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CORE 0.60 Dev Diary

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Tegetthoff

Tegetthoff

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I guess it is a good idea to keep everybody´s interest up by reporting on our progress on 0.60.

What I am presenting here is to a large part the result of the work of others, mainly Dec152000, so maybe Dec will also jump in and do some explaining (and correct any errors I make).

0.60 has turned into a major revision of CORE. It started with the decision to abandon single destroyers and subs, based on the realisation that the naval AI just could not handle the amount of units produced in CORE. To cut things short, we have lost some flavour but gained a lot of playability according to the first test runs (plus a noticable speed increase).

Dec has used this operation to completely work over the submarine set-up.

We now have two types of submarines, short/medium range submarines, which use the conventional submarine model and long range submarines, which use the nuclear submarine model, finally giving it a proper role.

We now have no less than 12 models in the short range/medium range setup and another 12 in the long range setup.

In addition we now have submarine brigades, which describe submarine equipment, which can be upgraded, even if the basic sub stays the same.
Submarine brigdes come in 3 flavours: "basic" SS equipment, and then "large" submarine equipment, which turns any SR/MR/LR into a large submarine (with positive and negative effects) and finally "heavy" submarine equipment, open only to the Japanese, modelling the special torpedoes Japan fielded.

Now once you define this you need to teach the Ai what subs and brigades to build and what techs to research, change the starting OOBs, rewrite the build AIs, modify the construction events and so on.

We are reaching the end of this process at the moment, with an internal 0.60.5 version due for the weekend.

We will keep you posted,

T.
 
Can the destroyers keep their names, however, as they have currently? Even if they now represent 'HMS Hotspur (and a few others)', it's still nicer to have names rather than just 1st. DD Division.
 
We discussed this and decided against it. We tried things like "U4,U6, U9" for submarine flottillas - just didn´t work.

If somebody really likes to have this, it would be fairly simple mini-mod to make, just a single file to change, as long as you do not mind the starting OOB.
 
Hmm no update in a week will the updates be semi weekly or take even longer?
 
Maybe I can put together another one tonight ...
 
Well that whos a quick reply. Thanks and if its too bothersome/time consuming just let us know, as writing comments and reports is the "hardest" part of modding and programming untill it becomes a full time habit.

PS. Also let us know if u need extra testers for the builds i did try to sign up as a beta tester earlyer(pre 0.5.0) but i think then the ranks where full as never got a reply on the other forums.

PSS. Also it mather not when the devdierys come cout but more that we know when we can expect 1, but like before take your time and keep us somewhat informed on it :).
 
March 16, 2012 Dev Diary

Well, ok, I didn´t manage it last night so here is a quick one.

I really should be talking more about brigades, but this is a major thing and nearly all of it done by Dec, so either Dec jumps in and reports at some point or I make a brigade diary when I have full access to the files.

So let´s have a real dev diary: what did I do yesterday - and what is the context of this?

The past two weeks I have been working on balancing Barbarossa and the war in Russia, which is sort of the central element of WWII. Even if you are playing a nation in the Pacific, the overall strategic situation will be determined in Russia. What we had here was an AI/AI standoff where Germany invaded about two provinces deep into Russia and then got stopped and nothing happened for the next couple of years. On top of that most GER players experienced a very easy war, with Russia often falling the the first year. This is immensely contradictory. If you just have a nation that is too weak, you add IC or infra or some events. But if a nation is too strong in the hands of a human and too weak in the hands of the ai, you have a balance problem.

So first of all I went over the German AI in great detail, reassessing garrison needs, retuning other ai settings, to get the full weight of divisions into the Barbarossa attack. As expected, this lead to a situation where Germany was stronger as an AI nation and we have one report from a SOV tester who reported that holding the line as the SOV was really hard. I then reset the front parameters to make sure Germany attacked even at low odds (because I have a hunch that the odds calculations are slightly off and the AI will stop attacking even if it would win), put more pressure on the front to prevent the attack from dissipating (garrison needs behind the front, while a real problem IRL, were judged too high by the AI) and so on.

On the SOV side, we worked jointly on the issue of the Soviet Union running out of TC in a big way. We added a bit TC via the 5 year events and changed Stalin´s HoG personality (he was subtracting 5% iC in the current settting). I also went over the whole pre-war AI, trying to prevent the permanent march of units across Siberia. It is now somewhat reduced, but still an issue.

So yesterday I had several hands-off runs with deeper penetrations by Germany, properly stopped by the Soviet. I did not have enough time to wait for a Soviet counterattack, but at least the unit numbers developed in the right direction.

The better performance of GER also enabled us to draw off some IC for increased submarine production.

While I was working on this aspect, Dec has been recoding the research AI for all the new techs, bottom up, starting with the small nations. We will probably push out 0.60.6 tonight or tomorrow. Then Dec will work on the large nations and I will find something else to do.

I have been thinking about coding out some of the alteranative history ai situations that you see when you run a lot of hands-off games. One notable one is the case where either ENG does not offer a guarantee to POL or POL does not accept the guarantee. GER then conquers POL without a major war and is then absolutely clueless what to do. The big solution is a strategic situation between Z-Plan and Barbarossa in 1940. The small solution, which I can go for quickly, is Barbarossa only. There are some other cases that just need a bit of ai coding.

Whatever, the general state of 0.60 is that we now have a Beta as far as the coding is concerned. The recoding has thrown up a lot of graphics issues - Dec has worked this from the unit icon side. Hagar, who is busy with other projects, hopefully will find some time to rearrange the unit images.
 
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Hmmm, let me see: you reworked the aerial combat system, included a bunch of new brigades, changed single DD´s and sub´s to groups, improved naval and land AI, added new techs, started including AoD features like synthetic oil plants, rebalanced the whole thing - ahm, anything you did NOT change?
 
Well not shure if its implemented for ai sov's troops but what realy hurts my troops is the "low" ifra in SOV meyby it can be futher reinforced whit making the sov troops use scorhed ground tactics?

If its already implemented, i think then its that ppl use the "weak" spots in thir lines in order to bait and trap sov divisions, witch i dont know if anything can be done about that. And as form my play point of view the SOV AI is doing rather good and provides a good challange depending of corse if GER dosent build any navy it propably is that GER becomes easily way too over powered.

Hmm an idea wich i dont realy like but whud be good to make players build bit of ships and "waste" IC on them thus weakeninig the Player GER : Add a trigger in some year hmm late 39-early 41, if GER fleet size is low USA is more eager to Fight them as GER cant realy fight back becos of the lack of navy.

And a idea i like a bit more if GER player has large navy AI USA is less likely to attack GER, but these events realy they shud be in pairs.

Not 100% shure on how the event can be made but i think there whos a event that raeder gaining carrier tactics if year whos x and ger had 2 carriers that chud be used as a basis.

I for one would wel come USA attacking GER while frace is in mainland europe if GER has next to no navy. If nothing else this whud make GER put more units on garrison duty in costal area's and less units attacking SOV.

Well thats my current input. now if u exuse me i got a game to play as JAP :) in core ofcorse.
 
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Blecky said:
Hmmm, let me see: you reworked the aerial combat system, included a bunch of new brigades, changed single DD´s and sub´s to groups, improved naval and land AI, added new techs, started including AoD features like synthetic oil plants, rebalanced the whole thing - ahm, anything you did NOT change?
Click to expand...

This is indeed a major rewrite and a lot of work below the hood you hardly see out front.

If you take our AoD history, then 0.49 was a quick shot at transferring CORE for ARM to AoD, 0.50 was a detailed conversion to AoD without really using its features and 0.60 is CORE for AoD, using more or less everything AoD has to offer.
 
Tegetthoff said:
This is indeed a major rewrite and a lot of work below the hood you hardly see out front.

If you take our AoD history, then 0.49 was a quick shot at transferring CORE for ARM to AoD, 0.50 was a detailed conversion to AoD without really using its features and 0.60 is CORE for AoD, using more or less everything AoD has to offer.
Click to expand...

This is what I had hoped for, indeed :)
 
I then reset the front parameters to make sure Germany attacked even at low odds (because I have a hunch that the odds calculations are slightly off and the AI will stop attacking even if it would win), put more pressure on the front to prevent the attack from dissipating (garrison needs behind the front, while a real problem IRL, were judged too high by the AI) and so on.
Click to expand...

This is a very good change - it's been a problem in core and AOD in general I think for a while. The German AI needs to be much more aggressive in general, particularly in France and the Low Countries and the start of the Soviet Campaign, because it seems, IMO, that whatever calculations are used to determine whether to attack or not don't take account of Germany's (generally) higher org.
 
A problem that has cropped up in connection to this is scorching. Apparently the Soviet AI scorches every province it leaves, stopping the German attack after a couple of provinces.

A Human player may not notice this, since with the proper use of armoured spearheads, he will capture the provinces before they are scorched. We are just rebalancing this.
 
Optimizing AI build schemes to use more serials, and less parallels would be good too and could help the AI in any situation.
 
March 20, 2012 Dev Diary

So for today let´s look a bit at aircraft changes. Again, most if not all of this was done by Dec, so I am writing this with the files open (and learning myself what was done in detail)

First of all, there is one model more for practically all aircraft types, with a 1930s model having been added to the mix.

Second, there are now several new aircraft brigades. As you know, CORE only had the escort fighter brigade previously.

There is now a twin-engined Light Bomber brigade (yes, CAS are not called "Light Bombers") giving them a number of advantages
There is also a "naval attack specialisation" brigade that attaches to light and medium bombers

Both of them work perfectly

For fighters and interceptors there are now two possible attachments:
A twin engined heavy fighter brigade and
A mixed air group brigade, which replaces the old "Minor Nation Airgroup", which was a CAS model

These work, too, but you cannot attach them in the production screen, you have to build them separately and stick them on later.

As usual, this involves a lot of work such as:
* teaching the AI what brigades to build
* Producing new model icons so the icons fit with the modified model numbers (which is done)
* Doing the same thing with the division illustrations (which is not done at all)

So, as promised, we are trying to use all the new features that AoD offers, including the many user defined brigade slots.
 
Well, night fighting is handled via doctrine techs in CORE.
 
On the subject of 'what if the west abandons Poland?', a simpler solution if you haven't already done the work might be something similar to SMEP - in 1940 Hitler demands Alsace-Lorraine and invades France. The attraction is that things are more or less the same for the AI.
The bigger issue IMO if you allow it would be: what if the the Soviets refuse the M-R pact?
 
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