General update this time around. The biggest change is that the map is wider and the scroll has been worked on to allow for a zoom level which encompasses the width of the whole map. Other than that I mostly spent the last week and a half adding a few requested items and fixing bugs.
Bugfixes/Changes:
Map is now wider.
Scroll has been tweaked so that the widest zoom level encompasses the width of the map. Note that if you have squad sprites enabled, zooming out to the widest two zoom levels will temporarily disable them.
Scroll speed now adjusts itself depending on zoom level.
Aerodrome screen now split into recon and escort roles.
Balloons are now more dangerous to attack.
Fixed bug in which observer would not appear in pending patrol list when assigning a recon pilot.
Fixed bug in which pilot experience in pilot profile popup was incorrect value.
Fixed bug in aerodrome that would make it difficult to un-assign pilots from pending sorties when the timer was running, since the list was refreshing each game tick.
Logistics delegation now includes the automatic resupply of field kitchens.
Thanks for playing!
Officer Details
Hi all,
Officers and pilots now have sub-experience bars underneath their attributes. These increase along with the officer's overall experience depending on the tasks completed by the platoons under his command, or by himself if a pilot. While filling the bar does not directly improve the attribute, it will increase the probability of the attribute improving when the overall officer level improves.
Leadership experience is gained by partaking in offensive actions and taking prisoners. Organization experience is gained by performing logistical duties, such as treating wounded, carrying supplies, or laying telegraph lines. Command experience is gained by building things or drilling.
For pilots, accuracy experience is gained by successful attacks on enemy pilots. Skill experience is gained by evading enemy attacks. Vision experience is gained by revealing enemy tiles, and Discipline experience is gained by reconnaissance pilots when successfully focusing on reconnaissance rather than being drawn into a dogfight.
Bugfixes/Changes:
Commanders now gain experience for performing different actions.
Commanders and pilots now have individual experience bars for each stat, which influences possible stat gain after level up.
Pilots are now rotated properly by the AI when delegating Intelligence tasks.
Pilots are slightly more likely to be shot down when pursued.
Open-minded Intelligence officers now provide a bonus to division experience for all successful pilot actions. They also have slightly lower Valour requirements for Flamethrowers and Tanks.
Close-minded Intelligence officers now penalize pilot experience gain. They also have slightly higher Valour requirements for Flamethrowers and Tanks.
Open-minded Operations officers have slightly lower Valour requirements for Flamethrowers and Tanks.
Close-minded Operations officers have slightly higher Valour requirements for Flamethrowers and Tanks.
Aristocrats, when assigned to Administration, boost morale and readiness daily for all units in the first year of the war. Each year, the effect is reduced and eventually becomes a negative effect on both morale and readiness.
Tooltips for Open-minded, Close-minded, and Aristocrat traits have been updated.
Fixed bug in which closing the event popup would unpause the game automatically.
Help text updated with sub-experience bar information.
New events: (Administration) Censor Mail - Choose between censoring mail to reduce morale or allowing potentially subversive thought and reducing cohesion. The effect of the morale loss is reduced if your Administration officer has the Propagandist trait. (Administration) Drill Sergeant - Allowing an old drill sergeant of one of your commanders to become one of his NCOs can provide a boost to his Organization and Command sub-experience points at the risk of adding the Slave Driver trait. Preventing this sort of nepotistic behaviour may, however, cause your commander to gain the Lazy trait. (Logistics) Supply Reshuffle - Choose between supplying your front-line troops at the expense of your support troops, or causing a morale drop to your front-line troops. Only available for Logistics officers with the Aristocrat trait.
Thanks for playing!
Update - Nov. 27
Hi all,
Mostly just quality of life changes this time around. The most obvious one is that selected units can now be filtered by type and size.
I've also tweaked starting unit positions so that rifle brigades and battalions are now partitioned into different sections of the starting trench. Let me know if this is enough or if I need to group them even closer together.
Other than the two above changes, most of the updates this time have to do with preventing unnecessary crowding.
Bugfixes/Changes:
Can now filter selected units by type and size.
Starting rifle and machine gun units now grouped by battalion.
Crowding is now prevented when scheduling orders for single-tile structures (dugouts, blockhouses, etc). Note that this is only possible when using areas of interest.
Fixed anti-crowding measures for orders issued manually, which was broken when I added anti-crowding for scheduled orders.
Units will now attempt to avoid crowding when using rest orders.
Fixed bug with save/load which caused a crash when no file was selected after having previously loaded a saved game.
Thanks for playing!
Telegraph Cables
Hi all,
Air sorties are now capped in number, as is the size of each sortie. To mitigate this, I've added the option of upgrading the aerodrome, which increases both the number of sorties you can launch, as well as the size of each one. This is to reflect the growing sizes of air forces later in the war.
I've also added "underground" telegraph cables. I use the quotes because you don't actually build them underground. Basically Signals units now have the ability to lay cable. If a unit is connected via cables to its HQ unit, it eliminates the order delay for that leg of the journey. For example, if the delay between Brigade, Battalion, Company, and Platoon is 3 tiles each, building cable between Battalion and Company gets rid of the order delay incurred between those two HQ units.
Tiles with cables are denoted by a Signals icon on the left side of the ground details popup. Cables in progress are denoted with a progress percentage and a red Signals icon. Rather than using build mode to lay out a line of cable, you simply drag a box. If there are any non-open ground tiles in the selection box, then only those tiles are targeted. Otherwise, a path is drawn from the start of the box to the end. Cables can be destroyed by enemy fire, and is easier to destroy in open ground.
Bugfixes/Changes:
Sorties are now limited in terms of number and size, and can be upgraded in the Aerodrome screen.
Pilots now require a readiness rating of 40% to launch.
Signals units now have the ability to eliminate order delay by laying cables.
Units in the middle of construction orders will no longer make progress once they run out of tools.
Fixed potential crashing when checking for noise/visibility.
Selecting Supply Area with an idle Supply unit now offers you the choice of what to supply an area with. I realized how annoying it is to select Resupply -> supply type -> Supply Area while testing the new Signals updates. Note that selecting Supply Area with Rifle units still defaults to Food, since that is the only supply type Rifle units can carry.
Carrying Supplies has been removed, as I feel it has become redundant.
Low morale no longer results in strikes, but striking units must recover both cohesion and morale before they will un-strike. I found too many units were striking due to the more fickle nature of morale. Low morale still causes retreating, however.
Did a bit of optimization when charging positions, removing redundant sight checks and making the whole thing a bit smoother.
Help text has been updated with changes.
Thanks for playing!
Unit Cohesion
Hi all,
I've included a new unit attribute: Cohesion. This is more of a long-term attribute that lowers gradually over time to simulate the eventual falling apart of units later in the war. Unit Cohesion will lower over time unless within an HQ unit's command range. If it reaches 0, units will strike and not respond to orders until you move an HQ unit - any HQ unit, even battalion or brigade HQ - nearby. If left on strike for too long, the unit will eventually desert and take your Valour points with it.
The rate of cohesion lowering is different for each nation, and each year. I'm hoping it will largely not affect the British or Americans (yet to be included), but will hammer nations like the Russians or Austro-Hungarians.
Bugfixes/Changes:
Unit Cohesion is now included and can be accessed by clicking the button next to a unit's Readiness level.
Low morale can now cause units to go on strike.
Retreating units now strike when they arrive at their location.
Fixed bug in which squads were still visible even with fog of war enabled.
Fixed bug in which units returning from leave could get bombarded in communications trenches.
Reduced ability of enemy to spot your units at night.
Time of day - morning, day, evening, night - is now dependent on the season.
Commanders can no longer be Beloved and Hated. Also, commanders can no longer be Reactionary and Intellectual.
New Logistics-based event: Engineer Strikes Engineer companies may complain that their tools are inadequate for their jobs. You can either lose 10,000 Support Tools from your supply pool, or refuse their request, which will cause the whole company to go on strike.
Thanks for playing!
Tutorial Update
Hi all,
Given the length of time it took to develop the task delegation, I took a bit easier this week and simply updated the tutorials. There is now a new one regarding support buildings as well.
Let me know if there's something that needs to be covered better. Once staff officer traits are implemented into events and task delegation I'll probably add one for Staff Officers and Scheduled Orders as well.
Bugfixes/Changes:
Tutorials have been updated, and now include a tooltip in the upper right of the screen next to the tutorial popup button.
Fixed bug which made it impossible to build Mine Entrances.
Fixed bug in which reassigning a unit in the process of building something to a different order would not properly clear the tiles assigned to it, resulting in a weird alternation of in progress and plains tiles.
Thanks for playing!
Task Delegation
Hi all,
Sorry for the delay on this update. I've added the ability to automate orders based on all officers now, which required me to integrate the AI with the Scheduled Order system. This allows you the observe what orders your officers give and edit/cancel them accordingly.
Tooltips and help text entries have been added.
Bugfixes/Changes:
Can now automate different orders depending on officer:
Your Chief of Staff handles repair tasks and reinforcement tasks. Reinforcement tasks will only occur if there are no structures that need to be repaired, as repairs take priority.
Your Operations officer handles trench raids, and will assign units to occasionally attack the enemy lines, as well as cutting enemy wire. The officer's Organization rating determines the size of each raid. It is worth keeping an eye on the orders issue by your Operations officer, since his orders will place your men in harm's way.
Your Administration officer handles troop rotation for you by checking on the total morale and numbers of entire units. Brigades take priority, followed by Battalions, then Companies. The threshold for sending troops to the rear is lower when dealt with by an officer with low Organization ability - good officers will prevent units from becoming too damaged before rotating them to the rear. Note that rotation orders do not occur when an offensive is coming up. Also important is that your Administration officer does NOT automatically recall units - this is for you to decide what to replace depleted units with.
Your Logistics officer controls supply lines, and will direct the construction of field hospitals and kitchens. Supply units will default to food and water. If you want to resupply ammunition or shells, you will have to do it manually so as to properly manage your stocks.
Your Intelligence officer manages air sorties and will try to find a balance between reconnaissance and escort missions. The higher your officer's Organization, the more sorties he will be able to send concurrently.
Thanks for playing!
Automatic Sorties
Hi all,
I've started to add the ability to delegate/automate tasks to reduce micromanagement. For now, only air reconnaissance can be automated. This can be done by going to the HQ screen and checking the checkbox above the Intelligence officer. Note that balloons are not automated yet, but this will be added soon.
Eventually, I'll add the ability to automate tasks for each officer.
Bugfixes/Changes:
Can now automate the sending of air sorties. Quality is dependent on Intelligence officer.
Scheduled orders now spread out assigned units to prevent crowding. For real this time.
Fixed potential pathfinding bug that would cause algorithm to break down when certain buildings were created.
Fixed bug that allowed pilots to be assigned as both pilot and observer.
Rebalanced air combat so pilots don't all die within the first few days.
Thanks for playing!
New Scheduled Order Options
Hi all,
As per your suggestions, I've now added support tasks into the Scheduled Order system. They kick in when the proper type of unit is selected. For example, for resupply tasks to show up, only Supply units must be selected.
Other tasks, such as Finding Wounded will be in later, as the logic behind them is a bit different from most orders. However, I believe this update covers most of the common tasks players might want to be able to schedule.
Bugfixes/Changes:
Random lines being added when using a tile size of 1 in Area Paint Mode has been fixed.
Pressing space bar while naming areas of interest no longer toggles the game timer.
Scheduled orders now spread out assigned units to prevent crowding.
Scheduled orders now include support tasks such as building field hospitals and resupplying areas.
Fixed crash bug that would occur upon completion of scheduled orders.
Thanks for playing!
Hotfix - September 11
Hi all,
Trench raids/melee attacks have been slightly revamped. Movement in open ground at night is now slowed down to represent sneaking when units are not visible to the enemy. Each step taken will result in a reveal/noise check. If it fails, the moving unit becomes visible, and resumes moving at normal speed. This is to facilitate trench raids at night. Additionally, Valour gain and prisoner count now increments at the point of capture - it is no longer required to bring prisoners back to your own trenches, as this was far too difficult to do on a regular basis.
Also, thanks to a suggestion in the discussion forums, field hospital placement is now more useful. Wounded men and sick men now automatically get sent to field hospitals if they are near them. This occurs once a day when resting or on guard duty. Previously, this effect only occurred one-way, with recovered convalescents being sent to units that needed them.
Bugfixes/Changes:
Fixed pathfinding when attempting to explicitly target an enemy unit for melee attack.
Added variation to starting communication trenches, so that they are no longer perfectly vertical.
Invisible or obscured units now sneak at night until revealed by the enemy.
Prisoners no longer need to be brought back to your own trenches during a raid to gain experience.
Fixed bug in which enemy artillery would retreat too easily after exchanging counter-battery fire.
Enemy AI now builds blockhouses along rear trench lines as well.
Sound effects for rifles/machine gun animations now fixed.
Men who become wounded or sick near field hospitals now automatically get sent to the hospital.
Fixed the ability to add supply dumps, which had been broken by refactoring in recent weeks.
Food consumption and resupply from field kitchens rebalanced.
Field kitchens can now be resupplied by right-clicking on it with no units selected. Nearby units will be assigned. Additionally, the same can be done with field supply dumps if you right-click on a dugout tile with no units selected, assuming your division still has ammo, tool, shell, or gas shell supplies remaining.
