CAOS News

We are happy to announce that CAOS: Reinforcements is live! You too can enjoy the new reinforcement system and struggle for control of the new Paris, Somme, and Seine maps! With Reinforcements you are free to recruit new units as the game progresses, so battles now remain far more competitive into the late-game as players and Ais alike bring in new units custom-tailored to the evolving battlefield situation.

To preview all the new features coming in Reinforcements, check out the full update change-log here.
[h2]Release Weekend Plans:[/h2]
Saturday August 14 at 10:00 PST (18:00 BST), we will be holding a play against the devs event on the NS2 Discord! If you’d like to give the Reinforcements update a try in glorious single combat against the NS2 Developers or our senior beta testers, come and join us for an afternoon of carnage! Xenophon will also be streaming his matches on discord for those who want to spectate the day’s battles.

[h2]Beyond Reinforcements:[/h2]
In September we aim to deliver a smaller update called Reinforcements II focused on interface and AI improvements. Reinforcements II’s interface improvements will focus on improving battle reports and overhauling the air command. Beyond the interface, we will be overhauling AI battlegroup logic. Lastly, we intend to use Reinforcements II to include some features requested by player’s such as a selectable AI starting point bonus (or reduction)

Moving forward we will alternate each weekend between play with the devs events and dev blogs as we begin working on CAOS: Operation Husky.

We hope to see you at next weekend’s CAOS carnage!

CAOS: Reinforcements update has arrived and here’s a quick run down of new features in the update.

Version Number: 1.0.1.2

[h2]Ongoing Requisition modes:[/h2]
Reinforcements introduces ongoing requisition to improve long-form scenarios and dramatically enhance replayability. Players earn requisition points to buy additional units and replacement points as scenarios progress, the income type varies depending on the scenario type:

• Attack Scenarios: Income is based on control of objectives. Attackers earn 100% of the victory point value of all controlled objectives as requisition points every 3 turns, defenders earn 50% of all controlled objectives as requisition points every 3 turns.
  
• Skirmish Scenarios: Attackers earn 15% of their starting point value every 3 turns. Defenders earn 10% of their starting value every 3 turns.
  
• Meeting Engagements: Both sides earn points on a fixed schedule. Both sides gain 10 requisition points every 2 turns, 20 points every 4 turns, and 40 points every 10 turns.
  

All of these values are fully moddable in the scenario_config files for each scenario. For instance you could easily swap Meeting Engagements to use the objective-based requisition used by Attack scenarios to create your own King of the Hill mode, alter the percent income per requisition phase, or even add requisition phases in every single turn, it’s all easily editable.

[h2]New Maps:[/h2]

• Paris, a large (50x50) map stretching from Le Havre in the West, to Melun in the south, and Mons in the Northeast. Paris provides a varied battlefield including many river valleys, cities, and open grasslands, great for mobile warfare and protracted sieges alike.
  
• 2 normal sized maps (Seine and Somme) created from the larger Paris map. Seine focuses on Paris itself, and Somme features the graceful grasslands surrounding the Somme river basin.
  

[h2]Other Tweaks and Fixes[/h2]

• AI planning optimizations to make turns resolve faster in large scenarios.
  
• Improved formatting on unit card name displays on the bottom HUD to prevent long unit names from becoming broken over too many lines.
  
• Fixed a bug that made the first attachment of UK armoured brigades un-groupable in 1944/1945.
  
• Various minor unit name and graphic fixes.
  

[h2]Reinforcements: Fight the Devs Event[/h2]
To celebrate the full release of Reinforcements, we will hold a fight the devs event on discord August 14-15.

Greetings! The Reinforcements update will go live as an opt-in public beta tomorrow, Sunday August 1, at 10:00 PDT. You’ll be able to access the new content after just a couple clicks (we will post a quick guide on how to access it when it goes live tomorrow.) Reinforcements is content complete, so you will be able to enjoy the new features, but there are outstanding stability issues primarily related to the AI being defender with the new requisition system, that we are working on resolving before we make it the new default build. We will run Reinforcements as a beta for a few days while we hammer out any outstanding issues and then release it normally.

Stay tuned for the Reinforcements beta build and full update notes tomorrow!

[h2]Battle for Abbeville Developer Let’s Play[/h2]
NS2 Xenophon and Joe join forces to hold Abbeville against the German onslaught in a random scenario in the upcoming Reinforcements update! We hope you enjoy this hour long co-op battle against the AI!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMtlY4IvPRY
This is our first pre-recorded developer let’s play, so naturally all feedback on the recording style and content is welcome. For instance after recording we realized the CPU processor fans are audible in the background, we will be taking steps to fine-tune the recording setup for future videos.

[h2]CAOS: Reinforcements Update Preview[/h2]
Reinforcements goes live this Saturday, July 31! So let’s take a quick look at the new features and content coming to CAOS!

[h3]Ongoing Requisition modes:[/h3]
Reinforcements introduces ongoing requisition to improve long-form scenarios and dramatically enhance replayability. Players earn requisition points to buy additional units and replacement points as scenarios progress, the income type varies depending on the scenario type:

• Attack Scenarios: Income is based on control of objectives. Attackers earn 100% of the victory point value of all controlled objectives as requisition points every 3 turns, defenders earn 25% of all controlled objectives as requisition points every 3 turns.
  
• Skirmish Scenarios: Attackers earn 15% of their starting point value every 3 turns. Defenders earn 10% of their starting value every 3 turns.
  
• Meeting Engagements: Both sides earn points on a fixed schedule. Both sides gain 10 requisition points every 2 turns, 20 points every 4 turns, and 40 points every 10 turns.
  

All of these values will be fully moddable in the scenario_config files for each scenario. For instance you could easily swap Meeting Engagements to use the objective-based requisition used by Attack scenarios to create your own King of the Hill mode, alter the percent income per requisition phase, or even add requisition phases in every single turn, it’s all easily editable.

[h3]New Maps:[/h3]

• Paris, a large (50x50) map stretching from Le Havre in the West, to Melun in the south, and Mons in the Northeast. Paris provides a varied battlefield including many river valleys, cities, and open grasslands, great for mobile warfare and protracted sieges alike.
  
• 2 normal sized maps (Seine and Somme) created from the larger Paris map. Seine focuses on Paris itself, and Somme features the graceful grasslands surrounding the Somme river basin.
  

Greetings! Over the past two weeks we’ve been hammering away on the Reinforcements update, due to release during the final week of July. Today we are happy to present a sneak-peak at the upcoming Paris map, and its sub-maps, Somme and Seine!

[h2]Paris:[/h2]
Size: Large (50x50)
Terrain: rivers, open plains, light forests, urban sprawl

The idyllic grasslands, woodlands, and river basins of northern France present an excellent battlefield for mechanized warfare and protracted sieges alike. The northern third of the map, around the Somme River basin, is a paradise for armored vehicles that lacks many natural obstacles. Conversely, the map’s south-eastern and western sectors contain many light forests and river valleys that create natural defensive hardpoints. However, these obstacles pale in comparison to the sprawling metropolis of Paris itself. Paris and its suburbs comprise over 20 major city, city, and town hexes; any battle within its historic streets will undoubtedly be a brutal, protracted affair.

Paris beautifully compliments the new requisition system coming in the Reinforcements update, since most large-scale battles on the map begin as mechanized blitzkriegs and stagnate later into urban sieges. Fortunately, with the new ongoing requisition system you can safely spend your initial deployment points on mobile forces and then bring infantry and heavy artillery in later in the game once the battle for Paris enters full swing. Or perhaps more accurately, full meat-grinder.

[h2]Somme and Seine:[/h2]
Being a large map, sometimes you’ll want a much smaller battlefield and that’s where the Somme and Seine maps come in handy. Both these maps are created from sub-sections of the larger Paris map selected for a specific theme.

Here’s a quick map showing the boundaries of the Somme (blue) and Seine (red) maps compared to the larger Paris map.


[h3]Somme:[/h3]
Size: Normal (32x24)
Terrain: rivers, open plains, isolated cities
Click here for Full-size Preview
The Somme map is perfect for blitzkrieg warfare. The road network is excellent, forests are few and far between, cities are numerous but easily isolated, and the many minor rivers crisscrossing the map are easily crossed. If you are looking for a quick battle with large armored armies and little disruption from terrain, then you’re going to enjoy Somme.

[h3]Seine:[/h3]
Size: Duel (26x22)
Terrain: major river, light forests, urban sprawl
Click here for Full-size Preview
Seine focuses on urban combat amidst the sprawling suburbs of Paris. The Seine River runs through the center of the entire map and can only be crossed at bridges. However, bridges across the Seine are never hard to find and even the most determined defender will struggle to control every crossing point. Most battles on Seine inevitably revolve around Paris or its suburbs. Mechanized and armored forces help secure the flanks around the metropolis, but ultimately the battle for Paris itself usually falls on the shoulders of infantry, engineers, and overwhelming volumes of artillery fire. While you’re clawing your way through Paris, district by district, you’ll be very glad Reinforcements adds ongoing requisition, because you're going to need it.

[h2]July Plans[/h2]
The Reinforcements update is due to release in the final week of July, but in the meantime, we have more dev blogs and events planned! We’ll bring you another dev blog detailing the various new requisition modes later this week. Next week we’ll be releasing a gameplay video showcasing the new update between NS2 Xenophon and one of our senior beta testers, Joe. Finally, in the final days before the update release we will be holding another live stream!

Stay tuned for more Reinforcements dev news!