Previous Page End Next Page Development History A general overview of what is new for those of you who have never played SP since Steel Panthers1 / Steel Panthers 2 The following is a general list of improvements in WinSPMBT and WinSPWW2 as compared with the original SSI post war wargame Steel Panthers II : Modern Battles (SP2), as some players will not have experienced the changes in the SP2 game engine.

The artillery routine was completely revised and these changes were carried into WinSPWW2 and WinSPMBT right from the start. Your artillery fire now lands at the end of the enemy player turn, as opposed to SP2 where it landed at the end of your turn, thus allowing your opponent to rally away the suppressive effects. You can now take advantage of your artillery's neutralising effects properly. This means predicting where the enemy will be when the shells arrive is a much more challenging procedure than has been the case in the past. You will no longer be able to simply shift fire a hex or two and have your artillery land right after you press the end turn button. This is a MUCH fairer system for both sides and better reflects "reality" where orders from the front lines had to be passed on to the gun troop commander who then passed the correction onto the gun crews who then adjusted their fire to new co-ordinates. This was not something done in a minute or two and this new system reflects that. The change takes a game or two to get used to but once you have played this way you will agree it is a better system than what was in place in the past. As well, guns that have high turn delay ( such as .05 ) will deliver fewer shells on target than if the delay was .00

Expanded map size. SP2 maps were limited to a maximum of 80 hexes height and 100 width. WinSPWW2 and WinSPMBT maps can now go from a minimum of 20 hexes wide and 20 hexes high to up 160 hexes wide and 200 hexes high. ALL maps are fully playable in generated, campaign, PBEM or scenario based games. AI deployment routines for units and victory hexes have been re-written to accommodate every map size. Campaign players now have the added bonus of pre-selecting map size before every game to allow them to tailor map sizes to fit their campaign core size.

Area fire can now be directed through smoke at reduced effectiveness and accuracy

Enhanced secure Play By E-Mail mode, this makes cheating rather more difficult than the original SP games, where an opponent could simply re load the turn and replay it as much as desired before returning this to you. We provide a non secure PBEM mode for those who do not need the encrypted secure mode.

You can now play scenarios against a human opponent in PBEM or in hot seat mode (handled like PBEM, but on the same PC), not just being limited to the AI.

Availability dates work on month as well, SP2 availability dates were by the whole year only.

Expanded OOB files, WinSPMBT and WinSPWW2 can have 999 units, and 999 formations in its database, SP2 was very much smaller than this, the expanded OOB size allows designers to produce a much richer palette of forces for you to command.

Expanded maximum units in a game. SP2 was limited to around 200 units per side, and about 49 formations. In campaigns, core size maximum was about 100 units. In WinSPww2 and WinSPMBT you can have up to 500 units per side, in up to 200 formations, and cores of 200. Thus much larger battles are possible.

Expanded unit classes. SP2 was limited to about 40 unit classes, WinSPww2 and WinSPMBT have 255. This enables OOB designers to assemble much richer OOBs, and to handle mixed formations much better.

Expanded terrain types. We have added mud, impassable to vehicles terrain, orchards, hedgerows, fire trenches, volcanic sand, railway and tramway terrain tiles. Fire trenches may be bought and laid out by the defender similarly to mines, dragons teeth and much more.

Expanded terrain heights. SP2 was only capable of maps of 3 terrain height levels. WinSPww2 and WinSPMBT maps can have 15 levels, 5 times more. Truly mountainous maps can now be generated, for example in Afghanistan.

Enhanced terrain map generation routines. We have nearly tripled the number of variables used in computer map generation compared with the original SP2 code. WinSPMBT and WinSPWW2 maps can be custom tailored with for example, tree lined roads, paddy fields inside bund walls, or to generate urban sprawl or villages, and a new town type of map intermediate between the old full map city grid and the villages.

Parachute drops and Gliders can be used for air landing of troops.

Many new unit classes allow richer OOB designs. Some specialist infantry classes have additional abilities in close combat, or in crossing impassable terrain, or are trained paratroops.

Formations may have morale and training bonuses both positive for above average troops, or negative for less elite groupings. Appropriate points cost modifiers are made here, unlike SP2 which charged the same points for a tank whether crewed by experience 60 conscripts or by experience level 90 veterans.

The unit information screens now show much more data than before, when purchasing units, you get to see the full ammo loadout, whereas in SP2, you were often in the dark as to how many missiles a TOW jeep carried for example. New armour information lets you cycle through the 3 armour types for vehicles, steel, anti HEAT and ERA ( for WinSPMBT only ), with the ERA values being current reflections as to how many charges remain on a face. Informational text is made available for units, and also at the formation level.

New cross attachment code lets you reorganise your companies, platoons can be moved under command of different company commanders. In campaigns, you can attach support troops bought for this mission under your core troop companies for the current battle. You can still attach individual units as with previous SP games, but we now ensure that the command unit cannot be attached away, leaving a 'phantom commander' as was the case in older versions of SP games.

More information about your troops is now available in the new headquarters and company details screens, for example which platoons belong to B company.

In campaigns, you can use your repair points as buy points to expand your core force. Therefore you do not require to buy lots of cheap armoured cars and trucks at campaign start in order to change these into useful units later on as in older SP series games.

You can set up user or historic long campaign difficulty levels, either making it easier by granting yourself more repair points, or less so as you wish.

Air parity is allowed now, just because you have been granted a few air strikes does not automatically mean your opponent has none as was the case in other SP games, he may have a few, or even a few more than yourself. You will always have to guard against the air threat, unless the opponent is completely bereft of air.

All fixed wing assets are off map assets, only helicopters are under hex by hex player control.

Units with smoke dischargers can pop these in response to enemy incoming fires. Units when fired on from the flank will often turn to face the firer, thus presenting thicker armour and/or locating previously unspotted firers.

Infantry when fired on can hit the ground, and possibly take cover perhaps even breaking LOS. Infantry can suffer from tank panic and flee from AFV if not equipped with AT weapons.

When infantry fight in the same hex, melee combat may occur, and some troops such as commandos and paratroops are better at this form of close combat. Sometimes in close quarters combat, troops especially if low morale or experience may be panicked and hence produce less accurate fire than would normally be the case.

The AI is considerably enhanced as compared with the SP2 version. It is not as objective obsessed, and will attempt to flank your entire position as well as bypassing round strong points. It is somewhat more cautious than the 'tin lemmings' of SP2!. The AI uses an adaptive purchase routine which uses points remaining and chance die rolls in buying its forces thus you will find enemy forces bought by the AI more varied than in SP2. The AI no longer assumes that if it is granted air strikes that its opponent will have no aircraft, so it buys AA assets even in this situation. The AI will use opening barrages in non assault games now, and it will often target the roads inside the human deployment area as human players tended to get into the habit of forming a traffic jam here against the old SP2 AI, which did not fire such missions. The AI will often plot interdictive missions on approach roads, bridges and cross-roads in no mans land as well, unlike previously. It also now knows about the smoke hexes that indirect fire of on map artillery leaves in SP series games, so will counterbattery your on map artillery assets more than you may have experienced in SP2 games. You will therefore have to learn shoot and scoot artillery tactics. It will now sometimes launch a patrol into enemy territory when defending, to locate your approach, or launch a spoiling counter attack. When defending, the new AI knows about the old human trick of running an end run along the top or bottom map edges, where the old SP2 AI would often not lay mines. The new AI will often lay edge of map mines, sometimes several layers deep. It now lays random individual mines or groups of mines on road hexes in its defended zone, and on bridges these may be backed up with a barrier (represented by a dragon tooth hex). The new AI knows that defending forwards when defending a river crossing is a good idea, it wants to shoot up those vulnerable rubber rafts now!. It will lay dragons teeth when defending a beachhead as well in some cases. In WinSPMBT, it knows about helicopter transport, it will use these in all battle types, not just when assaulting you, and it will try to get into the rear of your half of the map sometimes, even in a meeting engagement. If these transport helos are well armed, it will use them to cause annoyance to you as well whilst ammo remains. It may begin the game with SEAD strikes on your AAA systems. It may hold reserves, especially of attack helicopters and desant airmobile units to launch into the battle later on, perhaps to retake some objectives when the human player has moved on from these.

Expanded tools for scenario designers. Troops may be designated as reinforcements which arrive later, and this mechanism can be used e.g. for pop-up partisan units in certain scenario types. You can change the map side of the 2 players from the default game assigned setup. Scenario designers can set the various water variables for river crossing and beach assault missions. In user campaigns, pre determined auxiliary troops can be granted to the player, and if desired these can be in fixed positions which the player cannot alter on his deployment. Scenario designers can now add descriptive label text to hexes on the scenario map. As we now allow 125 waypoints to be plotted instead of the 10 of SP2, scenario designers are free to be more creative in setting up AI movement on map, for say patrol paths.

We provide the Mobhack windows based data editor. This allows the skilled end user to adjust unit, weapon and formation data to his liking (but incautious use of this may affect scenarios). SP2 of course provided no such utility.

History

Steel Panthers : World War II © (SPWW2) is the successor to SP Camo Workshop's original conversion of the Strategic Simulations Inc (SSI) 1950 to 1999 modern game Steel Panthers 2 to a World War 2 time frame known as SP2WW2. SP2WW2 was released December 1998 was a patched SP2 executable with a set of new OOB data files, new unit icon artwork and new scenarios by Wild Bill's Raiders

SP2WW2 was such an outstanding success that SSI made the source code for the original SP2 game available to SP Camo Workshop for further development in early 1999. Version 2.0 onwards are therefore complete games, not patches to SP2.

DOS SPWW2 Version 2.0, based on the modified SSI SP2 source code was released for the D-Day anniversary, June 6 1999. Over 50,000 downloads of the game were made.

DOS SPWW2 Version 2.07 was released a few weeks later mainly to sort out some bugs with the Play By EMAIL security.

DOS SPWW2 Version 2.2 was released at the end of 1999.

A DOS SPWW2 Version 2.2b was released a few weeks later to fix a couple of minor bugs.

DOS SPWW2 Version 3.0 released in July of 2000 was the biggest change so far.

DOS SPWW2 Version 4.0 was released in January of 2001.

DOS SPWW2 Version 5.0 was released in November 2001.

DOS SPWW2 Version 5.5 was released in June 2002.

DOS SPWW2 Version 5.6 was released in Dec 2002

DOS SPWW2 Version 6.0 was released in July 2003

DOS SPWW2 Version 6 Supplement aka v6.01 was released in August 2003

DOS SPWW2 Version 7.0 was released in June 2004

DOS SPWW2 Version 7.01 was released July 2004

WinSPww2 version 1.0 was released May 2006

WinSPww2 version 1.1 was released July 2006

WinSPww2 version 2.0 was released March 2007

WinSPww2 version 2.5 was released May 2007

WinSPww2 version 3.0 was released April 2008

WinSPww2 version 3.5 was released December 2008

WinSPww2 version 4.0 was released December 2009

WinSPww2 version 4.25 was released April 2010 mainly to correct problems with the basic PBEM security

WinSPww2 version 4.5 was released March 2011

WinSPww2 version 5.0 the current version, was released March 2012

Release History

This section provides information on the changes to the game made over the past number of years with the latest changes first and the oldest last. The game is now in it's fourteenth year with the release of WinSPWW2v5.0 .

WinSPWW2 version 5.0 Upgrade patch

10 New Scenarios
58 Revised Scenarios
2 New Campaigns
6 Revised Campaigns
22 Revised Campaign files
5 New Maps
2 New Sound files
88 New or revised Photos
9 New or Revised Icons
36 Updated OOB files
2 Revised Icon Graphic files
2 New or Revised Text files
Upgraded SHPEdit
Upgraded Cost Calculator
Upgraded MOBHack and MOBHack Help file

Snipers can now target and destroy IED's or demolition charges. However, it is not a "one shot, one kill" type of thing and the heavy anti-material rifles work best.
Problems with close range Z fire scattering too far have been resolved. Firing at 3 hexes or less, even blind fire with no LOS, will not scatter onto the firing unit.

Destroyed or damaged core units now do not add back their full cost if their core formation is deleted. They will only return their cost minus the damage inflicted. Previously, if your core unit was worth 250 points for example and it was totally destroyed (0) or damaged (-110 damage points for example) then deleting the formation gave you back the *full undamaged value* of 250. This gave you "Free money" for destroyed or damaged units. With the current code, you will get 0 points returned if your formation is completely destroyed and any damage points will be deducted if it is just damaged

The code routine that calculates the number of turns in a game has been re-worked and now the game takes better account of wide (X) and high (Y) maps with extra turns added for large maps, and some deducted from smaller with added turns now given for attack and assault battles

A bug in the main code for regular and campaign games that affected defend battles for players with very large cores has been corrected. In the past if the core was near the maximum there would not be enough points available to assault a force that size. Now, if the core is too large to allow the proper ratio of attacker/ defender in a defend battle defend battles will be rejected and the game will select a different battle type so players with large cores especially in campaigns where they have added to their core force and increased their overall morale and experience levels to the point there were not enough points or unit's/ formations available to attack them with may never see a defend battle. What had been happening was when the core value became too high it broke through the maximum value allowed and wrapped around upon itself creating very small attack forces for the AI

Both games OOBs have been checked and standardized for the following items for ALL units in ALL OOBs in BOTH games

- Infantry size. ALL foot units that are NOT scouts are size zero if they are 4 men or under . Scout units are size zero at 6 men and under. The rest are size 1
- Hand grenades have been standardized at 2 grenades per man for regular line infantry, 3 grenades per man for elite or specialist infantry like Paratroops and 1 grenade per man for second rate units like militia or partisans
- Infantry rifle and LMG ammo has been standardized to a scheme mechanically determined by code, not whim and has been applied to all applicable units. If, for example, Nation A has a section with 9 men it , every other 9 man section will have the same rifle and LMG ammo. Elite or second-rate classes may have a few more or less than a regular.
- Infantry speed checks were made for cavalry =speed 12 , bicycles=speed 9 and infantry limited to 6 movement points max if not a scout . Swim speed checks were done for infantry with all reset to 0 except for a very few specialist frogmen which are now swimspeed =1. Cavalry was standardized at swimspeed=1
- Survivability- This field has been zeroed for any Infantry , off-map artillery, or aircraft and helicopter classes that may have had a rating applied over the years for units in these classes do not use this rating.
- Heat armour- If HEAT armour was less than steel for any facing the error was corrected .

MOBHack has had more selective items added to the cut and paste section . Previously there was " Paste armour suite only" and " Paste as target Nation" to that we have added. All of these were added to streamline the process of ensuring a unit used by one nation, and the same unit used by another, stay the same where it is applicable to be so.

- "Keep target unit dates" -This allows you to copy a unit's data from one OOB and paste it into another existing unit and maintain the in service dates for the target unit
- "Keep target unit weapons" -This allows you to copy a unit's data from one OOB and paste it into another existing unit and maintain the weapon slots used for the target unit. Frequently, the same weapons use different weapons slots in different OOBs and this allows you to maintain the existing weapons used by the old unit
- "Keep target unit Icons" - This allows you to copy a unit's data from one OOB and paste it into another existing unit and maintain the Icons used by the target unit. Many vehicles have unique Icons used by different nations even if its just tan Icons used by desert Nations and green Icons by the others.
- "Keep target unit UnitClass"- This allows you to copy a unit's data from one OOB and paste it into another existing unit and maintain the UnitClass for the target unit. For example, a tank may be "MBT" class in one OOB and "Medium tank" in another. When faced with dozens of changes made to dozens of units in dozens of OOBs this comes in handy

These additions greatly helped speed up the process of standardizing or changing units and can be used in combination EXCEPT for " Paste armour suite only" which must be used alone

A revised copy of the OOB CostCalculator has been issued that includes lower cost changes to two unitclasses used in winSPWW2 that were missed last year

All 150mm-155mm standard arty now has the same ROF. It had been 4 for some and 5 for others but that range is all 5 ROF for that calibre now. All towed artillery, both on map and off map, has had ammo loads standardized by calibre so all nations using the same sized gun get the same amount of ammo with smaller caliber's having more ammo than larger calibre but now, all will be the same instead of one unit in on nation having 40 rounds for one unit and another unit with a similar calibre in the same OOB with 50 rounds and the same gun in a different OOB having 35. As well, all (+) double ammo loaded, on and off map artillery units, have been removed from both games as those formations unfairly cheapened artillery.

A number of issues raised on the forums regarding OOB issues have been addressed. The list only ran to 14 pages this time but included corrections to German Shurtzen HEAT turret rear ratings that should have matched the side ratings, the Pzkw IVF Vorpanzer has been added as well as a new Icon to represent it, Bren Carriers were starting too early and this has been corrected as well as the formations that used them.

"Boyes" ATR's have been renamed to the more correct "Boys", ATR have had, where applicable, their warhead size lowered to 1 from the 2 we had selected for ATR's over a decade ago but had gradually been changed for some and not others. ATR's are now more properly harassing weapons rather than tank killers.

A number of Anti-tank weapons had HE ammo instead of the more correct AP ammo where HEAT was involved and these have been changed and are but a few samples of the OOB work done

As usual we remind everyone that on going secure PBEM games WILL fail if this patch is applied while they are being played.

WinSPWW2 version 4.5 Upgrade patch

12 New Scenarios
7 Updated Scenarios
1 Revised Campaign
2 Revised Campaign files
1 New Terrain type ( Desert Houses )
208 New or revised Photos
28 New or Revised Icons
36 Updated OOB files
10 Revised Icon Graphic files
4 New or Revised Text files
Upgraded Cost Calculator
Upgraded MOBHack, MOBHack.INI and MOBHack Help file
Upgraded ScenHack
Upgraded Camo Map Editor
Upgraded Game Options

( the 4.5 upgrade patch contains all of the 4.25 upgrade patch files)

1/ Guns or vehicles loaded onto their transport planes in the game have their crews split off when loaded so they are dropped separately. Previously there was no way to rejoin them during the deployment phase. New code has been added so that in the deployment phase only, if you unload one of these units from a TRANSPORT AIRCRAFT, the crews will be re-united with their gun or vehicle by pressing ' J '.

2/ All Anti Tank gun unit classes have had their cost reduced by approximately 25%

3/ The GameOptions program will now auto-detect if your operating system is Windows XP or earlier or Vista / Win7 and any future OS Microsoft may release. If it finds you are running an operating system newer than Windows XP it will automatically run a command line that shuts windows explorer down briefly then restarts it ONLY IF you have the game set to run in FULL SCREEN MODE.

4/ There was a minor bug that allowed artillery falling on map in some cases to affect off map units. This has been corrected

5/ HQ's, scout classes, Forward Observers and ammo vehicles will now withhold opfire if they have not been fired on so these units will no longer give away their position prematurely. This makes scouts , for example, much more likely to be bypassed than in the past

6/ Anti Tank guns and flak units will also withhold fire on moving infantry and some soft vehicles as well but will not let the enemy get as close as Scouts etc.. This is an improvement on past code that tended to allow opfire from Anti Tank guns and flak units at moving infantry from long ranges when they should have stayed concealed.

7/ Non FLAK units in the delay or defence will not fire AAA weapons except if the fighter bombers are very close in the first 12 or so turns . This stops " recce by spotting AAMG fires "', if you put strike planes in as a pre-game deployment to find the enemy layout. Those units with AAMGs WILL fire at paratrooper carrying aircraft and gliders normally, however.

8/ There was a small section of code missing from the pre-game deployment screen (L)oad and (U)nload ALL UNITS routine where the (ESC)ape key did not allow you to change your mind but loaded or unloaded all units when the (ESC)ape key was selected. This has been corrected and the (ESC)ape function now allows you to back out of that situation

9/ Units on water that were destroyed were not being credited as kills. Now Corrected

10/ There is new min range code for artillery based on 1/5th of the units range with 5 hexes being the absolute minimum on map artillery units will target indirect, up to 20 hexes minimum. An on map gun , for example, with a 90 hex range would be able to target units a minimum of 18 hexes from the gun. All guns with a range greater than 100 hexes will only be able to fire at targets greater than 20 hexes from their location on the map. Mortar units on the other hand will have their minimum ranges determined by their sabot range with the absolute minimum mortars can target indirect now being 2 hexes

11/ The PBEM long campaign was not supposed to have special battles, but a bug was allowing these through. The campaign loop now clears down the special battle flag in the correct place and these will no longer show up in PBEM campaigns.

12/ Widescreen support has been added to the game for CD owners. This will allow you to run the game at the same resolution as your normal desktop. If a player wanted to use a resolution OTHER than the current windows desktop mode (e.g. to run the game in 1024x768 full screen, with the desktop set to say 1280x1024 ) then he would need to set the windows desktop to the desired size before starting the game. (Click on desktop, settings, choose required windows mode).

13/ The game code has been altered to make it much more windows friendly when it comes to CPU usage. In the past the game wanted all the resources it could have all the time including that time you were away from the keyboard making a cup of coffee or thinking about what you would do next. Now, the CPU usage will drop considerably when the game is waiting for input from the human player. It still requires all the CPU usage it can handle when the AI is moving but once it is the human players turn many players with high end computers will notice their machine is not working nearly as hard as it used to be and the effects are more obvious the newer and faster your computer is

14/ There were numerous minor unit , weapon and formation changes made to the OOBs .

15 / The Italian long Campaign code was checking for a max year of 1944 as a start date since that
fit VJ and VE days both being beyond that date. However, it took no account of the 1943 Italian surrender date so you could set an Italian campaign to a start date that was later than it's end date. This has been corrected

16 / There have been a number of new Romanian Vs Russians battle locations added to the game. A Romanian player should set up a regular campaign with Russia as the 3 possible opponents. Start date is 6/1941 and end date for the new battle locations is 8/1944. This replaces the previous generic Southern Russian and caucuses battle locations.

17 / The variety of battle locations for the Spanish versus a Russian opponent from 10/1941 to 10/1943 have been fleshed out somewhat, rather than the previous generic USSR locations. 10/41 to 8/42 is the Volkhov River Front, Novgorod and 9/1942 to 10/1943 is the Neva River Front, Leningrad for example.

18 / A new terrain set has been added to the game that will place single hex desert houses when desert maps are called for on all auto-generated maps. For sceanrio design purposes either house type can be placed on maps simply by switching between desert and summer .

19 / Smoke was not being replenished in some cases in Campaigns. Now corrected.

WinSPWW2 version 4.25 mini upgrade patch

4 Revised Scenarios and 2 revised scenario text files
10 New or revised photos
1 New Icon
36 Updated OOB files
2 Revised Graphic files

1) The code was reworked to correct erroneous error messages appearing when playing basic security PBEM. This was the main reason for issuing the patch but we included work we had done in other areas of the game as well and had planned to hold for a later release

2) Various OOB corrections including:

- Nimbus MC added to Blue OOB
- M24 chaffee front turret armour set to 4 in all OOBs
- Russian 152mm arty re-organized with corrected photos and stats
- Boyes AT rifles range increased to 13 giving them more correct penetration at various ranges
- Bazooka and Panzerschreck accuracy reduced to 4 and now match accuracy values in winSPMBT and better reflect their actual performance

3) Further corrections to ensure all units and weapons of the same type have the same ratings from OOB to OOB

4) New infantry flame graphics added

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

20) 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

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

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

WinSPWW2 version 3.5 upgrade patch

9 New Scenarios
5 Revised Scenarios
8 New maps
6 New or revised photos
2 Revised Icons
36 Updated OOB files
2 Revised Graphic files
3686 new Icon spots added
Upgraded Cost Calculator
Upgraded MOBHack
Upgraded Extended Map Editor

1) Fixed old "W" key bug where weapon ( 1 ) could not be fired when using the "W" ( weapons ) Key to fire only 1 weapon

2) PBEM Campaign bug where smoke was not being given to core troops after the first turn is fixed

3) AIAdjust percent INI modifier will now affect the buy of AI played forces in any battle type

4) A bug in special battles that was carrying beach assaults over into the next battle has been corrected

5) On map Arty command units have been removed from the list of units able to act as spotters. They can no longer call indirect artillery missions which was allowing an arty cheat that existed back to SP2

6) ANZAC WW2 Long Campaign now starts 1/41 in the Western Desert, rather than the old earlier date. That was the first Australian action (6th Div, Bardia) in WW2.

7) Scenario 312 fixed and now has V hexes. Scenario 5 revised to make it more playable. Scenario 354 has been redone .

8) A small bug where vehicles that automatically used their smoke dischargers would not be able to move has been fixed

9) A small bug fixed for generated and PBEM campaigns, where it was possible, if the campaign was set to run in the same year, to set an end month that was earlier than the start month. The game would not run time backwards but it would only run the latest month

10) The delay for adjusting the fall of shot for both on and off map artillery landing out of the observing units line of sight has been increased and in most cases now means only one adjustment can be made without delaying the next fall of shot an extra turn.

11) European WW2 Long Campaigns will now end in May 1945 instead of April 1945. This month is used for special situations e.g. the battle for Berlin
12) More Eastern Front WW2 locations have been added. There is no longer one set battle location for every month in the East Front campaign, many alternatives have been provided.
13) Landed gliders are no longer automatically destroyed, but are now treated as abandoned vehicles.
14) A bug with all units of a side being destroyed leading to screen flicker has been fixed.
15) A Bug with all units of a side being destroyed but the game did not end even if all objectives taken has been fixed.
16) Problems with the AI counter attacking early in the delay or defence has been corrected.

17) Changes have been made to the code so that if your vehicle kicks up dust due to movement then you can no longer undo that vehicle's action. (Note that this also applies for partial smoke that does not generate a smoke graphic in the hex).

18) A PBEM campaign bug existed where on 3 failed attempts at entering the password a PBEM campaign ended the turn (and saved off the files) instead of aborting. Now the player is returned correctly to the main menu.

19) In Campaigns, core formations were able to cross-attach to non core formations. This has been corrected. You cannot now attach a core unit to a support formation.

20) A bug existed in PBEM Campaign Games where the turn 0 artillery was replayed before player 1 was asked for his password allowing player 2 to watch this turn on his machine has been fixed. Player 1 must enter his password in order to see the turn 0 bombardment. Player 2 cannot now run this turn.

21) A bug in PBEM Campaign Games has been fixed that showed the units of player 2 to player 1 during the pre-game ( turn 0 ) bombardment

22) A bug in PBEM Campaign Games where any unspotted player 2 units caused to retreat by the turn 0 bombardment were shown to player 1 was fixed.

23) There was a bug in the WW2 code for guns with range >100 and AP that caused problems with the cost calculator. Now fixed

24) A new feature for CD holders only allows players to check the location on the map of the other units in a formation with a hotkey. Click HERE for more information

25) Off map artillery will now have a chance of losing radio contact and when they do they will not appear in the bombard menu. However, if a fire mission has been plotted and you lose contact the turn before the fire mission is scheduled to go in the fire mission will go in as scheduled but because it dropped off the bombard menu just before it did you will not be able to cancel it or shift fire.

26) "Tank Rider" passengers now have a greater chance of more casualties if caught on the tank when they are fired on.

27) Crewed weapons such as AT guns, howitzers and mortars when loaded onto a paratroop transport for air dropping now split into the crew and uncrewed weapon . They drop separately and you must now reunite the surviving crew and the unmanned weapon before being able to use it. This change also applies to vehicles but there are no "air droppable" vehicles , or transports capable of dropping them, in WinSPWW2 and very few crewed guns or mortars in droppable para formations so this change will mostly impact WinSPMBT rather than WinSPWW2.

28) Numerous small OOB corrections.

WinSPWW2 version 3 upgrade patch

14 New Scenarios
34 Revised Scenarios
13 New and Revised maps
39 New photos
27 New and Revised Icons
36 Updated OOB Files
2 Revised campaign files
9 Revised Graphic files
Upgraded Cost Calculator
Upgraded MOBHack
Upgraded ScenHack
Upgraded Extended Map Editor
Upgraded GameOptions

1) The OOB changes mainly centre around correcting discrepancies between some weapons and the units in the various OOBs that use them. All OOBs were then put through the cost calculator once again to ensure uniformity
2) Previously radios were given to almost every platoon leader and section leader no matter what the radio codes in the OOBs were set to . This has changed in both WinSPMBT and WinSPWW2. Now every company, platoon and section reads the radio codes and if the OOBs are set up with low radio chance then that's what you'll see in the game. The main HQ unit will always get a radios. This change affects two things mainly. 1) Calling for artillery will not be as easy as it once was and 2) units from a formation will not be able to wander far from their "0" unit lead. If they do it becomes harder to rally. This is no different that the way the game has played in the past but in the past most units had radios. Now there are fewer units that do especially in the WW2 and just post WW2 era. One example would be snipers. Snipers in the game have acted as scouts, Forward observers and snipers. There are far fewer snipers in this version of the game that have radio contact with artillery. We expect that this change will take some players who were used to picking almost any command unit as a Forward observer a bit of time to get used to . The effect is far less in the game on "modern" era armies
3) You will see a further addition to the HQ menu. You will now see ' R ' or ' * ' in the HQ menu list of units. The leaders with the R have a radio and as always in SP only leaders ( the x0 ) with radios can call arty so if you see a x4 unit with a radio it doesn't mean he can contact the artillery only leaders can do that. That aspect of the game has not changed but this change makes finding he leaders with the radios easier. As well these are colour coded and match the messages you would see at the bottom of the battle screen when you click on a unit. A white ' R ' or ' * ' means " in contact" and all that means is they have C&C link to their immediate superior. A yellow ' R ' or ' * ' means there is radio contact and a red ' R ' or ' * ' means the unit is out of contact with it's immediate superior. All of this is handy to know at a glance. If you are playing with a nation that has few radios you'll probably want to be careful where you put them. This allows you to find them without having to check every leader in the game
4) A further change has been made to the "Passenger" report you see in the main battle screen at the bottom left of the screen.
Previously the unit named there would be the last unit loaded onto or into whatever is carrying them. Nice if you only have one unit loaded but useless if there are more than one. The only way to know for sure what you had loaded was to check the information screen and then all units loaded would be listed but in a game clicking on a APC and seeing "sniper" wasn't that informative when you might have three scout teams and a sniper loaded. This is all less of an issue when loading tanks or halftracks but it has always been a problem with large capacity transports like landing barges or helicopter and even though you might know what's loaded in you never really knew how many more units you could load except by trial and error
This has been changed.Now, on the main battle screens your passengers are listed something like this
LOADED: 10 ( of 13 )
When dealing with infantry this tells you that you have 10 men loaded into or onto a vehicle that has a 13 man capacity. You no longer have to guess. For vehicles loaded into units like landing barges the game reads the carry cost of that vehicle so a tank in a landing barge might be reported as something like: LOADED: 30 ( of 50 ). Now you know exactly how many other points you can put in. Large helicopters are handled the same way.
5) The move cost for infantry (foot class) has been increased by 1 for wooden and stone buildings. Buildings will no longer be treated like open terrain
6) Units will only charged a movement penalty on entering a slope hex from a lower altitude so travel down hill is no longer penalised.
7)In assault battles a bit of code that had previously been added so landing barges etc could call arty in beach assaults was allowing any unit with a radio to call arty in a beach assault. This has been corrected .
8) Bug found in MOBHack where deleting unused weapons would also delete weapons that are still being used. Now fixed.
9) Units in retreat or route can no longer use a radio to contact artillery
10) The enemy passengers loaded in or on a vehicle was reported on the info screen you get when right clicking on a unit. This has been removed.
11) A text overrun bug that would intermittently show up on the HQ menu screen after purchasing has finally been squashed for good ( we hope.... )
12) There was a bug we traced back to the original code that was cancelling out the full effect to Multiple MG's on aircraft and only calculating for one gun. Now fixed.
13) PBEM Campaigns have been added to the game for CD holders. You can read more on this by clicking HERE
14) In some cases enemy bunkers could attempt to fire at targets outside their weapons arc which triggered an opfire event by friendly units. This has now been fixed.
15) A rare bug where crews carried as passengers could turn into enemy crews has been fixed.
16) Bulgaria was showing up as an opponent of Russia during campaigns. This has been corrected
17) Ranger and Mountain Forward Observers did not have the artillery spotting bonus. Now fixed
18) Changes to water depth were not being saved. Now fixed. The scenario #49 "Stark and Bitter Hours now has the correct water depth between the coral reef and shore.
19) HEAT ammo previously could sometimes overpenetrate it's nominal penetration value to a significant amount and this could give some weapons abilities that they did not have in reality. The code has been adjusted so this is far less likely to occur.
20) Level Bombers were not always dropping all their bombs. Now fixed
21) One infantry class was missed in the code that restricted their ability to throw smoke to one hex. Now fixed
22) WW2 Long Campaign bug fixed. AI was buying mines etc in LC when it had to defend but was not deploying them.
23) The Japanese long campaign code was set up too passively in the early Chinese fighting. There were far too many "defend" battles for the Japanese. Now changed. They will be more aggressive than in the past and there will be more advance and assault battles

24) The special battle text files that appear when playing campaigns were missing and have been included in this upgrade.

WinSPww2 version 2.5 upgrade patch

36 Updated OOB Files

Upgraded ScenHack

1]There was a problem in the game campaign code, that affected only some players, which would prevent them from deleting a campaign core formation after purchase. Now Fixed

2] There was a bug in ScenHack that would prevent users from loading scenarios made with version 2.0. Now fixed

3] The OOB changes mainly centre around correcting discrepancies between some weapons and the units in the various OOBs that use them. All OOBs were then put through the cost calculator once again to ensure uniformity

4] The code has been changed so that smoke is restricted to 60mm - 159mm calibre artillery and mortars. Although there would be a few exceptions to this rule in reality this covers the vast majority of historical cases . Rockets do not have smoke rounds with the exception of the German Nebelwerfer 41 15cm rockets. Smoke has also been removed from all naval calibres.

WinSPww2 version 2.0 upgrade patch

13 Additional Scenarios
11 Updated Scenarios
15 New Maps
14 Updated Leader Name File
29 Updated Ranks File
75 New and Revised Icons
145 New photos
36 Updated OOB Files
Upgraded Cost calculator
Upgraded CamoMapEditor
Upgraded MOBHack
Upgraded ScenHack
Upgraded CampaignHack

1) The game no longer automatically issues 10 artillery priority hexes per side except for sceanrio design. Priority hexes are issued based on the type of battle and the number of Forward Observers and the equipment the forward observers have available. Click HERE for more info.

2) Retreat/Rally hexes have been added to the game. Click HERE for more info.

2) Opfire filtering has been added as a bonus for players owning the CD version of the game. Click HERE for more info.

4) HEAT ammo now has a secondary HE abiltiy. Units with HEAT ammo can fire HEAT/HE at 66% if the effect of the regular HE round for that weapon. Units will reserve the last 4 HEAT rounds for anti-tank purposes, and are more reluctant to fire HEAT/HE against soft units in the reaction fire in the opponent's turn unless at 1-2 hexes or so. ( in close combat you throw everything into the fight ). HEAT/HE cannot be area fired (Z-Key) nor does it have effects in the surrounding hexes like regular HE might, for larger warhead sizes.

5) All HE ammo has been removed from Panzerfaust type weapons that had them added in to simulate the change mentioned above.

6] A "View All" key has been added to the game to show all hexes currently visible to your unit and saves clicking in all 6 directions.

7) Maximum game points has been increased from 50,000 points to 65,000 points. Previous versions of the game allowed 65,000 points only in one specific case. We now allow the 65,000 maximum in all cases.

8) Infantry and vehicles may now enter -1 water hexes. Previous to this change they could enter -1 hexes but only if they are classed as "land". There are sticking penalties for vehicles moving though these water hexes similar to swamp or mud. Infantry move one hex per turn. The game will now also accept entering -1 into a water hex with the map editor and the change will stick. Previous to this it would not.

9) Formations that showed more than two pages of units would occasionally show the "Next" and "First" buttons overlapping the unit info. Now fixed.

10) Hex info was not being shown in the bombardment screen after the unit info screen was accessed. Now fixed

11) The Nationalist and Communist Chinese LC were giving 100% of their battles against Japan. This has now been fixed so that they will now fight each other AND the Japanese and from 5/45 till 12/46 the Nationalist and Communist Chinese are the only opponents for each other and for the Nationalists there is small chance to fight themselves (i.e.warlords)

12) Bug fixed in Long campaigns were the AI was not buying mines etc for the AI defender.

Plus many other small tweaks and adjustments.

WinSPww2 version 1.1

The following changes were made to the game after it's initial release and are included in the V1.1 upgrade/Patch

There were some problems with reinforcement units not having the same entry turn as their APC - fixed. Passengers now have their reinforcement turn set to same as vehicle.

Artillery effectiveness against armour was too high and the following changes have been made to the code

1. Only units in the shell explosion hex will receive top hits (except cluster munitions)
2. Penetration in the blast circle outside the shell explosion hex has been reduced for shell splinters (except cluster munitions)
3. Armoured units may now suffer a suppression-only hit (hit by shell splinters message)
4. HE penetration on armour now needs more overpenetration to be certain of a penetration effect. If equal, 25% will go through, if overpenetration of 6, 90%
5. More chance of immobilisations (track hits) rather than kills especially if the shell size is small

Short range effects in infantry combat was a bit too high and the following changes have been made to the code

1. The bonus effect for fire at 50m reduced, and takes more consideration of firer suppression
2. The bonus for being unspotted (ambush fire at short range) has been reduced and takes more consideration of firer suppression level
3. The panic fire chance at 50 metres takes more consideration of suppression to the firer

The net result of these changes are a more give-and-take firefight

An Optional AI force level adjustment for Campaign games has been added An INI file variable has been added (optional) for users to use to boost (or even reduce!) AI points in campaign games . Information regarding this variable can be found in the WinSPWW2\Game Data folder in the file "Campaign AI Point Adjustments.txt" OR by clicking HERE

The coding for Smoke shells in campaign game upgrades was wrong and has been fixed. In campaign battles beyond the first, units will have correct smoke shell loads.

Anti tank gun reaction fire adjustment changes--In reaction fire, ATG (and FLAK) are now more oriented to vehicle/armoured targets and infantry less so, especially beyond 500m range. A players Anti-tank gun will now tend to reserve fire for vehicle/armour targets and not pop off at infantry especially if not yet spotted.

Arid maps Changes--Arid maps (e.g. Tunisia) used in V1 was being treated as a summer map, so not using the desert icons. Desert icons are now used (if they have them) by units in Arid maps.

Turn length Changes--As WW2 tends to use marching infantry, default battle length has been increased a bit to allow for this.

Barge Changes-- Barges were creating a new barge in the barge carrier when save games were re-loaded. Fixed. One one barge per barge carrier now.

The cost of units has increased. In some cases more than others. Generally the change has been slightly upwards but heavier tanks now cost more. For example. A KV-1 in Ver1 cost 91 points in MOBHack and now costs 112 points ( the game cost will vary due to experience and moral modifiers ) A IS-II that cost 93 points in V1 now costs 126 points. A Koenigstiger in ver1 was 156 points and now costs 214 points in v1.1. As a result all scripted campaigns have had their points allotment altered and new versions of those files are included with the patch as are a complete set of OOBs which also contain a number of tweaks and changes based on suggestions or problems found after the game was released

8 new PIC's

2 revised sound FX

3 new Icons

2 revised sceanrios and 13 new ones have been added bringing the total number of scenarios in the game to 345

When "clone all" was selected in the scenario editor where the cloned units had weapons deleted ("-"), the game initialisation code was wrongly loading the template weapons for all the cloned units if the scenario was reloaded in the scenario editor, or when the scenario was played as a game. FIXED. The cloned units will now retain their weapon changes

Anti Tank Rifles were working a bit too efficiently in the game and their effects on armour have been toned down somewhat. Expect more ** damage reports than outright kills now

WinSPWW2 version 1.0

Many of the following points will be new to anyone familiar with SPWW2 but they are shared additions with WinSPMBT.

Conversion of the old MSDOS game engine to Microsoft Windows.

Complete removal of all the old problematical MSDOS sound, mouse and graphics problems.

Optional DirectX or Windows GDI based graphics.

Option to use DirectX Full screen mode, or operate in a window on the desktop.

Windows-compliant sound and mouse routines.

Game size is no longer restricted to merely 640 by 480 pixels. User can choose from 640x480, 800x600, and in the enhanced CD version 1024x768, 1152x864, 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 modes.

Completely re-organised game screens

Arid and Savannah type terrains added to the map generator. They replace many maps that used to be desert but really shouldn't have been

New zoom-in level added

10 NEW terrains added

- Bare Earth (Arid Soil)
- Red Earth
- Brick Cobblestones
- Stone Cobblestones
- Beach Sand
- Sparse Grass
- Grass ( variant )
- Leaves ( Forest Groundcover )
- Autumn trees ( October )
- Autumn Orchards ( October )

The Map Autogenerating routine has been upgraded to use the 10 new Terrain types

12 Terrain tile sets totally re-done

- Green Grass
- Rough
- High grass
- Snow
- Soft Sand
- Desert Rough
- Sand
- Paved Roads
- Pavement
- Winter light snow
- Winter Snow Drifts
- Mud

- Revised Game palette
- Railways will now occasionally be generated on maps
- Barbed wire added for defensive battles. The AI will place Wire when it defends
- Loading and unloading of passengers now costs Movement points for both the vehicle AND the passenger units
- Custom OOBs can now be easily loaded and the default set of OOBs can just as easily be restored
- AI may now target any smoke signatures with artillery
- Vehicles may now reverse while while keeping the vehicles front pointed towards the enemy

Items specific to WinSPww2

- 63 New Scenarios
- 60 New Maps
- Over 275 new photos added.
- Six new nations added ( Slovak Republic, Manchukuo, Italian Social Republic, Vichy France, Polish Communists (LWP), Chinese Communists)
- Over 500 New and Revised Vehicle/Aircraft Icons
- Infantry squads will now display up to 19 men ( was 13 )
- Full WW2 scripted Long Campaigns added for France, Chinese Nationalists, Chinese Communists

The game's AI opfire and reaction fire routine has been re-written to make it more selective in targeting based on the weapon firing , target type and range.

A retire function for APCs/Halftracks/carriers and trucks has been added . Unarmed APCs/Halftracks/carriers or trucks with no passengers will retire 1km ( approx 20 hexes ) after dropping off their passengers. For armed APC/Halftracks/carriers etc. they will retire a few hexes (if any MP left of course!), then turn and face enemy. If they are close to the enemy and have sufficient MP they will occasionally reverse instead.

A new load up function for APC and trucks under AI control has been added . The game will now cycle through all APCs/Halftracks/carriers and trucks . If the carrier is unloaded and not within 20 hexes of enemy (at start) and it can move and is not retreating etc it will look for a target infantry unit or team to pick up (within a 1 km or 20 hexe range of the carrier). The target infantry/team must itself not be within 20 hexes of enemy. On the first pass the APC only looks for grunts of its platoon. On pass 2 it will look for any unloaded infantry or team (this allows trucks or APCs in a MISC platoon purchase etc to get in on the action) if the carrier decides there is a target infantry unit or team it motors towards it, and if it gets to the location of the passenger it loads it up

Plus dozens of other small tweaks, bug fixes and adjustments to game play such as.....

- A button has been added to the artillery menu to access the blast circles routine
- fix to spotter planes (direction 6 was broken)
- delete last formation - properly relinking subordinate formations to HQ (A0) if co HQ is deleted
- delete core formations now allowed (on the expand core screen of the core upgrade menu)
- German and Italian WW2 Long Campaign for taly and N Africa - allow Indians as opponents
- base morale now shown on purchase screen
- maps - ability to set battle location and access to the map generator with added buttons in the map editor (inc extended CD map editor)
- Included waypoint mechanism to linked scenarios.
- New properties for rough terrain.
- Minor modification for Z fire triggering AI OP fire.
- Fix on Preference bug (pbem).
- New code for AI APC vehicles.
- New Waypoint technique.
- "Z" ( area ) fire will now draw reaction fire
- Modified path-finding code (extended).
- Option to delete Core force units and refund the cost.
- Modified the Bicycle class and added the snow benifits to the light Ski class
- A new set of ID flags with their positioning lowered
- New ScenHack program
- New CampaignHack program
- New CostCalculator program
- The batloc was not being displayed in campaigns, if the default loc was not being used - fixed
- The game was putting severely crippled vehicles on map. Now fixed to immobilize severely crippled core vehicles (damage >= 1/2 cost).
- There was some tinkering with UK/Ger batlocs in North Africa in 1941 - should not go to Crete in LC.
- A campaign marginal victory gets min of 300 points, a decisive 500 (for smaller cores), before difficulty adjustment.
- When displaying the entry/exit hexes of air units in the bombardment screen, zooming in or out will cause them to disappear from view. And reappear when you move the cursor over them."----FIXED
- The "generate Campaign" screen had problems with some of the buttons....FIXED
- The games costing routine in the mainscreen was only incrementing cost at 90+ morale, and had a minor bug as well. FIXED
- Rough will now cause disablements on ROUGH+SLOPE hexes. It will NOT disable on regular flat rough terrain
- Wagons are now treated like cavalry and not trucks

and many more..

A special note regarding the scenarios in WinSPww2v1 The scenarios included with this game that were designed for earlier DOS Version of the game have been checked, rechecked, adjusted and tweaked in a number of ways. Quite a few man hours have gone into this and all the scenarios released with this game should play as they were originally designed to be played ( or even better! ). We have also revised the OOBs in the Windows version to eliminate many of the old, unused entries and because many of the older scenarios still used them it meant we had to go in an buy new units to replace the ones that were removed. As well, we found when we converted to Windows that some of the scenarios using Germany still had some info dating back to when Germany was OOB00. This too has been corrected and these sceanrio corrections extend to all the scenarios that were used to build the User Campaigns in the game. In the case of campaigns, not only have the scenarios that make them up been revised but also the point structure to ensure players can purchase what we suggest you can purchase for the campaign

AS A RESULT of these changes and the conversion to Windows players who download scenarios from various places on the Internet that carry scenarios for SPWW2 **MAY** find the older ones are "broken" in WinSPww2 and will require upgrading either by the original sceanrio designer or the player themselves. The changes we added to the game to make it better made this unavoidable and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause but we hope this inspires people to upgrade and re-issue their old scenarios for this new version of the game.

Some notes on the new AI "Artillery Interest" routines.

Previously, the AI arty routines targeted those troops which were spotted in its own phase and would then fall-back to the routines to beat up objectives, or approach roads etc. Thus you could do the "hill dance" of moving up from behind a ridgeline, firing and popping back down, drawing only normal return op-fire while exposed but ending your move out of LOS, so the AI would not assign arty on these units. The new AI artillery interest routine is linked to events which the human player is told about during game play, but which previously the AI was ignorant of. Basically - anything which generates a message that your human opponent (in a PBEM) could use against you, the AI now knows about as well. The AI artillery interest routine takes events which the human player would spot, and assigns a chance for the AI to assign available artillery to the general area of this event. Trigger events include flipping an objective hex, making direct fire smoke, making smoke from dust trails from vehicle movement, direct fire events (including direct area fire with the Z key), normal on-map artillery firing indirect fires (which generate smoke in the hex), and engineering clearance operations. All things reported to a human opponent, and now available for the AI to assign delivery of a few "presents" to as well, just as your human PBEM opponent would.

Also previously the AI was a bit reluctant to plot its on-map artillery assets, usually mortars. Often, a mortar unit with 60 or so original rounds would end the game with perhaps 45 or so rounds remaining. There is now a routine to check for possible mortar (includes all on map arty including say SP-MRL) targets, with the AI focussing on detected enemy units close to objective hexes as the prime search criteria. The on map arty assignment also tends to fall-back on enemy held objectives if nothing better is located, so it then drops searching fires around these. Thus, "camping out" near objective hexes will be somewhat more interesting for the human player!.

Addition features of the enhanced CD version only

( for more information on the added features available on the extended CD version click HERE )

- Cut and paste Map editor
- Secure Tournament play
- 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1152x864, 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 windowed and full screen modes.
- 250 Secure PBEM save slots
- Encyclopaedia Sorting functions
- ScenHack scenario editor for WinSPWW2
- CampaignHack campaign editor for WinSPWW2

What was new in SPww2 DOS Version 7.01
All OOBs Updated
1 Updated Campaign
26 New & Updated Maps
1 Updated Scenario
12 New Scenarios
151 New LBMs
7 Updated Sound Files
52 New Unit & Formation texts
1 Updated Help Text
2 Updated Rank files
3 Updated Leader files
-Victory hexes can now be edited onto the maps by hand from the view map screen for generated battles, PBEM games and campaigns
-During the deployment phase the AI opponent would opfire during deployment if you did something that triggered opfire-- like unloading in LOS - FIXED
-In PBEM games a player could spot the enemy during deploy on smaller maps. -FIXED
-Auto deployed barges sometimes ended up deployed on land - FIXED
-Units unloaded during beach assault set ups had been programmed to drown at the end of the first turn after deployment in beach assaults but they could still fire at beach targets while unloaded during the first turn then reload into Landing craft and continue to the beach. FIXED. Units left out of landing craft will " drown" at the start of the first turn now
-Random seeming game crashes mostly affecting XP users have been eliminated.
-SABOT range added to indirect fire artillery was also acting as the minimum indirect fire range- FIXED. On-map artillery now has a 20 hex minimum range for all guns. This is unchanged from before but now Sabot range does not affect that minimum
-Revised Game palette
-80 new single hex houses have been added (40 originals removed). This doubles the number previously available. In addition, 12 wooden multihex buildings and 12 stone multihex buildings have been redone for the SUPP. These additions had been planned for the next full release but we decided to add what we had done so far to these supplements. This is a Work in Progress and we plan to have all the buildings redone for the next release plus many new additions.

What was new in DOS Version 7
Completely new set of larger format OOBs (Order of Battle files) with thousands of changes and additions. New format OOBs can now hold 999 Units and 999 Formations. An additional 55 Unit Classes have been added as well. The OOBs have been extensively researched and availability dates, ammunition loadouts and formation design has been finetuned throughout. New units and new formations adorn many of the OOBs. You can get many of the particulars in the Country Descriptions section, but we leave some things for you to find out as you play the game.
Many tweaks and adjustments to the code & AI picklists have been made to fine tune & refine gameplay
735 New Pictures (LBMs)
933 New & Revised Icons in 25 SHP files
27 New Scenarios
83 New Maps
39 New Text files
64 New Sounds
Many minor tweaks to existing scenarios to have them utilize the new features available.
Minor tweaks to several existing maps & duplicate maps removed.
One new Campaign: Paratroopers in the Pacific. This campaign is based on the history of the American 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment. You will start off as the commander of Item Company, 3rd Battalion, 503rd PIR.
New "Player_SPWW2_Scenario.xls" file listing all scenarios, maps, and campaigns in the Game Notes folder.
All Scenarios and Maps are now numbered in the game selection screen, and maps also have their size listed.
The map code auto-generator has been extensively enhanced and the coded routines greatly embellished.
13 totally new terrain features have been added, as well as 4 old terrain types being completely revised. Transition months between seasons are now more accurately detailed and varied in terrain. As well, the transition between terrain types adjacent to each other has been refined.
The 13 new terrain types are Ice, Frozen Streams, Marsh, Ploughed Field, Red Sand, Red Sand Rough, Grey Sand, Grey Sand Rough, Arid/Fall Grass, Arid/Fall High Grass, Winter Crop Field, Mid-Winter Snow Field, and Bare Winter/Late Fall Trees
The 4 completely revised terrain types are Green Crops, Yellow Crops, Rice Paddies and Early Winter Fields.
A map generator that allows maps to be auto created using 19 different variables has been added, and is accessible from the Map Editor as well as the Battle and Campaign Unit Purchase screens so that you can customize your maps before each battle to further enhance your gameplay. You can even Save the maps you design on the fly, or load previously saved map -- even from the View Map screen of the Purchase Units section!
Maps can now be created as small as 20x20 (1 kilometer square) and can be expanded in 10 hex increments (half kilometers) seperately in both the X and Y axis up to 200x160 hexes (10 kilometers by 8 kilometers).
A number of important changes have been made to the "View Map" screen of the Deploy menu for generated battles and PBEM (all changes detailed within the Game Guide)

- Redraw the Map for the Current Opponents (use different battle location for these opponents and date)

- Redraw Map for the Current Battle Location (use same battle location)

- Change Map ID (specifically change battle location to another one by indicating batloc ID number)

- Redraw V-Hexes without changing terrain

- Change Game Length

MOBHack will now allow entering different Icon numbers for summer, winter and desert terrain and the game code has been revised so these will show up in the game at the appropriate times. A near-complete set of German and Russian Winter camo vehicles have been added to the game and a near-complete set of German and British Desert vehicle Icons have been created for the Western Desert. As well, German vehicles will for the most part, show up in Grey before the spring of 1943 during "summer" months. We will expand the number of units with winter and desert icons in future versions. As a result of this change, icon-makers will notice that they no longer have to build a parallel set of desert icons in a special and seperate desert SHP file. All the icons can be entered into the the same SHP file, and there is no longer a switchover to different SHP files for desert terrain.
In defend battles the Defender can not only place trenches, but remove them once placed in order to achieve a special effect. Laying & Removing trenches is used to simulate previous defensive engineering efforts to remove trees, bulldoze rough areas and otherwise improve Line-Of-Sight and strengthen the defenses because when a trench is removed the hex (in most cases) becomes Clear Terrain. Trenches can be laid and removed anywhere on the Defender's half of the map. Trenches laid in Water terrain will create a small island to put the trench on.. Trenches can also be placed on the attackers side of the map to simulate forward area anti-tank trenches or the previous front lines. Trenches cannot be removed once placed on the opponents side of the map because doing so gives the Defender too much control over the terrain and tilts the play balance in favour of the defender.
Victory Hex Point allotments can now be reduced down to 5 points and up to 250 points in 5 point increments. Victory Hexes worth less than 50 points will be ignored by the AI, and can be used by scenario designers to develop special battlefield situations and tweak AI and Player movement.
Automatic weapon and autocannon ratings have been revised and refined based on new formulas that have been extensively researched in order to bring more realism to combat tactics, strategies and results. As well, ammunition loadouts of autocannons have been researched and an appropriate number of "shots" have been assigned instead of the generic loadouts of previous versions (which was actually much too generous). Each in-game "shot" is the equivalent of short bursts. The new loadouts and weapon ratings illustrate how quickly autocannons eat up ammunition and also how deadly they are. Many auto-cannon armed vehicles do not carry much ammunition, and have high rates of fire, so they have to choose their shots carefully. The importance of the secondary weapons of these vehicles in the antipersonnel role is now much more apparent because of the ammunition limitations of the auto-cannon.
Autocannons with the proper traverse and elevation ranges can now engage slow, low-flying aircraft just like in SPMBT.
Tank ammunition loadouts fine-tuned according to new data uncovered.
Grenades, rifle-grenades, infantry bombs, anti-tank grenades, infantry anti-tank mines and other anti-tank explosive devices have been extensively researched and have replaced the generic representations in most instances. Where the generic representations still exist (because of lack of credible information) they have been revised in relation to all the new information uncovered on these weapons.
Vehicle Dust Trails have been revised to begin appearing in desert terrain and summer months at higher Visibility settings than previously.
A new Map Editing feature whereby you can add "Clear Terrain" (Grassy Plain) to a hex, and still keep the height contours of the existing map. You no longer have to add Clear Terrain to a contoured section of the map by removing all the terrain features of the hex, including height. If you move to the second page of map editing buttons you will note that when you pass the cursor over the "Clear Terrain" button on that page it reveals that it will "Add clear terrain to hex following the contours of the existing map." The "Clear Terrain" button on the first page remains the same as it always was-- it clears all terrain and all height from the hex.
Armament loadouts of planes have been revised and varied loadouts created for use in different mission types. A huge effort was made to review the weapons loads on fixed wing aircraft (many thanks to Jakub Jaraczewski). Many different air-to-ground rockets were identified and established as weapons in the game. These were matched to aircraft of the appropriate nationality and period. As an example, a player will encounter Typhoons in 1944 that fire 60-Pounder Rocket Projectiles and P-38 Lightnings loaded with M-8 4.5-inch rockets. A parallel effort was made to identify the characteristics of the aircraft cannon and their ammunition loads. Thus, players with an eye to detail will appreciate the use of "20mm Hispano" instead of the old generic "20mm-cannon." This detailed approach highlights the different capabilities of same caliber weapons from different countries, such as the 20mm Hispano used by Great Britain and the 20mm Mk.2 used by the USA. Even the differences between two same caliber cannons used by the same country, Nazi Germany's 20mm MG-151 and 20mm MG-FF, are evident.
New armor values and penetration ratings for some weapons. Many armor ratings were reviewed, as were the capabilities of key anti-armor weapons in the games. This resulted in a few subtle changes that enhance the dynamics of tank combat in the game.
Changes to Range Finder ratings. After extensive research some range finder ratings have been increased to better reflect the capabilities of the actual sights and range finders. This is another subtle change for SPWW2 that enhances the combat dynamic.
Standardization of cannon rates of fire. To a large degree, the rates of fire of tank guns, anti-tank guns, and artillery pieces have been standardized. This corrects the problem of like weapons having different ROFs from OOB to OOB.
A "Player's Info" text file included in the Data/Design folder to help modders build new OOBs using the same basic rules that we do, and also to give an insight on how the game works.
Amphibian movement in rice paddies was revised.
The Boats Get Stuck Under Bridges Bug has finally been eradicated. Now boats can ply the waters under bridges, but their icons will appear on top of the bridge solely for ease of locating. If the boat icons are allowed to go under the bridges, they can become hidden from view very easily and the Player might lose track of his units. So we have made the icon appear above the bridge -- but it is simply a matter of visuals, and the boat does not add movement costs for traversing the bridge or otherwise exhibit any adverse effects in the game. For all game purposes the boat is under the bridge and in the water.
The code controlling troops dismounting from APCs and other vehicles was tweaked to allow more realistic engagement by opponent forces that are in LOS of the dismount.
Frequency of fords in streams was revised, and fords are made to flash yellow on the mini-map for easy identification. The chance of getting stuck at fords was also revised downward a little.
Road code finetuned.
Many small code tweaks to finetune the frequency of various results.

What was New in DOS Version 6.01 SUPPLEMENT

Completely new set of OOBs with numerous changes and additions

A new Cost calculator with the following corrections:

- - changes to ERA costs ( applicable to SPMBT only )

- - changes to flame weapons costings (long range flame weapons increased)

- - EW cost changes (+) ( applicable to SPMBT only )

- - off map and on map HE shell costs were reversed - fixed

- - sabot ammo was using the AP range, not sabot range- fixed

- - off map planes with missiles were using off map HE costs which were too high- fixed

11 revised and 24 new scenarios

27 new or revised Icons ( 12 revised SHP files )

17 new text files

Revised MOBHack help file

9 new PIC's

Many tweaks and adjustments to the code including:

- -helicopters could not unload on a bridge on lake hexes - fixed
- -other units on a bridge on a lake hex could not unload passengers - fixed
- -mine points rolling over to a very high number for dragon teeth buy when 0 fortification buy points- fixed
- -reinforcement mortars off map fired if under AI control - fixed
- -bomber aircraft were not dropping the last cluster bomb - fixed
- -on-map howitzers with HEAT ammo when firing indirect used HEAT if they hit an armoured target - fixed
- -some small maps caused a crash - was due to the random trees placement code not being changed to allow for map X and Y changes -fixed
- -mortar ROF was decided to be too high - reduced. Mortar ROF is ROF+1 if warhead<4
- -indirect artillery was using the direct fire graphic when attacking armoured targets, causing the incorrect graphic and or a shot to appear from -1,-1 to target - fixed.
- -Artillery indirect fire circle size tightened up slightly
- - helos were not taking damage correctly, now fixed.
- -Ammo units - boosted load of weapons with warhead size <4
- -road bridges over lake hexes were reporting as rail bridges if any rail bridge present on map - fixed
- -In user campaigns, if the map size was > 100 in width, the non fixed troops were deployed on column 98 still. Fixed.
- -Infantry speeds in MPH sometimes went down on 3rd hex moved - fixed.

- -Vehicles which were reported correctly as dug-in on the deploy turn or in scenario editor were losing dug in status in turn 1 onwards.-Fixed.

- Infantry were not being charged for soft sand - now +1 MP is charged for moving in a hex with soft sand.

What was New for Version 6.0

Numerous tweaks and adjustments to the code, AI picklists and OOBs have been made to fine tune gameplay

New MOBHack Database checking utilities and OOB Price Calculator

ALL units have been re-priced with the new calculator (which can be found in the "Cost Calculator" folder )

30 New Scenarios and two new campaigns ( Langemarck at Narva and Stug Brigade 276 ) . Included with the new scenarios is a Beginners tutorial in the first slot.

Over 375 New Icons

New MOBHack Database checking utilities and OOB Price Calculator

ALL units have been re-priced with the new calculator (which can be found in the "Cost Calculator" folder )

Max Points now 20,000 ( was 12,000 )

A bug has been fixed where if a formation had non aircraft in slot 1, planes could be added in subsequent sections and this would then fool the air selection code and allow either unlimited planes or to add such formations to cores.

The surrender option has been removed in PBEM games as this proved to be a cheat in PBEM..

Mines were not able to be laid on the RHS of larger maps - now fixed as well, mines are now deployable in the UC if bought.

AI Picklists for all nations have been completely checked ( 14,991 lines of code !! ) and corrected and enhanced where necessary. All Nations should now field a correct mix of troops in all battle types

What was New for DOS Version 5.6

The game now allows 135 map sizes. Maps can now go from a minimum of 20 hexes wide and 40 hexes high to up 160 hexes wide and 200 hexes high. All maps are fully playable in generated, campaign, PBEM or scenario based games. AI deployment routines for units and victory hexes have been re-written to accommodate every map size. Campaign players now have the added bonus of pre-selecting map size before every game to allow them to tailor map sizes to fit their campaign core size.

Area fire can now be targeted through smoke filled hexes. No longer will smoke act as a barrier to fire however, accuracy and effectiveness is far less than aimed fire against a clear hex but this new system works quite well for harassing advancing enemy infantry.

Using direct HE fire, all units in the target hex now receive splash damage while in direct fire by HE weapons. This includes the original target if missed, but the shell still lands in the target unit's hex. (The original code ignored the original target if a miss was scored). This slightly increses HE effect in direct fire.

The retreat code has been altered to give more realistic retreat paths in most situations

Points changes made in the editor will now "stick"

A new "Infantry colour" has been added to the game. It is used for China, Czechoslovakia, Belgium and "Red".

All OOBs extensively upgraded. Our Player Community was the origin of many OOB tweaks. While we may not respond to every issue raised on the message boards, we do read and research every bit of information and opinion that the games generate.

A new pricing formula has been used for all units.

New ammo loadouts for all non-vehicular mortars, howitzers and naval guns have been implemented to smooth out inconsistencies between OOBs that resulted in unfair advantages/disadvantages for some countries.

A bug in the computer purchased forces points values was found and eliminated. The troops were bought at the correct cost but the units point value field was left the basic OOB book value rather than the adjusted cost for + or - experience/moral. Any forces bought by the AI or human player using the computer buy routines will now reflect the correct cost adjustment for Experience and Morale rating.

Campaign core force points values had remained at the original purchase cost throughout the campaign thus not properly reflecting their changes in Experience and Morale over time. This bug has now been isolated and eliminated. Core forces will be shown at purchase book value for their template formation at the beginning of their first battle but will be individually priced at the end of their first battle depending on their true individual Experience and Morale rating. As they further progress through the campaign they will gain value as they gain experience and moral.

There was a bug whereby campaign core forces morale jumped to the 80's after their first battle. This has been eliminated, and therefore core forces morale will now properly improve with successful battles

The internal routines that calculated points value variance from the default 70 produced very skewed results when the difference was 10 or more points either way. The formula was revised to a flatter range.

Many other minor tweaks and adjustments to the code.

We have only included four more scenarios with this patch but many additional scenarios for SPWW2 can be found at http://www.wargamer.com/archive/ . You can find them in the "Steel Panthers: World War II ( SPWW2)" section.

What was New for DOS Version 5.5

Cross attachment of Platoons feature from SPMBT has been added to SPWW2.

We have increased waypoint count from 10 to 125 per formation.

A fix has been applied to a Scripted User campaign barge loading bug.

The infantry pull back code has been revised. Infantry will tend to pull back a bit quicker now.

A bug where the cost for experience was not being given back on dropping a formation in the buy screen has been fixed.

A bug with close-assaulting infantry going to 250+ men has been fixed.

A bug with land troops with swim speed "swimming" over bridges has been fixed.

Ammo resupply from ammo dumps has been extended out to two hexes.

"Battle Sounds" with "Music ON" has been re-introduced to the game.

Smoke dischargers can be activate/deactivate on the unit screen.

63 new scenarios and 3 additional campaigns added.

What was New for DOS Version 5.0

The Order Of Battle (OOB) Files have been given a complete overhaul - see the individual nationalitie's entry in the Historical Design Notes section for details as there is too much to list here.

The AP penetration and accuracy formulas have all been revised and updated in V5. These are based on real life gun performance studies, penetration graphs and tables. We feel these new formulas accurately reflect the capabilities of WW2 era guns and ammunition. SP2 and SPWW2 have always calculated the angle of the firing unit to the target and the targets orientation to the firer so as to effectively increase the defensive armour value by the horizontal impact angle. That, coupled with these new formulas, gives highly accurate tank vs. tank combat results.

A new pricing formula for Armour that gives each tank a value based on overall capability is included. This formula uses data for gun penetration, accuracy, tank speed, vision, range finder, fire control systems and armour that gives a much more fair pricing structure than was the case in the past. The system works by taking the data from the OOBs and inputting those values into a program which writes the new values to the OOBs . Each component of a tank is assessed, and then the resulting points are all added together to give a final point value. The formula does not give any cheats. It is strictly linear. No rarity bonuses are involved.

A new pricing formula for infantry units that assigns points based on weapons carried.

A new pricing formula for artillery and guns that assigns costs based on Warhead size, range, HE kill and number of shells.

Revised HE values for tanks, mortars, artillery. These values are based on a number of different studies of High explosive shells and their effects on men and machines.

Trenches can now be purchased and placed in defend battles in the same manner as mines and Dragons teeth. You now purchase points for "Mines/DT/Trenches". Points are used for every section of trench you place on the map. Those points can be used for any combination of Mines, Dragons teeth or trenches.

LOS visibility through trees has been revised and now will occasionally allow LOS through two treed hexes.

The " sticking" code has been revised to give more realistic results for vehicles in mud and streams. Vehicles attempting to enter buildings will cost many more MP's than previous versions. This greatly increases the chance if immobilisation in mud and streams. Players that find this a bit too "realistic" are advised to play with Breakdowns OFF in the preferences.

"Fords" have been added to generated streams. This is a place that vehicles can cross a stream with a much reduced chance of immobilisation. These can be found by hovering the cursor over a stream hex. If it is a fording place, it will indicate that at the top of the screen

Many of the picklists have been revised which gives the AI side much more varied and less predictable picks.

The surrender code has been revised to allow more surrendering than was common in previous versions.

The Campaign core force is now expandable during the long campaign. You can use your repair points to add new recruits and expand your core.

"Auxiliary" troops are now available to scenario designers for user campaign battles. Auxiliaries are a fixed increment of troops made available to the player by the scenario designer and come in 2 types, "free" which are treated exactly like your own troops which you can position as desired in your deployment area, and "fixed" - these are for the scenario designer to place as required for the scenario, and the user cannot change their initial locations. though they may be placed outside your deployment zone.

Smoke dischargers may now be toggled on and off like ordinary weapons, to allow the user to stop his troops firing these in reaction to enemy incoming fires, if desired.

The AI tank heavy preference switch has been changed to buy even more tanks for those who want to play with non-historical armour force levels. The effects of the tank heavy AI preference are more noticeable above 3000 purchase points. However, for traditionally tank 'light' armies such as the Japanese, do NOT expect to see the AI purchase vast fleets of AFV's.

Those weapons using the '222' HEAT code (mainly infantry AT weapons) will now correctly report 'HEAT'' ammo, not AP, and use the HEAT code properly for penetration etc.

The old SP bug where radar controlled AAA (an AA gun or SPAA with FC of 100+) could target ground targets through smoke and darkness as if they had Thermal Imaging sights is now cured. Radar AAA will only count these bonuses vs. flying targets.

Air parity can now occur, the old SP premise that if you were offered aircraft, then the opponent has no air strikes, is gone. In rare circumstances he may have air strikes available as well, possibly more than you are allocated. Players will therefore have to consider flak purchases even if they have been granted air strikes.

Units in trenches and pillboxes get extra morale bonuses. Pillboxes give higher bonuses than trenches but units in both types of fortification will now be MUCH less likely to retreat from them than was the case in the past. Even units that have reached "rout" status are much more likely to stay in their trench or bunker rather than retreat out of the safety these fortifications provide. Units in trenches and foxholes are much more likely to endure artillery bombardment than those units not dug in.

The artillery routine has been completely revised in DOS Version 5.0. Your artillery fire will now arrive at the end of your OPPONENTS turn rather than at the end of your turn. This means predicting where the enemy will be when the shells arrive is a much more challenging procedure than has been the case in the past. You will no longer be able to simply shift fire a hex or two and have your artillery land right after you press the end turn button. This is a MUCH fairer system for both sides and better reflects "reality" where orders from the front lines had to be passed on to the gun troop commander who then passed the correction onto the gun crews who then adjusted their fire to new co-ordinates. This was not something done in a minute or two and this new system reflects that. The change takes a game or two to get used to but once you have played this way you will agree it is a better system than what was in place in the past. As well, guns that have high turn delay ( such as .05 ) will deliver fewer shells on target than if the delay was .00

The ROF for rocket units has been revised so that whatever ROF number is put into the OOBs is the number of rockets that will launch in one turn. This eliminates the problem where small rocket launchers ( such as a Nebelwerfer 42 with only 5 "tubes" ) may have fired too many rockets in one turn or rocket launchers capable of mass launching ( such as the Canadian Land mattress with 32 rails ) were penalised with too few rockets launched. We have also expanded the types of rockets that were available in the OOBs so you will find the static German Wurfgerat and the early Soviet heavy rockets fired from static frames in the OOBs now. All rocket units are provided with two "firings" worth of rockets

Artillery has the greatest effect on troops that have been or are, moving. Stationary troops or those in cover will suffer less and those in dugouts or trenches even less. Moving across open ground through an artillery "beaten zone" is NOT healthy for your troops but troops in dugouts or trenches will endure the exact same barrage with little effect. Assaulting a trench now means you must have artillery falling almost in front of your own troops as they go in. Your artillery observers, in good LOS, are even more important than before as they are best at keeping your guns "on target". Units in trenches may not retreat as quickly as if they were in the open but they still acquire suppression ( they just recover much quicker ) This is why your infantry MUST attack the trenches soon after the barrage lifts otherwise the enemy is give the chance to rally and recover which negates all the benefit of your bombardment. This is what the British mean when they say they are "leaning into" the barrage. If you have armoured infantry or "tankriders" so much the better as these units can stay back further from the actual barrage then move in quickly with their mechanised infantry and take the trench while the enemy is still dazed from the bombardment

Smaller maps will now tend to used for tiny points campaign cores - previously the minimum size was 500, but some users want to play campaigns with very small initial core values.

New Railway Terrain tiles have been added for scenario designers. This includes "regular" railway track as well as tram lines/streetcar track for cities

Some maps, such as those for the generated "Stalingrad" and "Caen" battles, will now have pre-existing damage and cratering.

We only had one significant bug in DOS Version 4, the Spanish LC bug and it is fixed in this release (as it was in 4.x on the Computer Games Magazine CD but not all users got the CD on the magazine).

Over 200 new unit Icons added.

Over 1100 new photos added.

Over 1000 text files are now in the game to provide unit and formation information.

31 new scenarios and one new campaign ( more on the way ! ). This means DOS Version 5 will contain a total of 105 scenarios and four User Campaigns

What was New for DOS Version 4.0

New WW2 long campaigns for Poland, USMC, Japan, India, ANZAC

Pacific Front is available as a WW2 long Campaign Theatre, some nations are allowed to transfer between European and Pacific (e.g. ANZAC, USA, GB).

Amphibious assaults have been stabilised and so reintroduced to the WW2 Long Campaign.
- In addition, the code will now attempt to load things onto any existing 'floaters' and 'fliers' before auto buying landing craft to simplify user deployment.

River crossing assaults have been returned to the WW2 and generated campaigns.

Battle Locations will generate city battles at times where appropriate (e.g. Canadians in Caen area)

WW2 LC has some scripted areas which may appear (e.g. Meuse river crossing for Germans in France 1940)

Major changes to aircraft
- Helicopters are back, and are now the only on map air type.
- All other air units are offmap assets
- Transports drop paratroopers, who use parachutes
- Level bomber class introduced

Gliders start on map, to pick up troops, then are removed and come in as a programmed air drop.

Transports are like gliders, but the troops deploy by parachute.

Level bombers go to the target area and then offload their bombs, they do not dive on individual tanks, nor can they use direct fire weapons like cannons or rockets.

Introduced the ability to change the turn of a pre game bombardment mission from the default 0.

Introduced new Black Volcanic sand terrain type - mainly for Iwo Jima

Iwo Jima linked campaign added.

DD and Snorkel Tanks - DD tanks and snorkel tanks show a different graphic when afloat, and cannot fire (both are effectively underwater!). Snorkel tanks less easy to spot, but find spotting very hard. DD tanks have spotting ability reduced. Snorkel tanks difficult targets when swimming. DD tanks can be sunk when swimming (the apron collapses).

Campaign Difficulty modifier - from very easy to very hard, allows user to set difficulty as desired in both the WW2 Long Campaign and the Generated Campaign. (Not the user campaign, as this is set by the designer).

In Contact/Out of Contact - Coloured status line added to unit information for this very important data.

Vehicle Dust Trails - high speed, or high quantity of vehicle movement in a hex in certain weather conditions will lead to dust trails rising above moving vehicles. High visibility conditions in Desert, high visibility and high summer months in Green and Jungle may give rise to 'rooster trails' potential conditions.

Hull gun equipped vehicles will tend to turn to face e.g. in reaction fire - Grants, Char B etc were previously handicapped as only the turret would turn to face.

At short ranges, AI tanks will often turn to bring bow MG to bear on an infantry target.

Infantry can hit the deck, and if successful, take cover, from fire. Hitting the deck makes them more difficult targets, and a good skill roll may break the firer's chain of fire, and a skill check may allow them to break LOS by finding cover as well. A successful taking of cover can reduce suppression. Infantry which are forced to pull back from fire will now sometimes turn and take a pot-shot back at their tormentors, especially if of high morale and/or experience.

Poor morale and/or poor training level infantry, especially those which have no viable or ineffective AT weapons may retreat in 'tank panic' either when attempting to close assault a passing AFV, or when such arrives in the next or same hex. Bigger, heavier armoured AFV tend to cause more consternation that tin-plated open top recce vehicles. Japanese are not greatly subject to tank panic.

Water movement allowance is shown in blue, alongside the normal MP allowance.

Game ranges can be displayed in hexes, yards or metres, by an INI file setting.

Surrender option - mainly for PBEM games - introduced, ending the game at that point with a massive points bonus to your opponent.

End of game map review feature - roam the map, viewing your and your enemy's troops at the end of play.

PBEM end game - now, after the game ends, zip your files and send to your opponent, who will unlike before, be able to review the end game data, and as above, the map.

Skilled AT shots allowed to hit vulnerable areas. Very experienced shooters, at close ranges, can generate additional AP over the 'book' value to simulate a skilled aimed shot to a weaker area such as say a vision block, or if insufficient penetration is available, they can direct the shot to hopefully gain a disabling track hit. Very dependant on firer skill, but there to simulate say, skilled German tankers versus French Char B in 1940, or KV later, or Allied tank crews bouncing a shot off the bottom of the panther front glacis down through the driver's hatch.

Hand to hand melee bonuses for some troop types, and certain nations renowned for hand to hand combat ('firing' at range 0, i.e. in the same hex as the enemy). Lancer cavalry have good HH bonus, and an additional bonus against enemy non-lance cavalry. Irregulars, Commando classes, Paratrooper classes, Ghurkas and Legionaries are enhanced for melee combat. Japanese and Australians are enhanced for HH combat, US Marines and UK infantry less so.

Scenario editing enhancements - more control over the global beach and wide river variables, and the ability to easily clear the victory hexes down and/or set all to a common points value in one operation.

User Campaign Editor - designer can now edit the number of flights made available to the human player.

Companies can be bigger - changes to 60 from 40 maximum units in a company.

New integrated glider and Transport aircraft equipped infantry units have been produced, these save you having to calculate the appropriate 'lift' of aircraft required or to buy separate transport plane units. These units are air units, so are only presented when air units are made available to you.

The SP Camo 'shotgun' victory hexes will now appear in delay or defend missions, at 60% of the frequency allocated to the meeting engagement battle in the INI file setting.

In random battles, where the user does not use a specified saved map, then the objective hexes are labelled and the value of each objective is shown as part of the text label.

Several cases of the original legacy code addressing illegal memory addresses, or returning out of range values from functions (usually negative values where positives only were expected) etc. have been tracked down and eliminated. This makes the game noticeably much more stable than before. Many playtesters report that they can for example download from the Internet in the background, do email and, in my case as the programmer, run the Borland C++ Builder development suite, and also alt-tab in and out of a running game session, without requiring to reboot the machine to play SPWW2. SPWW2 runs fine in a DOS window on Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, and one of our playtesters uses OS/2

What was New for DOS Version 3.0

SPWW2 V3 allows you to choose from nine map sizes to a maximum of 100x200 hexes. All other Steel Panthers based games offer three map sizes to a maximum of 100x80 hexes. This change allows you to play a game on a simulated battlefield of up to 50 square Kilometres! - map sizes: 40x100, 60x100, 80x100, 100x100, 120x100, 140x100, 160x100, 180x100, 200x100.

SPWW2 V3 now gives you up to fifteen levels of terrain to work with. All other Steel Panthers based games allow only three elevations above ground level.

SPWW2 V3 now allows each player to command up to 500 units. The previous limit for SPWW2 was 200. The maximum number of formations per side has been increased to 200, it was about 50 before.

SPWW2 V3 has removed many of the previous terrain editing restrictions in the original SP games. Now, every terrain feature except swamp and pavement can be edited into any level on a map. Cultivated fields and multi-hex buildings can be placed on any level. This new feature is not simply restricted to hand made maps and scenarios.

Computer generated maps will now use 24 variables when creating a map. Previous SP map generation routines used only 10 variables and only 6 of those actually caused changes to the maps .As a result, you will be presented with MUCH more interesting computer generated maps than ever before.

AI map deployment has been completely overhauled and the computer set up has been made much more challenging than in the previous versions of the game.

There have been an additional 20 terrain tile SHP file SETS added to the game so as to allow old features such as crops to be edited onto higher elevations. We have added numerous new functional terrain features such as Snowdrifts, Light snow, Rice paddies, Mud, Orchards, Impassable Terrain, Hedgerows, and Trenches.

Snowdrifts, mud, soft sand, rice paddies, hedgerows and crossing of trenches are liable to cause vehicles to stick, mud being the worst, soft sand and snow drifts less so.

Terrain descriptive text can now be added on scenario maps.

Elevations can be changed right on the map being edited so if you wish to place a small elevation change in a map to break up LOS, that can now be done.

SPWW2 V3 now has over 237 unique battle locations built into it. With the increased number of map variables the code uses you will now see computer generated maps that could only have been hand made before. ( And with the added elevations and new terrain could never have been made before ) For example; Hedgerows are auto generated in Normandy maps, Raised dike roads in Holland, Pacific maps will have rice paddies and raised rice paddy bunds. Streams create valleys across the map now rather than run up and down hillsides. Cultivated fields may be bordered by trees and the fields themselves are much more realistically generated than in the past. You will find maps that contain rolling hills covered in high grass or deep ravines that cut across flat plateaux.

We have added over 100 new unit classes to the SPOBS Many of these have special characteristics such as ski troops which move faster than regular infantry in snow terrain. There are now 169 unit classes in SPWW2 V3. Listed in MM

We have added new code modifiers to the Orders of Battle which allow us to create formations with increased or decreased battle experience and morale. This has allowed us to create Elite and sub standard formations which gives us much greater freedom to create more historically accurate formations for the game. More units and formations may be added to the Orders of Battle in the future, as will battalion command formations.

Appropriate points are now charged depending on the national characteristics when that option is selected. If your base experience for that year is above 70, you will be charged more points, if less, your troops will cost less. Contrast this to previous SP versions where some nations received a free bonus and others such as the French in 1940 were paying full cost for less capable units. Elite units such as SS will now cost over and above the national base cost, but less capable units like Volksturm will cost below the national average.

There is a severe bug in the original river assault code when more than a certain number of assault troops have rafts added, which will cause a memory leak and overwrite your preferences before eventually causing a crash. We will fix this later, but for now please limit river assaults to scenario games only, or where small numbers of assault troops are used.

Campaign core is 100 units as per SP1 this should be half max (200), also the 125 given before was over the max of 120 units allowed for a beach assault. We will further address this issue in DOS Version 3.0 when we increase the number of units and formations available in the game.

Campaign support points values have been changed based on the real value of your troops points (adjusted for experience etc.), and battle type. No more 350 support points for every battle. Assault support points can now be 800 or so. A bottom end cap allows a decent support base for small cores, and a top end cap is used to limit elite cores from simply wiping the floor with the AI.

PBEM

The main problem with PBEM is the user unfriendly nature of the process. We intend to address that later, but for now a few minor changes have been made which we hope may help avoid user errors, the commonest form of PBEM problem.

The 'exit' button is removed from the password screen, as if one exits the game during this phase, the game data is corrupted. Also added (hopefully) more meaningful help strings on the password entry scheme when you hover your mouse over the buttons. NB - when setting up a secure PBEM game, as player No 2 - when you get your initial turn and open it to purchase your forces, do not under ANY circumstances exit from the purchase screen - go through the entire process and enter your password, then save the game. Any exit between the initial load by player 2 for purchase and before the entry of the password and subsequent exit to the deployment screen (the one with the 'AUTO DEPLOY', 'HUMAN DEPLOY' buttons with a red bar asking for password entry at the top) - will totally trash the game as the security 'keys' are not set up until the password is entered and the game is initially saved between the password entry screen and that deployment scheme. So do not exit in the middle of buying troops, unless you are player 1 and wish to abandon this game entirely.

I have added (hopefully) more meaningful error messages when security warnings arise than the previous 'programmer geek speak' with lots of exclamation marks (!!!).

"Security violation - Corrupt saved game file" Something dreadfully wrong has gone wrong with the PBEM data file.

"Security violation - Executable corrupt - Reinstall Game" Maybe someone was poking new values into the .Exe?.

"Security alert - Player 1 MOB file not found" "Security alert - Player 2 MOB file not found" The game was unable to find the required mob - did you delete it somehow?.

"Security alert - Player 2 MOB file corrupt" "Security alert - Player 1 MOB file corrupt" You MUST play the PBEM game right through with the identical pair of mobs in place on BOTH player's PCs. This one means that one of the mobs has changed, or if you are player 2 and this is the first move - player 1 and you have different mobs, so ask him to send you his or otherwise resolve this issue. The likeliest reason for this is somebody loaded their mobs into Mobhack or another editor during the game. NO mob changes are allowed during the lifetime of the PBEM game on both player's PCs so do any mob hacking in a different installation of the game than the one you play PBEM on.

"Security alert - Player 1 has already played this turn?" "Security alert - Player 2 has already played this turn?" This means you are most likely trying to reopen a move you have completed, and have either not yet sent to your opponent, or have done so and not received the reply back yet. This error - trying to open a played move - does not corrupt the PBEM data any longer.

"Security violation - Cause unknown" Well - if you get that one, I am equally baffled as well!

NOTE - the 'unable to load mobxxx' error will sometimes be seen when attempting to load a saved game of any type - but especially a PBEM game - which was unreadable or corrupt in some manner. It is most often seen when a move from a different version of SPWW2 is sent over. PBEM games are NOT able to be transferred between different versions of the executable. Regular save games are (but will not be when we go over to 400 a side), and scenarios are as well. We hope to provide a scenario conversion utility when we change to 800 units maximum in a later version.

Battle Locations

Also known as "batlocs." There are 248 standard battle locations available to the battle map generator, and these are used in specific dates and opponent pairings. Some of these produce city terrain - e.g. USSR vs Germany in December of 42 will give you Stalingrad, Canada vs Germany in 12/43 will have you fighting in the town of Ortona in Italy. Countries should now take the "correct" map side in the main, but still a few may need ironing out. In addition to the standard locations, the game can 'synthesize' appropriate batlocs in certain situations by taking an existing batloc type that fits the terrain and renaming it to be appropriate to the current opponents.

Other Items

Soviet 'horde' extra points bonus removed. Soviets use normal points values multipliers. They no longer get 50% on top of the agreed points level.

Japanese infantry will now pull back but after taking higher casualties than other nations, and they will no longer stay pinned and be slaughtered. Japanese will retreat where others rout. Japanese will not rout, so will rally faster after a setback. Japanese scout planes will retreat on damage like other scout planes, not sit still in 'permanent retreat'.

The 1 hex to-hit bonus is based on experience and pin state, and is slightly reduced if firer moved. (NB - for those who wonder why they cannot hit at 1 hex - target speed is a factor, as is your speed - so if the target did 30 mph, and you charged up to him at 30 mph - there is a 60 mph speed difference that being at 1 hex helps, but does not remove completely !)

Civil wars - if both sides are the same nation, player 2 uses a different flag for victory hexes and ID tags. This does not apply to the encyclopaedia, or the turn indicator flag at RHS of the screen, it is there to help you tell things apart on the battlefield is all, and you will both be called 'USA'. Civil war is good for human vs human 'chess' play - where both forces are drawn from the same toolkit, and so the difference is more down to pure generalship.

Landed gliders now convert class to a truck type - so are far easier to shoot up on the ground. As air units before - even when landed - they were very difficult to hit even at 1 hex landed beside you. This problem still exists for spotter planes when landed, as they have to be able to take off again - but will be fixed in a future release.

Russians and Australians are now less likely to surrender, more likely to fight on or retire. We will be expanding the list of national characteristics in DOS Version 3.0.

The A0 units will no longer be placed on transport when "auto deploy" is used. This increases the life expectancy of the AI's commanding officer considerably. Trucks will now pick up, as will jeeps etc. In the AI's or "auto" deploy. Trucks and APC's will pick up MG teams - tanks will not use them as riders. Snipers will not be picked up as AI tank riders.

In snow, there is a possibility of vision being further reduced to represent snowstorms etc.

The main page uses buttons, not the dial. All menu screen graphics have been upgraded as well.

Infantry, on becoming pinned, are now classed as stationary targets, i.e. not as moving at the speed they were before the pinning fire was received.

Rifle and MG suppression on AFVs has been reduced, small arms hits from under 3 hexes may still retreat or rout AFVs, but long range small arms fire is merely an annoyance now.

A hit by a shell fired in indirect fire will now throw any tank riders off a tank with possible casualties, just like direct fire.

Close assault code is nearer original SSI's spec code, modified slightly. Both sides of the assault can take more suppression, infantry squads who fail an assault can be spotted, infantry AT will occasionally fire, infantry who move and then assault are severely handicapped. (Note that the movement includes transport movement, so charging riders in a HT 12 hexes and then offloading to assault a target is less of a reliable tactic now).

The number of smoke grenades issued to infantry has been reduced

The chance of bridges not being blown in a river crossing slightly - still very rare

Several artillery types (e.g. SP ARTY) were classed as armour, so did not get artillery command ratings - now they do.

Moving infantry is now much more vulnerable, especially out in the open. Try not to move over 1 hex if under fire - and passengers count the vehicle speed when debussing, to represent being tightly packed on exit. Just debussed infantry are therefore highly vulnerable if caught at that point.

When fighting versus infantry at 1 hex or less, units which fail a test based on current morale, experience and suppression will 'panic' and have reduced to hit chances occasionally - this is done on a line by line basis. Units which panic badly can have suppression added to them. This allows good quality troops to close with poor quality and/or shaken infantry at 1 hex with a reasonable chance - previously the 1 hex bonuses tended to favour the defender far too much, even if severely pinned.

Bugs Squashed

Heavily damaged squads being able to rally to Ready, but unable to move is fixed.

Too many secondary weapons were being removed when damage was received - less now, so depleted squads should have a shot of LMG, AT weapon or hand grenade at move start - though movement will reduce this as will suppression.

Landed gliders now become a 'truck' type - so are reasonably easy to shoot up, as they are no longer classed as 'aircraft targets'.

There was a bug that was giving very low leader rally ratings when the user preferences for 'national settings' was unselected. This has been fixed.

An annoying bug/cheat has been removed whereby if you right clicked on a hex which had hidden enemy units in it , your unit did NOT turn and this gave away the fact there were enemy units there.

An annoying bug/cheat where the hit locations of unspotted armour was reported by artillery shells has been removed. Unspotted vehicles now behave the same as infantry - only if destroyed will you be informed.

Found out why the close assault code sometimes crashed the PC in weird situations as well - squashed. The annoying bug where off map crews etc. shot up your off map batteries has been addressed.

A bug has been fixed where the AI random map generator would place buildings on rough terrain, this was an illegal placement. Side effect of this is that you now are not allowed to place buildings on rough in the scenario editor, nor does the scenario editor allow you to place buildings in lake hexes any more.

Vehicles should no longer eject 2 crews on occasions

Vehicles no longer 'explode' when crew bail out with low morale.

Removed a bug where shooters at infantry were getting suppression reduced.

Wrong protection factors etc. were being used for HE and artillery fire for FO vehicles and a few others..

Artillery, rifle and MG fires now more effective, and trucks will be destroyed by indirect fire HE. There was a bug where stationary vehicles were classed as moving when firing - accuracy is now better for stationary firers.

Invisible buildings - in cities etc. - this seems to be related to some building graphics not covering the required area, we have found one major culprit and replaced that graphic. There will likely be more to track down.

What was introduced in DOS Version 2.0

SPWW2 is essentially a new game. Although it is an offshoot of our earlier work, SP2WW2, the two games are not totally compatible. Steel Panthers:WW2 is meant to replace SP2WW2. This is a general overview of the changes made to create SPWW2 and does not include the dozens of "Nuts and Bolts" changes made to help improve the game.

Security for PBEM games: The changes include

1) Normal scenarios may now be played as password-protected email games.

2) Passwords have been encrypted.

3) The number of times each player has loaded and exited a game is recorded and can be displayed by his opponent.

4) All email games are autosaved when the user exits the game.

5) The user cannot unzip the game, play it and then unzip it again, to improve his score.

6) The user cannot install a second copy of the executable and use one for test playing.

7) No saved email game can be edited in any version of the executable.

8) Both players in an email game must use identical MOB files, throughout the game - i.e. any change of the MOB is detected as a security violation.

Combat System Enhancements:

1) Moving a unit now reduces available shots and shooting reduces available movement points. A unit can loose up to ½ of its shots or movement, this way. The losses are interactive. You will no longer be able to charge in, fire all your shots, then run for cover. Infantry transported in a vehicle will also lose shots depending as to how much the transport moved.

2) Movement TO HIT penalties have been removed, but all units except for aircraft and vehicles with gun stabilisers now loose target acquisition when they move.

3) Units now gain back some shots at the end of the turn to use for opportunity fire during the enemy movement phase. Up until now, if you fired all your shots, you have nothing left for opportunity fire, which allowed your opponent the chance to charge in and fire point-blank. This amount is randomised, and based on unit experience as well.

4) Indirect fire against AFVs has been made less lethal and more suppressive. The AFV should get hit less often and when hit, less should be track hits. The vehicle will take more suppression, however and crews may bail out and run, especially if the tracks are broken and the vehicle is immobilised

5) The delay for indirect fire has been increased. In the past, units who self-targeted received no delay penalty. The penalties now range from +1 turn to +3 turns. This will make pre-registered locations and artillery spotters more important in the game.

6) The artillery fall of shot spread has been modified. It is generally a more narrow spread than it used to be depending upon the accuracy of the ordinance being fired. Some shots still can fall quite wide of the intended impact point, especially if the spotter has no LOS to the impact point so calling in artillery 'danger close' to your own forces is still quite risky.

7) Infantry are now MUCH harder to spot, especially by vehicles or when moving slowly in good cover. Buttoned up, turretless vehicles are the worst at spotting. Size zero, sniper class units of high experience are the hardest to spot. Since infantry is now harder to spot and harder to hit you will notice that firing on infantry will produce fewer kills and more suppression than you may be used to.

8) Japanese units will no longer surrender, retreat or rout.

9) The USMC will no longer surrender.

10) Infantry can now only throw smoke grenades one hex.

11) Unit weapons ROF calculation was enhanced. The ROF now considers the size of the round, number of crewmen, unit ROF and crew experience.

12) Terrain defensive values were enhanced. All terrain, other than clear, now offers some protection. So, units will take fewer casualties and rout out of stone buildings less often.

13) Infantry units can now close assault more effectively. Attacks may now also be on the side or rear armour.

14) Computer opponent set up is now less predictable. They may set up near the right or left edges of the map or near both or neither. This way, the player will have to plan to protect his flanks. This has also been set up to be unpredictable. You will not always see the same units doing the same thing with each game. In particular, when advancing versus an AI force, you can no longer assume the top and bottom edges of the map are free of defenders. AI reserve formations will often be there - the old 'form a column and crawl along the map edge' human vs. AI tactic is now extremely risky. Be prepared to be in the middle of a concentric ring of closing AI formations once taking an objective.

15) The ROF for artillery using indirect fire has been increased.

16) Stacking limits have been removed. Press the keyboard SHIFT key to enter a hex that already contains another unit

17) Units moving through hexes that already contain other infantry, vehicles, bunkers, wreaks etc. Will have one movement point subtracted for every unit which is already in the hex. This is in addition to all movement penalties imposed for the terrain. For example, a tank moving through a hex that already contains four infantry units and two wreaks will lose an additional 6 movement points on top of the cost of the terrain in that hex.

General Changes and Enhancements to SPWW2v2:

1) Leader leadership and morale values were converted to WW II levels.

2) Unit experience and moral values were converted to WW II levels.

3) Counter battery values were converted to WW II levels.

4) Air superiority values were converted to WW II levels.

5) Dates were changed to appropriate period and will now run from 1910 to 1949. For Ver 2.0 we have only supplied MOBs that generally go back as far as 1930, more usually 1935. Future releases or updates MAY extend back further

6) Battles will now take place in generally appropriate geographic locations. We have tried to make non-historical battles occur somewhere believable, rather than just being in the desert, as was the case before.

7) A number of enhancements were made to the scenario editor, including the ability to place grass and sand dunes on hills.

8) The ability to change the side where each force begins the game when creating scenarios was added.

9) A cargo aircraft class of unit was added. Taking off costs half the planes movement points and climbing costs 10 movement points. Landing costs all remaining movement points.

10) The glider class of unit was redefined and enhanced. This speed of this class is halved each turn, until it must land. Once landed, it may not take off again nor will it rout off map if fired upon.

11) The ability to assign individual sound files to unit movement and weapons was added. Note that this will require the KobHack for SPWW2 editor. This editor is deliberately not being released publicly at this time, for further explanation, see below.

12) Several new sound files were added that are unique to specific weapons.

13) A leg artillery forward observer class has been added with enhanced spotting ability.

14) Month of UNIT availability and out of service month has been added. NB - formation availability has not been addressed yet due to lack of time. Some formations will appear without a corresponding troop type.

15) Players with very fast computers can now adjust the map scrolling speed with a hotkey (SEE: HOTKEYS, at the end of these notes).

16) The AI will now pick up and carry infantry on tanks in the same manner it did in Steel Panthers 1. As well, if you press the " Load infantry onto nearest vehicle" button in the deploy screen the infantry will load onto your tanks if they have the carrying capacity to do so.

17) There are now over 200 NEW icons in SPWW2 over and above the standard WWII set found in Steel Panthers 1 or the WWII section of Steel Panthers 3. Added to this are dozens of vehicle icons that have been redone and enhanced. There is also a new set of menu screens, Control buttons, reworked Terrain Icons and a completely new set of factory buildings. You will also notice that many of the flat roofed buildings have been replaced with peaked roof structures.

Artillery Changes

1) You will need larger guns than before to create craters, and to drop bridges.

2) Artillery effects on armour are now mainly morale effects - artillery will break up armoured assaults, but by making tanks button up and possibly retreat rather than by destroying them.

3) This does not mean that artillery, even mortars, cannot kill tanks. However it's more likely that a track hit will occur, and the crew will bail out if moral is poor. If you want to actually kill tanks, then go for 6 inch (150mm) or larger guns.

4) Artillery is primarily an anti infantry weapon, but it does this more by morale strikes than by kills. Artillery kills over time - do not expect one salvo to remove a squad.

Infantry Changes

All small arms will suppress more than they kill. We made infantry harder to spot, which in turn makes them harder to hit which makes them harder to kill. When troops are pinned they are facedown in the dirt and even harder to spot which in turn makes them harder to hit and kill. So as a result there are fewer kills and more suppression in SPWW2 and infantry will more likely retreat to someplace safe and rally then re-enter battle rather than be slaughtered at the first few shots.

Note that sometimes when infantry become pinned, then the LOS is recalculated and can be broken due to the squad having now hit the dirt. So you can have the situation of firing a shot and then no longer having a LOS to the target. The same is true for your own squads that are fired on. When they hit the dirt, their spotting ability is reduced. Infantry is deadly against unsupported armour. If you run a tank down a road without infantry in support the tank WILL die if it bumps into enemy infantry. If you plan to move through territory held by enemy infantry then you had best slow down your tanks, dismount your infantry and move them together to advance. The infantry should advance a hex or two in front of your tanks so the armour can provide direct support should the infantry bump into something nasty. You CAN use tank riders to (hopefully) disrupt close assaults, but these guys will tend to pay the price for acting as a form of 'reactive armour If you suspect infantry - dismount the squads and let THEM find the ambush. They spot better on foot in any case!

If you STRONGLY suspect an ambush at a particular point - dust it off with artillery, then scout with dismounts, with the tanks supporting them. Don't blunder into infantry zones - at least drop a barrage, and then follow up close behind this. Artillery is the best cure for infestations of infantry and AT guns you have.

Credits and Information

ORIGINAL SP SERIES DESIGN AND PROGRAMMING
BY
Gary Grigsby, Keith Brors and SSI

This section lists everyone who has worked on this game in one form or another from the latest version all the way back to the very first game released December 1998.

WinSPWW2 Version 5.0

PRODUCERS: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

GAME PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey and Don Goodbrand.

MOBHACK and UTILITY APPLICATIONS PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey.

PLAYTESTING: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

ICON DESIGN : Don Goodbrand

SCENARIO or CAMPAIGN DESIGN : Christian Basener, Cam Murdoch, Brian Price, Tobias Sorger.

GAME MANUAL AND DOCUMENTATION: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

OOB CONTRIBUTORS : Thanks to all the contributors on the game forums.

WinSPWW2 Version 4.5

PRODUCERS: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

GAME PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey and Don Goodbrand.

MOBHACK and UTILITY APPLICATIONS PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey.

PLAYTESTING: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

ICON DESIGN : Don Goodbrand

SCENARIO DESIGN : Ulf Lundström

GAME MANUAL AND DOCUMENTATION: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

OOB CONTRIBUTORS : Thanks to all the contributors on the game forums.

WinSPWW2 Version 4.0 ( and v4.25 )

PRODUCERS: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

GAME PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey and Don Goodbrand.

MOBHACK and UTILITY APPLICATIONS PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey.

PLAYTESTING: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

ICON DESIGN : Don Goodbrand

SCENARIO DESIGN : Blazej Ciepluch, Christian Basener, Christopher W. Berry, Ulf Lundström

GAME MANUAL AND DOCUMENTATION: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

OOB CONTRIBUTORS : Thanks to all the contributors on the game forums and a special thanks to John Pryor ( "Imp" ) for the work he did in providing the spreadsheets highlighting the errors and inconsistencies in the weapons database for winSPWW2 and winSPMBT.

WinSPWW2 Version 3.5

PRODUCERS: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

GAME PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey and Don Goodbrand.

MOBHACK and UTILITY APPLICATIONS PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey.

PLAYTESTING: Pyros Lambert, Remco Leenhouts, Ulf Lundström, Mike Torrance, Jason Young

ICON DESIGN : Don Goodbrand

SCENARIO DESIGN : Andy Gailey, Ulf Lundström

MAP DESIGN and Corrections: Ulf Lundström

GAME MANUAL AND DOCUMENTATION: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

WinSPWW2 Version 3.0

PRODUCERS: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

GAME PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey and Don Goodbrand.

MOBHACK and UTILITY APPLICATIONS PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey.

PLAYTESTING: Maciej Czerkas, Pyros Lambert, Remco Leenhouts, Ulf Lundström, Artúr Székely-Takács, Mike Torrance, Jason Young

ICON DESIGN : Don Goodbrand

SCENARIO DESIGN : Ulf Lundström, Daniel Toftemar

MAP DESIGN and Corrections: Ulf Lundström, Blazej Ciepluch, Marek Tucan

GAME MANUAL AND DOCUMENTATION: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

WinSPWW2 Version 2.0 and V2.5

PRODUCERS: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

GAME PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey and Don Goodbrand.

MOBHACK and UTILITY APPLICATIONS PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey.

PLAYTESTING: Maciej Czerkas, Pyros Lambert, Remco Leenhouts, Ulf Lundström, Artúr Székely-Takács, Mike Torrance, Jason Young

ICON DESIGN : Don Goodbrand

TERRAIN TILE ART: Don Goodbrand

SCENARIO DESIGN : Ulf Lundström

MAP DESIGN: Ulf Lundström, Simon Whitton

GAME MANUAL AND DOCUMENTATION: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

WinSPWW2 Version 1.0 and V1.1

PRODUCERS: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

GAME PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey and Don Goodbrand.

MOBHACK PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey.

UTILITY APPLICATIONS PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey.

PLAYTESTING: Boris Ajdukovic, C. B. Blackard, Claus Bonnesen, Maciej Czerkas, Tom DeShetler, Peter Dunn, Pyros Lambert, Remco Leenhouts, Ulf Lundström, Artúr Székely-Takács, Mike Torrance, Jason Young

ICON DESIGN : Blazej Ciepluch, Don Goodbrand

TERRAIN TILE ART: Don Goodbrand

SCENARIO DESIGN : C. B. Blackard, Blazej Ciepluch, Pyros Lambert, Ulf Lundström, Cam Murdoch (v1.1)

MAP DESIGN: Blazej Ciepluch,Pyros Lambert, Ulf Lundström

OOB CONTRIBUTORS AND CONSULTANTS: Blazej Ciepluch, Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand and our Playtesters

GAME MANUAL AND DOCUMENTATION: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

SPWW2 DOS Version 7.0 and v7.01 (names are in alphabetical order for v7 and v7.01)

PRODUCERS: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand & SP Camo (Boris Ajdukovic, Jake Cornmesser, Tony Engelsen, Fernando Giorlando, Miguel Guasch Aparicio, Doug McBratney, Edward R. Mortimer, Bill Wilson).

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand & SP Camo (Boris Ajdukovic, Jake Cornmesser, Tony Engelsen, Fernando Giorlando, Miguel Guasch Aparicio, Doug McBratney, Edward R. Mortimer, Bill Wilson).

GAME PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey and Don Goodbrand.

MOBHACK PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey.

UTILITY APPLICATIONS PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey.

PLAYTESTING: SP Camo (Boris Ajdukovic, Jake Cornmesser, Tony Engelsen, Fernando Giorlando, Miguel Guasch Aparicio, Doug McBratney, Edward R. Mortimer, Bill Wilson).

OOB DESIGN and CO-ORDINATION: Edward R. Mortimer.

WEAPON DESIGN and CO-ORDINATION: Bill Wilson.

ICON DESIGN and CO-ORDINATION: Don Goodbrand, Fernando Giorlando and Edward R. Mortimer.

SCENARIO DESIGN and CO-ORDINATION: Doug McBratney.

CAMPAIGN DESIGN and CO-ORDINATION: Doug McBratney.

MAP DESIGN and CO-ORDINATION: Doug McBratney.

LBM DESIGN and CO-ORDINATION: Tony Engelsen.

TEXT FILE DESIGN and CO-ORDINATION: Boris Adjukovic.

INTERNET FORUM and EMAIL GROUP CO-ORDINATION: Miguel Guasch Aparicio.

SOUND CO-ORDINATION: Edward R. Mortimer.

INTERNET FORUM REPRESENTATIVE: Miguel Guasch Aparicio.

ADDITIONAL DESIGN: Don Goodbrand, Andy Gailey, SP Camo (Boris Ajdukovic, Jake Cornmesser, Tony Engelsen, Fernando Giorlando, Miguel Guasch Aparicio, Doug McBratney, Edward R. Mortimer, Bill Wilson), and suggestions from the Player Community.

RESEARCH AND OOB DATA DEVELOPMENT: SP Camo (Boris Ajdukovic, Jake Cornmesser, Tony Engelsen, Fernando Giorlando, Miguel Guasch Aparicio, Doug McBratney, Edward R. Mortimer, Bill Wilson), Don Goodbrand and Andy Gailey.

OOB CONTRIBUTORS AND CONSULTANTS: Alessandro Bonnani, Blazej Ciepluch, Andy Gailey, Antonio Giubergia, Don Goodbrand, Jakub Jaraczewski, Sven Kessen, Maxim G. Yegorov, Jaime Miguel, Jim Nutter, Rahman Setiawan, Rami Sihvo, John Turesson, Eurico Viegas, Jordi Zamarreño and with special thanks to The SPCamo Yahoo! listmembers for ongoing discussion, support and research.

ICON ART: Blazej Ciepluch, Fernando Giorlando, Don Goodbrand, Edward R. Mortimer and Joe Rieger

TERRAIN TILE ART: Don Goodbrand

LBM ART: Blazej Ciepluch, Tony Engelsen, Fernando Giorlando, Don Goodbrand, Miguel Guasch Aparicio, Richard Hopkins, Jakub Jaraczewski, James Martin, Edward R. Mortimer and Magnus Rosander,.

OTHER ART and GRAPHICS: Don Goodbrand and Edward R Mortimer

SCENARIO AND CAMPAIGN DESIGNERS: C.B. Blackard, Frank Kontowicz, Don Lazov, Ulf Lundström , Doug McBratney, von Rom and Bill Wilson.

MAP DESIGNERS: Boris Ajdukovic, Steve Fields, Sven Kessen, Doug McBratney and Edward R Mortimer,

TEXT FILES: Boris Ajdukovic, Blazej Ciepluch, Tony Engelsen, Don Goodbrand, James E. Martin Jr., Doug McBratney, Edward R. Mortimer, Felix Schulz, Eurico Viegas and Bill Wilson,

SOUND F/X EDITING: Alessandro Bonanni, Scott Littleton and Edward R. Mortimer.

GAME MANUAL AND DOCUMENTATION: Don Goodbrand and Edward R. Mortimer.

GAME MANUAL HTML DESIGN AND GRAPHICS: Don Goodbrand and Edward R. Mortimer.

BEGINNERS TUTORIAL: Douglas McBratney.

GAME CONSULTANTS: Don Goodbrand and Andy Gailey.

HISTORICAL CONSULTANTS: Dimitar Boikov, Dallas Gavin, Jakub Jaraczewski, Don Lazov, Jim Nutter, Maxim G. Yegorov, Felix Schulz, Akira Taki and all the SPCamo Yahoo! Listmembers.

SPCam o PLAYTESTERS:( SPWW2 & SPMBT ) Boris Ajdukovic, Jake Cornmesser, Tony Engelsen, Fernando Giorlando, Miguel Guasch Aparicio, Doug McBratney, Edward R. Mortimer and Bill Wilson

INTERNET FILE DISTRIBUTION SUPPORT: Shrapnel Games http://www.shrapnelgames.com/
Dave Roberts http://www.spcamo.org

SPWW2 DOS Version 6.0 ( and Supplement 6.01)

PRODUCERS: Don Goodbrand, Andy Gailey.

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand, and the Playtesters.

OOB DESIGN and QA CO-ORDINATION: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

ADDITIONAL DESIGN: The Playtesters, and end user's suggestions.

PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand.

RESEARCH AND OOB DATA DEVELOPMENT: Edward R. Mortimer, Bill Wilson, Boris Ajdukovic, John Turesson, Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand, Dick (Boomer) Burleigh.

ADDITIONAL OOB CONTRIBUTORS : Dimitar Boykov for his contributions to the Bulgarian OOB and special thanks to the SPCAMO Yahoo listmembers for ongoing discussion, support and research.

MOBHACK OB DATA EDITOR & COST CALCULATOR PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey.

ART AND GRAPHICS: Don Goodbrand, Joe Rieger, Fernando Giorlando.

SPCAMO PLAYTESTERS:( SPWW2 & SPMBT ) Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand, Edward R Mortimer, Bill Wilson , John Turesson, Helge Bertram, Dick (Boomer) Burleigh, C B Blackard, Boris Ajdukovic, Tony Engelsen, Claus Bonnesen, Douglas McBratney, Ken Sharman and Dale Hight.

SCENARIO DESIGN CO-ORDINATION: Dick (Boomer) Burleigh, Edward R. Mortimer.

SCENARIO AND CAMPAIGN DESIGNERS: C.B. Blackard, Bill Wilson, Douglas McBratney, Edward R Mortimer, Edin Kapic, Halstein Sjolie, Luigi Variale, Ulf Lundstrom plus additional scenarios were provided for the Supplement by Don Lazov

MAP DESIGNERS: Edward R. Mortimer, Boris Ajdukovic.

GAME MANUAL AND DOCUMENTATION: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

GAME MANUAL HTML DESIGN AND GRAPHICS: Don Goodbrand, Andy Gailey.

BEGINNERS TUTORIAL: Douglas McBratney and Dick (Boomer) Burleigh

CONSULTANT: Dale Hight.

NTERNET FILE DISTRIBUTION SUPPORT: Dave Roberts http://www.pnw-listings.com/Wargames/

SPWW2 DOS Version 5.6

PRODUCERS: Don Goodbrand, Andy Gailey.

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand, and the Playtesters.

ADDITIONAL DESIGN: The Playtesters, and end user's suggestions.

PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand.

RESEARCH AND MOB DATA DEVELOPMENT: Edward R. Mortimer, Bill Wilson, Boris Ajdukovic, Zoltán "Kazan" Zajonskovsky, Tony Englesen, John Turesson, Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand, Claus Bonnesen, Helge Bertram, Dick (Boomer) Burleigh , C B Blackard, Nick Hyle, Dale Hight, Ken Sharman plus special contributors as noted in the Historical Notes section.

MOBHACK OB DATA EDITOR PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey.

ART AND GRAPHICS: Don Goodbrand

SPCAMO PLAYTESTERS:( SPWW2 & SPMBT ) Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand, Edward R Mortimer, Bill Wilson , John Turesson, Helge Bertram, Ken Sharman, Dick (Boomer) Burleigh , C B Blackard, Dale Hight, Zoltán Zajonskovsky , Nick Hyle, Boris Ajdukovic, Tony Engelsen, William Hutchison and Claus Bonnesen

OOB DESIGN CO-ORDINATION: Edward R. Mortimer

ADDITIONAL OOB CONTRIBUTORS: Jake Cornmesser, Doug McBratney, Alessandro Bonnani and Ondrej Jares.

SCENARIO AND CAMPAIGN DESIGNERS: C.B. Blackard

GAME MANUAL AND DOCUMENTATION: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

GAME MANUAL HTML DESIGN Andy Gailey

CONSULTANT: Dale Hight

WEB SITE PROVIDED BY: The Wargamer

SPWW2 DOS Version 5 and 5.5

PRODUCERS: Don Goodbrand, Andy Gailey.

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand, and the Playtesters.

ADDITIONAL DESIGN: The Playtesters, and end user's suggestions.

PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand.

RESEARCH AND MOB DATA DEVELOPMENT: Edward R. Mortimer, Bill Wilson, Boris Ajdukovic, Zoltán "Kazan" Zajonskovsky, Vincent Roiron, Tony Englesen, John Turesson, Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand, Claus Bonnesen, Helge Bertram, Dick (Boomer) Burleigh , C B Blackard, Nick Hyle, James Quinn, Dale Hight, Ken Sharman plus special contributors as noted in the Historical Notes section.

MOBHACK OB DATA EDITOR PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey.

ART AND GRAPHICS: Don Goodbrand, Zoltán "Kazan" Zajonskovsky (Japan, Hungary), Edward R. Mortimer ( Italy and Spain ) Joe Reiger (v5.5)

VIDEO DESIGN AND LAYOUT: Don Goodbrand.

SPCAMO PLAYTESTERS: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand, Claus Bonnesen, John Turesson, Helge Bertram, Bill Wilson , Ken Sharman, Dick (Boomer) Burleigh , C B Blackard, Dale Hight, Edward R Mortimer, Zoltán "Kazan" Zajonskovsky , Nick Hyle, Boris Ajdukovic, Tony Engelsen, James Quinn, Vincent Roiron.

SCENARIO DESIGN CO-ORDINATION: Bill Wilson

OOB DESIGN CO-ORDINATION: Edward R. Mortimer

SCENARIO AND CAMPAIGN DESIGNERS: C.B. Blackard, Dick (Boomer) Burleigh, , John Turesson, James Quinn

GAME MANUAL AND DOCUMENTATION: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

GAME MANUAL HTML DESIGN Andy Gailey

CONSULTANT: Dale Hight

WEB SITE PROVIDED BY: The Wargamer

SPWW2 DOS Version 4

PRODUCERS: Don Goodbrand, Andy Gailey

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT: Don Goodbrand, Andy Gailey, and the Playtesters

ADDITIONAL DESIGN: The Playtesters, and end user's suggestions

PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

RESEARCH AND MOB DATA DEVELOPMENT: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand, Claus Bonnesen, John Turesson, Helge Bertram, Bill Wilson, Edward R. Mortimer, Zoltán "Kazan" Zajonskovsky, Boris Ajdukovic, Nick Hyle, plus special contributors as noted in the Historical Notes section.

MOBHACK OB DATA EDITOR PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey

ART AND GRAPHICS: Don Goodbrand, Zoltán "Kazan" Zajonskovsky (Japan, Hungary)

VIDEO DESIGN AND LAYOUT: Don Goodbrand

PLAYTESTERS: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand, Claus Bonnesen, John Turesson, Helge Bertram, Bill Wilson , Ken Sharman, Dick (Boomer) Burleigh , C B Blackard, Dale Hight, Marc Bellizzi, Edward R Mortimer, Zoltán "Kazan" Zajonskovsky , Nick Hyle, Boris Ajdukovic

SCENARIO DESIGN CO-ORDINATION: Bill Wilson

SCENARIO AND CAMPAIGN DESIGNERS: Boris Ajdukovic, C.B. Blackard, Claus Bonnesen, Dick (Boomer) Burleigh, Andy Gailey (Amiens), Dale Hight (Amiens,) Ed Mortimer, Bill Wilson, Zoltán "Kazan" Zajonskovsky

GAME MANUAL AND DOCUMENTATION: Andy Gailey.

CONSULTANT: Dale Hight

WEB SITE PROVIDED BY: The Wargamer

SPWW2 DOS Version 3

PRODUCERS: Don Goodbrand, Andy Gailey

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT: Don Goodbrand, Andy Gailey, and the playtesters

ADDITIONAL DESIGN: The playtesters, and end user's suggestions

PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

RESEARCH AND MOB DATA DEVELOPMENT: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand, Claus Bonnesen, Swedish OB by John Turesson, Helge Bertram, Bill Wilson, Philippe Sacr (French army data)

MOBHACK OB DATA EDITOR PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey

ART AND GRAPHICS: Don Goodbrand

VIDEO DESIGN AND LAYOUT: Don Goodbrand

PLAYTESTERS: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand, Claus Bonnesen, John Turesson, Helge Bertram, Bill Wilson, Ken Sharman, Dick Burleigh , C B Blackard, Dale Hight, Marc Bellizzi, John Malcolm

SCENARIO DESIGN CO-ORDINATION: Marc Bellizzi

SCENARIO AND CAMPAIGN DESIGNERS: Marc Bellizzi, Dick Burleigh , C B Blackard, John Turesson, Helge Bertram, Bill Wilson, Claus Bonnesen

GAME MANUAL AND DOCUMENTATION: Andy Gailey. Original HTML framework for the manual provided by Shaun at Imaging Systems UK International.

CONSULTANT: Dale Hight

WEB SITE PROVIDED BY: The Gamers Net

SPWW2 DOS Version 2.2

PRODUCERS: Don Goodbrand, Andy Gailey

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT: Don Goodbrand, Andy Gailey, Maik Ehrhardt

ADDITIONAL DESIGN: The playtesters, and end user's suggestions

PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

RESEARCH AND MOB DATA DEVELOPMENT: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand, Maik Ehrhardt

MOBHACK OB DATA EDITOR PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey

ART AND GRAPHICS: Don Goodbrand

PLAYTESTERS: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand, Maik Ehrhardt

GAME MANUAL AND DOCUMENTATION: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

CONSULTANT: Dale Hight

WEB SITE PROVIDED BY: The Gamers Net

SPWW2 DOS Version 2.0

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: David Heath

PRODUCER: Don Goodbrand

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT: Don Goodbrand, Andy Gailey, Nick Papp, Maik Ehrhardt and Piero Angeli

ADDITIONAL DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT: Wild Bill Wilder, Michael Wood, Playtester's and end user's inputs

PROGRAM SPECIFICATION AND DESIGN: by SP Camo Workshop

PROGRAMMING: Michael Wood

OB DATA DEVELOPMENT CO-ORDINATOR: Andy Gailey

RESEARCH AND MOB DATA DEVELOPMENT: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand, Nick Papp, Maik Ehrhardt and Piero Angeli

MOBHACK OB DATA EDITOR PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey

ART AND GRAPHICS: Don Goodbrand

CONTRIBUTORS OF ADDITIONAL PHOTOS, SOUND AND MOB DATA: Darwin Barnes, Davor Popovic, Pentti Perttula, Frank Donati, Akira Takizawa, Yrjö Hakkarainen, Valery Zhigarev, Gene Duque, Jarkko Vihavainen, Georges Ostermann.

MUSIC COMPOSED BY: Derek Boain

VIDEO DESIGN AND LAYOUT: Joe Osborne, Michael Wood

PLAYTEST CO-ORDINATION: Maik Ehrhardt

PLAYTESTERS: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand, Nick Papp, Piero Angeli, Wild Bill Wilder, Jim Faletti, Darwin Barnes, Marc Bellizzi, Bryan Melvin, Pentti Perttula, Louie Marsh, Davor Popovic, Nick Papp, Gordon Kennedy, Mark Mitchell, Dick Reece, David Heath, Eric Johnson, Massimo Rocca, Hans Gaschler, Guy DeYoung, Chris Massey and Paul Vebber

SCENARIO DESIGN CO-ORDINATION: Wild Bill Wilder

SCENARIO DESIGNERS: Wild Bill Wilder, Jim Faletti, Darwin Barnes, Marc Bellizzi, Bryan Melvin, Pentti Perttula, Louie Marsh, Davor Popovic, Nick Papp, Gordon Kennedy, Mark d Mitchell and Dick Reece

GAME MANUAL AND DOCUMENTATION: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand, Nick Papp

CONSULTANT: Dale Hight

WEB SITE PROVIDED BY: The Gamers Net

SPECIAL THANKS: Brigham Hausman, Joel Billings, Gary Grigsby and Keith Brors and all our families.

SP2WW2

PRODUCER: Don Goodbrand

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT: Don Goodbrand, Andy Gailey, Nick Papp, Maik Ehrhardt and Piero Angeli

PROGRAMMING: Don Goodbrand, Nick Papp

OB DATA DEVELOPMENT CO-ORDINATOR: Andy Gailey

RESEARCH AND MOB DATA DEVELOPMENT: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand, Nick Papp, Maik Ehrhardt and Piero Angeli

MOBHACK OB DATA EDITOR PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey

ART AND GRAPHICS: Don Goodbrand, Piero Angeli and Nick Papp

PLAYTEST CO-ORDINATION: Maik Ehrhardt

PLAYTESTERS: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand, Nick Papp, Maik Ehrhardt, Piero Angeli, Wild Bill's Raiders

SCENARIO DESIGN: Wild Bill's Raiders

WEB SITE PROVIDED BY: The Gamers Net

A VERY SPECIAL THANKS goes to Fred Chlanda who's SHPEdit program first allowed Steel Panthers Icons to be edited and put back into the SHP files. Without Freds SHPEdit to get things started, none of this would have happened.

ON LINE HELP

First thing to do is to read this manual thoroughly, try using your browser's search utility to look for a word, if you cannot find what you require from the links in the left pane. See the section on using the guide at the start of the document..

If you have questions, register at the WinSPMBT group at http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/ . Look through all the message traffic, as your question is quite likely to have already been covered, if not, then post a message and someone will try to help you out.

NOTICE

Neither the revisions to the game code, nor the data editors and utilities used to create these revisions are in any way connected with, endorsed by, or supported by Strategic Simulations, Inc.

DISCLAIMER & DISTRIBUTION NOTICE

LIMITED WARRANTY

SHRAPNEL GAMES WARRANTS TO THE ORIGINAL PURCHASER THAT THE DISK ON WHICH THIS PRODUCT IS RECORDED WILL BE FREE FROM DEFECTS IN MATERIALS AND WORKMANSHIP FOR A PERIOD OF NINETY DAYS FROM THE DATE OF PURCHASE. IF THE COMPACT DISK IS FOUND DEFECTIVE WITHIN NINETY DAYS OF ORIGINAL PURCHASE, SHRAPNEL GAMES AGREES TO REPLACE, FREE OF CHARGE, ANY PRODUCT DISCOVERED TO BE DEFECTIVE UPON RECEIPT AT ITS CUSTOMER SERVICE CENTER OF THE PRODUCT, POSTAGE PAID, WITH PROOF OF THE DATE OF PURCHASE AND VALID RMA NUMBER. THIS WARRANTY IS LIMITED TO THE DISK CONTAINING THE SOFTWARE PROGRAM ORIGINALLY PROVIDED BY SHRAPNEL GAMES, AND IS NOT APPLICABLE TO NORMAL WEAR AND TEAR. THIS WARRANTY SHALL BE VOID IF THE DEFECT HAS ARISEN THROUGH ABUSE, MISTREATMENT, OR NEGLECT.

FOR WARRANTY REPLACEMENTS, VISIT OUR CUSTOMER SERVICE CENTRE AT: http://www.shrapnelgames.com/service.htm

WARRANTY DISCLAIMER

SHRAPNEL GAMES DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES RELATING TO THIS SOFTWARE, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND ALL SUCH WARRANTIES ARE EXPRESSLY AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMED. NEITHER SHRAPNEL GAMES, THE CAMO WORKSHOP NOR ANYONE ELSE WHO HAS BEEN INVOLVED IN THE CREATION, PRODUCTION, OR DELIVERY OF THIS SOFTWARE SHALL BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE SUCH SOFTWARE EVEN IF SHRAPNEL GAMES HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES OR CLAIMS. IN NO EVENT SHALL SHRAPNEL GAMES LIABILITY FOR ANY DAMAGES EVER EXCEED THE PRICE PAID FOR THE LICENSE TO USE THE SOFTWARE, REGARDLESS OF THE FORM OF CLAIM. THE PERSON USING THE SOFTWARE BEARS ALL RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE SOFTWARE.

SOME STATES DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OF THE LIMIT OF LIABILITY FOR CONSEQUENTIAL OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, SO THE ABOVE LIMITATION MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.

THIS AGREEMENT SHALL BE GOVERNED BY THE LAWS OF THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA AND SHALL INURE TO THE BENEFIT OF SHRAPNEL GAMES AND ANY SUCCESSORS, ADMINISTRATORS, HEIRS, AND ASSIGNS. ANY ACTION OR PROCEEDING BROUGHT BY EITHER PARTY AGAINST THE OTHER ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THIS AGREEMENT SHALL BE BROUGHT ONLY IN A STATE OR FEDERAL COURT OF COMPETENT JURISDICTION LOCATED IN WAKE COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA. THE PARTIES HEREBY CONSENT TO IN PERSONAM JURISDICTION OF SAID COURTS.

LIMITED LICENSE

BY INSTALLING THIS SOFTWARE YOU AGREE TO THE TERMS AND RESTRICTIONS OF THIS LIMITED LICENSE. THE SOFTWARE IS INTENDED SOLELY FOR YOUR PERSONAL NONCOMMERCIAL HOME ENTERTAINMENT USE. YOU MAY NOT DECOMPILE, REVERSE ENGINEER, OR DISASSEMBLE THE SOFTWARE, EXCEPT AS PERMITTED BY LAW. SHRAPNEL GAMES AND THE CAMO WORKSHOP RETAIN ALL RIGHT, TITLE, AND INTEREST IN THE SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS EMBODIED THEREIN AND DERIVATIVES THEREOF.

SHRAPNEL GAMES EXPLICITLY PROHIBITS ANY FORM OF THE RENTING, SELLING OR LEASING, OR ANY COMMERCIAL USE OF ANY PORTION OF THE SOFTWARE OR DOCUMENTATION TO ANY OTHER PERSON OR ORGANIZATION. IN ADDITION, NO USER GENERATED SCENARIOS, ARTWORK OR SOUNDS INTENDED FOR USE WITH THIS PROGRAM MAY BE PASSED ON TO A THIRD PARTY IN EXCHANGE FOR ANY FORM OF PAYMENT, REAL OR IMPLIED.

YOU ARE PROHIBITED FROM HAVING MORE THAN ONE (1) COPY OF THIS SOFTWARE, IN ANY FORM, CONCURRENTLY STORED ON A COMPUTER STORAGE MEDIUM OTHER THAN ONE (1) BACKUP COPY. EXCEPTED FROM THIS ARE ART, SOUND AND DATA FILES ASSOCIATED WITH USER CREATED ARMIES, SCENARIOS, MAPS AND CAMPAIGNS, IF APPLICABLE. THESE FILES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED NON-COMMERCIALLY.

ANY PERMISSIONS GRANTED HEREIN ARE PROVIDED ON A TEMPORARY BASIS AND CAN BE WITHDRAWN BY SHRAPNEL GAMES AT ANY TIME. ALL RIGHTS NOT EXPRESSLY GRANTED ARE RESERVED.

The unique artwork and data provided within this game are protected by copyright law and may not be used or altered without the express written consent of The Camo Workshop and Shrapnel Games, Inc.

If you wish to distribute the downloadable version of this game on a game magazine cover CD, please contact : http://www.shrapnelgames.com/contact.htm

TRADEMARKS AND COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

.

Steel Panthers, Steel Panthers 2 and Steel Panthers 3 are all trademarks of Strategic Simulations, Inc.
Steel Panthers: Main Battle Tank (SPMBT and WinSPMBT) is a trademark of The Camo Workshop.
Steel Panthers: World War 2 (SPWW2 and WinSPWW2) is a trademark of The Camo Workshop.
Scenarios and User campaigns supplied with the game are Copyright of The Camo Workshop, and the individual scenario authors.
OB Data Copyrights to individual designers is as per the notice in the encyclopaedia text
All game artwork, organisation data (except as noted in the OB copyright notice) and other game data files are copyright of The Camo Workshop.
Mobhack Data editor, Map viewer, MapEditor, ScenHack, CampaignHack and SP Cost Calculator copyright Andy Gailey and Scotia Software Ltd.

Discussion Groups-- http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/

Websites-- http://linetap.com/www/drg/SPCamo.htm

Internet File Distribution-- http://www.shrapnelgames.com/

We'd like to thank Shrapnel Games for sponsoring us, and our dedicated Player Community for supporting us. The best way we can show how we appreciate both of you is to bring you together. Please visit their website at http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ and have a look at the games they have to offer dedicated wargamers.

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