In the game you can use navy ships to fire upon land targets - providing another form of potentially very powerful artillery. Like artillery, guns on naval ships have a limited range and the first step that you need to do in order to allocate naval barrage support is to define those hexes that warships can fire upon.
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Before clicking on the button that is imaged to the left, you must first shift-click to select the map hexes that you want to be in range of the naval units. For very large maps, all this shift-clicking can be rather tiring, so note that when you save your work that the highlights are also saved so that you can latter return to the process of shift-clicking your hexes. When you have selected your hexees, clicking on the Naval Support... button will bring up the following dialog: |
The first thing to notice about this dialog is that you have three types of warships to chose from: battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. Typically, battleships are very large monsters that when firing can do lots of damage; destroyers are at the other extreme and have rather weak barrage contributions; and cruisers are right in the middle of these two extremes.
The other option that you have to think about is which sides can fire upon the hexes that you have selected. A check box is provide for this option.
Something to keep in mind is that once you have set it such that a particular type of warship can fire upon some hexes, you don't have to start shift-clicking hexes from scratch if you want to do something similar for a different warship type. An example will show how useful this is: destroyers typically have the shortest range so you first might shift-click a small collect of hexes and set these to be fired upon by the destroyers; cruisers typically have more range than destroyers so you merely have to shift-click further hexes to what you had for the destroyers; and finally, since battleships are the longest ranged of all you can then shift-click further hexes from those that you had selected from the cruiser - thus slowly accumulating the selected hexes rather than having to do everything from scratch.
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Sometimes you might want to see what hexes you have selected, from an earlier editing time, for a particular warship type and side. To do this you only need to click on the Naval Hexes... button to bring up the following dialog: |
With this dialog you need to chose which warship type and the side on which the warship belongs. Notice that we now have a pair of radio buttons instead of the earlier check boxes, as there is no guarentee that the scenario maker will want the warships of different sides having the same hexes as possible targets.
Above we learnt how to set hexes so that warships could fire upon them, but this doesn't necessarily mean that when we play the game that we'll automatically have warships which we can use. To allocate a certain number of warships to appear in the game we need to tell the editor what we want. On top of this we can also allocate the amount of airsupport (in the form of bomber and reconnaisance aircraft) that should be availible in the game.
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To bring up the dialog that will allow you to set the amount of off map support for your scenario you need to click on the Barrage Support... button to bring up the following dialog: |
There's quite a number of data fields to enter here, but on the whole they are pretty easy to deal with. Those fields that run down the left half of the dialog are concerned with side 1, while those that run down the right half are concerned with side 2. The only real trick is to make certain that you always enter values that are not negative - zero and up are your only options.
A game that has all the units that it will use during the game appearing right at the very begining is a little dull, and there is nothing more nerve racking than trying desparately to hold a crumbling front line while you wait for promised reinforcements to arrive.
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There are two parts to the Set Turn... button: the button itself and the number immediately below the button. The number below the button is a reminder what turn it is that you've presently set. To change the display turn you must click on the button to bring up the following dialog: |
This dialog has only a single data field and it must always be a number greater than zero. That is 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on, are allowed. If you set a the display turn to 1, then when you play the game those units will be present on the map at turn 1, which is the very first turn. If you set the display turn to another number then that number will correspond to the turn number in the game when they will appear on the map.
If you place some unit units on the map and then change the display turn number you will suddenly see your new unit units disappear. Don't be alarmed as the editor only displays those units that are on the map at a certain display turn and not all the display turns simultaneously - is the only real way of distinguishing when a unit will appear.
The fun part of any scenario comes from the existance of units on the map. Units are an abstract representation of a discrete collection of people and equipement. Sometimes, in the following, I shall use the term "unit" instead of "unit", as I'm refering more to the graphic (which is treated as a unit stack) rather than the abstraction.
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The first step that you must do is to shift-click the map hexes in which you want a unit to appear. Once you have selected your hexes, click on the New Unit... that is pictured to the left in order to bring up the following dialog: |
If you think that there is a lot to fill in on this dialog then you're not mistaken. (You might be interested to know that the New Unit dialog that now appears in the Joy Of Hex Editor originally had around 100 individual fields to enter in order to place one unit on the map. I'm amazed that I was able to reduce all that complexity down to what you see - still, I might have gone too far for the exact variables that make up the abstraction are now hidden from not just the game player but the scenario maker. Maybe in the in the next version I'll allow more control to be given to the scenario maker - ideas and thoughts will be welcome.)
The first item that needs to be selected is the Unit Type popup menu. This is where you choose what you want your unit to represent. You have the following choices, which are hopefully self-descriptive:
Head-Quarters Infantry Machine-Gun Troops Combat Engineers Mountain Troops Light Anti-Aircraft Heavy Anti-Aircraft Artillery Mountain Artillery Paratroops Glider Troops Airbourne Artillery Anti-Tank Guns Police Unit Security Unit Rocket Artillery Naval Troops Fortifying Engineers Bridge Builders Ski Troops Self-Propelled Artillery Armoured Infantry Tank Unit Armoured Recon Motorcycle Troops Cavalry Static Artillery Commandos
The next item that needs to be selected is the Type Of Motion popup menu. The type of motion has an important effect on what terrain types a unit can enter and how fast that unit can move. You have the following choices:
Foot and Horse Semi-Motorised Fully-Motorised Half-Tracked Fully-Tracked
Something to keep in mind is that some unit types don't make use of this choice. If you're not sure whether a unit is effected, just keep an eye on the image, as you chose different motion types the graphic will change if it can, but if the unit type is indifferent then you'll see no changes to the graphic.
The next item that needs to be selected is the Quality popup menu. This has an enormous number of abstractions hidden behind it. (Maybe in a latter version I might allow people to have more choices here ... feedback?) This item can allow you to have a unit that ranges from strong in attack and defense to a unit that is weak in these areas. As the quality increases artillery develops a longer range and it's strength increases. Other "hidden" abstractions are: armour strength, anti-tank capacity, and anti-aircraft capacity. The choices that you have are:
Very Good Good Moderate Bad Very Bad
The next item that needs to be selected is the Unit Size popup menu. There are two choices: battalion and company. Put roughly a battalion is about three times the size of a company and a company consists of about 100 men. Some people might quibble with what I've selected, but I needed some sort of values and comparison means.
The next item that needs to be selected is the Initial Defense popup menu. When the units first appear on the map they need an initial choice for how they should defend. There are the following choices:
Retreat When Attacked Defend Within Reason Defend At All Costs
Scenario makers must remember something important, one trick that I have used in the game AI is that once a unit has set its defense to "Defend At All Costs" it will never give that unit any orders. Thus if you want some units to stay on the map and never leave the hex in which you have initially placed then then use the "Defend At All Costs" option. But becareful: if you set "Defend At All Costs" for artillery, the artillery will never give out any barrage orders, which is probally not what you intended for that unit.
The next three popup menus are all concerned about colours. The choices that you have for colours are:
Light Grey Medium Grey Black Dark Red Medium Red Light Red Orange Pale Orange Yellow Olive Drab Light Green Medium Green Dark Green Light Blue Medium Blue Dark Blue Pink Light Purple Dark Purple Brown
The first colour choice is what the main background colour shall be. The second colour shall be the patch colour that fill in the region behind the unit designator. The third is the detail colour and is the colour in which the unit designator and text shall be written in. Play about with these menus items to get a feel for what is going on by watching what happens to the picture of the unit provided on the dialog.
The next item that needs consideration is the Unit String field. Whatever you type here will appear on the unit graphic - with the following limitations:
Only the first 4 characters of the string are printed - anything more is ignored; and anything less that 4 is alright. All numbers (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0) are valid. All upper case letters (A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Y,Z) are valid. The lower case "s" is also valid and will appear in the "lightening bolt S" of the German SS. The negative sign "-" is also valid. A space is also valid. All other characters are NOT valid. (Don't use them, as latter I might added to my unit font and need the very characters that you have selected.)
The Unit Graphic isn't a data field for you to enter, it is just a visual representation of the unit as it will appear on the hex map if you want it.
The final item is two radio buttons which you can use to set the side to whic a unit belongs.
Clicking OK will make your selection appear on the map.
If you have placed an unit on the map and you would like to remove it, select the hex containing the offending unit, open up the New Unit... dialog, and select the Delete Top Unit button. This will only remove the topmost unit that appears on the hex map for hexes that you have selected - other units underneath or not displayed because they are a different display turn will not be affected.
If you have placed an unit on the map and you are not certain what you have entered in its data fields or even if you feel like changing those data fields, you can simply select the hex containing the unit that you are interested in (you should only select one hex) and go cmd-i which will bring up a dialog very similar to the New Unit... dialog that we encountered above - the only differences being that you can only look at and change those data fields for an already existing unit, and there is no Delete Top Unit option.
In the Joy Of Hex game there is a rather simplistic generalisation: a company of any unit type consists of 100 men, and a battalion is the addition of 3 companies of that type (that is a battalion consists of 300 men). When a unit suffer casualties these are measured in number of men lost. In the editor, when replacements are mentioned they are measured in terms of individual men. Thus to rebuild a battalion that is at a quarter of its original strength (that is the number of men making up that unit is 75 men), you need (300 - 75 =) 225 replacements.
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There are two buttons to set the number of replacements - one button for each side. The image to the left show the button that will bring up the replacement dialog for side 1, which is shown below: |
The column of edit fields that are to the left of the dialog are the number of replacements in terms of number of men. The column of edit fields that are to the right of the dialog number of turns that the player must wait before replacements appear. Some examples might make what happens clearer:
Although there are about 20 main unit types there are only about 10 replacement types, which means that some replacements double up for multiple unit types. For example, you can use infantry replacements to repair standard infantry units, naval troops, police units, and security units, to name a few.
The button for the replacements to side 2 functions in exactly the same way as the button for side 1, so there's no need to expand further.
Hex ownership is important for many reasons, and though tedious the effort still should be made to include this detail. The most important use of hex ownership to determine if a unit has a path that it can trace a supply path to its head-quarters. Through the progress of a game, hex ownership will no doubt change, but if you mess it up at the begining then all sorts of oddities could arise whenever someone was to play your scenario.
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The first step is to go through your hex map and shift-click all the hexes that you want to be owned by side 1. You then click on the Set Ownership... button that is pictured to the left to bring up the following dialog: |
There's not much to this dialog, it's merely a check to make certain that you really want to make the changes to the hex ownership that you have requested.
Keep in mind that though you are setting the hex ownership of side 1 directly, the editor sets all non-selected hexes to side 2. In other words you set the hex ownership of side 2 by setting the hex ownership of side 1.
Something very important to note about hex ownership is that you must always surround a ferry (displayed via a green disk with the letter F printed on it) with hex ownership of only one side per ferry. If you have one edge of a ferry with a hex set to side 1 and on the other edge have a hex set to side 2, then no matter which side tries to use the ferry they will always cause the ferry to blow up.
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Sometimes you need to see what hexes (if any) you have set to be owned by side 1. To see these you just click on the Show Ownership button that is pictured to the left and all the hexes that are owned by side 1 will appear with the familar green highlight around the border. By default, non-selected hexes are set to side 2. |
Attachment is very important in the game as it is through attachment that units can tell where their supply (if any) is coming from. There are two sorts of attachment that can be made: firstly, you can attach any unit to a head-quarter unit; secondly, you can attach a head-quarter to a supply hex (a hex with an orange border).
Notice that there are two groups of buttons and display area on the Toolbar for the case of attaching units to head-quarters, and for the case of attaching head-quarters to supply hexes. You can tell the difference by the lower button: one has Attach Unit the other has Attach To Hex.
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To attach an unit to a head-quarter you first must click on the hex containing the head-quarter that you want selected. (You must only select one hex, any more than one and the editor won't select a head-quarter for you.) Then click on the upper button, pictured to the left, called Select HQ. If you have selected a hex where there is a head-quarters at the top of a stack then that headquarter image shall appear in the Toolbar. |
The next step requires you selecting the units that you want added to the selected head-headquater. You can now shift-click all the hexes that contain the units that you want attached to the head-quarters - keeping in mind that only the top most units of a stack will be added (not all the members of a stack, so you have to rotate the stack and add each time). Once you have selected the hexes that you want, you then click the Attach Unit button in the Toolbar, which will bring up the following dialog:
The above dialog is only giving you some feedback so that you know that some sort of attaching is going on.
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To attach a head-quarter to a supply hex you must first click on the hex containing the head-quarter that you want selected. (You must only select one hex, any more than one and the editor won't select a head-quarter for you.) Then click on the upper button, pictured to the left, called Select HQ. If you have selected a hex where there is a head-quarters at the top of a stack then that headquarter image shall appear in the toolbar. |
The next step requires you selecting the hex to which the head-headquaters will be attached. You must select only one hex (and it must have a supply marker - which in turn must have some supply level for the head-quarter side in question). Once you have selected the hex that you want, you then click the Attach To Hex button in the Toolbar, which will bring up the following dialog:
The above dialog is only giving you some feedback so that you know that some sort of attaching is going on.
Units can dig themselves in during a game, but units can also have their dugin quality set with the scenario editor.
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To set a unit to be dugin you first need to select the hexes that you want changed, before clicking on the Dug-In Quality... button pictured to the left, which will bring up the following dialog: |
There are two types of dugin quality (which one you chose will have an effect on the graphic that will appear on the map: a wavy top for lightly dugin, and a square-wave top for extensively dugin). and five levels of resilence.
If you want to remove any hexes that have a dugin marker, you only need to shift-click those hexes, click the Dug-In Quality... button, and click the Clear Hexes button in the dialog.
Since setting a unit to be dugin will place a dugin marker on top of the stack (making it difficult to determine what units you have placed in that hex), you might want think about leaving the process of having units dugin until very late in the the scenario making process.
Also notice that the dugin quality will continue to reside on the map even when you delete the unit that is supposedly dugin. Don't worry about this, for when the game starts, if there is no unit where there is a dugin marker then that marker will be removed. Having the dugin marker linger on the editable map can be somewhat a help to the scenario maker.
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Since clicking in a hex only determines whether or not to select a hex, a button is needed to rotate a stack of units so that you can see the other units that you placed on the map. To rotate a stack of units you first need to click in the hex in which the units lie, then click in the Rotate Stacks button that is pictured to the left. |
There are some recommended guidelines that go towards making a consistent scenario appearance, the editor doesn't check for them but you probally should:
Units should not be placed upon a lake hex, unless there is a valid ferry path there. Units from two different sides shouldn't appear in the same hex. Doing this could cause some unpredictable consequences in the game. Bunkers and Fortresses are already strong defensive positions. Applying a dugin quality is not recommended. Remember to set the hex ownership for side 1. Ferry Bridges (green disk with F printed on it) must be surrounded by hex ownership of one side. Attach all units to head-quarters (and head-quarters to hexes if need be) as the player will have to wait until the first night turn before he can attach the units himself, which will mean that the unconnected units will have to go an entire day without supply.