Summary: Cottonbalers campaign was infantry focused so armor was given less love. Many changes for armor 2.0 in support of forthcoming DLC. Applies to Cottonbalers as well. While we aren’t Combat Mission or Steel Panthers yet in our armor modeling we think we now have a reasonable model ;:-) Let us know!
no more annoying you take the first shot with your tank yet they end up firing first ! (Patrick, Luke) - Unlike small arms fire where you are working to be the first to build up sufficient Volume of Fire (i.e. win initiative) hard target combat is single shot. So if you fire first first, well you fire first! Simple!
Non Turreted (SPGun and ATGuns etc):
Now have a very restricted 60 degree arcs of fire (vs old 180)
They cannot OpFire outside this arc! -or with a normal player directed fire for that matter. But, of course, you can pay order and change facing to then normal fire in a different arc.
Turreted:
also have a 60 degree restricted arc of fire for opfire but can still opfire outside this arc but with a severe penalty - namely -60% chance to hit, added to the -30% already for firing at a, by definition, moving opfire target means net penalty -90% (before things like XP can kick in) to opfire at target moving outside forward 60 degree arc.
Minor (for now): Turreted normal fire (not opfire) now has 360 degree arc - instead of the former 180 degrees. Meaning no human rotation to fire shot required. So no order paid up front. Nonetheless I still auto rotate the tank (free as part of shoot cost) afterwards as heuristically what player would most likely want (face threat). This is all paving the way for armor 3.0 worrying about distinct turret vs hull facings. In that future you could turret fire outside of the front arc and not turn the hull if you wanted. But not yet!
ALREADY TRUE in 1.0:
Turretless vehicles cannot return fire if attacker not in firing arc (Luke) -
Range does effect chance to hit for hard (Luke)
Opfire has the hard target moving-30% penalty intrinsically due to moving (Luke)
Infantry and weapon teams still have 180 degrees firing arc for normal and opfire pretty flexible.
Target acquired (Luke) -repeated shots at same target (without shifting targets) get an ‘acquired’ to hit bonus.
Hard Attacks also generate Suppression on ATGuns and other open guns (Luke) - i.e. AT guns and howitzers in the field get hit both by hard effects (likely destroy on hit) and soft. Not true yet against hard targets as there is no Suppression model for them right now.
ATGuns easier to destroy: AT Guns now treated as hard targets when appropriate (Luke) - when attacked by a hard weapon system like a tank cannon. In other words they can now be physically destroyed by a hard shot. Same for field artillery. If such open guns are attack by soft weapon units like infantry they are still treated as soft target (suppression etc). Before this when ATGuns were simply soft targets they were hard to destroy even by repeated tank fire. This is more realistic as well as less frustrating. Think of such open guns as like a tank cannon but with no armor (well except for gun shield in some cases which was usually fairly weak (and I model very lightly).
ATGuns and Howitzer (“Open Guns”) obey restricted firing arc rules like vehicles (Luke) - that is if you shoot at one outside its front arc it won’t respond with fire (but will turn to face you after you shot if it survives).
Leader and XP bonuses reduced for hard attack “to hit” calculation in hard target attacks (Luke) - the percents were too overpowered when transferred without change from soft target firefights focused on suppression to chances to hit. The old model was 10% times Bolstering leader stars plus 10% times the number of combat unit (e.g. tank) stars plus a leader base of 25%. So a 3 star leader with a 3 start tank was 60% add to hit. Basically completely canceling the high firing out of firing arc penalty (e.g. during opfire). So fine for Suppression firefights but not to hit.These mods have been halved with leader bolstering gives a base 10% before any adds instead of base 25%. Part of me wanted to give that base perc to crew (arguably matters more in reality for firing then the leader) but wanted to keep the leadership emphasis.. Perhaps to a minor fault here.
Interface support for showing soft vs hard weapon ranges for armor: - many German tanks for example have greater ranges for their MGs than Cannon.
Recon by Fire button will now allow showing hard vs soft ranges if differ for armor (Luke) - specifically if soft is > than hard (e.g. many German tanks). If hard > soft then superfluous since a cannon will still act vs soft targets(i.e. Use HE; yes I imagine there are exceptions to handle someday ;-) ).
Armor info shows both soft and hard weapon ranges now (Luke)
Artillery now has penetration values by range if direct fired at a hard target (Luke)- e.g. an assault gun (e.g. StuH 42) or field piece directly firing at a hard target. Based on Panzer War.
Barrages similarly now have more accurate penetration value from indirect fire (Luke) - from Panzer War
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Barrages now only have a 5% chance of hitting a hard target in a hex they hit (Luke) - and if they are smoke treated as 0% (since not going to penetrate and best not to mislead the player).
Armor no longer turns to face the direction of a barrage (Luke) - clever players were manipulating poor little AI with (e.g. get that Tiger to change facing). Nor does it armor react to say reveal of an MG. Probably should refine for Half Tracks etcs
Armor no longer changes facing due to shock (Patrick, Luke) - it gave armor good opfire (even Self Propelled Guns with no turrets) when normally they wouldn’t get (or with a severe penalty).
Better 100% vs 0% percent ‘donuts’ (Luke) -prior confusingly implied a chance for % (this was a GUI hack at the time to avoid a worse approach).
Other
Moderate smoke indicated in mini HUD on hex map (Luke)- before only heavy was
Bug Fixes
Soft error at end of scenarios early in campaigns: “lkup_tag_by_scen failed for scen…and tag None” (Martin, Luke) -happen after scen 6 in inter scenario phase as well as during and after bootcamp.
soft error: lkup_tag_by_scen failed for scen…and tag None”(Luke)
Tanks had stopped using main gun on soft targets and were only using MGs (Alan, Patrick, Luke)- fixed
Deflected were being reported as “missed”! (Luke)
Crash: Low level save game load bug with pointers "Non UnitI passed for …” (Luke)
Crash: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'update_info_BannerSpriteIs' (Martin, Luke)
'>=' not supported between instances of 'NoneType' and 'int' (Martin, Luke) -During load of save game.
Scenario 21 - Eagle’s Nest.(Allen) German ghost units now trigger crows before they depart, evading a possible issue with no commands being triggered. This will hopefully also confuse the hell out of Luke.
Training 04 - Adjusted images and text for Line of Sight. (Patrick and Allen)
Typo (‘Failure a Mission’) in the Help file now fixed. (Allen and FlemishMerc)
StuH weapon corrected from howitzer 105mm to 105mm_L28 (Patrick, Luke)
Flags c08- Crash when a certain Italian Bark came up. (Allen and Luke)
'<' not supported between instances of 'NoneType' and 'int' (Alan, Luke)
Vehicle leaders firing arcs were erroneously being considered for determining ‘targeted hexes’ (e.g. orange) (Patrick, Luke)
Erroneous “Morale Check” messages during Support requests (Luke)
Removed misleading spam about not being able to shoot at buttoned up vehicle leaders
Crash: 'PLInterScenarioModel' object has no attribute 'CUI_p'(luke)- crash would occupy if trying to give a unit a replacement in the interscenario Aid View. (due to recent armor 2.0 changes.. Don’t ask ;-) )
“Sgt” was erroneously showing up in leader names (Henk, Luke)
Long names like Sgt Grant acting would break dialog boxes (Luke) - fixed
Crash: tuple' object has no attribute 'get_size' (Luke)
Player Round Flags were not updating for changing Axis Nationalities across scenarios (Luke)- e.g. if prior was Vichy would stay Vichyfor Italians AI
