Hello friends,
Patch #7 for Axis & Allies 1942 Online arrives today!
***Please note: there will be a short outage between 1-2 pm PST, Jan 22, 2020***
We've been working on a sweeping set of changes to transform our AI computer players into better opponents and teammates. This patch includes the first phase of our AI strategy improvements— plus UI updates, bug fixes and new features. Read on for full patch notes.
PATCH #7 NOTES
New Features and Improvements
- AI Strategy Improvements:
- AI players are better at reacting to game events and shifting goals
- AI players are better at executing team goals
- AI players are better at supporting teammates
- AI players use transports more effectively (specifically Japan, UK, & USA)
- Rules Implementations
- Players must now deploy all purchased units during the Mobilization phase. IPC will no longer be refunded for undeployed units
- Choose to ignore or engage enemy transports/submarines located in the same sea zone as your units at the start of your turn
- By default, the game will treat enemy transports/submarines as “Hostile”
- To ignore enemy transports/submarines: -Click on the relevant sea zone -Click on the “dossier” tab in the bottom left corner of the screen, or press “e” -Change the toggle below the Sea Zone name from “Hostile” to “Friendly”
- You are no longer required to move your units out of the sea zone during Combat Move to avoid engaging enemy transports/submarines. Units starting in a hostile sea zone can now make Noncombat Moves
- Choose to ignore or engage enemy transports/submarines in a sea zone during amphibious assaults and bombardments
- By default, the game will treat enemy transports/submarines as “Hostile”
- To ignore enemy transports/submarines:
-Click on the relevant sea zone
-Click on the “dossier” tab in the bottom left corner of the screen, or press “e”
-Change the toggle below the Sea Zone name from “Hostile” to “Friendly”
-Mark the region friendly prior to moving units into the sea zone
New UI Elements
- Updated buttons and menu visuals to improve readability of game UI
- Tooltips appear when required info is missing or invalid on a game creation window
- When loading units to transports, players will now see an arrow from the starting region to
- the diamond icon (destination marker) to indicate the action
- Diamond icons (destination markers) have colored edges to showcase type(s) of movement to a region:
- Blue: Sea Units
- Red: Air Units
- Yellow: Land Units
- White: Bombardments
- When players make incomplete or invalid movements, the units and diamond icons for that movement will now flash
Cancelling Unit Action Improvements
- Unit Movements can now be cancelled by pressing SHIFT+Right Click on the Unit Stack
- Cancel individual land units loaded to a transport stack, without cancelling loaded units for all transports in the stack. To do this:
- Click on the transport stack on the map
- Open the “dossier” in the bottom left corner of the screen
- Hover over the unit you wish to unload and click the red “X”
Engine Improvements
- Players with unsupported hardware configurations who were able to play the game prior to Patch #5, should now be able to play again with our newly updated engine
- Linux Players: We are still encountering issues with certain Nvidia hardware and drivers with Axis & Allies 1942 Online currently. Linux players with affected hardware will be able to play again through our Legacy Renderer until we resolve the core problem
Bug Fixes
- [Automatic Aircraft Landing] - Resolved crash caused by players or AI attempting to automatically land unlanded planes
- [Aircraft Carriers/Fighters] - Resolved an issue where players could move fighters and aircraft carriers into positions that break game rules
- [Movement] - Resolved an issue where movements taking units out of and back into a starting region in a single move could not be cancelled
- [Finished Games] - Resolved an issue where finished games wouldn’t properly appear in the Player Profile
- [Finished Games] - Win ratio percentage for ranked games no longer calculates based off of all games played
- [Launch] - Game will no longer become stuck when loading into a game with a corrupted game state
- [Game Saves] - Saved games no longer become corrupted due to system activities
- [Unit Placement] - Resolved issue where certain units overlapped with Industrial Complex’s too much
- [Performance] - Resolved memory leaks and fixed more issues where players were encountering black screens, units disappearing from the combat board or other crashes after a short play session
- [Notifications] - Servers will no longer be affected by multiple unread Notifications in the database
- [Notifications] - Notifications are now capped at 100 notifications. Older notifications will be removed to make room for new notifications after the cap has been reached
- [Notifications] - Players who declined a game invite will no longer receive notifications that “The game has started without you!”
- [Online AI] - Resolved issue where the online AI wouldn’t take its turn
- [Movement] - Resolved issues where tanks could not Combat Move through friendly territories to attack hostile regions
- [Transports] - Resolved issue where Transports would “teleport” back to original sea zone after the combat phase
- [Transports] - Resolved issue where Transports could not pick up units from certain regions and islands
- [Movement] - Mass moving Fighters/Bombers will no longer cause under-fueled units to travel farther than capable
- [Map] - World Map will no longer only partially show up when returning to the Game Board from combat