Well quite a few bangs actually. Some of the opening battles were amazing affairs. The river region around the Andenne to Huy stretch was reeling and rocking to the sounds of guns and bombs. When night fell the sight was a breathtaking one to behold. Anyhoo, with the start of this campaign, we tweaked a few things as part of the on-going evolution of the game to try and produce the best battles we possibly can, for you to be a part of.

Unit formations moving into the frontlines have a 1 hour cost to their move orders. Moving in the rear areas had a 15 minute cost last campaign, but this has now changed to a 30 minute cost, allowing us to keep the 15 minute cost attached to a FALLBACK order, thus seperating it from the other 2 kinds of unit formation movements. This better allows the choice of what you do to represent a clear and considered cost/benefit criteria. A FALLBACK is the quickest way to pull a unit formation out of trouble now, but you pay the price of a fast withdrawl in terms of equipment/terrotory surrendered. Additionally, the 1 hour cost to movement orders into the frontlines of contested sectors, is also now paid when moving OUT of those frontline sectors. We think these changes, although minor, will enhance the game's battles and strategic choices more. 

We also reduced the tank component of infantry brigades, since they were often being used as short substitutes for the armour brigades. The light recon. type tank and armoured car complement of the infantry brigades was increased slightly, so that they have some greater recon. ability and also a little more to distract any armoured forces they might stumble into with ... while your armour brigade can be brought up to deal with such threats if it seems appropriate. It's not expected or intended that this AFV aspect of infantry brigades be any kind of solution against a real armoured brigade of the enemy in your sector, it's just there to give infantry brigades a little flexibility. Most players polled supported the idea that we continue the differentiation of armoured and infantry brigades that we started doing last campaign, so this was a natural flow on from that.

Lastly, Oliver (KFS1) added some chat functionality we already had, but was not resident on the host until now ... in the form of unit/mission information pulled from code strings into the chat buffer. they may take some getting used to for some players, but they aren't that difficult really and you'll get the hang of them pretty quick we reckon. I'm cutting and pasting them from KFS1's article for you here: note that they are all called with a $ sign first and a 4 letter code for the aspect of the information you seek to pass onto other players without having to look up or rmeber what it was, such as who your mission leader is or what town mission you are originating in. This speeds up passing battle information regarding missions/towns/leaders onto others who might be needing that information, and working with you or wanting to, enormously.

KFS1 info on this feature below --------------------------------------------------------------

$orig
    $targ
       Are replaced with the name of your mission's origin or target respectively.
    $lead
       Is replaced with the callsign of your mission's current leader.
    $unit
       Is replaced with the short form of your current brigade, e.g. 1.Division/1.Brigade
    $miss
       Is replaced with your "mission" name, which is the same as $unit/$miss... E.g. 1.Division/1.Brigade/KFS1

These substitutions occur as soon as your message is received by the host, which means you can do things like:

    /own $orig
       Reports the current /own status of your origin rather than having to type, e.g. "/own Bergen Op Zoom"
    /m $lead Approve my contacts!
       Asks your mission leader an obvious question.
    /r $miss
       Tells the last person to send you a message which brigade and mission you are on.
    /1 I'm on $lead's mission in $unit attacking $targ but we haven't left $orig yet

We're already considering a few, extra, simple additions such as "$town" (my current town) and "$hcid" (the 'id' name for your unit for use by OICs and HCs).

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Well Campaign 45 was a total blast and all we can hope is that Campaign 46 is equally, or even MORE so. Get in there and blow each other to smithereens!