Player Guide

Essential Concepts

WWIIOL is fought over an area of more than 300,000 square kilometers of 1940's Western Europe. This map is dotted with a network of towns and cities. Each town is a varied collection of facilities, but includes always at least one army base (which includes an infantry spawn point and a vehicle spawn point), one “town center,” and supply depots linking the town to adjacent towns by road, rail or water. The only exception for this is some cities located on islands that are inaccessible by roads or bridges will not support vehicle spawning so that defenders do not have an unfair advantage over attackers.

Game play at its most basic level is a matter of attacking forces spawning in and forming up then attacking a town with the object of capturing all the facilities and the army base. Defenders spawn their own vehicles, guns, and most infantry at the army base, with a limited ability to spawn infantry at the various supply depots around town. Capturing these depots is the first step towards strangling the defenders ability to defend their town or city. Eventually they will be pushed back to their army base and this is usually the climatic moment in the battle, and often the most intense.

Everything revolves around the infantryman. As the only unit that can capture anything, all of the weapons systems in the game – from long-range destroyers, to aircraft with tons of high-explosive bombs, to heavily armed and armored tanks – are ultimately only as good as their ability to deliver infantry safely to capturable facilities. There are of course many complexities involved, the greatest of which is the thousands of other human beings trying their best to prevent you doing exactly that.

Choke Points (CPs)

Further Information: Choke Point

Territory is controlled based on the ownership of “choke points”, more often called towns or cities, sometimes the focus will be an airfield attached to a town or city. These points sit at strategic locations in the network of road, rail, and river lines across the map. They can be small villages with a mere handful of buildings, or sprawling cities like Antwerp, or Brussels, etc..

Every town or city in on the map will be joined to a number of neighboring towns and cities by a supply depot for each link in the network. these are vital points of any attack to gain spawning advantages, as missions can be made by the owner of that depot to create wider and more difficult to defeat options for attackers and defenders, depending on who owns that depot. Attackers must capture them and defenders must prevent attackers from doing so.

Capture

Further Information: Capture

The basic mechanics of WWIIOL gameplay revolve around capturing the facilities and CPs to move the front lines. Facilities are captured when an infantryman initiates the capture timer within a capture facility (be it a Depot, Bunker, or Dock). The capture timer is 8 minutes for 1 infantryman to capture the flag. The timer moves faster if more friendly units are present within that same facility. This capture timer is variable so the baseline can vary depending on factors revolving around comparative population online at the time.

AI Defense

Further Information: AI Defense

Given the sheer size of the WWIIOL game map, even many thousands of players cannot cover all the cities. Integrated AI defenses are placed at every CP to act as a light deterrent to surprise attacks.

Player Placed Objects

Further Information: Player_Placed_Objects (PPO) Player Placed Objects are field fortifications of different types that can be placed within the game world.

Facilities

Further Information: Facility

Every CP is made up of a collection of facilities that all serve different purposes. Some are spawn points, some are supply depots, but all of them can be captured. A capture building will be present for every facility showing the flag of the country that currently controls that facility.

Forward Bases (“FBs”), a.k.a. Fire Base

Further Information: Forward Base

While some CPs are close together, most often the distance between Choke Points is large enough to require the establishment of a Forward Base of operations in order to conduct a successful attack. FBs are effectively Forward Staging Points (forward spawn points) in the field represented by two military revetments (a vehicle tent and an infantry tent) that provide vehicle and troop spawning just a few kilometers outside of the CP they are attacking. Instead of using a distant army base as your staging area, FBs allow you to reduce travel time and move your supply line as close as possible to an enemy-held CP. Attacking the enemy's FB and destroying it when you are defending a CP that has been AO'd (attack objective placed on your town or city) effectively kills their attack initiative and momentum will swing towards the defenders. This will also open YOUR FB to the town or city that supplied their attack so you can bet they will be sending units out to destroy your FB and get their own back to restart their attack. This is known as "flipping FB's" or "FB ping pong".

Capture Mechanics

Main article: Capture

Spawning

Main article: Spawning

High Command Tactical Orders

Main article: Tactical Orders

Online Play

WWII ONLINE is a complex game, with enough scope to keep you busy for literally years. But much of that is hidden out of the way, and the game interface is formatted to allow you to get into combat quickly. This interface guide tells you all you need to play WWII ONLINE effectively and expose the paths to more intricate features as well.

Starting Up

When the game first starts, you will see a small window appears with some important information. This Start Up message shows you the Message of the Day, the approximate balance of forces (whether one side has an advantage in the number of players or if the two sides are balanced) and occasionally has a poll so that you can give CRS your opinion on a question.

Personas

Main article: Personas

Equipment Operation

Main article: Equipment Operation

The Theater Map

Main article: Theater Map

Terrain

Further Information: Terrain

Even though it looks flat, and may be a similar color, they can be very different. From very smooth grass (Airfield), to open pasture, to a boggy ground that will make driving very slow.

Brigades

Main article: Brigades

Missions

Main article: Missions

Chat Communication

Main article: Chat

Text Commands

Main article: Text Commands

Heads Up Display (HUD)

Main article: Heads up Display

Brigade spawning (TOEs)

Main article: Brigade Spawning

Officer In Charge (OIC)

Main article: Officer in Charge

Campaigns

Further Information: Campaigns

Eventually a side will win the war and the game will reset to it's initial or starting state. This is called a Campaign. In further information, you can check who won campaigns in the past, there have been well over a hundred campaigns fought in the history of WWII ONLINE.

A campaign begins in the early period of the war, basically 1940. The phony war period of 1939 and the attack on Czechoslovakia is ignored, and the campaign begins with the invasion of France around May 10th 1940. Only equipment relative to that period in time is available to players, whatever persona (nationality and branch) they choose to play. As the days and weeks unfold, the timeline advances into 1941, 1942, 1943 and so on ... each period is referred to as a "tier" (tier 1, tier 2, tier 3, etc..) with respect to what equipment is available to be spawned. Older equipment from earlier tiers, while less effective in many instances (and infrequently not in other instances) to the later equipment you get in whatever current tier the campaign has reached, is still available in limited numbers, usually seen by players as a "last resort" when all the "good stuff" is no longer available because it has been lost in combat. Supply matters in WWIIOL.

With it's focus on historical precedent, this campaign approach will also see things like the American forces not being available until the later tiers since at the start of the real war, America was not involved. As a rule the Americans enter the battle in tier 3.

The exact rules to end the war are not 100% public, but this is known for a fact:

• It's based on percentage of game-world owned by winning side.
• The real number is close to 95%
• Sometimes this means the Allied side has been pushed back to England, and WWIIOL has in the past seen the German side invading England for the win. This is not a requirement however, for German victory, it depends on how the territory battle has played out on the mainland.

Links

Main article: Links