War in the West v1.00.48beta available for testing

[Joel Billings]

Sorry, I forgot to report back that it appears that .37 is not going to be made official. I don't yet know about .44, but I do know that we've given Matrix a 1.00.48 version and we would like to get it out this week as a public beta. It's possible that .44 might become official, or it might wait to .48. There haven't been a lot of changes since .44 so it's possible that .48 can be given a short public beta and then be made official. It's hard to say.

As for starting a new game, it really depends. If you plan on playing a game with the East Front Option on, then you want to wait until .44, or even better .48. By .44 we had significantly improved the realism/balance of the East Front option, forcing the Germans to send forces East periodically to stem the Soviets as they did historically. It's clear now that the earlier versions of the game were too lenient and allowed the Germans to stand pat in the East or even withdraw some units without paying a price. By .44 this is much better, and .48 made a few minor tweaks to make it a little better. By .48 we are standing pat on this until we get a lot more feedback. If you are not playing with the East Front option, then there's less reason to wait, although .44 did have a number of balance improvements so we're anxious to get an official version out in the next few weeks. If you're playing the 43 campaign, .44 added a significant number of men to the Allied manpower pools, so that alone would be reason to wait to start a 43 campaign. One last thing, here's my favorite recently added new feature that Pavel added to .48:

1. New Feature (section 26.3.6) - Air Weather Forecasts - On the weather screen you will see two dates at the top, the current date on the left and the next turn’s date on the right. When you select the next turn’s date, you will see the forecast air weather for that turn. The Axis have no early forecast information on Polar Maritime, Tropical Maritime, and Polar Continental fronts until they have arrived on the map. The Allies have no early forecast information on Polar Continental fronts. For these fronts without early information, they must already be on the map before they are included in the next turn’s forecast. The forecast is just that, an estimate of where the fronts will go, along with the knowledge of the dominating weather that will exist in each climate zone during the next turn. There are no forecasts for ground conditions.

[Gerry Edwards]

New beta available for testing. Please see the first post for the change list and let us know of any issues you might encounter.

[loki100]

thanks for this, the changes look good. How safe is it to apply this patch to an existing game?

Not the technical save stuff but I'm in a PBEM with the EF box on and just entering 1945. For good or ill I'd not like to see my opponent's position just crumble when they've been managing the EF up to this point under the .44 rules. I'm just wondering if we are so late into our game that the scope to redeem any impact is too limited?

[Joel Billings]

It very much depends on what versions you've been using up to this point. The impact of moving units between fronts (both ways) is more important that it was back in 1.00.29, and somewhat more important than some of the later versions (but not different from 1.00.44). It's very hard to say because historically the German position did crumble in the East in 1945, and that even after major forces were sent east after the Battle of the Bulge. If you've been playing under .44 for some time, then .48 is not going to make a huge difference. Although the front line gets smaller as the front line moves west, their are offsets to this benefit for the Germans. The really bad weather doesn't kick in anymore and Soviet Potential gets some bonuses, so things can develop as they did historically. However these have been in at some level for awhile now, with just some tweaking going on. My suggestion is if you are at .44, you should move to .48 (certainly if you play the AI, where a major bug was fixed in AI air transport missions that caused the combat glitch, but even in 2-player game). It won't impact your game very much, and you should enjoy using the new weather forecast feature. Of course I'm biased as I'd like to see lots of players trying the public beta as we want it to become official within the next few weeks. Hope that helps.

In some ways the Eastern Front is like a battleship starting a turn. It takes a long time for the change in course to be noticed, but once it does it also takes a long time to stop it. The good news is that we think the EF option will correctly put more pressure on the German player in the future, certainly much more than it did at release of the game.

[loki100]

thanks yes, I'll see what my opponent says but it seems less disruptive than I was afraid of. I think we've played most of the game under .44, certainly since we started into 1944

[rlp2]

Beta installer (WitW v48) loaded with No problems.

Great Job

[jhdeerslayer]

I don't see the second date in my game for air weather.   I updated with AI game in progress if that matters:
 
. New Feature (section 26.3.6) - Air Weather Forecasts - On the weather screen you will see two dates at the top, the current date on the left and the next turn’s date on the right. When you select the next turn’s date, you will see the forecast air weather for that turn. The Axis have no early forecast information on Polar Maritime, Tropical Maritime, and Polar Continental fronts until they have arrived on the map. The Allies have no early forecast information on Polar Continental fronts. For these fronts without early information, they must already be on the map before they are included in the next turn’s forecast. The forecast is just that, an estimate of where the fronts will go, along with the knowledge of the dominating weather that will exist in each climate zone during the next turn. There are no forecasts for ground conditions.

[Helpless]

I don't see the second date in my game for air weather.   I updated with AI game in progress if that matters:

Hmm.. I think it was released for the expansion testers only.

[Joel Billings]

ORIGINAL: Deerslayer

I don't see the second date in my game for air weather.   I updated with AI game in progress if that matters:

. New Feature (section 26.3.6) - Air Weather Forecasts - On the weather screen you will see two dates at the top, the current date on the left and the next turn’s date on the right. When you select the next turn’s date, you will see the forecast air weather for that turn. The Axis have no early forecast information on Polar Maritime, Tropical Maritime, and Polar Continental fronts until they have arrived on the map. The Allies have no early forecast information on Polar Continental fronts. For these fronts without early information, they must already be on the map before they are included in the next turn’s forecast. The forecast is just that, an estimate of where the fronts will go, along with the knowledge of the dominating weather that will exist in each climate zone during the next turn. There are no forecasts for ground conditions.

I just updated the first post with this note: --- This item was mistakenly included in the readme notes for this 1.00.48 version. It's actually only hooked up for those players testing the Torch expansion as it was a new element that we are still testing. Our plan is to make this available to all WitW owners in a future version, and it's a case of a new feature being added to the basic engine due in large part to work going on for the Torch expansion. Sorry for the premature announcement of this feature.

[zakblood]

it happens, thanks for the update anyway as most will get the update / dlc anyway

[KenchiSulla]

I've recently installed the beta patch after leaving the game for a while. Playing against the AI as the Germans and the game is fun to play! Eastern front needs to be managed fairly carefully now and I wonder how it will play out later..

AI seems a bit passive. I've retreated up to Napoli but it is not following, sticking to Sicily bombing airfields and ports in the Southern half of Italy (turn 10)