Hello everyone. RTW3 has officially updated to v.1.00.46. The full changelog is posted below, but before we get to that - we have a dev diary for you. Some players have had issues with how officers and their appointments are currently modeled in game. To help with that we have introduced some new changes to how officers are assigned, and clarified why officers are modeled the way they are. [h1]Dev Diary - Officers and Assignment[/h1] As always, we appreciate constructive criticism and suggestions from players. They help us make Rule the Waves III better for you. We have read the feedback on the officer system and have made some adjustments to address these concerns. First off, the officer system is intended to provide flavor and variation in the game. It is also intended to reflect the uncertainty about peoples’ true administrative and leadership abilities until a crisis arises. This is intentional – as anyone who has served in a military organization knows, or really in any large organization, both capable and not so capable people can get promoted. The game aims to simulate this. In RTW3, the player has the role of grand admiral, and as such this position would usually not interfere with individual appointments of ship commanders. The game lets you do so, but at a cost of prestige, which is intended to put a brake on extensive interference in appointments from on high. When officers are promoted or auto assigned, the system considers time in rank and battle experience as the main factors. Ability is also factored in but to a smaller degree. There has been some feedback that the officer system is either pointless or encourages micromanagement. We have tried to respond to this, and as a result, there are some changes and adjustments to the officer system in our most recent update. In this update officer abilities are less likely to be revealed in peacetime than previously, as most officers’ true traits will be unknown in peacetime. We hope that this will reduce the incentive to micromanage. Having a Naval Academy will increase the quality of officers, and slightly increase the likelihood that officers’ abilities will become known. Also, if the player chooses the option to have officers assigned automatically to empty slots, this will be done immediately when a slot becomes vacant, instead of after the player has pressed next turn. Thus, if you choose this setting, there will usually only be a few occasional free slots that the player will have the opportunity to fill without prestige penalty after every turn, which should further reduce the incentive to micromanage. Of course, player’s still have the option to let the game auto assign officers for a turn at a time, or, if you’d like, you can opt for full manual control and try to handle officer appointments yourself. And now for the changelog... [h1]v.1.00.46 Changelog[/h1] [b]Strategic Layer [/b] [list] [*] Fixed a bug that made surprise attacks very unlikely. [*] Fixed a bug which could in unusual circumstances make nation base resources go negative. [*] Removed Hereditary enemy from Spain vs USA. They have plenty of conflicting interests as it is, and the additional enemy status led to too high likelihood of early wars. [/list] [b]Battle Generation [/b] [list] [*] Fixed a bug where clicking on a division in the pre battle screen could show an error message. [*] Fixed a missing objective in an Italy vs France mission. [*] Fixed a data error in a mission for the Ceylon possession. [/list] [b]Battle Resolution [/b] [list] [*] HE penetration had been inadvertently lowered in a previous update. That has now been readjusted. [/list] [b]Officers [/b] [list] [*] A Fleet exercise will now have a chance to reveal the ability of ship and division commanders. [*] Dissolving a division with a commander will no longer cost prestige. (Reshuffling ships and creating new divisions will impact crew and division efficiency, so should be a sufficient downside to cheesy ways of getting rid of bad commanders). [*] Officer ability will now be more likely to be revealed in wartime and less likely to be revealed in peacetime. [*] There is now a chance that poor ship and division commanders will reveal their deficiencies in battle, giving a chance to dismiss them for free after a lost battle. [*] Fixed a rare error in officer events that could pop up if there were too few officers. [/list] [b]UI Improvements [/b] [list] [*] Added years in rank and battles fought to the select officer dialog. [*] If Auto assign officers is selected in User preferences, then all vacant positions will be automatically filled as soon as they become vacant, thus leaving no incentive to micromanage. [*] Rebuilt ships will now only have the last rebuild year after the class name. [*] Made sure the flotilla attack flag is not behind the missile control panel, even on a small screen. [*] Added a button to set preferences from the load/create game screen. [*] Special characters in officer ranks and place names are now converted when that option is selected. [*] Added notifications when largest ship of type in the world is built. [/list] [b]UI Fixes [/b] [list] [*] Fixed a UI glitch with maintenance cost when a game is loaded. The number shown could be slightly wrong as it omitted effects of officer attributes. This was a UI thing only and did not affect the actual calculations. [*] Fixed a bug with torpedo range data not showing in the ship status screen. [*] Fixed some minor UI issues. [/list] [b]Fleet Management [/b] [list] [*] Fixed a bug that generated error messages when the last ship was removed from a division in the division editor. [*] Fixed a bug with clearing all ships from a division in the division editor. [/list] [b]Ship Design [/b] [list] [*] Speed limit for triple turrets in A & Y and TPS > 1 changed to 21 knots. This is to fix an issue where some legacy ships could not be refitted. [/list] [b]Aircraft [/b] [list] [*] Later Jet Attack and Heavy Jet Fighters can now carry 2 ASM. [*] Slightly raised the production rate for jet aircraft. [/list] [b]Bug Fixes [/b] [list] [*] Fixed a bug that could generate errors when checking if shipnames are used. [*] Fixed a bug that capped AP penetration on higher AP tech levels. [*] Fixed a bug with coastal artillery occasionally being placed at sea when loading a saved game. [*] Fixed a bug with the space bar restarts game setting not being remembered when the game is restarted. [*] Fixed a bug with bombardment ammo loadouts. [*] Fixed an unusual case where the auto run battle could get hung up on a message box. [/list] And that is everything we have for now. Enjoy the Update and Dev Diary, and happy hunting everyone!