Optio's VASSAL module - Part 2

Here is a quick overview of how the units  work.

The battlefield consists of a square grid of which each square is itself divided into a 5x5 square grid of which the squares are invisible. I've made them visible for this post.

When placed on the battlefield, a unit snaps to the middle of a square.

Regardless of the size of the unit.

When dragged, units jump from square to square.

A unit must be placed so its side edges are equidistant from the sides of the battlefield square. Not like this:

Right-clicking on a unit produces a popup menu that gives all the features of the unit.

Next Piece and Previous Piece give all the sizes of the unit, i.e. a unit of one stand, two stands, or four stands, in line and column.

Increase Morale and Decrease Morale runs through all the morale scales available for units, starting with the worse and progressing to the best.

Let's give this Greek Hoplite unit a morale of 2-2 (2 firm and 2 shaken morale intervals). You just repeat Increase Morale until you get there.

Colour up and Colour down puts differently coloured borders around the morale scale. These indicate which command the unit belongs to.

Rotate CW and Rotate CCW rotates the unit left and right, in 90 degree increments.

More Disorder and Less Disorder increase or decrease the disorder of a unit. The first level of disorder looks like this:

The second looks like this:

 The third looks like this:

The fourth and last looks like this:

The black square disorder corresponds to the disorder of Unwieldy units in the tabletop game. The maroon square disorder corresponds to the disorder of Drilled units. The red square disorder corresponds to the disorder of Agile units and the orange square disorder corresponds to the last level of disorder before order is restored. It's the '1' on the order/disorder counters or cubes in the tabletop game.

For those units capable of missile file, when they have shot one indicates this with a small bow and arrow symbol which appears or disappears with the Shot command.

If a unit capable of evading has performed an evade, this is indicated with the Evade symbol using the Evade command.

Missile damage on a unit is indicated by coloured arrows appearing next to that unit. Let's use as an example a Psiloi unit shooting up a Hoplite unit.

Shooting is indicated on the Hoplite unit using Increase Missile Hit and Decrease Missile Hit. A Psiloi will normally score one missile hit on the Hoplites per attack (in other cases shooters can score two or even three missile hits per attack). The first missile hit is a green arrow.

The second missile hit is a yellow arrow.

The third missile hit is an orange arrow.

And the fourth missile hit is a red arrow. When the unit receives a fourth missile hit, its morale is moved down by one interval. The next missile hit cycles directly to the green arrow and the whole process repeats.

That covers the important traits of a unit. I'll give a couple of examples of movement and combat in a future post.