Chapter 4. Basic Functionality
- Table of Contents
- Menu Reference
- The AHC OrBat Window
If you have no security clearance, this is the view of War Room Applet that you will see.
Notice these parts of the War Room Applet window:
The Title Bar. This displays the title of the currently selected map, as well as the date and time that War Room Applet is displaying.
The Menu Bar. This contains several drop down menus that invoke the many features of War Room Applet.
The Map Overview. This shows the entire currently selected map in miniature form. The portion currently displayed in the Map Area is outlined in yellow. You can click in the overview or drag the yellow rectangle to scroll the Map Area to a new position.
The Map Area. This displays a scrolling view of the currently selected map. The CP status for all CP's at the time you are looking at, as well as any plans you are allowed to see at the time you are looking at, will be displayed here.
The CP status is displayed with a flag representing the nation that controls the CP. If the CP is contested, the flag will show that with a distinctive flame effect. The flag may be accompanied by additional marks that give more information about the status of the CP:
This symbol indicates that there is a current text note (intelligence information) for the CP.
CP's that are capturable will have a little capture pip next to them; the pip is the color of the nationality that is threatening the CP: France blue, Germany black, Great Britain red. If more than one nationality is threatening the CP, there can be more than one capture pip.
This symbol indicates that the CP is out-of-supply.
This symbol indicates that the CP has been contested for several minutes and may have the AB tables up.
This illustration shows a contested Warremme that can be captured by the British or the French, surrounded and so out of supply, with current intelligence information, where the AB tables are probably up. Notice that the surrounding towns display the black German capture pip, indicating they are vulnerable to capture from Waremme.
You can right-click a CP in the Map Area to select it in the Interaction Area, which gives you access to more detailed information.
If an operation displayed in the map area is illustrated with unit markers, you can click on them there and they will be selected in the OrBat if it is open.
If you enable the Map Grid, it will be superimposed on the map in the Map Area.
The Interaction Area. In this area you can perform a variety of different interactions with the data displayed on the map. Without security clearance, you are limited to View mode. In this mode, you can select a CP from a drop-down, alphabetical list. When you select a CP, the Map Area will be centered on that CP. At the bottom of the Interaction Area, the CP name and the last time it's status was updated will be displayed. If you have clearance, any intelligence notes will be displayed as well.
Figure 4-1. Interaction Area Showing CP Notes
After the CP name, there will be a little button with a question mark
Pressing this button will pop-up Cornered Rat Software's
information page for this CP.
This page will show the status of each facility in the CP.
Since this data is coming direct from CRS, it can not be pulled from the history database. If you have set War Room Applet to look at any time but the current time, the data on this information page will not match the data displayed in War Room Applet.
If there are one or more detail maps available for the CP, there will be a detailed map button
before the CP name for the selected CP in the Interaction
Area. Press this button
to select a detail map for that CP.
If there is only one detail map defined for the CP, it will
be selected immediately.
If there are several, a dialog pops up asking you to choose
one of them.Figure 4-2. Dialog for selecting detail maps when there are more than one available for the CP
When you select a detail map, it is displayed in the overview and the Map Area just like any other map. Plan data can be entered or displayed on it, or it can be shown with the coordinate grid superimposed.
Keep in mind that most of the detail maps have not been measured precisely, so grids and plan data that was originally entered on other maps will only appear at approximately the correct positions. In general, only the maps listed in the Map Menu are measured accurately.
Between the Interaction Area and the Map Area there is a textured bar; you can drag this to the right to give the Interaction Area more space; or drag to the left to make the Map Area larger.
Menu Reference
You can see a lot in War Room Applet just by scrolling through the default map, but there is a lot more to see. Use the menus to select other, larger scale maps, look at the history of the world, or change your view in other ways.
The World Menu
The Refresh Command. This command causes any changes you have made to information in War Room Applet to be saved immediatately, and any changes others have made to be retrieved and displayed. War Room Applet refreshes automatically every five minutes, but this command forces an immediate refresh. If you are using War Room Applet to make plans or enter intelligence information, it is particularly important that you use the Refresh command before you exit War Room Applet in order to make sure that the information you have entered is saved in the database and made available to others.
The Set time... command. This command allows you to set the date and time that War Room Applet will display, as described above.
The Map Menu
This menu allows to select the map that will be displayed in War Room Applet. There are a variety of maps available; some show the whole theater (at different scales); some may show parts of the theater, and some show specific towns.
Whenever War Room Applet shows plan information, it is automatically resized and repositioned to match the scale of whatever map you have chosen.
The name of the map you are currently displaying will always be shown in the title bar.
The Window Menu
The New War Room window... Command. This command creates a complete, new War Room Applet window. All windows will always show the same date and time, but they can show different maps, or different parts of the same map. They can also be set to work with different plans. You can start as many windows as you want, but the War Room Applet process will eventually run out of memory.
The E-mail map image... Command. This command will display a window that prompts for an e-mail address.
When you enter a valid e-mail address and click OK, a JPEG image of whatever is currently displayed in the Map Area will be generated and mailed to that address. You use this command whenever you want to capture or print an image from War Room Applet.
The OrBat... Command. This command creates a window that displays the AHC OrBat. See this section for more information.
The Chat... Command. This command opens a chat window. This isn't very interesting because the chat server is not currently available.
The Hide Menu
This menu lists various items that can be displayed in the Map Area, along with checkboxes. If you check the checkbox in this menu, that item is hidden; it is not displayed in the Map Area. You might want to hide things to make the Map Area less cluttered, to make it easier to work with the information that is most important to you.
The items you can hide are:
Grid. The Map Area can display a grid overlayed on any of the maps. The grid has squares corresponding to 100 km, 10 km, 1 km, 100 meters. It will display in as much detail as can be presented given the scale of the currently selected map.
The grid is hidden by default; to make it visible, you have to un-check it in the Hide menu. You will only have the option to un-hide the grid if you have Confidential security clearance or above.
The coordinate of the upper left corner of the map is given in the upper left corner of the grid. First is a two-letter code that identifies the 100x100km base square. The remaining digits identify the point within that square. There is always an even number of digits. The digits in the first half measure distance east from the baseline of the square. The digits in the second half measure distance north from the baseline of the square. The first digit in each half represents 10 km, the second 1 km, the third 100m, etc.
Feature Data. Hiding Feature Data will hide the flags at each CP that show the CP status.
Not in plan. You can add plan information to the map without including it in a named plan. Selecting this item on the Hide will remove any such information from the map window.
Named Plans. The bottom section of the Hide menu will list all the plans that are current for the time you are looking at. You can select any or all the plans in this list and they will be hidden. The information for any of the selected plans will not be displayed in the map window.
The Help Menu
This familiar menu lets you get to on-line help, and gives information about the application and the maps.
Help. This command brings up a window displaying the very manual you are reading now.
About War Room.. This command displays information with copyright information about War Room Applet.
About this map.. This command gives credit to the author of the map currently displayed in the Map Area.