Second Front Playtest · published · build 25370516
Hello everyone,
This playtest brings together the work I have done since the August version. It is a substantial update, particularly to the AI, vehicle combat and infantry coordination, but there are also changes to the Battlelog, loading, menus and Garage.
Several systems now make decisions together that were previously considered separately. That is also why I need your help: a successful controlled test does not tell me how the AI will behave in every scenario, against different human tactics.
Here is what has changed.
Combat rules and results
1. Berserk charges. Berserk infantry can charge into an enemy-occupied hex during Prep Movement. The defenders resolve their entry fire, and surviving Berserk units can attack inside the same hex. This includes situations such as a Berserk unit carrying a bazooka reaching a tank and using it from the tank's hex.
2. Final Protective Fire. FPF is implemented for the specific case of Berserk infantry entering the defender's own hex. This is not a general extension of defensive fire during ordinary movement.
3. Fighting in a shared hex. Outside units cannot fire into a hex where opposing units are already together. The permitted attacks between those units remain available. After completing a charge, a player-controlled Berserk unit can be selected for legal firing actions, but not given ordinary movement or other unrelated orders.
4. Case A. Turning a gun or turret to take a shot now carries the appropriate Case A penalty. This is reflected in the actual shot, the preview and the AI's evaluation. Facing matters much more: a target may be visible without being worth the rotation needed to engage it.
5. Vehicle facing and reaction fire. Hull and turret orientation are treated separately, including turret and rear machine-gun arcs. Paid turns on the spot can create reaction-fire opportunities. Close-range reaction fire, subsequent shots and facing-dependent modifiers have also received attention.
6. Crew exposure and smaller combat details. A PIN result that forces a closed-top vehicle's exposed crew to button up is shown as "Close Hatch," rather than suggesting that the tank is an ordinary pinned unit. Cowering is explicitly shown in infantry fire results and explained in the help. Vehicle shots also account more consistently for hedge cover and the smoke in a burning-wreck hex.
Infantry, targets and coordination
7. Deliberate traps for Broken units. The AI now examines actual legal escape routes and coordinates units to close them during both Move & Fire and Advance. Infantry and vehicles can work together, including around buildings with stairs and multiple levels. It reserves the units and positions needed for a plan instead of assigning every nearby unit to the same job.
8. Knowing when not to shoot. A Broken unit has lost its ability to fight normally; a Desperate unit must escape. If it must escape but has no legal route, it is Doomed and will be eliminated for Failure to Rout. Once the AI establishes that situation, it avoids shooting at the trapped unit. Further fire would waste ammunition and could even produce a Heat of Battle result that rescues it.
9. Better fire-target selection. Vehicle fire gives more weight to actual threats, including anti-tank guns, armed vehicles, infantry with anti-tank weapons and nearby infantry capable of a Close Combat attack. A vulnerable target is not automatically the most important target.
10. Fresh decisions after defensive fire. When First Fire interrupts movement, the AI reassesses the situation. Where the rules still allow it, it can choose another shot, position or action instead of blindly completing a plan made before the attack.
11. More selective Close Combat. The AI compares participating groups, expected losses and the danger of the resulting position. Defenders normally demand a better exchange than attackers; last-stand defence is treated differently. Leaders should not launch an unsupported attack merely because a nearby squad could have made it worthwhile.
12. Movement that prepares for Advance. Infantry can move to a staging position while remembering the position it intends to enter during Advance. The later decision checks the current situation again. Position selection also considers newly observed enemy movement and escape routes, not only targets already visible from the starting hex.
13. More useful support-weapon allocation. At the start of Move & Fire and Advance, the AI redistributes weapons according to morale, carrying capacity and suitability. Crews without a gun can carry heavy weapons, and Heroes are useful candidates for demolition charges, flamethrowers and light anti-tank weapons. Newly created Heroes can receive an appropriate weapon as well.
14. Better escape handling. Rout planning considers building levels, stairs and the capacity of the final destination. A group may pass through an overstacked hex without choosing it as its final refuge. Leader escape decisions also distinguish ordinary unbroken squads from Berserk squads that are about to charge away.
Objectives, terrain and vehicles
15. Local fighting versus the wider battle. The AI groups nearby forces more coherently and compares threats to victory locations with the time available to reinforce them. A small enemy force should not keep a much larger defence occupied while the main attack reaches an important objective elsewhere. Reinforcement timing and coordination remain important areas for testing.
16. Better understanding of routes. The terrain-sector system now distinguishes connected woodland roads, town streets and passages, open areas and wooded map edges more carefully. Infantry can use this information to seek forward covered positions instead of treating the shortest route as the only useful route.
17. Safer vehicle approaches. Route evaluation considers exposure along the approach as well as the destination. Vehicles can choose longer, safer paths within their movement allowance. Armour facing, firing arcs, threats from different directions and the position in which a vehicle stops all matter.
18. More deliberate fighting distances. Defending tanks can prefer greater distance when their expected effect is comparable. Against infantry, the AI considers both stand-off distance and friendly infantry support before accepting a closer position. These preferences are still being tuned against real scenario play.
19. Hatch decisions. The AI weighs the benefits of an exposed crew against the danger of pinning, stun and other crew effects. It also considers which weapons can actually be manned in the proposed hatch state, including the restrictions of one-man turrets.
20. Coordinated long-range fire. Vehicles, mortar halftracks and suitable infantry mortars can compare and coordinate useful firing positions at ranges of roughly 12-24 hexes, within their weapon limits. This concerns weapons on the map, not off-map artillery. A useful long-range position needs targets in different hexes, not simply several units stacked in one distant hex.
21. Keeping reinforcements moving. Active woodland-road entry corridors are kept available for incoming vehicles. Once the final reinforcements have arrived, those routes can be used normally again.
Combat calculations and responsiveness
22. More complete fire probabilities. The three rebuilt IIFT lookup files contain 201,240 results each: 603,720 in total. They cover the different Cowering categories and expanded infantry states, giving the AI and the combat previews a more complete basis for evaluating fire.
23. Millions of infantry Close Combat cases. A new lookup file covers 9,492,336 supported infantry Close Combat situations, including versions with and without possible Ambush. Identical results share records, keeping the file to about 33.3 MB. Vehicle Close Combat remains calculated dynamically because attack order and changes to the vehicle's state can affect later attacks. These are probability calculations; actual combat still uses dice.
24. AI work spread across frames. Larger searches and analyses can continue across several frames, and unnecessary waits between phase operations have been reduced. The aim is to give the AI room for more useful calculations while keeping the game responsive. Complex positions can still take time; please report unusually long pauses as well as apparent stalls.
Battlelog, loading and presentation
25. A much more useful Battlelog. Battle history can be retained with saves and inspected action by action or phase by phase. Fire, Close Combat and Rout outcomes are easier to follow. The selected entry can show an orange arrow at the firing unit and a yellow arrow at its target, linking the calculation to the map.
26. Clearer previews and saved positions. Smoke previews appear when hovering over Fire Smoke rather than obscuring unrelated target information. Saved vehicle hull and turret orientations are restored directly when loading an autosave.
27. Scenario data and language coverage. Availability checks for weapons such as Panzerfaust, Panzerschreck and PIAT use the scenario date, including reinforcements and loaded saves. British infantry values used by the AI have been filled in. Missing translations and unintended English fallbacks have been addressed across the supported languages.
28. Reworked startup and scene transitions. The main menu, battlefield and national workshop backgrounds now load separately. Loading progress is more informative, the scenario description is available while loading proceeds, and transitions between the menu, game, Garage and editors have been reworked. Normal startup uses the display's native resolution in fullscreen-window mode.
29. Garage and workshop presentation. The Garage has improved lighting and vehicle visibility, more reliable worker movement and interactions, and a button to hide the interface for a clear view of the vehicles. The national menu workshops have also received animation and presentation work.
What I would like you to test
Please play ordinary scenarios as well as deliberately awkward situations. I am especially interested in:
- Whether the AI chooses useful objectives and supports its attacks, rather than becoming absorbed in an unimportant local fight.
- Vehicle routes, stopping positions, hull and turret facing, hatch decisions and reaction fire.
- Berserk charges, attacks inside an enemy hex, and the Case A values shown in previews and results.
- Broken-unit escape routes, coordinated traps, Close Combat choices and support-weapon use.
- Loading and reloading games, Battlelog history, menu/editor transitions and performance on your machine.
When reporting a problem, please include the scenario name, turn, side, phase and the relevant hex or units. An autosave from just before the event, together with a screenshot or Battlelog entry, is especially helpful. For an AI decision, tell me what happened and what you expected it to do instead.
For a diagnostic run, use Start-SecondFront-Diagnose.cmd in the game's installation folder. It creates a separate run folder inside Diagnose. Please include that folder with your report, plus the relevant autosave. Detailed diagnostics can affect performance, so mention whether you used that launcher when reporting slow turns.
This is still a playtest, not a claim that every tactical combination is finished. Multiplayer is not part of this update. My immediate priority is to see how these changes hold together in your games and deal with the situations that still need work.
Thank you for testing, and for taking the time to explain what you find. That feedback makes a real difference.