A new button has been added to the Orders tab, the "LOS" button, click this (or press the "L" key) and the LOS tool is active.
The cursor becomes a cross hair, click and drag and a line like that displayed below will appear. Keep dragging around the map to check other locations for LOS.
Light blue represents good visibility, dark blue bad. The visibility is calculated at 100-meter intervals along the line. Where no line appears there is no visibility from the start location to that point. The calculations are done assuming both the sighter and sightee have a unit radius of 150 meters, LOS in game is calculated from forward edge to forward edge. The perpendicular black lines represent the terrain height at each 100-meter point along the line. As you can see from the displayed line the height of the terrain is represented internally to the nearest meter and gently slopes from one contour level to another, it is not just a series of flat pancakes layered one on top of the other at 10 meter intervals. (Once the patch is out, try it at the Airfield; you may be surprised to learn that the whole area is not just a flat billiard table).
Remember that this is a theoretical LOS; actual unit sighting in the game also takes into account unit deployment states, size, effectiveness etc.
A new button has been added to the Orders tab, the "Threats" button, click this (or press the "T" key) and the Threat LOS tool is active.
Select one of your units and any threats that it can currently see will have a line drawn from your unit to the threat, bright red and they can see the threat very clearly, dark red and its touch and go.
When determining if a unit should fire at an enemy a couple of factors come into play. Two important ones being how well they can see the enemy and how long its been since the actual sighting. So even though a unit can see a threat it does not automatically follow they will fire at it.
Each time you start a new game you can now specify how realistically you want orders sending/receiving to be modelled.
With minimal delay when you give an order the AI processes it almost straight away. While this is great for the human player, it is not very realistic. It takes time for orders to be coded, sent, received, decoded, assessed, new plans drawn up, subordinate orders prepared and then coded and sent to subordinates and so on down the line.
Typically a Battalion in WW2 would take around 30 to 60 minutes to process orders. And then the Companies would have to process them taking another 20 minutes or so and then the Platoons and so on. Thus even though the Battalion commander may react instantly to a development, such as a new sighting of the enemy on his flank, it may take an hour or two before his companies can redeploy.
Experienced commanders relied on this effect to achieve tactical "surprise", especially against non-motorised forces, who typically had less radios and took longer to process orders. Better commanders can of course respond more quickly, and distance from subordinate to superior also has an affect on the length of the delay.
For the first hour a unit is on the map (ie either the first hour of the game or the hour after it arrives as a reinforcement) a unit does not experience any orders delay.
Making a minor change ( ie any change other than adding a waypoint or changing the task type ) will take effect almost immediately.
You can now specify how realistic you want it from the current minimal level to "Painfully Realistic". This should put an edge to those multi-player games!
With the introduction of realistic orders delay you now need some way of seeing which units have not yet responded to new orders that you have sent them.
Enter the nice magenta background to a units current task, this is the task displayed on a Units icon when you use the F4 key. When the background to the task icon is white the unit is not awaiting orders, when it turns to magenta it is.
You can now watch your orders proliferate down through your forces.
The F10 key now shows the Artillery Ammunition level on the info box of all your Artillery units, other types of units will just be blank. You can also use the view tab to turn this on.
The lighter the color the more Artillery Ammunition left. When it’s black the unit is out, sorry.
If a unit normally has 60 rounds and 6 tubes then it's level will be calculated as:
- 6 tubes & 60 rounds -> each tube has 10 rounds (FULL LOAD)
- 3 tubes & 30 rounds -> each tube has 10 rounds (FULL LOAD)
- 3 tubes & 15 rounds -> each tube has 05 rounds (HALF LOAD)
Hold the cursor over the weather and see the Weather Tool Tip.
You can now direct that all Artillery units attached to a force only provide on-call support for other units of that force.
When you create a task you will find a new check box "Arty Direct Support Only" on the task data display, click it to turn it on and off.
You can now stop your Artillery assets from spraying their fire all across the map. Attaching an Artillery unit to a force now means what it says, if you use this option, they are really part of that force.
When one of your units, or an enemy unit you have under observation, is destroyed it is replaced on the map by a small cross.
You can turn these crosses off by using an option on the View tab.
A Grey cross represents a destroyed Axis unit.
A Brown cross represents a destroyed Allied unit.
When the End of Game dialog appears all enemy units still on map are revealed and their real stats are available for review.
In the above picture the British units are all displayed as they actually where at the end of the game, even though they are the enemy.
You can gloat over the sorry state of the enemy, or kick yourself for not pressing on (as they were worse off than you).
Now the player gets to surrender as well.
If you do offer to surrender the result depends on who your playing:
- Against the AI - The game ends and you lose big time
- Against a Human opponent - Your opponent gets a message and can either "Accept" your surrender or force you to play on. If they "Accept" your surrender then you again lose big time.
Select the new "Surrender" button and you will be asked if you really want to surrender:
Really surrender and you will then see the following message:
Your opponent will see:
Your opponents Order Tab will now look like this:
They select the "Accept Surrender" button:
They accept your surrender and its off to the End Game Dialog and disgrace yet again.
When the AI now offers to Surrender it works the same way, the new "Surrender" button changes to "Accept Surrender" and you can accept if you want, or continue on and try to wipe them out!
Note: The game must be running before the Offer or Accpetance can take affect. While the game is paused nothing will appear to happen, and due to network delay it will take a few minutes of game time for things to appear to be happening.
Because of the change to the Orders Tab the "End" and "Quit" buttons are gone.
To exit the game you now use the "Leave" button which will display the folowing dialog.
With the release of extra maps the ScenMaker can now allows you to replace a scenario's current map.
Click the button labeld "Map" in the picture below.
Select the new map from those listed in the following dialog.
After changing the Map any existing Side Tasks and on map Units may need to be repositioned.