New Campaign
• The School Teacher campaign which was posted on November 25th in the Matrix forum has been added to the game.
New Features and Improvements
• The four British scenarios have been revamped and the unit names corrected for 1989. Thanks to The Plodder for his considerable help with this!
• Major update and cleanup of the British data files with the help of Tazak. Removed towed Rapier SAM units from the self-propelled SAMs.
• Counters – The unit counters now use a modifiable national bitmap background when being drawn. Slightly 3D backgrounds are supplied to replace the default flat look. The default background art can be found in each National folder.
• Newly created maps that have a different aspect ratio than the FPRS standard maps are better supported by the game user interface. The mini-map will now stay a fixed height and now force the collapse of the BIC elements.
• Selecting Units – you can now select a HQ and all subordinate units by Alt-Clicking on it on the main map. This makes it much easier to select all related units without first scouring the map.
• Selecting Units from the OOB. You can now both Shift select and Alt select from the OOB tree. Three cheers for Rob!!
• PBEM and PBEM++ play – Game Options are remembered and reused when starting a new game. They are also honored when restarting a saved game. The default Game Options settings are remembered separately for PBEM++ games now so that the regular game defaults are not also the PBEM++ game defaults. Suggested by Radagy.
• Infantry mounted in trucks were not being offered a chance to disembark prior to the objective as were infantry mounted in tracked carriers. They now do.
• Units that are locked in place and cannot be moved in the scenario editor or pregame setup are now drawn with the combat numbers on the counter drawn in gray instead of white. This is similar to the way inactive units are drawn and helps distinguish these units at a glance.
• Helicopters in resupply mode will not be attacked by air defence units unless the air defence units have a direct line of sight.
• The number of air search “radar detection warning” messages were excessive and have been scaled way back now.
• PBEM classic – the outbound dispatch screen has been redesigned somewhat and made more user friendly. In fact, the various UI elements of PBEM classic and Head to Head play all received a general review and refresh for this update. Fog of war is honored better but there are no changes in functionality.
• Game resolution replay – a new floating panel has been created that shows the current time, weather, and buttons to pause and restart the replay, to restart at the beginning and to skip to the end.
• Game resolution replay – the map zoom controls are now enabled during this phase.
• Staff Diary / Force /Roster – the text descriptions have been expanded a little to show the location of the unit, whether it is a core unit or not in campaign games, and who it is subordinate to or if it is independent. The first instance of each subunit type is now hyperlinked to the Subunit Inspector so that the player can look up what his forces have much more easily. The Force Roster and the Subunit Inspector can run side by side and the player can jump between them as desired.
• Better support for the 1024 x 768 desktop resolution for the user interface.
• Air defence units –the game mechanics have been tweaked slightly to better improve the combat modelling. The sky is dangerous again. Also, the max range circle is now the max weapon range and not the weapon range limited by line of sight as before.
• Air search radar – improved modelling so that contacts are made and kept more reliably without slowing down game play.
• Passwords - The entering of passwords for games that need them has been redone and is more effective now. Also the default password of “password” has been removed and the passwords are never shown in clear any more. Finally, once the password is typed into the password dialog a simple Enter key will trigger the Proceed button.
• Resupply orders – if a unit is given these orders it will show in the Unit Description Panel when the orders will be complete.
• Artillery barrage sound effects – These were not being queued up to be played as originally intended so this part of the code was extensively rewritten. There are also two new sound effects for light and heavy artillery impact sound effects.
• Saving a game – don’t let it happen if unit orders are currently in progress.
• Data - updates for better SAM SA values in the low end. A definite bump in the ability for MANPADs to shoot and kill.
• Code fixes for arty/MLRS issues adding in a "size" factor to the hit number based on SA value of the round. Minor bump to hit number of larger caliber guns/rockets.
• Movement orders - If a movement plot is not physically possible (i.e. no bridges over a major river) then a message comes up that 'Sir, this order could not be implemented for some reason.' and the order is rescinded.
• River crossing times have been reduced from 45 minutes to 20 minutes for each nationality. There are other delays imposed as with any other type of movement and the grand total of over an hour was becoming excessive.
• In an AI vs AI game all units will be revealed despite auto-spotting game option setting.
• Command delays - reimposed command delays for recon units getting new orders. They were being waived just because they were recon but this was too generous.
• Combat model. Further refinements have been made to some of the combat values and formulas at the suggestion of some of our highly knowledgeable users.
• Units can begin the game in an “inactive state” which means they are not active until the enemy approaches or attacks them. They were showed in a grayed out state to both players originally to denote this state. Now they appear this way only to the owning player.
• To better facilitate the use of large Soviet forces, a token divisional HQ unit has been created in the order of battle. It has an intrinsic command delay of 30 minutes and a command range of 40 km.
• Units that were due to arrive in the future as reinforcements were visible in the map flyover panel earlier in the game and this was confusing. They are hidden now until they are arrived.
• The Fire Support Control Center (FSCC) will stick to HE fire against city and woods hexes and not use smoke and mines as much.
• The speed at which units move involuntarily (scooting) has been adjusted so that they are distinctly faster than normal but not instantaneous as was sometimes happening before.
Bug Fixes
• Saving a game – if this was done during the pregame orders setup then you could not return later and finish the pregame setup – you were now in the regular orders phase. This has been fixed and thanks to Herman Hum for pointing this out.
• PBEM++ - sometimes the game would revert to pre-game setup mode part way into a game and require the players to move their units back into the setup areas!
• PBEM++ - announce when players are getting close to critical sudden death levels.
• PBEM and PBEM++ turn replay – the craters and kill markers will be drawn in as expected now as replay unfolds.
• PBEM++ - sometimes the game ended prematurely but this has now been fixed.
• Minefields – if the AI issued orders to its forces while they were in the process of clearing minefields then the clearance would sometimes be abandoned and the unit would run the rest of the mines. Now it will wait to finish clearing the field before executing the new orders.
• Game resolution replay – the code to replay the most recent turn of each player was rewritten to be more reliable and actually show just that turn – no more and no less.
• Localization - another fix made to international string representations of floating point numbers. Problems in this area were breaking saved games and PBEM++ games.
• Unit selection from the chain of command (OOB) tree stopped working as expected. You can now click, shift-click and alt-click to select units and combinations of units again. Herman Hum spotted this one too.
• The User Preferences were still showing a “movement range overlay” color as an option when that particular display had been removed from the game months ago.
• Limited Staff Orders allowance was not being reset to zero between turns for PBEM++ games. This has been fixed.
• Reinforcement units - the unit counters for units that had not yet arrived in the game were not being generated and were showing as blanks in various displays. This was an optimization gone wrong and was spotted by Jim Zabek.
• Reinforcement units – the arrival hint messages were showing even when the units themselves were hidden by fog of war. This has been fixed.
• Data – American – M114 has been changed to Recce from APCT.
• Unit stacking - made a fix to stacking calculation where a group of units is spread out but added with Alt-Click. It was assumed to be all in one hex.
• A bug in the player C3 history display would sometimes cause previous orders points to be missed and it could show the wrong length of command cycle in the last hour.
• Scenario editor - blown bridges were sometimes draggable but now are not.
• Scenario editor - the bridge builder was rotating bridges between 3 states (made, blown, removed) when all we really wanted was for the bridge state to be what the relevant button type was. There are no unexpected consequences when re-editing a bridge hex now.
• Map editor – an access violation error was being thrown when drawing setup hexes in the bottom row of the map.
• Orders transition delays -fixed a bug where orders transition delays were apparently being waived for all units. This will cause units that are changing orders to take an extra delay of 5 to 20 minutes to change posture and get ready for the new orders. It will slow down movement but was in the original game. Somewhere along the line it got turned off.
• Game flicker reduced when game start / stop button is pressed.
• Zooming the map hid any current movement waypoints / arty TRPs. These are now restored after the zoom is complete.
• When the game ended you could not browse enemy forces and select enemy units by clicking on the Chain of Command tree. Fixed now.
• Helo Radar detection flicker now shows for correctly for the players side.
• Campaign games: when a unit “exited” the map it did not return for the next installment of the campaign. Thanks to Tazak for pointing this out.
• A situation where a helicopter unit in flight could be blocked by a stack of two ground units has been found and fixed. Herman Hum described this well and we nailed it.
• The ‘exit game’ exploit discovered by Jenrick whereby closing the game during turn resolution allowed you to effectively restart the game and circumvent the normal C3 command cycle. Very inventive ploy but disallowed now.
• OJsDad noticed that enemy movement path lines were still showing when fog of war was on. This has now been fixed.
• A number of spotting errors have been corrected. They were effecting both what was spotted, when and in some cases not updating and leaving unit markers on the map even though the unit was not “visible”. This may be the cause of a number of reports questioning AI fire selection in certain instances and an impact on AD spotting too.
New Game Play Mechanics
• As noted in the bug fixes we have done a massive bug hunt and kill related to spotting issues in the code. One fix would uncover yet another layer and also other behaviors. Thanks to Charles testing retesting and constantly beating on us I believe we have a clean spotting mechanic again. To that end you will notice a couple of new things.
• Units will appear and vanish more often as they go in and out of your units LOS.
• More “?” units on the map denoting contact but no ID. This area will get more attention in the 2.04 update as we work FoW improvements.
• We were able to revise and tweak many of the spottable mechanics and the spotting too.
• No more x-ray vision thermal sights.
• Units hiding in high cover are harder to spot.
• Unit with Thermal sights and Recon capability increase the radius of a target unit’s spottable range about 1 hex for each ability. The map overlay only shows the basic spottable range for now.
• Urban fighting has had a major overhaul.
• Units are not harder to spot and kill if they are in urban terrain. AFVs and Infantry are treated differently for spot and kill.
• NOTE: Units put in Hold and in urban terrain will now shoot at targets at 1/3 of their effective ranges. This will provide more of an ambush effect and stop long range fires that trigger counter fire and spotting. If you want long range shots use the Screen order.
• Minimum standoff ranges for some units, main recon, have been increased based on game visibility. Once an enemy gets inside the min range the unit will displace to open the range back up. We had a bad calculation and it was causing Recon units to basically get overrun before they would move. Units in Hold will stay longer in locations and are less prone to scoot.
• Adjustments have been made to all of the National tabs for all countries to reduce the delay times for Air, Arty, and Bridging to bring the times in balance with additional delays now working correctly in the HQ code. In most cases you really won’t see an impact to how those functions have worked. The Soviets have had the times for Air and Arty reduced a bit and they should be a bit quicker in the response times.
anzer:
