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Offline Asid

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Re: On The Western Front
« Reply #30 on: May 27, 2019, 12:07:16 PM »
Tweaks
27 MAY @ 6:30AM - AGGROBLAKH


Hi all,

It's been a busy week for me personally, so I mostly focused on some more content and tweaking the AI to make things a bit more challenging.

Bugfixes/Changes:
•   More events, which are not tied to a specific staff officer
 o   Disease: Increases rate of wastage even during favourable weather.
 o   Officer Birthday: Choose between allowing an impromptu birthday celebration in the trenches, which decreases Readiness, or banning the celebrations, which decreases Morale.
 o   Shellshocked Officer: Choose to limoger/relieve an officer or monitor him, which may result in a new trait.
•   More names for all factions.
•   Map is now 50% wider and can be scrolled from left to right. The camera can also be zoomed out a bit further to see more of the battlefield.
•   Firepower of rifle and machine gun units has been increased.
•   Enemy AI is more proactive about attacking units in no-man's land. Prior to this, players could build trenches and wires relatively unmolested by enemy fire, which is obviously unrealistic.

Thanks for playing!

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Offline Asid

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Re: On The Western Front
« Reply #31 on: June 10, 2019, 08:00:16 PM »
Squads
9 Jun @ 9:51am - Aggroblakh

Hi all,

I've managed to implement some of your feedback this update.

Bugfixes/Changes:
•   I've added squads into the game. When you select a platoon, you can now view the men in each individual squad.



•   Following on, the numbers in each unit have been lowered. Part of this is to reduce numbers in HQ and support platoons to more realistic levels, but also to make the numbers divisible by 4.
•   If any of you have encountered the event in which your ability to recall reserves is temporarily disabled, you might have noticed it takes a very long time to regain this ability. I've reduced the effect to about 3-4 weeks rather than the 6-8 it previously took.
•   Camera scrolling has been reworked to be smoother. Widening the map broke the horizontal scrolling due to the way I had set up the camera.
•   You can now use the middle mouse button/mouse wheel button to click and drag the screen to scroll.
•   Fixed bug which prevented underground construction.

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Offline Asid

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Re: On The Western Front
« Reply #32 on: June 24, 2019, 11:25:52 PM »
Plane and Pilot Roles
24 JUN @ 9:23AM - AGGROBLAKH

Hi all,

Major changes to air combat this update. Planes now have both roles and attributes of their own. Fighter planes remain the same as before, but recon planes are now two-seaters which take a pilot and an observer. Pilots are only responsible for evading the enemy, while observers are the ones whose Vision determines what they reveal on the ground below.

Plane stats modify air activity accordingly. For instance, a plane with a good engine will be more effective at pursuing the enemy. However, since you're only a division commander, you don't get to choose which planes you receive, so you'll have to manage plane supply accordingly. I'm hoping this adds more strategy to the air combat.

Help text has been updated with the new information, under 'Aerodrome - Roles'.

Bugfixes/Changes:
•   Planes are now separated into recon and fighter planes. Pilots in recon planes cannot perform escort roles, and vice versa. Upgrades will unlock both types.

•   Planes now have stats which vary based on different variants. Note that a higher tier plane will be more effective than a lower tier plane with the exact same stats.

•   Fixed a few bugs which were causing unnecessary performance spikes.

•   Moving the camera should now be smoother since it temporarily stops the game timer. It's a bit of a hack but both the camera movements and timer intervals are multithreaded already and thus interfere with each other if both are active. This is why the scrolling was choppy.

Thanks for playing!

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Offline Asid

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Re: On The Western Front
« Reply #33 on: July 02, 2019, 02:36:40 PM »
Hotfix - July 1
2 JUL @ 9:15AM - AGGROBLAKH

Hi all,

Releasing this hotfix as it contains not only some important optimizations and bugfixes, but also contains the start of what I hope will address concerns about realism regarding scale and time.

Bugfixes/Changes:
•   Time intervals are now 5 minutes, and cooldowns/effect durations have been changed accordingly.
•   The map has been embiggened and the scale of the starting trenches has been tweaked. The scale still isn't perfect, but this work is in preparation of further changes to scale. Let me know what you think. The buildings/houses will soon be rescaled to fit the size of trenches.
•   Did some optimization of enemy AI and pathfinding, which should improve performance.
•   Camera scrolling with the middle mouse button has been fixed. Previously, the vertical movement would override the horizontal movement, which was why it was difficult to do so.
•   Reduced the effect of disease, as the disease event was wiping out entire units.
•   Fixed bug in which orders issued with no units selected would cause units to skip tiles when building things.
•   Fixed bug in which selecting a tile for construction would wipe out barbed wire on that tile.

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Offline Asid

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Re: On The Western Front
« Reply #34 on: July 16, 2019, 12:39:21 PM »
Dots
16 Jul @ 9:41am - Aggroblakh

Hi all,


Squad "sprites" are now an option that can be toggled in the Settings screen from the main menu. They are disabled by default, as I'm not totally sure all of you want them in the game.

This is the only major change this update. I had to do a bunch of optimization and deal with a bunch of technical debt in order to add sprites without a major hit to performance, so most of the real work this update has been under the hood. Let me know what you think about the sprites, and how they can be improved.

Actual human body sprites (though obviously less accurate with numbers) will come later as a separate option, but for now I'm hoping this helps with the scale.

Bugfixes/Changes:

•   Sprites are now an option.
•   Enemy is now more proactive with suppressing fire when units hop out of the trenches.
•   Loading saved games has been tweaked so that there is less initial lag before proceeding to the progress screen.
•   Sickness has been tweaked to be less debilitating.

Thanks for playing!

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Offline Asid

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Re: On The Western Front
« Reply #35 on: August 06, 2019, 02:31:11 PM »
Balloons
6 Aug @ 7:35am - Aggroblakh

Hi all,

Balloons are now in the game. They can be launched, repaired, and sent back up from the Aerodrome screen.



Air sorties consisting solely of fighters will now target balloons for both attack and defense if they are present. Balloons are divided into eight sections, each with their own set of hit points. However, if one section is destroyed, the whole balloon is destroyed.

Balloons exist for the purpose of artillery spotting. As such, artillery accuracy is now reduced for all types by increasing the attack area size if there is no friendly balloon in the air.

Another major change is that Repair, Fortify, and Destroy orders are now click-and-drag orders rather than "Build Mode" orders. For example, you simply select "Repair Trench", drag over an area, and all trench tiles in that area are marked for repair. This functionality extends to scheduled orders as well. I hope this helps reduce the amount of micromanagement needed in the game.

Bugfixes/Changes:
•   Balloons now in the game.
•   Repair, Fortify, and Destroy orders are now click-and-drag orders that specifically target the ground types you've chosen to Repair/Fortify/Destroy.
•   Squad lists have been removed.
•   Fixed bug with issuing wiring orders via the scheduled order screen.
•   Scheduled order popup dialog now refreshes upon completion of a non-repeating order, so that there are no "dangling" orders remaining.
•   Fixed bug with enemy AI constantly issuing repeated construction orders which was causing game to slow down.
•   Fixed bug in which blockhouse and dugouts were no longer accessible after reloading a save.
•   Pause menu now appears on top of everything, to prevent game from locking up if a subscreen like Aerodrome or Order of Battle is opened when the game is paused.

KNOWN BUG: Saving and loading works, but for some reason, loading a saved game, then reloading another saved game seems to cause issues. I'll keep trying to track this down, but it shouldn't be more than an inconvenience at the moment.

Thanks for playing!

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Offline Asid

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Re: On The Western Front
« Reply #36 on: August 19, 2019, 01:59:13 PM »
Areas of Interest
19 Aug @ 8:39am - Aggroblakh

Hi all,

The ability to add areas of interest is now in the game. This allows you to mark and label any part of the map by painting it with a "brush". This feature can be accessed from the Scheduled Order screen.



This new feature is hooked into the scheduled order system, so that you can assign multiple orders to the same area. This will hopefully reduce some of the micromanagement in the game.



Bugfixes/Changes:
•   Areas of interest now in the game.
•   Help text is now updated with both areas of interest and observation balloons, which I had forgotten to include in the last update.
•   HQ command range now temporarily decreases when under artillery bombardment, which worsens order delay.
•   Save/Load has been optimized, so the crashes that would occur when loading previous saves or continuing on from them should no longer occur.

Thanks for playing!

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Offline Asid

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Re: On The Western Front
« Reply #37 on: August 26, 2019, 12:32:27 PM »
Content Update
26 AUG @ 8:29AM - AGGROBLAKH


Hi all,

The last couple of updates added wholesale new features, so I decided to take it easy this week to add some content and fix some bugs.

Bugfixes/Changes:
•   New events added, mostly related to command range:
Chief of Staff - Runners borrowed
A friendly division requires extra communications for a raid and needs to borrow yours. Command range maximum is reduced for 4 weeks.

Logistics - Use POWs to build support buildings
Once you have 1,000 prisoners and 2,000 Valour points, this event may pop up. Accepting this event causes the prisoners and Valour to be subtracted, and at the end of 5 weeks you get 6 field hospitals or kitchens built automatically.

All - Communications Sabotaged
An enemy spy sabotages communications. All command ranges reduced to 1 for 3 weeks.
•   Fixed path drawing bug when using a brush size of 1 to denote an area of interest.
•   Progress now renamed to Ownership
•   Open ground with buildings/forests on them now say building/forest rather than staying as Open Ground. Building and forest tiles also display strength levels now.
•   Open Ground renamed to Plains.
•   Fixed the ability of artillery to move laterally.

Thanks for playing!

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Offline Asid

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Re: On The Western Front
« Reply #38 on: September 05, 2019, 12:10:20 PM »
Artillery Pits
05/09/19
 


Artillery pits have been added into the game. You can build them like any other structure. Reinforcing them camouflages them rather than strengthening them, so that enemy pilots cannot see them.

Additionally, artillery units that dig in to them enjoy extra protection from all forms of attack. The trade-off is that digging in to an artillery pit takes longer than on open ground, and there is a longer than usual delay when moving a dug-in artillery battery out of an artillery pit.

If there's anything I can do to improve artillery pits, feel free to let me know!

Bugfixes/Changes:

•   Added artillery pits. Can be reinforced/camouflaged, but reinforcement is easily destroyed by enemy artillery.
•   Non-player owned goal tiles now negatively affect command range and morale/readiness regain from rest. Melee defense is also increased when in one's own trenches.
•   Added attack animation for ballistic (rifle and machine gun) weapons. I'm hoping this provides a bit more feedback when your units are under attack.
•   Settings now persist throughout the game.
•   Right clicking when Build Mode is active will now switch between add and subtract modes so that you no longer need to manually click the buttons at the top of the screen to switch between the two.
•   Fixed bug with construction of mine entrances.
•   Fixed bug where enemy AI was getting stuck in its own wire forever.
•   Fixed bug in which enemy offensives were too staggered, resulting in only a handful of enemy units going over the top at a time.


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Offline Asid

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Re: On The Western Front
« Reply #39 on: September 11, 2019, 02:09:43 PM »
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.

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Offline Asid

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Re: On The Western Front
« Reply #40 on: September 20, 2019, 01:12:40 PM »
New Scheduled Order Options
Fri, 20 September 2019


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!

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Offline Asid

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Re: On The Western Front
« Reply #41 on: September 29, 2019, 02:15:33 AM »
Automatic Sorties
Sun, 29 September 2019

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.


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Re: On The Western Front
« Reply #42 on: October 29, 2019, 02:44:46 PM »
Tutorial Update
Tue, 29 October 2019

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.


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Re: On The Western Front
« Reply #43 on: November 09, 2019, 12:47:07 AM »
Unit Cohesion
Fri, 8 November 2019


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.


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Re: On The Western Front
« Reply #44 on: November 16, 2019, 12:19:11 AM »
Telegraph Cables
Fri, 15 November 2019

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!

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