CWB Update
Hi All,
In our latest blog post we are shifting gears to the Civil War Battles series.
This series has seen some huge improvements over the last few years, and with that (the required adjustments "under the hood" so to speak) some unintended consequences can sometimes occur. A couple of those things for this engine are involving LOS and Fatigue Recovery.
For the LOS issue, changes were made to prevent a player from seeing what the line of sight was from an unoccupied hex. I.E. they had to have one of their units present on a hex to be able to have this info displayed...and this feature was with the Extreme Fog-of-War (EFOW) optional rule being selected. Well, we're human, and those of us on the testing team doing the testing use EFOW as our preferred method of play, so we failed to thoroughly check this using just regular FOW, and a problem did exist. This has lead us to take further steps to enhance our testing routines to hopefully prevent issues like this being released in the future.
Another item was fatigue recovery. This situation was brought to the fore as we addressed a legacy bug that when the Night Movement Fatigue optional rule was selected the "first" side in any given scenario would have 50 fatigue points assigned to their troops that moved in the dawn turn, even though night was done. A change was made to the code (and is still in effect) that now assigns fatigue to units immediately upon an action triggering it (ex. moving during a night turn, etc.) as opposed to queuing all of these up and applying them at the beginning of the following turn. This change also impacted when fatigue was recovered, which happened at the beginning of the next turn. While noticed, we did not get the documentation updated to reflect this new behavior. We have since revisited the situation and made further adjustments, being, fatigue is still applied immediately upon the action taking place, but we are reverting back to the original behavior that in order to be eligible to recover from fatigue a unit must not conduct any movements or be fired upon for one complete turn before the check is made - which then get's us back in alignment with the documentation, and also the desired method in which we want the game to operate.
Both of these issues have been resolved and we are now testing the fixes. Once we are satisfied that we do in fact have things nailed we will put out a round of updates for the series to get these fixes in play for everyone. There's been some other reports of adjustments needed for Forgotten Campaigns which will be included, as well as some PDT adjustments and other tweaks...so we'll be tackling all of that with the 4.01 round. However, we won't be pushing it out until we are confident we have these things nailed, so your patience would be greatly appreciated. :-)
And a little sneak peek of a new feature to be rolled out with the 4.01 updates as well - dynamic tool bars. Now you can use the "Filter" buttons to control which batch of buttons are displayed at any given time (or all at once). Focusing on Unit Commands, Map features, Highlighting, etc.
We have plans for the continued enhancement of the series as well, which we think you will be pleased with. We also have new content in development for this time period and hope to have that see the light of day in the not so distant future.
Game on!
Will the LOS fix be extended to the Napoleonic series? When?
With regards to the restore line LOS for “empty” hexes, I can see both sides of the coin here and therefore, making it an Optional rule would be my suggestion. Currently my cavalry and/or infantry in the advanced guard have the additional responsibility of searching for ground with good fields of fire… behind the lines, mounted field officers usually are used to find the best firing positions if needed. Under the current LOS rules you just need any unit on the field, including a single leader, to determine LOS from a hex… adds another realistic touch in my opinion.. just my 2 cents…..from an absolute fan of these CWB games, first exposed to this system with the very first version of the board game Terrible Swift Sword from SPI way back when. I still have that puppy somewhere around here : – )
Kudos on your customer service and the general improvement and support for all of the games in these different series. Your decision to continue to support games folks purchased earlier through JTS and HPS is a superb WDS management decision. It creates an immediate loyal customer base, and enhances my desire and presumably others’ to buy your future products. A couple of requests follow below.
Please continue to improve (1) AI and (2) graphics. I never understood why many of the old Talon Soft games had better graphics than the “newer” JTS/HPS games. (3) I understand you will restore line LOS for “empty” hexes, which, as noted by others above, is needed for artillery placement and, I would add, for planning ambushes and movements (out of the enemy’s sight). It is a huge component of what makes planning the battles for these games so enjoyable. Regarding my final request, I don’t know what others think, but I would very much welcome (4) the ability to slow down and/or an ability to pause battle replays. These always go by much too quickly. It is nearly impossible to see or digest the losses, or the number of battles actually taking place in a given turn. While some might prefer the current status as enhancing the fog of war; I think unit contact information in real life, with some minor delays, would be largely available to the immediate participants and the field officers as would a “sense” of the losses sustained (though probably not the precise numbers as state now unless these were very small). Admittedly, this same information would likely reach higher authorities, i.e., commands/headquarters, on a more delayed basis.
The fair use of the line of site when no unit is in the hex is to establish where to place cannon. Please return it to the game. Also a reachable hex function would be nice. The new “filter” function is great. Please keep improving the software I have been playing since Talon Software and the games just get better.
Like the look of the new toolbar features and filters. Good move. thanks
Leave a comment