Army Editor Beta

[MTG]

Thanks for a copy of the beta.  I did a quick test and found a few problems and have some questions.
1. The copy function does not work on a new OOB.  It must be saved first. 
2. The copy function for regiments/battalions does not copy the unit name, unit type, skirmishing, shooting effect, reload, range and close combat values.

Questions:
1. Why is the minimum reload time 1 minute?  Historically it was shorter than that.  Men could fire 2 or 3 times per minute.
2. The meaning of shooting effect is unclear.  What are realistic values for a musket vs a cannon.  Both can kill one man.  A 12lb'er could kill 14 men under the right circumstances.  Should it's value be 14 times greater than a musket?  Should a musket have a value of 1?
3. Why only 3 levels of command?  What about division and corps command?  Are they inputted later during scenario creation?

[Dr D Ezra Sidran]

I'm going to let Andy answer your other questions; I'll respond to, "Why only 3 levels of command?  What about division and corps command?  Are they inputted later during scenario creation?"

This was a design / gameplay decision that I made early on after polling a pretty large group of potential users. The majority thought that three levels would be fine. It's really a question of where do you want to cut off the commanders. You could easily go Army HQ -> Corps -> Division -> Brigade -> Regiment -> Company, but do we really want to issue orders that far down the chain of command?

If you want to use General Staff for a large battle, I would suggest Army HQ -> Corps -> Division is appropriate. Smaller battles would use, perhaps, Division -> Brigade -> Regiment.

[MTG]

Having a division as the smallest unit would be fine for an operational level game but not a tactical one.  A full battle abstracted down to only the division level will not interest many players.  Having a division as the largest unit would work for a advance/rear guard fight but not a larger battle.  This type of abstraction and limitation was common during the cardboard chit games of the 60s and 70s but with the advent of PCs is wholly unnecessary.

[Quartermaster]

On launching the editor the page that is displayed is not aligned with the Windows screen. 

I can work around it by dragging the lower right corner then maximising the screen.

See attached screen capture.

Windows 10 machine with geforce gtx 960 M graphics card.

[Andy ONeill]

1. The copy function does not work on a new OOB.  It must be saved first. 
2. The copy function for regiments/battalions does not copy the unit name, unit type, skirmishing, shooting effect, reload, range and close combat values.

These were bugs. Mostly.
Now fixed.
Should be in a new version when Ezra loads it to the web site.

The name is intentionally not copied since you'll want unique names.


Questions:
1. Why is the minimum reload time 1 minute?  Historically it was shorter than that.  Men could fire 2 or 3 times per minute.

The measure is seconds.
There's a tooltip explains this if you hover over the field.
2. The meaning of shooting effect is unclear.  What are realistic values for a musket vs a cannon.  Both can kill one man.  A 12lb'er could kill 14 men under the right circumstances.  Should it's value be 14 times greater than a musket?  Should a musket have a value of 1?

Musket fire is per unit - there would be perhaps a thousand shots in a volley.
The values are to be decided.

3. Why only 3 levels of command?  What about division and corps command?  Are they inputted later during scenario creation?

Ezra covered this elsewhere.
I think it's a reasonable abstraction for c18th / 19th.
Or earlier.
c20th + the military tended to have more complicated organisations with attached and remote artillery etc.
Alos.
Without this sort of abstaction, the kriegsspiel version of the game would either be more complicated than a "quick" game or require different OOB.

[Andy ONeill]

On launching the editor the page that is displayed is not aligned with the Windows screen. 

I can work around it by dragging the lower right corner then maximising the screen.

See attached screen capture.

Windows 10 machine with geforce gtx 960 M graphics card.

There is a -full command line switch which will run the app in full screen mode.
Right click the shortcut for the exe.
Choose Properties.
Edit Target
Add a space and then -full to the end after GSPBArmyEditor.exe

[Quartermaster]

Thanks Andy, Unfortunately "Target" is not editable

[Andy ONeill]

I'm not sure why you can't edit the shortcut properties, but it's just a shortcut.
Rather than worry about why... just create another one.
Shortcuts are lnk files which are in a specific folder.
Right click the shortcut and choose open file location.
Right click > Properties and grab the string from the start in field which specifies where the exe is. Select and Ctrl+C
Just the string - no quotes.
Close that.
Right click in a blank part of the file explorer window and choose New >  shortcut.
CTRL+V to paste in the location you just grabbed.
Select the gsbparmyeditor exe.
Next on to complete it.
Then right click the new shortcut > Properties
Choose Run :  Maximized.
Click it to prove it runs OK as expected.
Close the army editor down if it runs ok.
Delete the old shortcut out the folder.

[Quartermaster]

Now fixed thanks

Managed to add -full to the one I created

see attachment for details

[MTG]

Questions:
1. Why is the minimum reload time 1 minute?  Historically it was shorter than that.  Men could fire 2 or 3 times per minute.

The measure is seconds.

The Wiki says minutes.  That will need to be changed.

The name is intentionally not copied since you'll want unique names.
Many names would only have a battalion or regimental number changed.  Therefore, it would save time to copy the name and change the number rather than retype the whole name.  You could just install a checkbox beside the name with a title of "Copy Name."  That way the OOB author could decide for himself.

[Andy ONeill]

I've changed the wiki.
The copying names thing - I see your point.
Have to think of a slick way to implement this.