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David Heath -> Flashpoint Germany v1.02 Now Available (4/6/2005 7:32:14 AM)
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Hi Guys
The latest v1.02 of Flashpoint patch. As always please let us know what you think.
New and Improved Features:
• AI. There is now a concept of a ‘desperation point’ which is triggered
for the AI player when it is running out of time or resources and needs
to mount a final big push to win. When desperate the AI will become much
more likely to use nuclear weapons, aggressively launch air strikes, use
arty at 3x and launch a spoiling attack on the ground if it had
previously been on the defensive.
• AI. Helicopter and other support units that arrive as reinforcements
during a game are now normally moved immediately to the vicinity of
friendly supreme HQ. They are more likely to go on the hunt for likely
enemy targets as well during an AI planning cycle.
• AI. As a personal favour to the esteemed Belphegor the game will no
longer pass command to a recce unit in the event of HQ destruction
unless there are no more suitable (line or better) units left.
• AI. Multiple small changes have been made to the AI to sharpen up the
play value in situations where it was reported to be somewhat lacking.
More feedback please!
• Mechanics. Off-map artillery never suffered any losses no matter how
much they were used. Now each individual artillery step takes a chance
of loss proportionate to the general electronic warfare intensity (a
proxy for how much interest and support is being shown by your superiors
in your battle) each time it fires and the quantity of enemy assets put
on counterbattery. The base loss rate of 1% (low EW intensity) to 3%
(high EW intensity) per tube per firing impulse is increased by an
additional 1% for every 20 enemy off-map steps currently having
counterbattery orders. These rates may sound low but they will inflict
substantial losses over the length of any intensive scenario.
• UI. The hint that appears over an enemy unit when the mouse hovers
there no longer reports the formal unit name but rather a spotting
report with an estimate of the distribution of vehicle types in the
unit. For example, a tank company with 10 T-80s might be reported as
having anywhere from 7 to 13 MBTs. This will be useful for those playing
with maximum fog of war who want some sort of actionable spotting report.
• UI. A brief ‘sliding’ Unit movement effect has been introduced to make
it easier to see which unit just moved from where during turn resolution.
• UI. The separate announcements that used to be made regarding unit
arrivals as reinforcements and withdrawals have now been consolidated
into just one list per side per turn.
• UI. Counter Silhouettes. There are now two sets of unit counter
silhouettes. You will be able to switch back and forth between the
existing set (default) and a new image file with 178 individual
profiles. Look for the menu item “Game/Use Generic Silhouettes”. When
checked the original set will be used, when unchecked it will use the
new set contained in the file “FPG Unit Counters2.bml”. The setting will
be remembered from game to game.
• UI. Added unit counter silhouette and badge graphics to the Unit
Inspector so that users can further change them if they like. The unit
counter silhouette must be 45 by 25 pixels and the bottom left corner
pixel is the “transparent” color. The unit badge graphic is 150 x 38
pixels and does not have a transparent color. These can be changed for
the duration of the scenario or permanently. Note: Keep a copy of the
original FPG Unit Counters2.bml and FPG Unit Badges.bml files
respectively in case you want to restore the original graphics.
• UI. As the game played and losses mounted the surviving units are
resubordinated as needed to maintain some continuity to the chain of
command. Drastic losses can lead to a significantly changed Chain of
Command tree that is hard to read in the Staff Diary after the game is
over. New in version 1.02 the original chain of command will be
preserved so that the staff Diary will show it again as originally laid
out to make inspection at this stage easier.
• UI. Tac Ops Center Diary. The many “Activity resolution for the
period…” statements are now filtered out of the unit diaries for
clarity. All the other entries are time stamped anyway so they were
redundant.
• UI. When one or more attacking jets are shot down there will be a
‘combat hint’ announcement if combat hints are enabled.
• UI. When bombing completely destroyed a unit it was reported to have
been bombed “off map” rather than in the actual target location.
• UI. The Butchers Bill that appears at the end of the Staff Diary for
the game post-mortem contains a list of platforms together with the
number of starting and surviving steps. The platform portion of this
list is now sorted alphabetically which makes it much more readable.
• UI. The caption at the bottom of the unit silhouette counter is drawn
in an 8 point Arial font. It will be scaled back to 7 or even 6 points
to better accommodate the increasing width of the caption in the future.
• UI. Keypad number keys now scroll main map around in ‘auto repeat
mode” if keys are held down long enough. The central “5” key centers map
on cursor if possible.
• Scenario Editor. The “Export to CSV” function was exporting unit tags
in the format “1/1” in a way that Excel would interpret it as “Jan 1” by
default. To help fix this a leading space is appended to each Unit Tag
so that “ 1/1” is sent. Excel will interpret this correctly. When the
file is reimported back into Flashpoint any leading or trailing spaces
in the Unit Tag are stripped off. (When manually editing the Unit Tags
in Excel, a leading space is not required to be added or preserved –
this change is just made for the FPG -> Excel leg of the job.)
• Scenario Editor. The space allowed for editing the Unit Icon Tags was
too small. The caption has been changed from “Icon Tags (4):” just to
“Tags (4):” and the editor widened to 57 pixels.
• Database. Added Towing Capacity (in tons) field to Platforms data table.
• Database. Added new unit: “SH2-BMD” which is the HQ element of a
Soviet Airborne Infantry Battalion.
Fixes:
• AI. The AI would sometimes go into an endless loop when dealing with a
group composed entirely of recon units. Fixed.
• Mechanics. On rare occasions during turn resolution the game queue
event processor would miss the end of turn event and continue merrily on
all the way to end of the game. The turn progress bar would stop
updating and the player could not recover control. The situation that
gave rise to this has been found and repaired.
• Mechanics. Sometimes the turn resolution would be cut short for no
apparent reason and then have to be run again to progress to the proper
game time. This was because the master game event queue was processing a
second ‘Get Player Orders’ event in certain cases. This was unwanted and
has been removed. .
• UI. Scenario Editor. The ‘Ad Hoc Editor’ button in version 1.01 was
directing the user to the full extended editor in error. Fixed.
• Scenario Editor. The default ‘% Starting Supply’ for NATO on map
forces was only 25% while the others were all 100%. The initial default
value has been changed to 100% across the board.
• Scenario Editor. When extracting units from the database, selecting a
supporting off-map force would then wipe out the default starting
locations for the on-map force! Fixed.
• UI. The background of the various animations was being lifted from the
wrong part of the screen when the unit info panel was on the left hand
side.
• UI. Sometimes in a PBEM or reloaded saved game a Mission Briefing from
a previous scenario would be displayed instead of the current one. Fixed.
• UI. When a bridge is blown the bridge graphic will be removed
appropriately in all cases.
• UI. Unit Inspector. Scroll through some units in the Unit Inspector
then hit Proceed button and be told that a valid Platform type is not
recognized. E.g. “Sir, subunit type “M1A1” is not recognized!”. The
database filter condition causing this has been amended and fixed.
• UI. When giving unit orders “P” was the hotkey for both Proceed and
Show Path. “C” was the hotkey for both Cancel and Show % Coverage.
Confusion! The Cancel and Proceed button shortcuts have been removed.
• UI. Some of the interrelationships between the various map overlays
were not painting correctly in all cases. This has been sorted out and
fixed.
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