Destiny of the World News

The convoy system was reworked because it was not working as intended. You used to be able to pretty much ignore convoys, because they were very hard to damage. You will see a big change with the new system. You will need to stay on top of your convoy inventory. Convoy losses should now be a critical concern like they were during the war.

There are two big changes to how convoys are handled. Because of the way convoys used to be modeled, the game allocated extra capacity for each convoy, but given that they were lightly loaded, it was very unlikely that shipping would be sunk. The game now matches shipping tonnage used with shipping tonnage needed, which means when damage occurs, you will lose fractional convoys.

Secondly, convoy detection was only occurring if the convoy ended movement in a region where a patrol ended movement. The game now checks every region a convoy moves through for possible detection by patrols. Patrols now are properly doing interception checks along their full path of movement.

New Functionality:

• When convoys are intercepted, and a battle occurs, the map is centered on the battle location, and a brief indication is shown on the map
  

Tuning

• Reduced factory costs to produce Militia or Infantry
  
• AI emphasis on strategic bombing has been increased
  
• Air-to-Air combat damage has been increased slightly
  
• Damage from ground strafing and bombing of land units by air units has been reduced slightly
  
• AI should build a more effective mix between air and land units. Land units were being under-prioritized
  
• Increased benefits of Farming Research
  
• Increased benefits of Cryptography Research
  
• Increased detection chance for ships on patrol to detect other ships
  

Changes:

• Convoy losses were not working as intended. The size of a convoy was based on the capacity of typical merchant ship. Since many supply convoy loads are less than this, losses in combat would result in losses to supply or fuel, but not to convoy ships. This did not reflect historical shipping losses. This also affected trade convoys, but the impact was less apparent because shipment sizes were typically much larger. Instead, the game will deduct fractional convoy points based on lost tonnage. You will see increased convoy losses under the new system, and will have to build more convoys, or protect them, as was the case historically.
  
• Modified to allow interception of American convoys (trading with UK or France) prior to USA entry in WW2 by Germany (to reflect what happened historically)
  

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed bug where some map regions along the map edge didn't render (black screen). The world map is modeled as a sheet of paper rolled in a cylinder. This problem sometimes occurred along the map edge. Note, even though the map is modeled as a cylinder, it utilizes latitude, longitude when computing distances, so large regions near the poles are smaller in distance in game terms than their visual appearance might imply. This is how the game handles mapping a sphere onto a flat surface.
  
• Fixed bug where displayed land attack rating was not being computed for newly created units.
  
• Supplies sent to units in theaters outside of the country's capital theater were being requisitioned properly from the theater depot but were sent from the capital instead of the depot region. Oops. The supplies eventually got there but took much longer to arrive.
  
• If a unit's strategic redeployment (SR) destination has been captured, the deployment was correctly cancelled before entering enemy territory, but the unit received a readiness penalty as if they had made a normal move. They should no longer receive the readiness penalty if their SR move is cut short.
  
• If Air/Land units attacked a region, and the land attack failed, the land units retreated properly, but the air units triggered new battles. The air units should now retreat as well.
  
• AI Patrols which crossed theater boundaries were not working properly. When patrols crossed a theater boundary, the new theater AI was stealing the patrol ships and the patrol was cancelled.
  
• AI would order strategic bomber missions for your strategic bomber units if they were located in AI controlled friendly territory, if you hadn't already issued orders for them.
  
• Fuel is stored at the unit level. There was an obsolete field that used to store the army/fleet value that was being used when displaying the unit that sometimes caused an incorrect value to be displayed. The average fuel for an army/fleet should have been computed on demand. References to the obsolete field have been replaced with the on-demand calculation.
  
• Convoys were only checking interception at the end of their routes. They are now checking the entire patrol route
  
• Surrendering country research was not being cancelled, resulting in superfluous messages in the message panel
  

This upgrade focused on a review of China and France gameplay. These are the two most challenging countries to play, but I think they are in a state where you can have good success with them, with patience and clever play. Giving France the ability to reject Vichy, when offered by Germany, gives them a much better position, but still a very difficult one. I recommend only playing these countries after you have gained experience playing other countries. :)

A few observations on the current gameplay:
[List]
Infantry and militia factory costs seem too high. Expect reductions in costs.
Air power seems a little too strong against ground troops, this will probably be tuned back a bit.
Air-to-Air combat doesn't seem deadly enough. This will probably be increased some.
Naval interception chance seems a bit too low and will be increased a bit.
AI use of Navies is not where I want it to be. After air/ground gameplay is more tuned, expect the AI to make better use of their navies
AI is producing too many air units vs. ground units.

Note: These are things that I'm aware of and will be tuning. But expect them to occur over several updates


In this Update:

New Functionality:

• Upgrade All Units. Before, you could only upgrade one unit at a time. You can still do that, but when you click the Upgrade Button, there is a new checkbox on the confirmation message box that you can "check" to upgrade ALL eligible units in the selected army, air fleet or naval fleet (if sufficient resources are available).
  
• The German player was always given option to create Vichy, but the French player was not. Now the player is always given a choice whether playing France or Germany.
  
• When convoys are successfully attacked, the attacking country is now identified in the message.
  

Tuning
[List]
Increased Free France factory capacity slightly
Increased German AI aggressiveness against France
Reduced number of factory points to build new factory
Adjusted food production rates further
AI will cancel trades if it is short of resources it traded.


Changes:

• Previously, if a battle contestant had very low morale, the battle would end before it actually started. Now, at least one round of battle will be fought before combat can break off.
  
• Units with low morale can no longer initiate an attack. The average morale of a stack must now be at least 50% to attack.
  
• Convoys with no coal or fuel now can move 1 region per turn (like ships can) and incur some damage. Previously, they could not move. In low resource situations, this was very difficult to recover from.
  

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed mouser hover and unit selection in Information Panel Unit List. Sometimes selection did not pick up the correct unit.
  
• China not allowed to move into UK Territory as a planned move until UK and Japan officially at war.
  
• Game would let you build a Naval Base in an inland (no sea access) region. Game now checks if the region has sea access before allowing you to build a base there.
  
• AI Patrol Logic was sometimes stealing ships being sent to other theaters as reinforcements.
  
• Manpower was not getting populated correctly for Vichy France or Free France when Vichy is created.
  
• France started with 1 too many espionage teams active
  
• Fixed bug with colony regions not all transferring properly to Vichy or Free France
  
• When convoys ran out of coal, the shortfall was not shown in the Production Screen Usage Row, so you couldn't tell how much more coal you actually need to resolve the shortage. The shortfall amount is now included in the usage row.
  
• Estimated usage was being double counted in some cases, on the Production Screen Resource Grids.
  
• There have been some reports of the game crashing when screen resolution was changed in the Options Screen. I believe this was caused by not exiting the game when changing resolutions. The game did warn you to exit but didn't force this. The game will now warn you that a resolution change will require you to restart the game, and after you acknowledge the message, the game will exit. The new resolution should be used by the game when you start it again. I think this will resolve the issues that have been reported. If you still have an issue, please use the bug report link to report it.
  
• Surrendering countries' trade deals, espionage, production and research weren't being cancelled properly (except for Vichy)
  
• Unit Report didn't show your country's units when they were located in allied regions in some situations
  
• Fixed bug where AI was trading for resources it didn't need
  

The major feature of this update is improvements to the map drawing logic. The logic used to draw move buttons and arrows was based on an early build of the game, and it was pretty inefficient. It contained a lot of unneeded logic which greatly slowed the drawing process. This also sometimes caused the game to appear to hang, because the logic consumed so many resources while trying to render each screen update. The drawing logic has been rewritten to only do the calculations needed. This should greatly improve performance when issuing patrol and strategic redeployment orders and should remove this source of "hangs".

New Functionality:

• Production queue tooltip on Production Screen now shows the earliest estimate-to-complete for each item in the queue. For example: "Infantry: Earliest ETC: 4 weeks. 2 Divisions"
  

Tuning

[List]
Changed starting unit deployment for China to give them a better chance against Japan
Increased Chinese starting food stockpiles. Decreased starting food stockpiles for other countries. All countries should start the game with 12 weeks buffer of food.
Decreased food production for China, France, Germany, and Japan.
Cash prices for trade goods have been increased substantially. Trades were so cheap that countries could buy everything on the market for very small amounts.


Changes:

• Production Screen: Changed default to repeat=no when building airbases or radar. There is no benefit to building more than one.
  

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed 5 units erroneously deployed in East China Gobi Desert. This is impassable terrain.
  
• Retreating attackers were intended to retreat to their starting region. They should do this now, when possible.
  

New Functionality:

• Added a flashing battle marker on the mini map, so you can see the world battle location more easily
  

Bug Fixes:

• Rebasing aircraft were unintentionally engaging in combat
  
• Naval combat was occurring between Japan and UK before Pearl Harbor
  
• Production Queue click-detection/tooltips in the Information Panel was misaligned by a few pixels causing the wrong item to be shown sometimes.
  
• Fixed error with RebaseAir command not allowing selection of distant airbases that are legal targets in some circumstances.
  
• Fixed bug where Units Report Select button (which zooms the map to the unit) couldn't find unit and went into loop, hanging the game.
  
• Fixed bug where movement arrows were drawn incorrectly when the movement arrow needed to be drawn exactly vertically. This happened in a few regions near Hawaii. Arrows should now be drawn correctly.
  

New Functionality:

• Unit Specifications Report - This report lets you compare the specifications for different unit types between all major countries. This lets you see how the latest researched units compare between each country. You may find this useful when planning attacks.
  
• Added Land Attack and Air/Sea Attack strengths to map region tool tips
  
• Stockpile row on production screens now shows net change from last week on tooltips
  
• Added a Cheat Screen. This screen will allow you to gain resources by entering a command. If you use a cheat, Steam Achievements will be disabled for that game. When you are learning a complex game, it can be frustrating to find that you've made a mistake which makes it impossible to recover from after you've invested a large amount of time in the game. It's up to you if you want to use this. You may also find this useful, as the game continues to be tuned. The screen is opened and closed by pressing the "~" key. The command format is resource 999. So, for example, "Cash 10000" would give you $10,000. The following resources can be specified: Cash, Food, Oil, Coal, Metal, Supply, and Fuel.
  
• Added a progress bar for the Factory Production. Toward the end of the game, it can take a little longer, so this will let you see a progress bar while it is processed.
  
• Your AI allies may, under certain circumstances, gift units to you. Added an alert message box to inform you when this happens and added gift details to the Messages Panel.
  
• When loading saved game, map will now center on your capital.
  

Tuning
[List]
Reduced factory cost for producing cruisers, battleships and aircraft carriers
Increased effectiveness of Mining Research. If you are short of resources, don't forget about this technology.
Reduced Metal requirements for Supply Production. It was using far too much of the country's metal as a percentage.
USA AI should be more aggressive with invasions
USA and UK endgame AI updated to more intently focus on Japan, if Italy and Germany have been conquered. Currently, too many forces are left idle in Europe and the Mediterranean.
USA AI was being starved by lack of ships against Japan. Increased production priority of ships that take longer to build. Production AI was too reactive. Going forward it should be more proactive, given the long lead times needed to build ships.
Adjusted German AI after USSR falls to better address new goals. More changes planned.
Increased effectiveness of unit-based AA fire. Region-based AA damage is unchanged.


Changes:

• Japan starts the war as a member of the Axis, however hostilities with the UK did not begin historical until Pearl Harbor. The AI has always honored this restriction, but the player could violate this inadvertently by attacking the UK early. The player can still attack early, however, the player is now given a one-time warning if they attempt to attack the other country prior to Pearl Harbor. If they don't cancel the offending orders, a state of war will exist between the two countries. These changes will let the AI fight back against a human player's early attack, and it will also warn a human player, who might be unaware of the consequences of early initiation of UK/Japan conflict.
  

Bug Fixes:

• French Tech Level 0 fighters had a data entry error on gun size. Gun size was off by a decimal point.
  
• Fixed message showing internal ID instead of display name of fleet in message panel.
  
• Chinese forces were allowed to retreat into UK territory prior to hostilities commencing between the UK and Japan. Normally this occurs after Pearl Harbor. Since the Chinese forces retreated into UK territory, the Japanese Player could not pursue them there without triggering hostilities between the UK and Japan. This has been fixed so China can't retreat into UK regions until after the UK and Japan are hostile.
  
• If land units attacked an enemy land region containing both land and air units, and all defending land units were destroyed, the defending air units could sometimes hold the region. This situation should have triggered a victory for the attacker. This should be fixed.
  
• Fixed AA Gun numbers for USA and UK land units. Data entry error.
  
• Radar was not being added to units when created or upgraded.
  
• Maximum aircraft field not entered for French fighters.
  
• Infantry Tech information missing artillery data on Research Details Screen
  
• In the original game design, a unit had to be 100% ready to be issued orders. This was changed to 90%, but there were a few places where it still used 100%. This has been fixed.
  
• Leader bonus value was displaying too many digits of precision on Battle Screen.
  
• Submarines encountering ship transports only fired their surface guns. They now fire torpedoes.
  
• Fixed crash bug on unit report where same division number from two countries was present in the same region.
  
• When attacked, troops on transports were taking casualties, but corresponding transports weren't being sunk.
  

Under Investigation The naval system is not currently playing the desired role. The current AI production process is being adjusted to be more proactive. Going forward, expect to see more naval activity.