Entering your orders

This page describes how you enter your game orders using the pbem.dk web interface. This is not a desription of the order syntax, for that you must refer to the rule book or to one of the order syntax reference sheets. There is also a separate help page which describes how to enter messages to be sent to other players as part of their turn reports.

Getting to the order entry page

To get to the order entry page you first have to sign in to the site (use the User menu in the left sidebar). When you have signed in, the Functions menu should appear (if it does not appear you are probably behind some caching proxy server which does not understand that it should not cache the menu and you need to reload the left sidebar manually).

From the Functions menu, choose Your games and a list of the positions you play should appear in the main window. At the right of each position are some links to things you can do and one of them is order entry. Follow the link and the page with the order submission form should appear.

The order entry page

The main feature of the order entry form is a big text area in which you can enter your orders. If you have already entered some orders for this turn they will appear in the text area so you can edit them or add more orders. There are also two buttons for submitting your orders; one above the text area and one below. Pressing either of these buttons will submit the orders you have typed so far. Nothing will be submitted until you press one of the buttons, so please remember to do so when you have typed in your orders and before you leave the page (e.g. by selecting another page from the sidebar menus).

When you submit your orders they are immediately checked by the pbem.dk server and you get the order entry page again with information from the order checker added below the order entry text area.

You can edit and submit your orders as many times as you want as only your last submission before the deadline is used.

Getting a template

You can get a template for entering orders by pressing the "Get template" button above or below the order entry area. A template is a list of all your locations, units and other entities which can be given orders, in a format which the order checker will accept (because all except the ID numbers is formatted as comments). The template gives you ID headers for all the entities you can give orders to, and if you simply fill in the orders for each entity under its ID header you should be assured you do not forget to give orders to some unit or location.

Some status information such as the force/fleet of units and pending orders from last turn will be shown in the template, but lots of other status information is omitted for brevity and therefore the template is not a replacement for the status section of your latest turn report.

If you have already written some orders and press the "Get template" button the template will be appended to what you have written. If you press "Get template" more than once you will thus get more than one template.

Information from the order checker

Once you have submitted orders for a turn, information from the check of your latest submission will be shown under the order entry area on the order entry page. This is your "receipt" for the orders you have submitted. The information consists of three parts:
Messages from the last run of the order checker
This section has any warning and error messages from the order checker. Pay close attention to this and try to correct your orders so they do not generate any errors and warnings. If there are no errors, the only text here will be the number of orders submitted and a statement of how many of these were counted against the administration limit of your position.
Your current submitted and checked orders
This is a copy of your orders in a standardized form, stripped of any comments and indented to set any embedded orders apart. Check that these orders are what you want for they are the ones which will actually be used when the turn is run!
Your current order status at turn start
This shows all the units, locations and other entities of your position which have any orders to execute in the next turn. This reflects the orders you have submitted as well as any pending orders from the previous turn. All break, clear, insert and embed orders in your submission will already have been applied, so you can check that the orders of your units have been modified as you intended.

Forecast

If the game supports forecasting, a link titled "See forecast" will appear immediately under the order entry area. Clicking this will open a window with a forecast report based on your currently submitted orders (this may take a few seconds). The report will be based on all information available, including any information shared by your allies. More detailed control of the forecast report can be had if you use the standard "reports online" page (reachable from the menu bar at the top of the order submission page).

A few tips on order entry

Each order must be one line of text (plus any lines for embedded orders, see the rule book). You should never split long orders across multiple lines (check that this does not happen if you cut and paste the orders from some other editor).

Anything after a @ character is considered a comment and ignored by the system. Players generally use comments to make the orders more readable to themselves or to keep track of e.g. resource use. For example: 

3101:           @ The Vampire Lord, at 246
sacrifice       @                         + 10 mana
summon 84 20    @ 20 wraiths              - 60 mana
  orders:
    join 3102   @ join vampire
  .             @ end of orders for wraiths

Order syntax reference

Above and below the order entry text area you will find a link to the order syntax reference sheet for the game. If you click this link the syntax reference sheet will appear in another browser window to allow you to refer to it while typing your orders.

It is also possible to look up specific orders by typing order syntax queries among your orders in the order entry text area and then submitting the orders. Any line starting with a question mark "?" is taken to be an order syntax query. Each query is replaced with a comment stating the syntax of the order which matches the first word after the question mark (on the same line). For example, in your orders for a fantasy game you could write: 

   4001:
   move 423
   ? tactics
   storm
When you submitted this it would be replaced with 
   4001:
   move 423
   @ tactics tactics [unit-list]
   storm
Square brackets around an order argument placeholder means that the argument is optional, so from the line above you will be reminded that the tactics order as its first argument has the tactics you want to set and as a second, optional argument has a list of units you want to set tactics for.

Any question mark in the name of the order to be looked up will match any string (including the empty string) and in this way you can look up several orders with the same query. If you e.g. submitted 

   ? wait?
   ? ?strike
it could in a fantasy game be replaced with: 
   @ wait phases
   @ waitallsig id-list
   @ waitforall range id-list
   @ waitforone range id-list
   @ waitonesig id-list
   @ coldstrike position power
   @ firestrike position power
Remember that comments are ignored by the order checker (and the game engine) so the result of an order query does not really change your orders. But as the result appears in the text area for order editing it is easy to replace the query result with a real order by deleting the @ character and replacing the argument placeholders with the actual values you want. Or, if you prefer, you can leave the query result in your orders as reference and write the real order below it.