Update 1.2 "Blue Danube"

Hey everyone!

I'm excited to bring you our second major update for Fire & Maneuver. We've made some substantial changes that impact melee mechanics, fire-at-will, the tutorial/tooltip system, and several other aspects as well. We mentioned a few weeks ago adding in the new cosmetic system and progression for the animal avatars, but instead of introducing in-game monetization we wanted to focus on fixing bugs and stabilizing the game first.

Finally, instead of calling our updates titles like "General Improvements" we're going to name each update after a famous 19th century orchestral piece and in some extra music each month to go along with it; update 1.2 is titled "Blue Danube" because many of the changes we made incidentally affect the Austrian faction.

We plan on releasing one more update toward the end of this month which will hopefully add in cosmetics and fix more bugs.

Balance
- Cavalry prices increased by 25 points.
- The Cumbersome trait now decreases a unit's price by 40 points instead of 10. We wanted to make field artillery more viable, especially light artillery.
- 3 range units are 45 points cheaper.
- 4 range units are 25 points cheaper.
- 5 range units are 5 points cheaper.
- The "range vulnerable" debuff which is applies to all cavalry and the infantry march column formation now gives a +2 penalty instead of a +1 penalty when being shot. Attack columns are now also range vulnerable. This means playstyles that rely on rushing are going to be harder to pull off.
- Units on hills can now fire over obstacles making non-indirect fire units more useful.
- Dismantling supply caches in the campaign now gives 33% of your cash back.
- Units with the "breakable" trait will no longer be able to receive orders until they can regain cohesion. This state of continuously retreating and not being able to be ordered is called a "rout."
- You can now hurt units in hard cover if you shoot at their flanks or use the "range drill" perk. Otherwise, you will need to blow up their cover with artillery before moving in.
- Square formation can no longer receive flanking penalties, this has been something the community has been asking for for a while.
- Artillery's "charge" button has been disabled.

CSA
- Sharps Rifle has been removed from the "early era" for the Confederate faction.

USA
- Zouaves from 0 to 6 limit

Italy
- Added Fusil M1866 rifle with a 2 limit
- Bersaglieri from 0 to 4 limit
- Carabinieri from 0 to 4 limit

Ottomans
- Added Fusil M1866 rifle with a 2 limit
- Egyptian Line Infantry from 0 to 6 limit
- Zouaves from 0 to 4 limit

Russia
- Added Berdan M1868 rifle with a 2 limit

Britain
- Added Martini Henry rifle with a 2 limit
- Highlanders from 4 to 6 limit
- Dragoon Guards from 0 to 4 Limit

Prussia
- 2 limit on the Werder rifle
- Bavarians from 0 to 6 limit

France
- Zouaves from 0 to 6 limit
- Voltigeurs from 0 to 2 limit

Austria
- Austrian Line Infantry to lose "melee drill." We felt like last update we overcorrected the Austrian melee-focused playstyle. We kept the Hoch & Deutsch as a strong melee unit, but made the regular infantry more vanilla. We wanted the difference between Hungarian & German infantry to be more distinct.
- Saxon from 4 to 6 limit
- Bavarians from 0 to 6 limit
- Grenzers from 0 to 6 limit
- Austrian Kaiser Jaegers get range drill instead of efficiency. Because the Hoch & Deutsch are now a melee-focused unit, the Austrians did not have any range options.

Fixes
Fire at Will
This mechanic has been completely overhauled. It has a new visual display over units and will fire reliably at enemies crossing its path.
- Fire at will will no longer be able to trigger when a unit is engaged in melee.
- If an artillery unit with the cumbersome trait moves then its "fire at will" stance will not be able to activate that turn.
- Units in march column (who can't shoot) can no longer use fire at will.

Melee
- If a third unit joins a melee, that unit will no longer alter the direction of the melee; instead, it'll fall into the reserve line of its ally.
- Charging into a melee will no longer damage friendly units.
- Withdrawing from a melee is more reliable, you can now withdraw diagonally if you were charged at an angle and the bug where units could only retreat forward through an enemy instead of backward has also been fixed.
- Withdrawing from a melee and cancelling the order no longer flips the units who were in melee.
- Ordering a charge and cancelling the charge order no longer breaks the orientation of the unit who was going to charge.
- Infinite melee-pursuits are fixed. If a unit tries to charge and an enemy withdraws out of the charging unit's range, the charge won't go through. For example, light cavalry can no longer charge across 4 tiles (past its total movement cap) to complete a charge.
- Units can no longer bypass the bogged down terrain by moving into a forest and then charging through it.
- Units who have orders to charge will no longer go through with that order if they get charged first during the turn.
- Units with the "breakable" trait will now retreat from melees when their cohesion hits 0.

Miscellaneous
- Damage desyncs have been fixed. In some games two players would see different amounts of damage on the same unit.
- Attrition was not applying to units who didn't border an enemy unit, this has been fixed. Now, as long as you have 0 cohesion and move you will always take attrition (unless you have the skirmishing trait).
- Added some stability to 2v2s, players who experienced freezes should have smoother games. Let us know if you detect any further issues.
- Playing a battle and then jumping into the tutorial would previously get stuck on the loading screen which has been fixed.
- When a unit with the "breakable" trait routed it would cause the game to lag, which has been fixed.
- A bug where players would select an "age of rifles" breech-loader, then go into an "age of glory" lobby and then left click to drop it in has been fixed.
- Infinite loading screen in campaigns is fixed.
- In campaign units with 0 strength will no longer be able to enter battles.
- In 2v2s sometimes your orders from previous turns would show up on your order page and couldn't be gotten rid of. I believe we fixed this, but if we didn't let us know.
- Arrows on the game board no longer linger from previous turns, they are cleared consistently at the end of every turn.
- Players are no longer able to charge their teamates in 2v2s.
- When players leave lobbies their names will now get cleared instead of lingering.
- The Hard & Soft Cover system has been remade and is far more robust. Shooting/charging into cover now deals the correct amount of damage.
- The locks over countries were backwards and natitutons would appear as locked while they were unlocked, this is fixed.
- The little orange/blue pips on a unit card now clear when a unit is dead.
- Bugs relating to equipping cavalry carbines are now fixed.
- 2v2 maps no longer show up under the 1v1 section, but they are still playable in a 1v1.
- Changing resolution would revert when hitting apply, this has been fixed.
- Turning off shadows on graphics option now works.
- Depth of field now works.
- Crimean War campaign gave the wrong popup.
- Bug relating to occupying enemy HQs in the campaign fixed.
- Corps splitting exploit fixed, now creating now corps cost money and you lose movement points.
- Bug where players who played quick matches can't play custom matches until they restart their game fixed.
- Empty "zombie regiments" in the campaign are now disbanded.
- In quick match some players got the "early era" and some got "late era" in the same lobby, this has been fixed.
- Math corrected for high influence modifier in the campaign. High influence now grants 1,250 manpower per turn instead of 250.
- Training match now chooses between several maps instead of always playing on the same one.
- Players who do not own the Franco-Prussian War music DLC will not be able to hear the bonus music.
- Training matches now choose between early and late instead of the "All" era.
- The quick match lobby timer ticks instead of being frozen.
- Level display in lobbies is fixed.
- Late period CSA cavalry now have the correct default weapons.
- Cover has been added to the frontier map's forests and villages.

Quality of Life
- Changing formation will now give you a preview just like moving to a new tile does during the ordering phase. We plan on making the preview system better when in the ordering phase so that players can see a "ghost unit" of where their unit was and where they intend on moving to, that'll be for a future update.
- An info panel has been added to the armory if players are confused on how to equip weapons.
- A brand new interactive tutorial system has been added to the game. Players are no longer forced to play through it, but may revisit it under the "learn" tab.
- A brand new set of over 65 nested tooltips have been added to battles. Every mechanic of battles are explained through the nested tooltips.

- New 1v1 map "Monte Villa"
- New 1v1 map "Twin Creeks"
- New 2v2 map "Alpine Foothills"
- New 2v2 map "Magenta"

- New scenario system. This sytem still needs a lot of work, but you can now jump into historical scenarios on the world map, they include:
- Malakoff, Crimea
- Milazzo, Sicily
- La Moncelle, France
- Williamsburg, Virginia (DLC-required)

- Players can now right click on a unit's UI to assign it a number. This is good if you want to keep track of certain friendly or enemy units.
- Arrow movement preview is turned off when the mouse hovers over UI.
- Envelope in the bottom right now tells you how many other players ended their turns, especially useful in 2v2s.

Content
- A new objective-based game mode has been added for custom matches. If you guys like it, we can make it the standard way to play quick-matches. We buffed artillery a lot in this update, but we also don't want to see people sitting in corners with their artillery. An objective-based game mode in quick matches could help remedy corner camping. Let us know!
- Added an "All time periods" custom match option.
- Dynamic time of day has been added!
- Multi-day battle system has been added. If you play long enough it will become night time and you will need to redeploy your men for the next morning of battle! In the next update we will add some UI to make this feature clearer, and we will add a game option to turn this off if you don't like it.
- In the Campaign the AI is smarter and can now buy its own troops to rebuild armies!
- Several new maps added to the quick match pool so you aren't playing on "River Path" all the time...

Graphics & Optimization
- Playing with post-processing turned off no longer looks super oversaturated.
- Graphics menu UI updated.
- Players can now customize the music they want to hear under the audio tab.
- Animals/flags on the "Nations" tab are much higher resolution.
- Every nation now has a unique background in the "nations" tab.
- The game border is now lifted up slightly so that farmland that extended off the map is covered up.
- Brand new tooltip graphics (read more under quality of life)
- Brand new battle UI, a new chat system, and kills-to-win bars. A mini-map will be added soon.

- More sound effects/polish on buttons that previously felt dull.
- Buying weapons/troops under the army builder is more intuitive, buttons are clearer.
- The unit info tab has been moved to the top left of the screen.
- When you unlock a faction, the nation's victory theme will play.
- Selecting a unit now has a unique voice line associated with it. We will continue adding in more voice lines each update!
- Buildings weren't generating fire/smoke when destroyed, this has been readded.
- New loading screens have been added to startup and when going into battles/campaigns.
- New quotes have been added for loading screens.
- The "Delta" map had floating trees and a missing hill mesh fixed.
- Units hold their rifles better in the campaign unit cards.
- The text "Attack" has been changed to "Fight" when an enemy attacked you in campaign.
- The flags the animals held in 2v2s no longer layer improperly.
- Bloom reduced on the main menu map.
- Icons for the French carbines, Russian M1856 Rifle, Ottoman Enfield rifle, and the Italian weapons in the armory have had their icons corrected.
- Did a little work to optimization but not much this update. Next update we are updating our project and cleaning up files, and optimizing how sprites are loaded.

Known Issues
- Spawning on Antietam puts your camera at the wrong area and spawns troops backwards. Will fix asap.
- New tooltips can be a bit buggy and not very smooth when appearing on screen.
- Hotkeys still need to be fixed.
- Players can't add more than 1 AI in a match.
- Ready button UI needs to be changed.
- Units crossing bridges look ugly when not in column as they spill into the water, will fix.
- Players aren't able to put cosmetics on their animal avatars.
- Sprites sometimes face the wrong direction after finishing a melee
- Animations suck and need to be worked on for sprites.
- Players have a lot of merits but nothing to spend them on, especially players who spent $18 on the "European Empires" pack. They will soon be able to spend these merits on cosmetics and more things in the future...