Standing Orders

[pzgndr]

I had an epiphany of sorts the other day. In my pbem playtesting with human and AI opponents, I noted when attacked by AI that the game defaulted to Quick Combat even though I did not have that option enabled. I thought maybe I had introduced an error when implementing AI-AI chit combat but I verified the same behavior playtesting with v1.22.00.

So it dawned on me that it must be this way for pbem, since you cannot expect to be exchanging pbem battle files with the AI during the AI's turn. But the user manual does not make this clear, so I will add some clarifications. Bottom line is that players in pbem games with the Quick Combat option enabled should be using standing orders, but also in any pbem games with AI opponents at war with you regardless of the Quick Combat option choice. This is an important consideration for any smaller pbem group that chooses to have some AI players to help speed up games.

The good news is that with recent changes improving AI performance for selecting chits, committing the guard, fighting another day, etc., that it's OK to default to Quick Combat. Players just need to understand that. I did notice that the combat report did not show the human defender chit selection for standing orders, so I want to track that down before releasing v1.22.02.