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For the Motherland - Developer Diary 11 - Air mapmode, AI and Cameras

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podcat

podcat

Game Director <unannounced>
Paradox Staff
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Jul 23, 2007
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Team For the Motherland didn’t go to E3 this year, so we have been busy making a slew of small features and improvements instead of sipping piña colada and drooling over the latest Assassins Creed videos in LA. Here are a few of them:

New Air Mapmode
Seeing status of your air force has always been a bit lacking, so we have added a few things to help out in the air mapmode. You can now see your planes ranges around airbases and they are colored to show their total strength for that range.

dd11_air.png

As you can see from the picture the close range fighters have been taking a beating while the long range units are doing fine. Hopefully this new mode should make it much easier to see how good your air coverage is.

New Camera
We have implemented a new camera that is much smoother and has everyone at the office's favorite feature: zooming to cursor. This means there is a lot less panning around, you quickly zoom out with the mouse, place it over the region you want to get a closer look at and zoom in and the camera will auto-pan there for you. Also, before you ask, there is a legacy mode option if you for some reason don’t like this that will let you use the old camera controls.

Allied Objectives Improvements
Despite all the love on the forum for the Allied Objectives feature we felt that it could be improved ;) Set objectives are now considered much more important by your allied AIs and they will focus much more closely on them. So instead of trying to help out along the whole Russian front where it deems it weak, for example, you will see the AI focus on the part of the front you specified. This means you as a player have to think a bit harder on where you place allied objectives too.

Attack Delay Indicator
Not being able to tell at a glance which units are waiting on the post-battle delay is a source of frustration for players who like to micromanage their units, so we have added a coloring feature to counters so you can see which units are currently waiting for this:

dd11_attack.png

Other small goodies and fixes this week

  • We fixed a long-term annoyance with the air reserve mission - now if you have a mission flying out from an airbase, and units of the same type on reserve in the same province, when a unit on the active mission falls below the str/org threshold set by the mission stance it'll be swapped with one of the reserve units so the mission carries on uninterrupted.
  • Some other small and helpful updates like tooltip actually showing you what is required to break a non-aggression pact and an alert warning you when one is about to expire have been added.
  • The breakthrough combat event now reduces attack delay to help you blitzing the enemy more effectively with fast units.
  • The collapse all button in the OOB browser now works as a toggle to collapse/expand all units to make unit organization easier.

dd11_expand.png
 
I really like that your max range around the airbases. The old method that blacked out provinces planes couldn't go to worked too, but this one is much more intuitive. Also, good to hear that the allied objectives will work better. I had an example where Axis Turkey was being steamrolled by the USSR, and I, as Germany, asked Bulgaria and Italy, who were sitting outside Athens staring at the Greeks, to help. Both countries decided rather than cross the Bosporus and help out Turkey, that they'd head to Finland instead. Since they strat-deployed they killed my supply network :( Good to hear that problem should be fixed.
 
Love, simply love, the new air mode.
 
TheBromgrev said:
I really like that your max range around the airbases. The old method that blacked out provinces planes couldn't go to worked too, but this one is much more intuitive.
Click to expand...

this way has the advantage of showing you overlap between bases so you can plan your fighter defense and it will also show ranges on different units in each base so you get a feel for what is there.
 
podcat said:
this way has the advantage of showing you overlap between bases so you can plan your fighter defense and it will also show ranges on different units in each base so you get a feel for what is there.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that should help prevent lots of interceptor groups that share coverage in a province or two from flocking to intercept the same strat bomber, resulting in massive overstacking penalties. On a related note, will the military AI be taught to stop sending many air wings to a single province? I often get when playing as or against France cases where my 3-wing interceptor group will try to fight off a group of bombers, only to have the AI send lots of interceptors to help the bombers. The result is the AI gets negative attack modifiers due to overstacking. This happens at the Metz airbase all the time.
 
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I like the air map mode improvements. Is it for fighters only or can you use it for bombers as well to easily see where you can bomb from any given base?
 
Good to hear about the allied objectives working better now.
 
The improved air map mode is just great. Honestly, I thought that those circles are something photoshopped-in to the screenshot, but after I have read the paragraph about it, I was amazed. Good job.
party0012.gif


Not being able to tell at a glance which units are waiting on the post-battle delay is a source of frustration for players who like to micromanage their units, so we have added a coloring feature to counters so you can see which units are currently waiting for this
Click to expand...
Hopefully, we won't be able to see this on enemy units, will we?

The collapse all button in the OOB browser now works as a toggle to collapse/expand all units to make unit organization easier.
Click to expand...
A big THANK YOU!
love0011.gif
Makes my life a lot easier.
 
release FtM and take my money please.
 
SOLD! That is what I was waiting to hear! So the AI finally is ready to lsiten to me. Nice not having to fight the entire war on my own. Now...if I DO NOT provide it with any objectives. Will it default back to organizing around my front where it deems week?
 
this is very quickly starting to remind me of this woman I once knew, she kept showing me all these wonderful thing but I'm still waiting to get my hands on them!!!...lol

looks very good guys, keep up the good work!!!!
 
One thing that has bugged me since SF is the air map mode. The air map is much less useful than it could be because you have to 1. check the air map to get an idea of what kind of coverage you need 2. give your air units orders 3. switch back to the air map mode to see the results 4. alter air orders to correct for mistakes 5. back to air map mode to verify that there isn't too much or too little overlap. Fortunately, much of this could be avoided simply by having the map display this mode when giving air units their orders. It would be nice if something like that were part of the updated mode implementation.


edit: Nice to hear about the reserve missions btw.
 
Yes! I totally love the new "zoom to cursor"-feature the most.

Keep 'em goodies coming! :D
 
Just curious how accurate the circles are though. Because provinces are measured to their center point so isn't it possible to be inside the ring but outside the range? This would apply to those areas with larger provinces obviously.
 
jmschaub said:
Just curious how accurate the circles are though. Because provinces are measured to their center point so isn't it possible to be inside the ring but outside the range? This would apply to those areas with larger provinces obviously.
Click to expand...

they are an approximation because in game the distances for orders etc are to province centers, so if you are trying to set up a fighter defense screen its best to overlap a bit
 
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