upcoming patch, test request

[WanderingHead]

Current distribution status (so you know who you can play)

playtest20070915
-- tica

playtest20070916
change from 20070915: AI should not move fleets onto allied fleets, e.g. German fleets onto Japanese sea zones. Save compatible with 20070915
-- rjh
-- MrQuiet
-- Lebatron

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Guys,

I have a version just about ready to push as a patch. But I'd feel better if it had at least a little testing.

I have one game going, but it is all I can carry myself. If anyone wants to try out the patch, let me know and I can send it to you (old beta testers would be fine, and anyone else all I will ask for is an email promising not to further distribute, sent to me and Joel).

This test version will feature bug fixes, UI enhancements, and mod feature additions. Most of the mod feature additions would be exercised in the latest version of Global Glory, which I would include.

GG is currently allowing flight across narrows by air, with an air penalty for air at max range (the rule exempts air operating 1 move from air base, so if you only move one region the air is exempt unless it moved across narrows [e.g. W France across narrows to England _does_ count as "max range" for a speed=1 air unit]). I also liked Jesse's idea for air unit cost changes very much, so incorporated the basics of it: fighters cost 3, tac air still 3, heavy bombers 5. The balance of this scenario is now iffy, a lot of new stuff to try out! So far I find already that I am liking the idea of buying more flak, since fighters are more expensive. so far it has the right feel to me.

If you want to help out, let me know!

[WanderingHead]

Here's a list of stuff in the patch.


UI

Region Info Screen improved, with totals displayed underneath each column (so you don't have to count things yourself).


Improved the GUI stacking of units in non-movement phase, so that in the production phase one can still see which infra is repaired, which units are in supply, etc.


Readonly mode. One really neat thing about this is the ability to load a game as "Neutral", allowing you to see only what BOTH sides can see through FOW. Hence, you can take screen shots for AARs and not worry about revealing anything.


Rules

Japanese surrender depends on dropping a-bomb on Japanese factory.


French surrender can occur if Southern France is in German control (it was blocked). However, in this case all Vichy territories will remain WA controlled instead of changing to Vichy.


Resource shuffling is improved to store more resources. It doesn't matter in the stock game because Germany is so flush with surplus resources anyway, but without this change it isn't even possible to give a good value to early game resources.


Damaged units can now queue in damaged factories, instead of being destroyed if there is no undamaged factory to queue in (this was most commonly seen in China).


Improved retreat path for units that have no access to undamaged rail, so retreats will now tend to be towards adjacent factory and friendly population centers instead of the region with the lower identification number.


Changed combined arms to group infantry and airborne together and exclude militia (previously, militia was in and airborne was out).


assess op-fire evasion penalty for unsupplied op-firing units that have no access to supply. Note that this does not _consume_ supply, just needs access.


prior suppression bonus will not benefit bombardment fire


bombardment roll modifier to capture evasion adjustments



Stock scenario setups

reduce starting artillery evasion from 6 to 5



AI

Allied AI will not attack neutral shipping before the USA is at war (admittedly, this only impacts mods since there is no neutral shipping in stock scenarios, but it is a change to the stock AI)


Soviet AI will intelligently move into East Poland sometimes.


Modability Features

Air at max range can have mod-able penalties (for both firing and fired at) for air at max range.


Evasion adjustments (fired at, out of supply, frozen, winter) can mod-ably cause roll modifiers for suppression (otherwise, these things have far too small of an effect on suppression fire, due to the suppression mechanics).


Political Events
- event probabilities
--- probability modifier for a region's garrison size
--- probability modifier for number of bombing hits against factories
- event prerequisites
--- Political events can occur more than once.
--- Possible to allow for more than one political event to occur in one turn.
--- Can prevent events from possibly occurring based on date.
--- Can prevent events from possibly occurring based on VPs.
--- Can prevent events from possibly occurring based on current gift status.
- event effects
--- ability to adjust resource Gift
--- ability to select whether surrender causes infra damage or not


Partition Agreement: when completed, all units in Belorussia will move to East Poland, and all units in Velikiye Luki will move to the Baltic States. It used to be just a fixed number of units, so mods that put more units in those regions would leave those additional units out of the occupation move.


Zero-pop regions can be mod-ably precluded from doing research. This helps Global Glory, where it forces the oil refining factories to produce supplies instead of being allowed to produce research.


Air moving across narrows capability added (sort of supported in v1.011, but with a bug allowing resources to also flow over narows).


Bug Fixes

damaged CAG trace to factory limited to range 20, like naval, instead of being able to trace to any factory anywhere


Damaged units can no longer trace to any factory then teleport to any factory for repair. Instead, if they can trace to any port/factory they can then teleport to any port/factory within a range of 18.


Arabia-Italian East Africa narrows will now act as an op-fire narrows from Arabia.


If England is German controlled before the French surrender, then English units will no longer retreat directly to England (which caused a "combat required" stuck situation).


If an event surrender (like Russian surrender in GG) occurs, couple of fixes like retreating supply units instead of letting them be captured. And leaving the nation "hostile" but not "at war", so captured factories are still at limited production and don't contribute population.


The airfield bombing defender adjustments (defense 15, or unmodified evasion for fighters) will now only apply in air-to-ground fire against air units, instead of also applying to ground-to-air fire against air units.


Damaged air units can no longer trace-to-factory by flying to a sea zone and then tracing to factory, they must fly to a friendly land zone then trace.


If a port-to-port naval move is stopped by FOW revelation, you will now be able to continue the move to a port instead of being stuck at sea.


An infantry that is moved by a heavy bomber in one turn, will no longer be unable to retreat in the following opposing turn as though it were dropped airborne.


A couple of memory leake/overwrite problems were fixed.


Fixed bug in Political Events Screen if you switch between scenarios that have different events, where the descriptions got muddled.

[MrQuiet]

It sure sounds like you have spent a lot of time on this game and for that I would like to say thanks.
I have a couple questions:
 
Did you change Japan surrender conditions (ie production point threshold) in stock scenarios??
Did you change Japan Starting Security in stock scenarios??
 
Thanks
I will be contacting you to help test.

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: MrQuiet
Did you change Japan surrender conditions (ie production point threshold) in stock scenarios??

Yes, all scenarios. The bomb must be dropped on a populated factory region of Japan AND the VPs of Japan at the end of that same WA turn must be less than 7.

Loophole closer: if Japan has no populated factory regions (e.g. factories already bombed out or population already irradiated), only requirement is that Japanese VPs is less than 7 and WA has bomb.

Some advocated a lower Japanese VP level, but I thought it best to take a smaller step since requiring dropping the bomb is itself a big change.

ORIGINAL: MrQuiet
Did you change Japan Starting Security in stock scenarios??

I plan to, but haven't made the change yet. Was waiting to see any other comments that pop up on the subject.