Sorry for the long delay between updates. Fairly sizeable content update this time, as I've added both divisional staff officers and random events.
The headquarters screen now contains a section which allows you to assign divisional staff officers, each with different effects on the division as a whole. Additionally, the frequency, type, and possible outcomes of random events are dictated by who you assign to these positions. For instance, it might not be worth it to have a competent Chief of Staff if his personal traits aren't very good, as the events and decisions he forces you to deal with might be a giant pain.
For now, the number of events and decisions is limited to one per officer type - I'll be adding to it gradually as I continue to work on the game.
Bugfixes/Changes:
Staff officers now appear in the HQ screen.
Chief of Staff: Affects order delay for all units.
Operations: Affects artillery effectiveness and readiness decay when both attacking and switching tasks.
Administration: Affects passive morale loss and replenishment rate of units in reserve.
Logistics: Affects food/water regain when in range of kitchens.
Intelligence: Affects success rate of air reconnaissance and revealing of units due to noise.
The help text for this new feature is also included. Additionally, German staff officers now have the "von" in their surnames, and British staff officer names will sometimes be preceded with "sir."
Random events and decisions now appear every now and then.
These can sometimes cause temporary effects that affect the whole division.
Since your Operations officer now affects the number of tiles attacked by artillery batteries, the default number of tiles bombarded is reduced.
Following on from above, the number of tiles bombarded is now affected by current readiness levels. This is to encourage more frequent drilling and troop rotation.
Readiness used to be reduced when in reserve, as sort of a tradeoff to the restoration of morale and numbers. Readiness now increases when in reserve. However, readiness now goes down when units attack, to simulate the breaking down and overuse of equipment. Thus it becomes necessary to rotate troops even after taking offensive actions.
Fog of war has been tweaked to make it harder to scout enemy positions without constant reconnaissance.
Aerial reconnaissance is now more difficult, but can be mitigated with a good intelligence officer.
Added a few more variations to the officer portraits.
Important notes:
You might notice a few references to something called "unit cohesion." This is irrelevant for now, but will eventually come into play once I get the Russians, Italians, and Austrians into the game. No timeline yet on when that happens, but it's just something for the future.
You might also note that a lot of traits for the staff officers, such as "Reactionary" don't have proper tooltips. This is related to some of the random events I have in mind for future updates, so proper tooltips will appear for these traits once I hash out their associated events.
Thanks for playing!
Easter Rising.. er, Update
Hi all,
I hope you're having a nice holiday. I've reworked the reinforcement/fortification mechanic this week, as I wasn't really satisfied with the pointlessness of it as it previously was.
Bugfixes/Changes:
Reinforcement of trenches is now a binary attribute ie. a trench tile is either reinforced or it is not. A reinforced trench adds duckboards which reduce the movement penalty in trenches and adds firesteps, which increases the sight range of units on watch duty. Conversely, the sight range of units is now reduced by a few tiles.
Following on from above, the movement speed of units in un-reinforced trenches has been reduced.
Reinforced blockhouses now look different. Unlike trenches, there is no gameplay effect on blockhouse reinforcement other than to make the blockhouse more resistant to damage.
Following on from above, the Fortify Blockhouse order now works again. I had broken it with some of the changes I had made previously.
Highlights for paths and areas have been reworked to be less of an assault on the eyes.
Support units no longer participate in group construction actions when selected.
The unit order submenu used to require you to select a group of units that were all the same type. Failure to do so resulted in a truncated order menu with only three orders - Move, Rest, and Cancel. Now you can select units which fall under the same broad category - Combat, Support, or Artillery. That is, you can select a group of rifle units and a few machine gun units and issue an Attack Area order to all of them. Note that ineligible units still will not carry out orders they normally wouldn't be able to. For example, selecting an engineer unit and a supply unit and issuing a Build Trench order would only issue the order to the engineer unit.
Thanks for playing!
Little Things
Hi all,
Mostly minor gameplay tweaks this update to improve the game rather than adding new features.
Bugfixes/Changes:
Units now spread out when building a line of trenches, communication trenches, or barbed wire. This is done to prevent crowding and reduce micromanagement. However, it should be noted that this doesn't apply for single-tile structures like dugouts or field hospitals, nor does it apply for underground structures.
Added a new forest variation.
Bug in which sight was not extending for units in blockhouses has been fixed.
Enemy now starts with some wire pre-built.
Following on, wire effects have been tweaked so that units will be stunned as they cross wire, rather than simply stopping in their tracks. The duration of the stun is longer depending on how heavy the wire is.
Thanks for playing!
Portraits
Hi all,
Some issues with the help text have been addressed, as well as some minor changes that hopefully improve the user experience. I've also added portraits into the game for officers and pilots. This adds literally nothing to the game except for kind of looking cool. I'll add more variation as I go, but for now at least it's functional.
Bugfixes/Changes:
Portraits have been added for officers and pilots.
Some typos and grammar issues in the help text have been fixed.
Section about officers has been added to the help text.
Watch Duty is now possible in blockhouses.
Structures built in houses and forests are now partially visible.
Weather conditions now affect artillery. Number of squares hit within an artillery unit's attack range is now reduced in adverse weather conditions.
Artillery now actively avoids tiles which would be unfeasible to stop in, such as dugouts and houses.
Bug in which two-tile sized houses were not properly providing cover over both tiles is now fixed.
Units will no longer be able to stop in tiles if they are over the crowding limit. I'm hoping this addresses some concerns with regard to the feasibility of having hundreds of men crammed into a single tile by forcing players (and the AI) to be a bit more proactive in building comprehensive trench networks.
Thanks for playing!
Help Text
Hi all,
I've added Help Text into the game now. It's by no means complete but forms a basis to build upon. Please let me know if there's anything that needs to be explained better and I'll add it in. Some critical blocking issues with the tutorials have been fixed, but they'll be overhauled soon anyways.
Other than that, this update is a relatively short list due to the time it takes to simply write all the text.
Bugfixes/Changes:
Help button is now clickable in the pause menu and allows you to view information about certain aspects of the game.
Blocking issue involving subordinate/superior units in Basic Training tutorial has been fixed and takes into account the newer unit information popup.
Tweaked the enemy AI to be a bit more aggressive in building structures.
Fixed bug in which the enemy AI was not properly rotating its troops to the rear.
Thanks for playing!
Bughunting
Hi all,
Relatively light update this time in terms of new features. The game seems to be crashing quite a bit during gameplay for a lot of you, so I've been poring over the code and trying to identify any potential areas that may cause crashes depending on certain situations. That being said, I've still had some time to tweak the game and fix some bugs.
Bugfixes/Changes:
Errors that were popping up but not causing crashes in the debugger have been addressed, which will hopefully alleviate many of the crashes being encountered.
Fixed some pathfinding issues that would arise with the enemy AI that would cause it to skip building certain tiles.
Fixed bug in which certain situations would cause the enemy AI to get stuck attempting to rotate its units into the reserve, creating unnecessary pathfinding checks that slowed the game down.
Buildings under construction no longer provide protection until complete.
Watch duty is now an option when in terrain (houses/forests).
Machine gun units can now perform watch duty at night. It wasn't particularly realistic to not have machine gunners attempt to attack advancing enemy soldiers at night.
When rifle units attack advancing enemies in no-man's land during daytime, they now specifically target single tiles rather than entire areas.
Support units now cause less damage in melee combat.
Selecting zero tiles in a rest order no longer crashes the game.
Supply Area orders no longer default to the current mouse position as the starting position. This fixes the bug in which ordering a unit to supply an area would result in them moving into no-man's land prior to supplying units in trenches.
Hopefully these changes make the game a bit smoother to play.
Thanks for playing!
Fonts!
Hi all,
The game has been crashing quite a bit, most of the time when starting a new map or returning to the main menu. I've managed to track it down to an issue with the font loading improperly. I've now changed the default font from Century Schoolbook to good old Times New Roman. It's no longer period appropriate, but at least it won't be causing issues any more.
Bugfixes/Changes:
Crashes when returning to the main menu or starting a new map have been fixed!
Font is now Times New Roman.
If fog of war is enabled, enemy-controlled tiles will now be seen as open ground when clicked on until they are revealed.
Bug in which showing unit attack ranges would reveal hidden tiles when fog of war was enabled has been addressed.
Line of sight has been tweaked so that units can no longer shoot over hills.
Some pathfinding optimizations have taken place, which hopefully makes the game run a bit smoother.
Elevation Map now appears above other ground tiles, making it easier to see the elevation of trenches, etc.
Errors in calculation of total division numbers, morale, supply, and readiness have all been fixed.
Bug with names and alternate names of reserve units disappearing have been fixed.
Default names of units now have proper notation. For instance, 1st Brigade, 2nd Battalion, C Company, 3rd Platoon is now 1/2/C/ 3rd Platoon.
Star shells now decrement properly when used.
Units supplying an area no longer distribute supplies to units outside that area.
I'm still working on getting Help text into the game, accessible from the pause menu. Let me know if there's anything that needs more explaining and I'll make sure it gets in right away.
Thanks for playing!
Hotfix 8
Hi all,
Thanks to some fantastic feedback I've received in the Discussion forums, I've fixed a bunch of weird issues that escaped my attention.
Bugfixes/Changes:
Underground pathfinding and actions were broken due to some overzealous optimization on my part. This should now be fixed.
Also due to optimizations and tweaking, there was some weird behaviour where units would cross into enemy trenches before starting to perform actions in no-man's land. This is fixed.
Fixed issue with tutorial dialog in which the title bar wasn't large enough, resulting in situations where you would end up clicking on something behind the popup when trying to move the dialog around.
Support units can now only make use of melee attacks. I know engineer units often carried carbines, but I wanted more distinction between support and combat units. Note that support units can still use melee combat.
Bug in which HQ units would attack opposing units in melee without actually moving to the enemy unit's position has been fixed.
Corrected start time for tutorials when loading them after having played a different map. Previously, they would carry over the time from the previous map.
I'm still working on getting Help text into the game, accessible from the pause menu. Let me know if there's anything that needs more explaining and I'll make sure it gets in right away.
Thanks for playing!
Hotfix 7
Hi all,
Due to feedback, I've released another relatively minor hotfix.
Bugfixes/Changes:
Hotkeys for game speed (Spacebar, +/-) now work properly and don't need you to explicitly click on the game map for them to work. Previously, the game UI overlays would override the hotkeys and accidentally click or select buttons.
Units can now switch interchangeably between the original naming convention and the new one I introduced this weekend. This can be toggled from the Order of Battle screen.
Fixed a relatively rare crash bug that would creep up if the game ran long enough, into 1916 and beyond.
I'm still working on getting Help text into the game, accessible from the pause menu. Let me know if there's anything that needs more explaining and I'll make sure it gets in right away.
Thanks for playing!
Hotfix 6
Hi all,
Some critical (although minor) changes I felt deserved a new build this weekend.
Bugfixes/Changes:
Have changed the default manner in which companies and platoons are named. Now their numbers/names are relative to their commanding unit ie. each company will have its own 1st Platoon, etc.
Fixed crash that would occur when scheduling orders if order was issued after its intended start time.
Have separated terrain effects into separate effects depending on terrain type. This allows me to customize things, like having forests impede movement, or buildings obscure units based on their condition.
Morale and readiness regain is now halted when on watch duty. I'm hoping this gives players more of a reason to rotate units between watch duty and rest.
Machine gunners can now explicitly be ordered on watch duty. Previously they could only be ordered to rest, and would switch to guard duty during the day.
I'm also working on getting Help text into the game, accessible from the pause menu. Let me know if there's anything that needs more explaining and I'll make sure it gets in right away.
