug in the program. Similarly, I still can't determine the rationale behind why a particular friendly soldier can get a 0% to hit chance against an enemy trooper, but the enemy can still hit your guy. The readme.txt indicates that a 0% hit chance arises when there is some obstacle in your soldier's LOS inhibiting firing. But if that's the case, how could your soldier have spotted the enemy in the first place? And why doesn't that some obstacle inhibit the enemy's fire? A more plausible explanation would be that a 0% hit chance pops up when the enemy unit is beyond the effective range of your soldier's current weapon. For example, your soldier armed with that .45 automatic pistol can't shoot at the enemy machine gunner several hundred yards away with any effect, but the machine gunner sure could hit your guy. That would make sense. But again, both the manual and the readme.txt leave us in the dark about this problem. (4) Map and graphics: I'm not a rabid believer in graphics making or breaking a wargame (as opposed to say, RPG's and flight sims). Too many "pretty" wargames, like Talonsoft's Battleground series, are all graphics and no game. So long as the graphics aren't harsh on the eyes and help facilitate game play, I'm happy. SAW's map and graphics fill that bill nicely. A big plus for me is the ability to scroll the map by simply moving the cursor to the edge of the screen, rather than clicking madly on a map edge until I get where I want to go. (5) Sound: The music gets old pretty quickly (as in most games), but you have the option of turning it off without turning off the sound effects, which are pretty nifty if not downright necessary. It's a plus in my view to hear the sound of gunfire during hidden movement so you can figure out why one or more of your soldiers are down and out when your turn comes up again. And yeah, hearing the screams of a wounded or dying soldier is (dare I say it) kinda cool. (6) Campaign game and scenarios: The best part of SAW is the campaign game, though there may be a fatal bug in it (more on that in the bug section below). As in RPG games (or even the Panzer General series of games), permitting your squad members to gain experience and get better as the game goes along does worlds for getting you immersed in the game. After your guys get promoted to sergeant (along with the extra action points promotion brings) and get a few medals, you really have a reason to care whether they get shot up in the next scenario. The custom scenarios are a great diversion for an hour or two (try the Dungeon scenario sometime--it's a hoot). (7) Scenario editor: Custom scenario builders are all but a must in any game these days (IIRC, we have id Software to thank for that gem), and SAW doesn't disappoint. I suspect that we will see dozens of SAW scenarios on various websights in the near future. Too bad that SAW doesn't include a campaign editor allowing you to link together custom scenarios into one long campaign. I can't think of a wargame that does (Panzer General II doesn't, and you can only randomly generate a campaign in SPII and III, rather than linking specific custom built scenarios), and I think the industry is missing a huge trick here. (8) Morale: Unfortunately, this vital aspect of small unit warfare (even the Hollywood vision of it) is completely lacking here. Even simple morale rules could, and should, have been implemented in SAW. As an example, soldiers should occasionally freeze up and not be able to move or shoot (or at least suffer some degradation in their firing and movement capabilities) depending on such things as wound status, experience level and number of enemy soldiers in their line of sight. (Oh, wait, does morale figure into the opportunity firing routine and SSI just forgot to mention that??) (9) The "Feel" of the game: Overall, for all its faults SAW does a pretty job of giving me the feel of WWII squad level combat. It demonstrates (in the most unpleasant way) the importance of watching your back and not simply bursting through doorways or across open fields or other terrain lacking cover. Creeping up to windows, building corners and up staircases becomes a way of life. And the game is fun and a lot of it. (10) Bugs (real or imagined): (a) Lockups: I've had the game lock up (not crash back to Windows, but actually lock up) twice. The first time was in the campaign game in the secure the church scenario (I can't recall the actual name of the scenario offhand). One of my men crept up the staircase to the bell tower and from the level below the top threw a hand grenade up to the top. The blast apparently only stunned the Nazi machine gunner, but when my guy then walked up the stairs to the top, the machine gunner stood up and everything froze at that point (though the music kept playing from the CD). And when I rebooted the computer and brought up my saved game, the same thing happened again when my guy went up the staircase. In addition, other soldiers who could sight the stunned machine gunner always got a 0% hit chance when trying to shoot at him. The other time was in the dungeon scenario. I had just cleared out the middle section of the dungeon when the game simply hung (again, though, with music still coming from the CD). (b) Campaign game: I think there may be a bug in the Bridge Across the Rhine (or Remagen Bridge) scenario in the campaign game. According to the pre-scenario briefing, your squad is required to clear the bridge of "at least" four satchel charges and "double-time" it back to their entry point in the SE corner to exit the map. There is no time limit (though I wonder why not since the briefing indicates that the bridge will be blown in the next two hours). My squad recovered and carried off five (not four) satchel charges on the bridge, killed every enemy soldier on the map, and exited off the SE corner of the map in ten turns, but I still get an "Allies Fall" message and get booted out of the campaign game at that point. I have searched every cell of the bridge and cannot find any other demolitions. At least one other poster has had the same problem. I have e-mailed SSI about this, but have yet to hear from them. (11) Scale: Does anybody know what the temporal and geographic scales of the game are supposed to be? How big is a cell? How long is a turn? (12) Manual: I won't belabor a subject that's been part of two recent lengthy threads, but the SAW manual falls into the standard (these days) category of simply telling you what all the buttons and interfaces do without offering any insight into game mechanics. Though a section on tips and strategies would have been nice, more important would have been an explanation of things like LOS and opportunity fire as criticized above. But it appears those subjects will be left to a no-doubt soon to be published strategy guide, and we'll all have to plunk down another $20 to $30 to get an explanation of the basic fundamentals of game play. Just my two cents. Regards, Bill From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggety beasties And things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us! ~Cornish Prayer