WWII Armoured trains

[PatG]

I have been posting my work on trains over on the Shrapnel site. I thought there might be a few people here who might like to see it. :) Drop Icon0110.shp into your game data - graphics folder and the scens in the usual place. Eisen Bahn is a proof of concept so not particularily well balanced. It features a German late war heavy scout car train. Danuta! is a bit better worked out and puts you in command of the Polish armoured train Danuta.

Enjoy.

[Double Deuce]

Interesting. Once we have completed some changes to the master forums I plan to add a section for designers/playtesters. Those working on new images, OOB's etc may get there own subforum IF there is enough content and interest to make it viable.

[PatG]

This is the second beta of a replacement Blue OOB that will allow you to drop trains into a scenario. This one adds the So Ki patrol vehicle to the previous icon set and provides some premade and roll your own formations. I suggest you set up your main force then use the alllies -> set captured function to import the trains from Blue.

Icon0110.shp goes in the Game Data\Graphics folder
Spob042.obf goes in the Game Data\OOBs\Custom OOBs\ folder in the sub folder of your choice.
The three text files go in the Game Data\Text folder

I'll put together a post or two on the trains themselves and some of the tricks I have picked up working with shp files and oobs.

{edit: OK here's the missing zip}

[Double Deuce]

I definately see a use for these "using them in a stationary mode". The trick will be simulating any kind of movement as the game engine is not designed to restrict their movement along "railroads".

[Double Deuce]

PatG - What are you using to modify the .shp files (the paint type program). Can you post a short step by step on the process for those who may want to try something like that at some point?

[PatG]

The extensive road grid most of us take for granted only really came into being in the second half of the 20th century. Prior to this, the railroads were the strategic logistical arteries across Western Europe and were even more important in Eastern Europe and abroad. Only railroads were able to carry the huge amounts of materiel required for modern combat operations, in all seasons and over all but the most rugged terrain. Beyond purely logistical matters, railroads tended to promote civilian settlement along their length and concentration of resources at various junction points. With commercial power comes political power and political power becomes a strategic target.

Further afield, in Africa and Asia, railroads were the only way to move any appreciable distance at more than a walking pace. From the plains of Manchuria to the jungles of south east asia the railroad was the only way to move that didn't expend large amounts of sweat and boot leather.

Arteries, even steel ones, can be cut, and must be protected.

Steam technology was far better developed than the primitive internal combustion engines. While the most modern tanks of the time were limited to crawling along at a walking pace with a gun or two and boiler plate armour, steam trains could carry large numbers of guns at high speed under what was for the time, excellent armour protection. As shown in the Russian Civil war, armoured trains were the blitzkrieg weapon of their day.

next up - making the Icons.

[PatG]

I'm a perfectionist but if I wait for perfection you'll never see anything ;)

So consider these to be draft lecture notes:

Making trains

Dimensions:
At vehicle scale 1 px = 150mm or 6 inches
At ground scale 1 px = 1 m or 40 inches
stock SHPedit size is 89x89 but you can exceed this

Tools:

Painting tools: I use the Gimp - but you can use Photoshop or similar applications as long as you can load the stock pallette and produce a bmp file. The ability to work with layers is very, very useful.

I have found no satisfactory Linux based creation tool for the LBMs used for unit pictures. I'm told Photoshop will produce lbms but I haven't verified this.

Research:

Get as many views as you can - an overhead line drawing is like gold - there is no dishonour in tracing but there may be copyright issues if you use the image unaltered. If not present, sometimes scale can be determined by measuring a known value such as a length on the drawing and calculating from there.

"Borrowing": If the unit you are creating has the same turret or chassis as an existing unit - then use that. Not only does it save you work, it maintains a common look and feel in the game. Don't be afraid to stretch a gun or a chassis a bit either.

Colour views are good for paint schemes. Be aware that museum pieces may be re-painted often in colours quite different from the original and images on the net or even in books may not accurately reproduce the right colours. Personally - I wing it and go for a "good enough" colour scheme.

Techniques:

I use four basic approaches for creating icons. Each has its merits.

Format based approaches:


You can directly create a bmp file using Paint or similar. This technique is good for small items and one offs and usually has very good colour compatabilty as long as you remember to use the stock pallette.

You can make a multi-layered image then save it to bmp. This approach is very flexible and allows you to easily change colour schemes and camo patterns (see below). This can cause problems with pallette compatability.


Size based approaches:


Create the image at final size. This approach can give very crisp gross detail but can also look blocky. It can be hard to reproduce the impression of fine details.

Create the image oversize then scale it to final size. This technique tends to be fuzzier overall but paradoxicly, can give a better impression of fine detail.

However you decide to create your bmp, use an odd number of pixels for image height, this makes centring your turrets in SHPedit much easier.

Painting

Be sure to grab the pink transparent colour and the default pallette.

In the game, the "Sun" is in top right corner, therefore a units shadow shows at the bottom and left of an icon and highlights show top and right. Use grey gradient fills for curves and solid grey fills for planes using suitable tones to represent the shadows and highlights. On a seperate higher layer overlay the base image with the camo pattern or colour and use the paint program's effects on the higher layer to allow the base layer to show through. In GIMP, I set the colour layer to 80% opacity and "multiply" - this gives a nicely shaded image. Reduce the image to a single layer - in Gimp "Flatten" - and use "Save as" to save the image as a BMP.


SHP ED

Shp Ed only looks scary but it is soon tamed through being methodical.
More to follow

Loading and saving.

Turret position
In the SP Fix window, The cross hairs correspond to where the icon will be displayed in respect to the hex centre - line them up properly in both the turret and body icons or you will get weird turret rotations.


Multi-turret and multi-hex vehicles - at vehicle scale one train car will take up more than one hex - this allows for multi turret vehicles.

Items displayed lower in the purchase list will be displayed higher on the map. E.g if two tanks C0 and C1 are placed in the same map hex, C1 will be displayed on top of C0. For a two turret vehicle, creat one icon for the body of the vehicle and the main turret and another for the second turret - I use a "turret ring" icon for the body. Assign the body icon to C0 and the turret icon to C1 and the second C1 turret will float over the main body and rotate as normal.


Stats considerations for a multi-hex vehicles

Split the crew between the two evenly to simulate spreading out the crew. Also split weapons between the two halves.

Survivability should be higher than normal - even for low armour values as noted in the Mobhack readme, high survivability with low armour makes a unit tough against small arms and small calibre guns but still vulnerable to bigger guns. With their large chassis and other features like protected dismounting boxes, armoured trains have more staying power than contemporary tracked vehicles.

Ammo loads for trains are much higher than normal armoured vehicles. One of their major roles was providing indirect fire support.

Radio - almost always present in the form of inter-car communication devices

If using Mobhack, build trains as integrated companies to represent better command control structure.

Slot 4 is bow mounted weapons good for either limited traverse front mounted turrets or AAMGs (which will fire 360 from slot 4)