Napoleonic Battles 4.02 Preview

Greetings,

We've been hopping with a variety of projects here and we wanted to take an opportunity to share some of the new changes coming in the next round for the Napoleonic Battles series of games. We believe you will be very pleased with what is coming down the road...

This round of updates brings a mixture of changes which enhance game play. Some minor, some we consider major... first off some minor ones:

• Added "Ask Before Activating AI" prompt when the Toolbar button is depressed.
• Adjusted Column Pass Through Fire rule to apply to units in Square formation as well.
• Adjusted Arrival Check so probability is increased by 1% for each turn a unit does not arrive up to an additional 20% chance.
• Adjusted the way Scheduled Reinforcements are displayed. With FOW in effect, instead of (??) being displayed as the probability, a rating will be listed - 'Low' (1-33%), 'Med.' (34-66%) and 'High' (67-100%).

Then some changes on how things are displayed within the game. Some of these items have been requested by customers mailing in, some where enhancements driven by the Dev team:

• Added Alternative Outline Color menu option to the Settings menu. When selected this will place a white outline around each hex.
• Added Alternative Contour Color menu option to the Settings menu. When selected the contour lines will be displayed in green instead of brown.
• Added support for full graphics file sets to the Snow and Frozen directories.
• New "high res" 2DSymbols files for the Standard images (NATO style). (Pictured below)
• Adjusted Highlight Organization. Now, when a unit is selected both it and it's chain of command are highlighted. Example: selecting a Brigade will also highlight the Division, Corps, Wing and Army commanders in that chain of command. The higher command will use a different color of highlighting (only in 2D views).

Our programmer for this series, Henrik, wanted to implement this change to better reflect skirmisher tactics after reading some period accounts:

• Adjusted Skirmisher firing, if all firing units are skirmishers then possibility for leader casualties is doubled.

The cost of "leading from the front" just got higher!

We also made some bigger changes which will address some common practices many players use in the system, address deficiencies of the turn based model, or just make it easier to play the games.

1) We've added a new Range Check Tool that you can use to help determine good places to deploy your artillery when establishing a defensive position, or maybe to check the distance to calculate march time between two points. To use you simply Shift+click to have the distance from the current hotspot displayed in the clicked hex. Display will disappear when the mouse button is released. This check can be made regardless if a hex is occupied or not.

 2) Added 3 hex "leash" for skirmishers from non light/guard units or routed units.

This one will take some getting used to for veteran players, but we feel it has been long overdue and will give a more accurate representation of the use of the skirmish companies from the standard line battalions.

3) Adjusted LOS calculation routines. After each movement LOS is recalculated for the moving unit(s). If new units are detected within 3 hexes they will be displayed. If new units are detected within a 4-6 hex distance a (?) will be displayed. If the moving unit is a Supply Wagon or Routed unit then it will only detect up to 3 hexes, and only a (?) will be displayed. Again, the detected units must be in the New LOS, not in concealed terrain which blocks LOS.

Gone are the days of marching down a road only to bump into an enemy unit that you should have been able to see upon approach...

4)  Adjusted Column Movement feature (using the Atl + Right Click to move entire commands at once.) Changes include:

• Prioritize adjacent units on road first before selecting adjacent units on the wayside.
• Will not fail if there is a unit from a different org stacked with valid units, so you can ALT move through own units.
• Will allow movement of multiple units in a hex at once if not on a road.
• Will keep leaders in a stack with other valid units.

For those who have not used this command before, it provides the ability to move an entire command - be it a brigade, division, corps or even an entire army group - down a road with a single set of commands... extremely useful when bringing reinforcements up to the front!

And this is my personal favorite...

5) Added new Movement By Command function, which enables an entire brigade, deployed in Line, to be moved with a single set of commands. With battalions in a cohesive line, using the Alt+right-click command, the entire brigade can be moved at once!

We're also going back into the first four games of the series that had some negative impacts from later PDT changes. For example, all cavalry over stacking issues have been addressed in these titles, so no cavalry unit is on the map or in the reinforcement schedule that will arrive with greater than 600 troopers. The entire command is still present, a squadron, or two, have been deployed in each case to resolve the over stacking issue...so as losses occur they can be recombined later if desired.

Standardization of the scenario descriptions continues, with two more games being addressed for this round. Hopefully by the 4.03 round we will have all of those done, but with so many new features we did not want to hold up this round of updates.

We haven't put the wraps on this round of changes yet either, so there may be more goodness to come before we close them out. Estimated time of public release is late September at this point...stay tuned!

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As we wrap up, we want to take this opportunity to remind everyone about the newly launched "Official" WDS Forums - https://forum.wargameds.com/ - head on over and join in the discussions, or pick up a new PBEM opponent... while still quite new there is a good bit going on to investigate!

And that's a wrap for this week...stay tuned though, as we have a lot of good content coming over the next few months!