Including Training, Sending Back Damaged Or Excess Elements, Converting Support Squads and Adjusting Morale and Experience) from the Ground Up
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New features 1. Reworked ground element upgrade, swap and replacement formulas (including training, sending back damaged or excess elements, converting support squads and adjusting morale and experience) from the ground up. It should result in better utilization of ground pools and choosing better models on upgrade or swap, prioritizing units in the rear over those on the front. Also, it should prevent units on the front from being starved of replacements, by reserving part of manpower, armaments and equipment pools for their use. Refit replacement segment was split into two parts, A and B. In part A only combat units on refit and support units attached to them get replacements. They have a chance to use more manpower, armaments and equipment than their numbers suggest. In part B the units that are considered to be always on refit (like HQs with support units attached to them, airbases and rail construction units) get replacements. This allows the player to better control the units that get replacements, where previously most of the available manpower was used on keeping the HQs up to strength, while combat units were sucked dry. The logistics phase log now gives a much better overview of replacements process. 2. When a new game is started, MAX TOE of human player’s HQs, airbases and construction units is set to their current TOE percentage plus 1. Players are free to adjust the numbers as they see fit. This is to prevent sucking nearly all available manpower and armaments to understrength HQ units, as defined by the scenario designers, which is especially important for the player going second, who had no control over MAX TOEs before his first full logistics phase. 3. Unit slot matching to TOE slots was vastly improved, and is now able to cope with certain variants of historical unit composition that differ from TOE composition, without immediately sending unmatched elements back to the pool. Please note that in time the unit will slowly transform to match TOE, this is inevitable. The improvement is in the fact that units will be quicker to request newly introduced elements and will not send back unmatched elements if some other elements of the same type are understrength. 4. Changed what the Hiwi number means. It now represents the number of core elements using Hiwi manpower, instead of representing additional elements using Hiwi manpower. Surplus Hiwis will be returned to pool whenever detected, for example when loading saves started under older version of the game. 5. Reworked aircraft upgrade and swap procedure from the ground up. It should result in better utilization of air pools and choose better models on upgrade or swap, prioritizing groups in reserve or the rear over those on the front. 6. It is now possible to import ground elements and aircraft from the same country’s pool (this is called a conversion). This is enabled for both sides, Axis and Soviet. It may be used to represent the process of upgrading older tanks with extra armor plates or new guns, or the process of adding (or even removing) a few weapons to rifle squads, without having to build them again from scratch and pay full cost. It is also possible to use this function to convert captured equipment to its native equivalent to better fit historical unit OBs, wherever such equivalents exist. Most of the Soviet antitank guns, common artillery, mortars and some tanks have their equivalent in each of the Axis countries’ equipment databases. This feature helps to reduce huge armament pool drain at certain dates, which caused problems with reinforcing units. Convertible infantry squads can be upgraded “in place”, that is immediately in the unit without sending old elements to the pool, and taking new elements from the pool or building them. 7. Added editable “import cost” attribute to ground elements and aircraft. It may be positive or negative and represents the cost (when positive) or returns (when negative) in armament points to import or convert one ground element or aircraft. Positive values may be used to simulate adding new weapons or upgrading structure of an existing item (like fitting a tank with armor plates). Negative values may be used to simulate removing some weapons of an existing item (like when reducing 12man rifle squads to 10man rifle squads). 8. Added editable “minimum imports” attribute to ground elements and aircraft. It may be used to force the import of at least the specified number of elements or aircraft, provided they exist in the source pool, overriding import percentage (for example 5% from 10 is 0, but with minimum imports set to 1, one element or aircraft would be imported anyway). 9. Added editable “import percentage” attribute to ground elements and aircraft. It may be used to override default values of 5% for imports and 10% for conversions by any value in range from 1% to 100%. Import percentage determines how many % of the source pool are imported or converted each turn. 10. Added editable “build flags” attribute to ground elements and aircraft. It may be used to specify elements as “no autobuild” (when set to 1) or “lendlease” (when set to 2). “No autobuild” is designed to replace using build cost of 9999 to disable building of autoproduced equipment. “Lendlease” is designed to replace using build cost of 0 to prevent paying for production of lendlease equipment. Both of these values allow specifying proper build cost for those elements and getting proper gains from scrapping. Lendlease aircraft also have slightly better dynamic reliability. 11. Added editable “scrap type” attribute to ground elements and aircraft. It may be used to change the default scrap policy of scrapping ground elements 1 year after their end date, and no scrapping at all for aircraft. Scrap type 255 means no scrapping at all. Scrap type 254 means instant scrapping, immediately after end date. Scrap type in range from 1 to 253 means scrapping that many years after end date. This value allows specifying proper end dates for older equipment, which in turn affects upgrade and swapping procedures, as the routines are able to determine that given equipment should not be used. 12. Added editable “factory upgrade” attribute to ground elements and aircraft. It may be used to specify different upgrade path for factories that produce given equipment, from equipment “field” upgrades, which are now reserved for telling the upgrade and swap procedures what successor given equipment should have. If not specified (like in case of games started under older versions of the game), the default value of factory upgrade is its normal upgrade for vehicles and aircraft and no upgrade for autoproduced elements. 13. Added editable “TOE update” attribute to ground elements. If set to “yes”, each occurrence of given element in TOEs will be replaced by its upgrade element after this element’s end date and the upgrade element’s start date. It may be used to help with upgrading certain elements that change their type or class. 14. Added editable “initial build” attribute to ground elements. It may be used to force the game to build a number of autoproduced elements, even if there is no demand yet. This helps to kick start upgrades. 15. Added editable “turn build limit” and “turn build percentage” attributes to ground elements. They may be used to put a hard and a soft cap on the number of elements built to replace missing elements in units. It’s safer to use “percentage” rather than “limit”, because it adjusts to greater need. Some elements like artillery or cavalry squads by default have some percentage set, lower than 100% that depends on their build cost. Build limits cause slower replacement rate for certain elements, even if there is enough manpower and armaments in the pool, to represent limited training capacity or limited resources (like horses) for autobuild elements without actual amount of production per turn defined. 16. Added editable “change from modifier” and “change to modifier” attributes to aircraft. They may be used to affect chances to upgrade or swap given aircraft to another model. “From” is used when given aircraft is current air group’s model. “To” is used when given aircraft is considered to become new air group’s model. 17. Whenever ground element weapons are listed (except in the editor), modified rate of fire and accuracy is now shown instead of element modifiers to rate of fire and accuracy, which more useful information to the player. 18. More information about ground elements and aircraft is now visible on certain screens, including start and end dates, factory upgrade, type and some other parameters. 19. Germany will now export 1% of its armament pool, but no more than 4000 points, to every allied country that has less than a certain amount of armament points (20000 for Rumania and Hungary, 15000 for Finland and Italy, 5000 for Slovakia). In addition, information about armament exports is now visible in the Event Log. Previously it was always 1000 points and only when Germany had over 100000 armament points. 20. Added “Super Heavy Gun” ground element type, to be used for guns with a caliber of 210mm and above. In games started under previous version, “Heavy Artillery” elements were not swappable. In games started under this version, “Super Heavy Gun” elements will have that restriction instead. “Super Heavy Guns” require trucks to move, have a supply requirement of 90 (vs 30 of “Heavy Artillery”) and have double the effect on fort destruction compared with “Heavy Artillery”. 21. Added the ability to set custom Command Points (CP) limit for HQ TOEs and individual units in the editor.