WinSPMBT version 2.0 upgrade patch

[DRG]

This thread will be for info only regarding the release of the version 2.0 patch. Yes.... it got so big we decided to call it a new version. Over 15% of the patch are new game functions, the rest are bug fixes and code tweaks and there a dozens of little things we changed that are not listed. After studying what we had added it was decided this warrented calling it the next version.

Here is the latest list of changes. We will keep you informed here as to it's release date

Edited Sept 11 to correct an item numbering error and make some minor corrections to the text

Don

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The Camo Workshops WinSPMBT ver 2.0 Upgrade patch

This patch was originally intended to put the DL version of the game in sync with the CD version in terms of OOB's, bug's fixed, scenario and graphic fixes.
HOWEVER----we made a large number of changes and additions after the CD's had already been burnt so this patch can ( and should ! ) also be applied to any CD version as well.

This patch contains the following changes and additions for the v1.1 Upgrade ( already included in the CD version )

1) Points were not correctly charged for elite or second-rate troops when bought by the human player -FIXED

2) The cost calculation was done in floating point, leading to rounding down when e.g. a squad at 15 was revalued to 15.75 points, was reduced back to 15 when converted back to integer. Now rounds up to 16 before returning.

3) Combat sounds had short delays after them left over from the old DOS sound system which only played one track at a time. These have been removed, as well as reducing some delays on user messages appearing during combat sequences. Sounds should be quicker, and the delay when a unit was destroyed is gone.

4) A problem in XP which could cause a crash (and very rarely in Windows 98) when deleting formations on purchasing when the formation spanned 2 pages was fixed. Now when a formation is deleted, the entire list is recalculated.

5) Air weapons were not showing correctly in the scenario editor change weapons dialogue. The weapons list now shows all potential weapons, and since there was only room on the screen for 120 weapons we have added 3 "pages" accessed by entering negative numbers as the page number. -1 for page 1, -2 for weapons 120+ and -3 for weapons 200+.

6) Casualties for paratroops landing has been revised. Small one man teams should have less casualties on landing, as should vehicles especially the "airborne APC" class. Ammo containers no longer explode when dropped

7) Numerous OOB fixes - UK , Netherlands, India, and east Germany have had more work that some but a number of nations using 'Carl Gustaves" had them classed incorrectly in the weapons list and those have been corrected. There were a few other minor issued that resulted in all OOB's being point recalculated.

8) I new Scenarios added #107 Raid into Honduras 1986

9) 2 Scenarios reworked . Scenario #1 has been extensively revised and sceanrio #28 has had minor alterations

10) Game Options master Control Programme now exposes 2 variables that were only available through INI file editing.

A] Graphics delay is the minimum wait time between screen redraws,
and
B] Unit |Move delay controls the time units wait between multiple hex moves.

11) Game Messages Delay has been changed to work in roughly 1/4 second intervals and not 1/2 second. In addition, a user-editable modifier has been added to the INI file [game] section for those who require to radically alter the base messages delay level.

12) Instructions have been added to the sub folder of \Game Data\Sounds for people who may encounter sound problems on their computers when using the MP3 sound files in the game. We did not include WAV files as comparable quality WAV's would have added 144MB to the amount of HD space used by the game but we have included step by step instructions for those few players who may encounter difficulties

13) There have been a few minor alterations to some vehicle SHP files

14) a few photos used by the OOB's have been revised

15) a correction has been made to the Sounds.INI file that prevented the PPsh sound FX from playing in the game

16) two in game help texts have been revised

17) The game manual has been corrected to give you more information on the additional controls added to the GameOptions Misc page

18) UAV now considered high flyers, above rifle and AAMG height and require proper AA guns and SAM to engage.

19) Bugs with Allied units showing the wrong experience level and ID tag were fixed.

20) Bug with points not being correctly charged for unit experience and morale levels fixed.

21) Bug where pressing previous page after a formation was deleted in the purchase screen occasionally crashed the PC fixed.

22) Bug where having more than 23 of a particular unit type simultaneously available caused the units to be unpurchaseable fixed. Now if more than 23 of a type are available at the first time, only the first 23 are displayed rather than declaring a formation invalid.

23) In the advance or delay with the traditional victory hex clusters, occasionally these were displayed off the bottom of narrow maps under 40 hexes tall. -FIXED

24) Bug where pressing escape in the map save screen after changing your mind on the selected save slot -FIXED

25) A bug whereby units in a campaign which used ARENA or VIRSS did not have the shots restored -FIXED


The following changes were added to the patch after the CD release to make this the 2.0 patch


26) Iraqi Picklist altered to give a more accurate " insurgent" type force composition for the AI. A further revised OOB

27) NVA Picklist altered to give a few armoured vehicles to the AI once in awhile while US forces are still engaged plus added APC infantry after the USA departed

28) There was a bug when the AI was buying 1/50th of the force value as mines in defence then 20% more if it was a river crossing or beach assault. - in campaign battles only. -FIXED

29) added "Dragons teeth" to hex mouse-over, if DT's are in the hex and added "Mines" to hex mouse over if mines detected in a hex

30) AI was sometimes deploying units in lakes. FIXED

31) A "mission" button has been added to the deployment screen ( Useful if you saved during deploy, and came back 2 weeks later and forgot your mission)

32) In scenarios, if the "reaction turn" is set to "turn 98" units will hold in place for the entire game and not counter attack to re-take V-Hexes. This includes both advance and assault and delay and defend scenarios"

33) New Icons include a Merkava MICV "Nemer", USMC "EFV" , British/Dutch Scarab, USA desert M3a3, German Dingo and Fennek Icons added along with a new Challenger 2 uparmoured Icon and a new 2S6 Tunguska Icon series

34) AA radars will now spot planes and helos at ranges beyond the firing unit's ground vision rating

35) The list of a campaign core force units on the upgrade/fix/review screen between battles (if allowed to refit) - was indexing incorrectly - in large cores you only saw 2-3 pages because the bug was skipping pages in the middle and showing first, second and last generally- FIXED

36) There were occasions when some maps said "town" or "city" etc, but none appeared or only a few villages seemed to appear. FIXED

37) Changes made to "Carry capacity" and "Carry cost" did not stick when changed in the editor. FIXED

38) Visibility can now be changed from the "View Map" screen. Previously this could only be changed before starting a battle. This allows players a second chance to do this while setting up a game ( for PBEM for example ) and now allows campaign players the option of adjusting the visibility during campaign games

39) There was a minor bug in the "View Map" screen where pressing ESC would not allow you to back out of that function without selecting a map number first. FIXED-- Pressing ESC while in the "Change Map ID" subscreen of the "View Map" screen will now properly exit that screen without having to enter a map ID number first

40) Updated South African and USMC AI Picklist

41) There was a bug that was preventing units from clearing mines after a save. FIXED

42)Thermal imaging sights ( TI ) will now have some LOS blocked by a fire hex (usually 2 or more fire hexes are needed for significant LOS degradation), and heavy smoke reduces LOS penetration very slightly, causing some "shadows". usually 5-6 hexes of freshly laid (full) smoke is needed to reduce TI penetration level slightly. Fire and smoke hexes do NOT reduce radar AA Fire Control LOS against aerial targets.

43) There was a difference between the way User Campaigns and Generated Campaigns allowed you to change ( upgrade ) units . This has now been standardized for both campaign types. The Unit list menu is now an "active" menu for both campaign types allowing you to select units to change from there

44) Mike Torrance's Campaign "Silver Lions" has been added

45) There was a bug where flak units firing at enemy aircraft increased the kill count with every hit even though no kills were made. FIXED

46) A bug where a fire mission could not be cancelled has been fixed.

47) A Bug where player 2 in a scenario could see player 1's troops during the pre game bombardment, if player one was the AI fixed.

48) A safety feature has been added to the scenario editor. The sceanrio editor will now auto saves to slot 999 on exit with title "AUTO SAVED SCENARIO"

49) The mini map was not centring on the location of the unit in use on the main map. FIXED

50) Vehicles and artillery pieces "dug in" in a hex showing a sandbagged revetments can now regain dug in status one turn after entering. They are not restricted to their original revetments and can enter any "sandbagged" hex to regain hull down status

51) The vehicle Load / Unload screen would not allow you to scroll around the map. FIXED

52) The game maps can now be scrolled in all directions using the up, down, left and right arrow keys. If accessed from the numeric keyboard Numlock must be OFF

53) AAA reaction fires has been tweaked a bit . If they are hidden they will fire at very short ranges only or if the to-hit is better than 9%. Therefore,- hidden tanks will not pop off at passing planes unless these spot them by flying close enough, or if the aircraft or Helo gets to a 9% to hit OR at 3 or so hexes, they will blaze away as the thing is too close.

54) There has been a slight adjustment upwards for spotting hidden vehicles when using vehicles with a Vision rating of 40 and above especially if the "hidden" tank fires

55) Spotting with TI ( vision 40+ ) decrease slightly with speed. You'll spot things a bit better if you are not moving at top speed


56) There have been slight alterations to the accuracy numbers for smoothbore guns. The length/calibre cals did not give accurate numbers with shorter barrelled smoothbores like the German L44 or the US M256 and the longer Russian barrels gave them slightly higher accuracy than reality. As well. Fire Control ( FC ) and Range Finder ( RF ) ratings were not quite giving the added benefit to higher end equipment that they should have so the formulas have been slightly altered to give greater benefit to the vehicles with the higher end equipment. Each of these factors, if overdone, have a HUGE effect on gameplay and we have endeavoured to strike a fair and balanced compromise. Sometimes even slight changes can make a noticeable difference so we've been careful not to overdo it

57) An additional PBEM security type has been introduced. "Basic" security will not kill a game ( in the most common cases ) if it detects something wrong. It will allow players to play on two machines ( on a laptop then back home on the desktop for example ) and it will not stop a game if both players are using different OOB sets. This is "Security lite" for those players who trust their opponent and just want password protection to prevent peaking and / or wants to play at work and at home and cannot with the more stringent regular PBEM security. However, it will NOT allow you to rename the save slot number of the PBEM. If you do it will kill the game.

58] A new message will appear when ground units fire at aircraft and Helicopters indicating whether the aircraft / helo was hit by ground fire. The code has always run tests to see if a hit would cause damage but until now you had no way of knowing if you were taking hits or not before the damage occurred. Now you will see a message indicating that a hit has occurred. If Damage is taken a second message indicating the damage will appear right after the hit message

59] Artillery and aircraft bomb collateral blast damage has been adjusted. Artillery cluster munitions have a minimum blast radius of 1 now and air-dropped cluster bombs have a radius of 2 hexes (speed and height of delivery, larger footprint). Previous versions of the executable had blast damage into surrounding hexes as well but we discovered a bit of code that was reducing this after it had been applied. That bit of code has been commented out and now you will find aircraft weapons and large calibre arty gives blast effects out to , in the case of 2000 lb bombs, a potentially lethal area of 200 yards around the point of impact. As well, there is a new game function that allows you to see the potential blast radius while the artillery barrage or airstrike is going on. Pressing the "R" key while in the bombardment or "Z" key menu will turn on or off the blast radius markers. There are white circles that show the maximum blast radius and there are yellow circles that show when known enemy units that are within the main blast radius are damaged by the blast effects. It is important to remember that even though the blast effect for some weapons like 2000 pound bombs may be quite large this does **NOT** mean that every hex and unit within the blast effect area is affected by the blast. This addition allows players who are interested to see just how the blast area works in the game. Blast effects are reduced by the distance from the impact hex, and the usual effects of dug-in status, being in cover etc. Cluster munitions are more evenly distributed over the blast area than an HE round, so range effect is reduced for them. Armoured vehicles more than 1 hex from the impact will tend to be suppressed by blast rather than be destroyed by fragments, except with cluster munitions.

60] Units retreating and routed will now surrender a bit more than previous when the situation is "hopeless". There is less chance of a routed unit retreating into an enemy occupied hex now

61] There was a bug which deselected the current unit if you went to the HQ menu and then exited as player 2 in a game. In certain circumstances you could then examine player 1's artillery menu, and his force structure. FIXED

62] The CostCalculator ( and all the OOB's ) has been altered to give extra cost for high-tech equipment ( Vision, Range Finder, Fire control etc) . Generally this penalizes modern kit more, with early kit staying about the same, especially if fitted with high end range finder, stabiliser, FC 35+, thermal vision etc.

- TI type sights (vision>=40) cost more (about a 40+ point raise)
- Range finder costs more, esp. range 20 or so plus
- FC, esp. over the 35 value, cost more
- stabilizers cost a bit more
- Electronic warfare (EW) more costly per point
- AAA radar FC more costly (sees planes through smoke now)
- Open topped armoured vehicles a few points cheaper

For example. A M1A2 SEP Abrams previously cost 443 points ( that is the BASE cost unadjusted for morale and experience). It now costs 526 points. An Iraqi T-72G with Vision 30 was 236 points it costs 244 now so it's really only the higher end equipment that gets the increases.

63] Cluster munitions costs and ICM (arty AP rounds) have been revised. They were not being charged very much. That has been changed upwards They are also more effective now.

64] 34 new scenarios ! Ten new scenarios from Bill Wilder and Twenty four from Ulf Lundstr�m plus 20 new Maps

65) Some problems with ARM and PGM fired from planes in stand-off attacks resolved. (Plane would fire a missile and have a round detected, but nothing happened).

66) Aircraft PGM (not ARM which will still search for enemy radars anywhere on map) targeting modified. PGM will only be targeted on a 15 hex circle round the original target hex. There is no longer a "magical" detection of previously unspotted units, so you should aim at areas with located enemy units. COIN fighters will me more likely to attack detected infantry than other strike planes, as usual. All planes will prefer AAA type units if detected in the 15 hex radius, over any others since the rationale is they are things that attack planes, so the pilots give them a higher priority. (They also like ammo carriers, and the enemy HQ if they can see it).

67) Mostly, planes which launched a PGM or an ARM will then exit the map, without making the normal bomb run over the map to the target hex. Exception - a non-wild weasel type plane which launches only an ARM is considered to be firing that to aid its run-in to the map, so it will continue on with the plotted bomb run, unlike a wild weasel, which will pull off at long range. Planes which make a stand-off attack are only subject to fires from long range AA weapons (>100 hex range) - usually SAMs. A strike plane with say 2 Mavericks in the same weapon slot can therefore make 2 completely stand-off attacks, provided each such attack launched a missile, and only then (if it has some bombs) need it enter the map to deliver these in the normal manner. i.e you can "plink" at targets from off map, especially if the enemy have no long ranged AA.