Hubert Cater

Hi UFC, Sure, what we had was as mentioned a tie in of NM to unit morale as follows: unit morale = unit morale * national morale So if unit morale would normally be at 100% and National morale was at 50% then unit morale would be 50%. On paper this looked like it would be a great idea but in practice we found it just didn't work out as well as intended. For example, unit morale is not usually at 100% to begin with and even let's say once you got to a National Morale of 80% and subsequently having unit morale continually reduced by the formula above (as NM continued to be reduced), combat pretty much started to become as mentioned useless for both sides. Alternatively multiplying National Morale against the attack and defense values is pretty much the same thing as this is how morale already works relative to combat results, i.e. since it is related to a unit's 'readiness' value and this value *is* multiplied against the attack and defense values for units. One way to see this is to take a closer look at the formulas and see how unit morale already plays a part in combat results or to even setup a test campaign with units in good supply and maxed out strength (which will result in maximum morale) versus units in low supply and low strength (which will result in low morale) to see the difference in the combat results. Long story short, think of how effective a cutoff unit is and how much fun it is to play turn after turn of mostly 0 vs 0 combat etc. This is actually already in place with a number of events tied into National Morale. Just taking a quick look at the DECISION event list and there are over 35 DECISION events tied into the different National Morale levels that then tie into any number of sub events. For example the first War Weariness DECISION event for the UK ties into 4 different SUPPLY events and so on. I hope this helps and as mentioned I'm not adverse to making changes but in fairness we did test this out quite a bit. We had about 20 testers over a 6 month period playing any number of multiplayer games and the absolute consensus was that NM as it was tied into the unit formulas just didn't work and after a year of game time it literally felt pointless to play. Hubert

Good one !

Good catch and I'll look into this for the Editor.

Yes, the WWI release

Sure send me that and I'll see if I can repeat it with your instructions.

My pleasure

I'll let Bill expand on this if necessary but the original idea behind National Morale was to model the pros and cons of various decisions and the relative effects of waging war over a period of time for each nation. Essentially it was a way to model winning and even losing a war beyond the traditional capture and capitulation of enemy nations which I think the game does a pretty good job of, i.e. targeting key 'National Morale' locations on the map such as the blockade routes or cities and fortresses on the map. Beyond that we decided to include combat casualties in the National Morale numbers and lastly we had the idea that we could also tie in National Morale with individual unit morale. As Bill mentions we found the impact on units to be simply too excessive and you do make a good point that since everyone does drop 90% very quickly I wouldn't even be adverse to removing it entirely (as it relates to individual units) as I still think the other aspects of National Morale are significant enough. We can discuss this internally and make some adjustments and hopefully get a better idea for any possible further adjustments.

1. I would say that this is possible, in fact we released a US vs USSR in 1945 expansion called Patton Drives East (for SC2 Blitzkrieg) that included many 3D unit sprites for the higher and applicable technology levels. Really your imagination is the limitation so to speak 2. Never say never but I'm not sure (at the moment) when we would see such a release to be honest. 3. I unfortunately can't say at the moment as we are still focusing on WWI and a few other items. Hubert

Is this the very first turn? If not please send me the saved game file with instructions on how to repeat the error exactly, i.e. which unit moved to which tile and so on. I'm going to take a look at the mod shortly as well.

Looks like the file is compressed with using RAR compression. If you download WinRAR or I believe 7zip they should do the trick in helping you to extract the file, hope this helps!

Is it a compressed file that was downloaded that needs to be decompressed? What is the name of the downloadable file?

Hi Hellraiser, This is still the case it is just that Italy is now a minor in Global Conflict... but we are looking to improve this now that 8 majors are an option with the lastest SC engine.

National Morale has an effect on units in that it will also lower a unit's morale by up to an additional 10%. For example, once a country's National Morale dips below 90% then a unit's morale will receive a hit of an additional 10% after all other regular unit morale calculations are performed. In testing we linked a unit's morale value to be multiplied by the current country's National Morale but found that units were taking too much of a hit when National Morale was very low so we capped it at having only an additional 10% effect. Hope this helps, Hubert

I stand corrected

Hi Hellraiser

Thanks guys and this has been finally resolved and will be included as a fix in any future updates.

Our pleasure and please don't hesitate to spread the word

Yes, I believe all the fortresses in game have trench lines on all sides. There are alternate fortress tiles that can be modded that do not have trench lines on all sides but I don't think these are used in the default campaigns.

I'd say it is more probably for aesthetic reasons to use a 1 sided trench, i.e. depending on how you would like the trench lines to flow but since most players just automatically go to 2 sided trenches it has been suggested that this become the default and we have changed it to this for the first patch.

Correct, this is a false positive and this file can safely be deleted as it is not needed post installation. Subsequently we started to use a different compilation of this file and it is now deleted after your program is installed so it should no longer be a problem with Virus programs going forward.

lettowvorbeck, ufc, we will try this in Beta and see how it works out.

You know I have to admit that with the recent changes regarding trenches I wanted to do a double check and I did find one issue and perhaps this is the one you've noticed. Trenches on resources do provide maximum defensive bonuses regardless of facing and this is now corrected on my end... but it should be fine in all other cases. One other thing I noticed with this is that the defensive bonus information is not showing up properly for the estimated combat odds display and I've corrected this as well.

Hi Gronq, I can see how this is not optimal and I will see what I can do. Hubert

By default I believe it is two escorts per Carrier. If you are seeing more than this and it is repeatable, don't hesitate to send me a turn and I'll be glad to take a look.

Our pleasure Baron