You guys have been pretty good sports putting up with the intermission all week and it looks like were ready to reward your patience. Those of you keeping score probably figured that 1.28 was long over and we were moving on to 1.29. Well, so did we, but…

We had been working on a bunch of game play changes that have all sort of piled up and they really want to be released so here we are. 1.29 is still in development as is the Unity II code base. While we wait for them, we have a few things that we are going to deploy to the live server. These are pretty major actually and they warrant a little live time before a campaign. Fear not however, this will not be your regular intermission, as you will see below. Enough of my rambling, here’s the beef.

1.28 Features

New Brigades

All ground Divisions will now have three brigades. Just kind of makes everything easier plus we really had to have the parity in order to try out this next one.

New Brigade Types

Since it seems to have worked well in the Air Branches we are rolling out new Brigade ToE's for the Armies. Each DivHQ will now have a ToE that is tailored to function as a resupply point. In addition, each Division will now be comprised of 2 Infantry focused Brigades and 1 Armored focused Brigade. We’re aiming to keep the numbers of units in a division about the same but just moving them around a bit.

This is likely to cause some havoc with the current (and distressingly maddening for us) naming convention of Divisions and Brigades but we’ll come to that in due time. For now, we are just going to add “(Armored)” at the end of the descriptive name in the UI. We’re working to add an icon to tell brigade type as well. We’re not sure if these changes will stay in for the next campaign but we want to start running them in intermissions at least, hence this weekend’s intermission.

Moving Through Friendly Territory

We've adjusted the movement timers. As before when you move into a front line town you will not be able to move your Brigade for a long period of time. If however, you move into a non front line town you will be able to move again relatively quickly.

Fallback

We went over the fallback code and made a few tweaks so that units would have better preferences about where to fallback if they have to do so automatically. We also added the ability for DivHQ’s to fallback automatically if they are able to.
New Terrain

DOC added a bunch of new towns including: Gorinchem, Herwijnen, Zaltbommel, Tiel, Lith, Druten, Grave, Hatert, Nijmegen, Lent, Mook, Heijen, Well, Wyler, Milsbeek, Kleve, Goch, Kalkar, Sonsbeck, Geldern, Xanten, Wesel, Rheinberg, Dinslaken, Duisburg, Oberhausen, Essen and Mulheim.

We also moved some factories from Dusseldorf and Koln to Essen and to mix up the front line just a bit the Germans now start off with Aarschot, Tienen, Jodigne and Eghezee. Koblenz and Sobernheim also got some army bases for defense.

Tail Gun Audit

With the help (and by that I mean incessant prodding) of our beta team (you know who you are!) we audited all of the tail guns in game to have better traverse and elevate speeds. We also evened up the load outs and adjusted rates of fire as best we could.

Other Good Stuff

- Improved the handling of the Qf 17 Pounder
- Fixed a towing bug on the M5A2 ATG
- Adjusted load out ratio of AP/HE/HEAT on PzIVD and StugIIIB
- Upgraded the Blen IV to the more correct MC 500lb. bomb (more boom!)
- The P38 no longer loses it’s boom when the engine gets damaged
- Audited main guns and tracks to have better survivability
- Audited concussive resistance for tank crews so (a.k.a. “StuG HE bug”)
- Boats and ships no longer reward a kill for merely disabling a weapon, now you need to sink them
- Disabled EWS icons for planes, air raid sirens will still sound
- Added new 7 year anniversary decal

Recent Host Changes

Most of the following has already been ported over to the live server as it has been developed but it is all officially part of the 1.28.5 plan and this seems like a good time to put it all in one place for your review.

Depot Changes

Depots do not carry their own supply, they are merely a window on a limited segment of the supplying brigade. Each spawn reduces the window by 1 unit throttling the rate at which people can spawn through that depot.

Previously these depot windows were per-depot per-weapon. We have changed this to be per-brigade per-depot per-weapon. This means that if you have two brigades in Antwerp, each will have its own set of windows at the Antwerp-Schilde Depot, regardless of your side.

1.28.4 Host Update April 28th 2008

- Fixed an issue that caused some sorties not to record their scores preventing some players gaining rank.
-- We are looking at options for compensating players for their lost points.
- Fixed a timing issue that would cause players to be removed from their squad when the database was busy
- Turned off the script that automatically put people back in their squads to work around the removal bug.
- Increased maximum number of contact reports per mission from 16 to 32.
- Fixed an administrative utility that was causing a host crash.
- Disabled an administrative utility that was interacting badly with the database.

1.28.4 Host Upadte April 23rd 2008

- Fixed an issue that could cause players to be removed from their squads under heavy database load conditions such as after a host restart.
- Fixed an issue that could cause players to be rejoined to their squads after manually leaving.

Campaign #44 Host Update April 9th 2008

* Resupply Missions (see below)
* No-Mans-Land Depots (see below)
* No-Mans-Land Mobile Spawns (see below)
- Automated shutdown no-longer locks the arena at 5 minutes.
- Automated shutdown counts down to 0, locks the arena to disable capture, kills and spawning, then shutsdown after a further 60 seconds warning.
- Removed despawn timer while the arena is locked.
- Fixed several issues allowing Division HQs to provide supply after a brigade was moved out of town.
- Fixed an issue causing nearby players to cTHL when a player with a 2-character callsign tried to deploy a mobile spawn.
- Increased the Overstock Limit (DivHQ -> Brigade) from 10% to 20%.
- Added a curve to the rate at which new AOs are introduced to reduce the maximum AOs in high-pop
-- Minimum AOs is still 3

Resupply Missions

When posting a mission, you will note that there are several "Mission Types" listed below the Origin/Target selection. One of these is "Resupply".

To post a Resupply Mission you must select an ORIGIN in the town where your Divisional HQ is deployed and the TARGET must be the TOWN where your Brigade is deployed - the DivHQ and Brigade must be in different towns.

The goal of a Resupply Mission is to despawn your equipment at the location of your current Brigade (which should be mission's Target unless the Brigade has moved).

On successfully RTBing your equipment to the Brigade you receive a chat message indicating success and are scored some points.

/Unlike/ a normal RTB, the unit will /not/ be reserved for you at the destination. Resupplied units are delivered directly to the destination Brigade and /you/ are returned to your mission origin - ready for your next run.

- Delivering a resupply unit will cancel the earliest resupply ticket for the piece of equipment
- Delivering a unit to a full spawnlist will "overstock" the equipment up to a maximum of 20% rounded up of its capacity (a capacity of 13 can be overstocked by upto 3 additional units).
- Delivering a unit to a fully overstocked list will "Rescue" the unit (return to Divisional HQ in 15 minutes).

No-Mans-Land

"No mans land" refers to towns on the frontline which do not have brigades deployed in them but which sit directly between two or more opposing brigades.

We found that under the right circumstances, these towns generate some thrilling combat action. Prior to this addition, however, they were mostly just the source of many complaints about softcaps.

In short: we decided to make many of the rules for approaching such a town the same for both sides once an objective was placed on it.

A No-Mans-Land town:
. Is a Front-line town
. Has no Brigade or Division deployed there
. Is Linked to a town with a friendly Army *Brigade* (not DivHQ)
. Is Linked to a town with an enemy Brigade or DivHQ of any Branch.

NO-Mans-Land Depots

It is now possible to use a depot in a friendly town one link from your brigade.
Requires: Must own link, must own depot, must be a DEFENSE objective on the town for your side.
Example: Your side owns Huy and Bouillet and the link Huy->Bouillet, Brigade is in Huy, enemy places Attack on Bouillet, the Huy->Bouillet now becomes spawnable for your side.

No-Mans-Land Mobile Spawns

No-mans-land MSPs: Defensive MSPs to frontline towns with no brigades/divisions can now be deployed if the town has defense objective - previously you had to wait until the town was contested. (If the town has any brigades/divisions in it, the contention rule still applies at this time)

Hmm. Maybe we should have called this 1.29 instead! If you’d like to comment on any of these changes or ask any questions please visit this discussion thread.

I used to close these posts with “See you on the Meuse!” but I think DOC has something more interesting in mind for this intermission so I guess I’ll see you in Nijmegen instead. Cool town that one, you’re gonna like it a lot.