SITREP Friday 2 Aug 2019
Hi all,
Sorry for the tardiness in reporting in. I have been busy working on the HQ Basing code. This is the last feature I am going to add before we put out a new public release build. It's a big change. Currently the version you have and all previous versions do not base senior HQs, except for attacks. The attack code, both the plan doctrine and tactical doctrine was changed years back. It basically hives off all HQs, senior and junior and bases them near the forming up place for an attack. That ensures they're not on the firing line and in harms way during the assault. I had wanted to write more comprehensive HQ basing code for all mission types. But it's a lot of work. So I begged off then.
The current new code will address Move and Defend missions. It will only apply to senior HQs - ie Brigade and above. I've just finished writing the plan doctrine for this. When the AI develops a plan for a Defend or Move it will test to see if the subject of the force is a senior HQ. If it is, it will then determine whether it can find a safe location within effective command range of the objective and if so it will subtract the subject from the main force group and assign it an independent HQ basing task at that location.
Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong. I want to avoid cases of HQs moving around the map independently through unsafe territory. So I have chosen to limit the search for suitable locations to the appropriate mission route and adjacent locs. It will try the mission task route first, then the subject to objective route, creating this if not already generated, followed by the main supply route - ie supply source to objective. The trouble is none of these may be safe at the moment when the plan is developed but may become so as the force advances. So there's a plethora of cases to be handled. I've been progressively working my way through these and adding smarts to handle them with the aim of basing the HQ if at all possible. It will stay put, if it's safe and it can cover a goodly portion of the chosen route. Otherwise it will default to the current practice and advance or deploy with the main force.
So that's where we are up to at the moment. That's all well and good, but what I now need to do is write code to reassess and move the HQ forward as the main force clears the route or reaches the objective. I also need to handle all the scheduling and status code that currently relies on the mission subject being the subject of the main force group, which will no longer be the case. I know it's been a while, but it's going to be a bit longer. I thank you for your patience.
In the meantime Pavlo (ioncore) is ploughing ahead with his new Khalkhin-Gol scenarios, not to mention fixing, tweaking and enhancing other aspects of the game code. Testing is also progressing on the Bradley at Bay scenarios.