This update has a huge number of changes, including the much anticipated pathfinder overhaul. After a significant amount of testing we feel this is ready, but would like to give Members a chance to look it over before we make it official. Remember this is still a beta, and any feedback will definitely be appreciated.
It is available in the Members Club. If you have a members account, and have registered Last Stand Arnhem, a link will be on your Members Home page under Downloads. If you don't have a members account, create one! It is free, it will keep track of all your Serial Numbers, and allow you to get additional content like this Public Beta!
Change History:
V5.60.02 – September 28, 2010
- Path Finder Overhaul
- The path finder has seen a major overhaul to improve its ability to successfully find a path through areas with blocking terrain and to evaluate long, complicated paths (such as across long bridges). For game performance reasons, paths are evaluated while the game continues to run, and long and / or complex paths may take up to a few seconds to complete. For a long move you may notice a brief delay between the time you issue the movement order and the time the unit actually starts to move.
- Battle Setup
- Fixed a bug where pre-battle deployment could be initialized with the wrong battle’s data, resulting in a ‘checkerboard’ of deployment zones around controlled Victory Locations.
- Fixed a bug with determining when a river crossing was required to move off a map or setup across a river.
- Extended cross-river setup zone restrictions to single battles. Previously this was determined only for Operations or Campaigns.
- Bridge Victory Locations now exert more influence on the shape and extent of entry setup zones, making them much less likely to change control due to entry setup zones.
- Bridges are no longer automatically unprimed at the start of a battle unless the Germans have lost control of all of the bridge’s VLs.
- Fixed a rare case where deploying teams in open ground would fail, even though the area was within a valid setup zone.
- Fixed a bug that allowed you to stack your vehicles on top of each other during setup. Sorry, the world will have to find another solution to its parking problems.
- Tactical Combat
- The pixel size of the Mini-Map is now scaled based on the size of the resolution of the game window and the size of the tactical map. For resolutions where x or y size is 800 or less, the mini-map is scaled to 4 pixels per mega-tile (24m) if the map is greater than 36 mega-tiles in size, 5 pixels/MT if the map is greater than 30 MT in size, or 6 pixels per MT otherwise. If both x and y resolution are greater than 800 pixels the mini-map is scaled to 5 pixels per MT if the map is greater than 31 MT, or 6 pixels per MT otherwise. For map makers, if your MMM file is scaled to 6 pixels per MT they will only ever be ‘squashed’, rather than ‘stretched’, so they should not look blocky regardless of the scaling.
- Fixed a bug where mini-map display of setup zones could be offset slightly from their actual location on the main map.
- Fixed a crash that could occur on the Nijmegen Bridge map when playing the game in 800x600 resolution and displaying the mini-map.
- Base number of rounds for ‘off-map’ mortar fire support reduced. Combined with the accuracy reduction in the data files, the overall punch of mortar support has been reduced.
- Vehicle crew members are now vulnerable to small arms fire when manning exposed weapons or when in an open topped vehicle fired on from a large height advantage at close range.
- Vehicles using the MOVE command will only use reverse for short moves, or when there is a known enemy to keep the front armor towards.
- Vehicles using SNEAK will no longer abort their move when spotting a new enemy unless they are moving towards a known enemy.
- Reduced the chance for non-penetrating hits to cause internal damage or crew casualties to vehicles.
- Vehicle movement speed near / through trees is now much slower, with a higher bog chance but a lower chance of immobilization.
- Vehicles that are bogged or mired move more slowly.
- Bailed out crews now continue to rout towards the home map edge, rather than stop and stand, if they are unable to rout off the map on their first attempt.
- Routing teams can no longer capture territory or Victory Locations.
- Light armored vehicles and open topped vehicles now more vulnerable to infantry close assault.
- Infantry teams with secondary weapons effective against vehicles (demo charge, gammon bombs) now employ them when close assaulting a vehicle.
- Infantry close assaulting a vehicle has an increased chance to hit.
- Line of Sight for teams manning heavy machine guns or mortars is now always traced from the team’s gunner.
- Pinned or Cowered soldiers now prefer crawling to standing when moving.
- Soldiers with a weapon requiring a setup time will only move to a new location if it is rated significantly better than their current location.
- Fixed vehicles no longer pivot or move a very small distance right after you hit ‘Begin’ to start a battle.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when a weapon with a very small blast radius was fired (Stuart V SP ammo is the only such case in LSA)
- Fixed a case where the “We can’t hurt that” message was displayed when targeting infantry in heavy cover.
- Fixed case where fire orders could be cancelled when the option “Always See Enemy” was on but the target was considered to be concealed still.
- AI
- Deployment of infantry teams more heavily favors building edges facing towards the enemy.
- Deployment of AT guns now favors areas with a moderate field of fire, rather than a very restricted field of fire.
- Reduced chance that AI will decide to move a team while the AI has decided to defend.
- The AI is more likely to offer a cease fire when close to a Force Morale failure.
- The AI is more likely to accept a cease fire offer if no Victory Locations have changed hands in some time.
- Fixed a case where AI player could target a human player’s team that was in line of sight but not yet spotted.
- Battle Group Screen
- Slots available to the reserve battle group are now allocated into slots not available to the primary battle group first, assuming the primary battle group has a platoon of the correct type which does not already have the maximum number of slots. If there are no such slots the primary and reserve battle group will both be able to fill some slot(s).
- Added the text “RES” to the team icon for teams that are on loan from the reserve battle group.
- Strategic Screen
- Front line battle group name (in info banner area) properly updated when you issue a Relieve order.
- Fixed a bug that could cause a hang when a valid location for a reinforcing battle group could not be found.
- Fixed a bug that could show the wrong supply level for a battle group stacked with a friendly airborne battle group when the airborne battle group was on limited supply due to the automatic airborne supply level for the first few days. NOTE: Incoming supply display still only reflects the state of incoming supply at the start of the current strategic turn.
- When merging two battle groups, the absorbed battle group now returns all active teams to its Force Pool before being absorbed, recovering whatever points it can get back for returning those teams. The total purchase points from the absorbed battle group are then transferred to the absorbing battle group.
- Initial purchase point allotment for all battle groups increased slightly, based on the number and type of teams they might be expected to loan while in reserve.
- Static Troops are now immediately absorbed into friendly battle groups when a friendly battle group starts the game, or enters the strategic map, on the same map as the Static Troops.
- Debrief Screen
- For single battles: If the battle ends because a bridge was blown, victory is determined by the map and VL control at the moment the battle ended, rather than granting all map control to the side that was trying to capture the bridge. NOTE: This is for single battles only.
- Non-tank vehicles (halftracks, armored cars, etc) now count as vehicle kills, not tank kills.
- Fixed a bug where the Axis side could be incorrectly granted control over neutral ground adjacent to Axis controlled ground during post-battle calculations.
- Scenario Editor
- Fixed a crash that could occur when the game was running in full screen mode if you loaded a battle, operation, or campaign that did not use all possible dates in the game, then minimized and restored the game window.
- Fixed a bug where the editor could give incorrect error messages when you tried to save a valid scenario file if you had previously played a battle, operation, or campaign before entering the Scenario Editor.
- Data File Changes
- Campaign.txt: Fixed incorrect (blank) entry in Veghel Bridge data that could cause incorrect calculation of the river line for this map.
- AlsTeams.txt: Corrected White, Humber, and Daimler Scout / Armored cars that were set to SAI unit type 10 (halftrack) to SAI unit type 9 (armored car) for correct path finder behavior.
- AxsTeams.txt: Corrected Sdkfz 250/9 halftrack to SAI unit type 10 (halftrack) from SAI unit type 9 (armored car) for correct path finder behavior.
- Elements.txt: Added a new column ‘Foliage’. This column is for terrain elements that represent the foliage around the central trunk of a tree. Elements coded with ‘foliage’ set to 1 will be scaled to the height of the tree they are adjacent to.
- Elements.txt: Increased visual hindrance and cover values for all foliage elements. Line of sight is blocked much quicker through woods, and soldiers are harder to hit in woods.
- Elements.txt: “Field” element now rubbles to “Shellhole”.
- Elements.txt: “Sandbag” element now rubbles to ‘Debris” instead of “Brick Wall”.
- Vehicles.txt: Corrected fire angles for Pz III turret weapons and Sdkfz 250/9 turret weapons.
- Weapons.txt: German 5cm and 8cm mortar accuracy reduced to match all other mortars.
- Weapons.txt: Accuracy of ‘off-map’ mortar fire support reduced to match all other mortars.
- Stock Scenarios
- Last Stand Arnhem Operation: Added KG Brinkmann to German forces present on the first turn.
- Additional items
- Numerous map fixes. All 64 maps triple-checked for elevation issues. Other issues addressed pertained to map coding, RFM and art issues. A few known issues will be addressed in the next update.
- Corrected several misspellings to battle briefings and battle names.
- A few strat map image improvements.
- Corrected echelon symbols on three strat BG icons.
- Fixed error where sandbags rubbled to "brick wall" element instead of "debris" element.
- Fixed campaign.txt co-ordinates where Best bridge map where the destroyed bridge graphic was off by one pixel.
