Commander,
Update 0.3.3 is out and also includes all the work of 0.3.2, which had not been released yet: a single, very big update. Many of you wrote to tell us: halfway through a game the camp was self-sufficient, the warehouses were full and nothing happened any more. The reason was simple: nothing left the camp for the front. Now the front is there, it asks for men and materials, and if it is not served, it gives way. The war asks for more and more as the months go by, the doctor does his job and bad weather really matters.
Saves: games from 0.3.1 load. Orders, events and floods that have already arrived keep their old values; the new rules apply to the ones that come after.
At a glance
- The front: sectors with their own strength, historical battles and weekly quotas from the Supreme Command.
- Convoys and troop trains: trucks from the Vehicle Garage with breakdowns, attacks and air escort; men to the front by train.
- Hospital: up to 300 beds, a doctor who operates on his own and asks only for what he lacks, surgeons who get tired.
- The war moves on: ever higher requests, extraordinary requests, harsher telegraph orders.
- Less abundance: a rationed freight train, building actions with real costs, deliveries only for what fits in the camp.
- Climate and nights: month-by-month Friuli weather, escapes that succeed in bad weather, fires that leave their mark.
The front
- The front sectors (Isonzo, Carnia, Trentino; after Caporetto, Grappa and Piave) have a strength from 0 to 100. Historical battles lower it and send waves of wounded to the Hospital.
- From the fourteenth day the Supreme Command asks every week for a quota: ammunition, food, medicine, cloth in winter, and men. The amounts grow with your camp, with prestige and before the great offensives.
- At the end of the week a sheet signed by Cadorna (by Diaz after 9 November 1917) arrives with the outcome and the new quota. A quota met raises strength and prestige, a missed one lowers them. If a sector collapses, Command takes men from the camp.
- With several offensives at once a second quota can arrive. You can send free aid to sectors without a quota; if the warehouses overflow, Command requisitions part of the surplus supplies.
Convoys and troop trains
- The quota sheet opens the Strategic Map: click a sector's pennant to prepare the load. The Vehicle Garage trucks leave from the road, drive out of the camp and come back, smoking if they were hit; on the map the counters travel towards the sector.
- Breakdowns and attacks: trucks break down more often in bad weather and with a low-level Vehicle Garage; along the road a convoy can be hit and lose part of its load. With the Airfield at level 2 the air escort also protects these convoys, and the fighter is really at risk.
- Troop train to the front (Passenger Station): a train takes idle men to the front as replacements, up to 120, 250 or 400 at a time, leaving a reserve for the work.
- Replacements order: when there are too many men without duties at the camp, Command asks for them: "Idleness is over, off to battle". Every departure lowers the morale of those who stay, and too many men without duties bring brawls and disorder.
- Wounded from the front, once healed, return to their units instead of staying at the camp.
Hospital
- Up to 300 beds: 15, 60, 150 and 300 by level, with more staff, more power and higher consumption. Patients now eat and use up bandages and sheets.
- The doctor operates on his own: red codes go into theatre as soon as there is a free theatre, the supplies and a team that is not exhausted. He no longer asks for permission.
- He asks for what he lacks, at most once a day and at its own cost: a surgeon from the staging hospital, nurses and stretcher-bearers, urgent supplies, bandages and instruments boiled at the Laundry, the chaplain on the ward, letters of condolence to families through the Post Office.
- Tired surgeons: every operation wears out the team; exhausted, it closes the theatre for the turn. If there are not enough attendants for the patients, care is less effective.
- Early discharge: the lightly wounded leave at once to free beds, but some relapse. At Hospital L3 the doctor no longer asks to expand it.
The war moves on
- Requests from events, orders and missions grow with the months of war and with the size of the camp, more so during battles.
- Extraordinary requests from Command: now and then the front asks for about half of your stock of one resource; refusing costs prestige, front strength and more dangerous nights. How often depends on the difficulty.
- Losses not stated in advance: choices show the risk of losses (low, moderate, high); the number is revealed afterwards.
- Telegraph orders: those that cost men also cost morale; twelve new orders, five of them impossible, which cost dearly whether carried out or refused. Every order shows what refusing it costs.
Less abundance
- Rationed freight train: Command sends what is needed until the next train, depending on the difficulty and the historical pattern of supplies; the double weekly train that filled the warehouses is gone.
- Building actions with real costs, in proportion to the camp: shoeing the mules uses materials, the vet uses medicine, tobacco for hundreds of men is no longer almost free.
- Deliveries from the cities: only what fits in the warehouse and in free beds arrives. Rome sends at most 40% of each depot stock at a time, the rest waits.
- Repairs cost building materials and timber; without a Workshop the engineers repair, but slowly.
Climate, nights and fires
- Month-by-month weather based on the climate of Friuli: sunny summers with thunderstorms, a mild September, a rainy and foggy autumn, snow from December to February, at most four days of rain in a row (six in autumn). The winter of 1916-17, the "white death", brings more snow.
- Escapes and captures: deserters and spies are no longer caught almost every time. Rain, fog and storms help them, dogs lose the scent in the rain, and the chance of capture is written on the choices. An infiltrator can start a fire to distract the sentries and vanish with the documents. A spy does not always confess, and sometimes lies.
- Fires: a fire put out at once still takes away hit points and burns the supplies kept in the building; a bomb or a shell also damages the buildings right next to it. The Fire Post's pump against floods uses supplies, and there is only one.
- Work accidents: on building sites someone gets hurt, and without rest a man may collapse.
Camp and interface
- Field tents with real places: 200, 400 or 800 depending on the Dormitories, enough for a brigade at rest, using canvas and bringing more sick. They stay until you have them taken down.
- Latrines: dirt depends on how full they are compared to their places; with enough latrines there is no longer a risk of epidemic every day.
- More variety: characters take turns proposing missions, an event does not come back for thirty days, and missions respect the seasons.
- Red dots on the Logistics Register tabs, with the reason in the tooltip; drivers at the wheel do not count among the free men.
- The revolt is brought by Lt. Paolo, the advisors' panel stays inside its frame, and the doctor's message no longer flashes over other windows.
- A downed enemy plane can be heard falling; fixed the warehouse warning that also appeared at level 3.
What's next?
Try to hold the front through the great offensives of 1916 and 1917, and tell us in the community discussions how your war is going with these new rules: this version was born from your messages, and so will the next ones.
Thank you to everyone who plays and reports problems.
See you soon, Commander.