BRICKHOUSE

Steel Panthers World at War

Summary: SPWaW is a World War II turn based strategy game based on SSI's Steel Panthers. It is completely free and one of the best computer war games out there. This is my resource page for SPWaW with links to the latest version, an old SP strategy guide, and other useful links and material. If I ever get around to design my own scenarios for SPWaW they will be posted here.

SPWaW current version

The current version of SPWaW is 8.403 which was released in January, 2006. You can download it for free but the full download is 425+ Mb. There are several files to download. First the complete game version 8.20 and then you need the apply three patches to reach the 8.403 version.

Download the game and patches from the SP:WaW Depot

Mega Campaigns

These are special hard coded campaigns that aren't linear, but instead branch into different directions depending on the victory level achieved and on choices made by the player during the campaign.

Previously the Mega Campaigns were sold separately, but now they have been combined into a single version called the Generals Edition. Please note that the game itself is free but you have to buy the Generals Edition in order to play the Mega Campaigns.

SPWaW Enhanced DV

This is a complete rework of the OOBs, Graphics, Sounds, Gamecode Issues, and many other things too numerous to list. No code changes compared with the official SPWaW but the modified OOB and other tweaks makes for a different game experience.

Visit the Enhanced SPWaW forum for information and download links.

Steel Panthers Illustrated Strategy and Tactics Primer

An old Strategy & Tactics Primer originally intended for Steel Panthers, written by Todd David Brady. Not everything in it is valid for SPWaW but a lot of it is. My contribution to all this is converting it to HTML with links and all.

NB! The primer is a large document all contained on a single HTML page that is over 1 Mb in size. It will take some time to load!

You can read the guide now if you have the time to spare. Few read it all at once and usually come back several times to read interesting parts.

Scenario Design Tutorials

During 2000 and 2001 Wild Bill Wilder published a number of scenario design tutorials to the Matrix Games SPWaW forum. These were recently compiled into a larger document by Larry Holt, who at the same time added a number of design tips from other players to Wild Bill's original ones.

SPWaW free eBook package

At the time the scenario design tutorials were published I received permission from Wild Bill to create an eBook version using Larry Holt's pages as a starting point. This eBook is now available for download from this page. The package, a zip file about one Mb in size, contain the following free eBooks:

In order to read the eBook on your handheld you need to install an eBook reader. In a perfect world all eBook readers would be able to read all eBooks regardless of which publishing program was used to create it. Unfortunately this isn't a perfect world and therefore I recommend using the Mobipocket reader since I have used their tools to create the SDT eBook. Feel free to use another reader but be prepared that it may not display perfectly.

SPWaW Victory Ratios explained

This is from a post on the SPWaW forum at Matrix Games and describes how the victory rations are calculated in SPWaW. There has been some controversy in regards to the problem with scoring a Major victory in some scenarios. The reason for this happening is explained below:

I have posted this before but I will post it again.

Human vs computer
More than 1-3 Decisive Loss
1-3 to 3-1 Draw
3-1 to 7-1 Minor victory
7-1 Higher Major victory

The odds vs human player are a little lower. This is due to the predictable action of the AI in computer generated battles.

Human vs. Human
More than 1-2 Decisive Loss
1-2 to 2-1 Draw
2-1 to 6-1 Minor victory
6-1 Higher Major victory

The problem as I see it gentlemen, is not the calculation of the odds but the value of the objectives. Objectives for larger scenarios should have a maximum value of 500, not 250. That way you could with 21 objectives get a score of up to 10,500 instead of 5,250.

Now when the game was limited to 30 formations or thereabouts the 250 point value was okay. With the larger scenarios, these numbers can never reflect the scores needed to show a true major victory. So the problem is not with the ratios but with the points. Now scenario designers can overcome this with special objectives, but the poor gamer who play generated battles is s... out of luck unless you uses the generated map and preset objectives.

SPWaW private comments

Under this heading I am going to post private comments about SPWaW. Things like which scenarios and campaigns I like best, funny things that have happened while playing, problems encountered etc.

Opportunity fire confirmations can ONLY BE LOWER CASE!!!!!!!!!!! If you hit Caps Lock SPWAW will gladly ignore your frantic key presses. "He-he, he's pressing the right key but it's the wrong case, let's just ignore the poor bastard!!!!" Sadly enough, things like End Turn responds to both upper and lower case, so you'll have no trouble ending your turn...

SPWaW v6.1 is a dramatic shift in how infantry is handled. The combat system for infantry has been changed making machine guns much more deadly and rifles less so. Moving in the open against an entrenched heavy machine gun can cause an entire squad to be wiped out. This changes infantry tactics a lot and requires a new thinking when dealing with entrenched infantry. The first scenario I played using v6.0 was King of the Hill. It ended in a Crushing defeat the US losing 132 men and 6 AFV's. The problem was that I didn't modify my tactics enough to compensate for the new infantry combat rules against the dug-in German troops. Having only two 60mm mortars as artillery support makes this scenario a lot harder playing v6.1 than it was previously.