Hello there Generals!
Another update has arrived, and this is a big one! Today we release 1.12.5, that targets some of your most pressing concerns. But there is more! As we have a plan in the works to release monthly updates for By Blood Alone. So keep your eyes peeled for more information related to that!
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# Balance
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- Minor tweaks made to further railway/infrastructure focuses that were a bit weak, or were unchanged in the last iteration
- Changed certain Italian Balance of Power Decisions from being available only one time to once a year. This should give players more leeway with the whole balancing act
- Songgotu Zhanshan is now an economist for MAN to avoid a double Captain of Industry for MAN
- Stopped medium and heavy flame tanks from being able to be paradropped.
- Reduced values for some modifiers in Swiss National Spirits, including Spirit of Saint Bernard.
- Reduced values for the modifiers in swiss Weapons Designer and Popular Dictator traits.
- Made it less likely for countries to accept Swiss demands for territories.
- Influencing Cantons decision in Switzerland is now slightly more expensive and less likely to succeed.
- Cohesion settings should no longer result in unit clumping for the AI, and provide a much more stable frontline situation for all orders with less relocation, but may have slightly more overall movement than before. [GD note: from a design perspective, cohesion now works significantly better than previously; feedback particularly appreciated here]
- Changed the Yalta conference to make it better interact with the new Peace Conference Format.
- AI peace conference behaviour changed significantly when taking land for themselves. This is now much more distance based, and should result in more cohesive borders. [Iterative change #1]
- Peace Conference AI is now slightly more self-aware about contested bids. They will early-out of contests in some cases as an effort to reduce point wastage and to create more cohesive borders. Several defines added to control this behaviour. [Iterative change #2]
- Adjusted base org values for ship types
- Reduced org bonuses for some ship classes in doctrines
- Medium and heavy batteries attack and piercing adjusted, bb and bc armour no longer increases visibility and have higher armour values
- Increased xp spend cut off for legacy land equipment upgrade
- COMBAT_DAMAGE_SCALE_CARRIER returned to 5 was 1, NAVAL_STRIKE_DAMAGE_TO_STR decreased to 1 from 2, NAVAL_STRIKE_DAMAGE_TO_ORG decreased to 1.5 from 2
- Air combat COMBAT_DAMAGE_SCALE increase from 0.25 to 1
- SHIP_TO_FLEET_ANTI_AIR_RATIO increased from 0.2 to 0.25, ANTI_AIR_POW_ON_INCOMING_AIR_DAMAGE increased from 0.2 to 0.25, ANTI_AIR_MULT_ON_INCOMING_AIR_DAMAGE increased from 0.15 to 0.2
- Removed multiply stats ic cost and AA from Ship AA modules, increased base AA attack to replace them
- Reduced base Heavy hull costs slightly,all treaty battleships should now fit within treaty limits
- ENG now starts with 36 BB hull researched, nelson class now obsolete at 36 start
- Slightly improved Fascist/Neutral approach to beating overseas countries
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# Stability & Performance
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- Fixed a crash during hot joining on Mac.
- Reduced the size of the flags texture so the game works on GPUs with 8k texture limit
- Fixed rare CTD during GUI initialization in DX11
- Fix CTD caused by incorrect parsing of persistent AI strategy
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# AI
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- Improved ENG BB ai templates
- AI no longer treats obsolete equipment as best available equipment
- AI ENG will now try to build at least some KGV class BB's on time
- AI ENG now wants to build slightly higher ratio of BB's
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# UI
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- Airbase tooltip will now aggregate airwings of the same type, country and mission to make it more readable
- Glow effect is now shown when you can afford a BoP decision
- The game will now prevent incompatible saves from loading when continuing from the Launcher
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# Modding
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- Added has_completed_custom_achievement trigger and debug_custom_achievements console command
- More configurable AI behaviour in peace conferences (through defines)
- Reworked how ai_strategy unit_ratio is used to calculate and set build_airplane values. See common/ai_strategy/documentation.info for details.
- Added a list of all active ai_strategy entries to the imgui view ai_strategy.
- When retrieving a list of equipment icons or 3D models from the equipment graphic_db to display in the tank or plane designer any duplicate entries will now be removed.
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# Bugfix
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- Minor loc fix for concessions to monarchies for Switzerland. Used to say "Concessions to Swiss Monarchies", now "Concessions to X country (German)" Monarchies
- Added a variable to whichever nation that cedes Bessarabia to Soviet so it shows up correctly in news events
- Fixed typos in Guarantee events for Switzerland.
- Fixed minor comment in Guarantees event for Switzerland.
- Adjusted "Side Active" condition for Balance of Power so it's more accurate.
- Added tooltip for Political Advisor Adolf Furrer so it's clear he can unlock an extra Research Slot
- Fixed typo in one of the Italo-Ethiopian war events
- Improved tooltip in Italian focus All Roads Lead to Rome so that the way wargoal targets are picked is more intuitive.
- General Cedillo is now again a leader of the Mexican revolt
- The Grand Council of Fascism will now actually oust Kings or Christian Democrats in the form of the National Military Junta, if the Balance of Power is low enough.
- Fixed old news event not having a dynamic loc for the USSrs name
- Slight loc fix changing 'Embargos' to 'Embargo' in the League of Nations embargo event.
- Added conditions for entering peace talks between Italy and Ethiopia, as well as events, and loc, and other things concerning the peace conference.
- Fixing missing Modify Government alert for a political advisor can be assigned.
- Salvador Abascal now has a portrait if you have MtG enabled
- Puyi now gets nationalist symbol correctly
- UK shouldn't be able to give Turkey Levant states that they no longer own.
- Germany no longer ignores Switzerland after they've stopped being neutral.
- Fixed trigger not showing appropriate requirements in Human Torpedo decision.
- Suppress the Mafia decision will, no longer show infantry equipment requirements twice.
- Italy's Focus 'Negotiate Claims' will be bypassed if certain criteria is met. Certain events will also be skipped, if the criteria isn't met.
- Fixed Germany granting territories to Switzerland in Fascist Path
- Added extra tooltips for expansion focuses in Switzerland
- If France is faction leader, all its allies will join them in the Stresa Front with Italy
- If Italy declines Germany's offer to assassinate Mussolini, Germany won't be able to ignore that rejection and go ahead with the assassination anyways. Also, if the Balance of Power is active for Italy, Mussolini's side will be switched out to the King's.
- Typo fix for BBA_ethiopia_anti_colonialism_events.4
- Fixed bad texture conversion on DX11 when using R8G8B8_UNORM, R8G8B8_UNORM_sRGB and X1R5G5B5 formats
- Ivan Smirnov, Ivar Smilga and Alexander Shlyapnikov now gets released out of prison if they are still alive and hasn't been released yet when completing Return Democracy to the party
- You can no longer use the "No Garrison -> Kurdish uprising -> Annex" exploit to fast remove Kurdish separatism faster than normal
- Turkish puppets can no longer pick the "invite to alliance" focuses and break free from their overlord that way
- Remade some checks that only checked for "puppet" subject type to include all subjects for Turkey
- Italy can no longer claim the throne of Montenegro if the controller of said state is at war with Italy.
- AI should now respect the equipment_production_min_factories AI strategy even when there is no need for the equipment type
- It's no longer possible to see certain Balance of Power Decisions before finishing the required National Focus for Italy
- Paradrop orders without enough assigned transport wings now display how many wings are missing on the order instance (map arrow) tooltip.
- Scrambled carrier air wings that can perform naval strike or kamikaze missions will prioritise them over air superiority and interception unless they are fighter or interceptor air wings.
- Fixed missing localization of equipment categories fighter and CAS, displayed in a naval combat tooltip and probably in a few other places too.
- Fixed issue where Vorarlberg wouldn't be a core of the Holy Roman Empire when formed by Germany.
- Fixed an instance where the Italian AI would always decline Ethiopian territorial expansions if Ethiopia went up to a satellite via the focus tree
- At the end of peace conference, for new puppets, calculate the right type of puppet
- Songgotu Zhanshan and Megata Toshiro are once again Manchurian advisors
- Tooltips in Northern and Southern Italian designers now specify the need to complete the Focus New Industrialization Program to improve them.
- Fixed issue with Italy completing two mutually exclusive focuses when failing on mussolini's missions to conquer North/South Ethiopia and withdrawing from Ethiopia at the same time.
- Turkeys join alliances focuses now bypasses if in faction
- Fixed missing core in the Siberian union that created a weird gap
- Losing non-cores as Italy will now only reduce BoP if the value is below 30% towards the Grand Council. Losing a core will now reduce 15% BoP instead of 20%.
- King Vittorio Emanuele III will no longer get the crown of Albania if he abdicated or died.
- Pressure government decisions will no longer show up if the target country already has the same ideology and is in faction with the sender.
- Focus Topple Amhara Rulers will no longer be available if ideology is not Fascist or Non-Aligned. The Ethiopian characters that become the country leaders of their respective puppet countries will become the leaders of both Fascist and Non-Aligned ideologies.
- Added tooltips in Swiss Focus Tree to notify when the Absolute Neutrality and Swiss Citizen Militia Decision Categories are disabled.
- If a subject of Yugoslavia controls Dalmatia and Italy demands those states, Yugoslavia will get to decide the fate of those states - not the subject nation.
- You can no longer hire several advisors of the same type
- Fix potential OOS on hot-joining caused by data on executing air missions never being written to the savegame.
- Fix CTD when leaving a game where an air group for whatever reason contains a faulty air wing reference.
- Fix potential OOS on hot-joining a second time without restarting the game, caused by erroneous reading of daily port strike limits from the savegame.
- Fix OOS involving interception missions targeting an enemy airwing that's passing through a region, where both the enemy's mission region and the interception region updates on the same hourly tick.
- Ceding Bessarabia is now properly showing the former owners name in an upcoming news event
- Switzerland will now seize the gold reserves of countries it enters war against.
- Added bypass for Swiss Focus 'Trade Agreement with Germany' for when Germany is not fascist, and it will not be completed if Switzerland is at war with Germany
- Added bypass to the Swiss focus 'Withdraw from the League of Nations' for when the League of Nations has already been disbanded.
- Fixed issue where Switzerland would not have a Viable European Fascist to complete Fascist Path.
- Set the correct population in the Swiss Plateau state in Switzerland, and adjust the population in other states.
- Fixed first loading screen background flipping immediately as GUI is being loaded
- Increased AI weight for Japan to abandon the naval treaty in early 1937.
- Fix crash on Leader details screen, officer corps tab, when the player clicks on an advisor role to give to a unit leader
- Switzerland no longer gets a "Breach of Neutrality" event when the Absolute Neutrality category is not present or when the hostile country is in a faction while not being the faction leader.
- Switzerland will not be able to offer trading gold with countries they're at war with.
And always remember, if you discover any bugs or if you have suggestions for the game, please do submit it in the forum section dedicated to those areas.
