VASL6.5 beta test module now available

DougRim

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VASL 6.5 beta test version is here! Give it a whirl to help find any bugs before the official release!

New Features

1. Casualties Bin


This feature automates tracking of CVP during a scenario. All CVP-eligible units (infantry, vehicles, guns, planes, and LC) now start with their full CVP value as the default. They can be moved to a casualties bin which will track and report on total CVP for Allied/Axis sides. CVP for individual units can be adjusted as required by SSRs, CGs or other situations.

To Move A Unit to the Casualties Bin:

Right click on the unit, select Casualties Bin and then either Allied or Axis from the submenu. This allows for maximum flexibility (think Italians or prisoners) as to which side the CVP should be allocated.

To Change the CVP of a unit:

Right click on the unit, select Reset CVP and then enter the new CVP value. This has to be done for each unit. Changing the CVP of one Russian 447 in a scenario won’t change it for all Russian 447 in the game.

If you are using DVP, you will need to do this for each vehicle in the Casualties Bin.

For vehicles, you can reset the base CVP value as above or you can reduce the CVP by clicking on CVP Modifiers and then selecting one of the four submenu items which will change the CVP by (1) -1 for malf/disabled MA; (2) – 2 if the crew survives; (3) -3 if the MA is malf/disabled and the crew survives; or (4) return CVP to the default value.

While crews are built into the vehicle CVP, Armor Leaders are not. To add an AL to the Casualties Bin, the AL counter must be put on board and then sent to the Casualties Bin.

To View CVP Counts:

For a quick count, click on the CVP button on the tool bar and a current total will show up in the chat window for Allied CVP and Axis CVP.

For a detailed view, click on the Casualties Bin button on the tool bar and the Casualties Bin will display with a stack of those units sent to the Bin in each of the Allied and Axis areas. Those units cannot, in this version, be automatically sorted, but they can be restacked and sorted manually and their CVP values can be changed as above while in the Casualties Bin. Clicking on the Allied CVP or Axis CVP buttons at the top of the Casualties Bin window will update the CVP total for that side (only). You can close the window normally or leave it open.

All Casualties Bin actions will be saved by Save Game.

To Handle Wrecks and Casualty Reduction:

For Wrecks, before turning the vehicle into a wreck, clone it, send one version to the Casualties Bin and then change the other to a wreck.

For Casualty Reduction, turn the squad into a hs, clone the hs, send one version to the Casualties Bin and leave the other on the main map and apply any further actions (such as breaking) to it.

Version Compatibility:

For both players to see and use the Casualties Bin, they will both need 6.5.

Games saved with previous versions of the game can be opened with 6.5 and will work normally. In terms of the Casualties Bin, existing unit counters will not contain the Casualties Bin functionality. However, new unit counters dragged from the Counters Window will. Simply replace the existing counters with one from the Counters Window whenever a unit needs to go the Casualties Bin.

Some counters that should not have the Casualties Bin menu items may have them. This is due to the way counters are created in VASL. If you find such counters, please report them.

Extensions:

Unit counters added by extensions will not have the Casualties Bin functionality even though they will have the popup menu items. Sending such a counter to the Casualties Bin will produce an error message in the chat window and will not add CVP points to the Allied or Axis totals. However, the game will not crash, and you will be able to continue to play normally. With the agreement of Third Parties Producers, it would be possible to work with those who have produced Extensions with unit counters to see if the Casualties Bin functionality could be applied to those counters. This work is underway on the BFP Extension.

Vehicle CVP special case:

A reminder that when determining the CVP of a vehicle, the highest possible AF is used. In the case of vehicles with Front AF inside a square box, this can raise their CVP. For example, a vehicle with a squared 8 AF will be treated as having 11 AF for CVP calculation purposes, resulting in 3 CVP for armor rather than 2 CVP.

2. Counter Finder

This feature lets players search for hard to find counters such as motorcycle counters or Out of Gas or NVR counters.

To use, click on the "Ctr Search" button located between the INFO and Night buttons on the toolbar. You will have two ways to locate a counter: search and scroll.

To Search:

Enter a counter name in the text box with the text "Enter Counter Name". Then click the "Search" button. The location of the counter will show up in the other text box. If no match is found the text box will report this. This will happen. For example, looking for bicycle counters - enter "Bicycle". You will get a result. Enter "Bicycles" will get you no joy. You can just keep entering different counter names. Clicking on Clear will reset the text boxes to their original state but is not required between individual searches. The search function is case insensitive so both “Wind” and “wind” will find the Wind counter.

To Scroll:

A scrollable list is displayed at the bottom of the window. Scroll down the list until you find the counter you want in the left-hand column. The right-hand column will tell you where it is in the counter palette.

In both cases, what you get is the location of the counter in the counter palette (which opens when you click on the German 467 icon on the tool bar). You will not be taken to that location; you have to get there yourself. Just navigate through the tabs and panels as you normally would.

This is meant to handle those hard to find counters. It won't work for units: infantry, vehicles, guns, LC and planes. Basically, anything that is found under the Axis O/B or Allied O/B tabs is excluded (with some exceptions like Bicycles, Dozers). It is also not going to find counters in extensions.


Bug Fixes

1. LOS Fix for rubbled upper levels and split levels

Rubble counters (both stone and wood) can now be incremented by level via their popup menu just as building level counters can. The LOS tool will recognize the applicable level of the rubble counter. Drag the Wooden Rubble counter off the Toolbar and change type and level as required.

The total height of Split-level buildings, including underlying terrain, is now correctly calculated and so the LOS tool works.

2. LOS Bug fix to handle BFPDWxb and deluxe boards when flipped and cropped

A couple of board configurations needed a fix to fully enable flipping and cropping.

3. Concealment Chart error fixed.


Counter Changes

1. Korea: Forgotten War counters are now part of the main VASL module

All the counters from the KFW extension have now been added to the core VASL module, meaning that the KFW extension is no longer required for VASL6.5 forwards. All hail Al Cannamore for a huge effort on the KFW counters!!

2. EC/Weather counters have been updated

The entire set of EC/Weather counters have been redone as per a long-standing thread on GS. Many of them can be flipped or incremented to reflect different conditions. They are still found in the same place in the Counter Palette (Other/Map/EC).

3. Several counter bugs were fixed

The images for the German 20L(6) AA gun and versions of the Finnish T-26 vehicle were corrected. A problem with LC wrecks was fixed.


Board Updates


While not strictly part of VASL6.5, a reminder of some of the board updates that have taken place over the last year. Auto syncing should be taking care of this for you; if you have downloaded a board from VASL.info recently, you are probably doing something wrong!

1. LOS has now been applied to all Deluxe boards

2. Festung Budapest boards have been updated to version 6.0+

3. Bugs in various individual boards have been fixed: BFP, bd40, bd50, bd70, bdRileys

4. The addition of Light Woods transformation to all boards has been completed and various bugs fixed

Of course, a whole group of new boards were VASLized over the past year. A lot of hard work by a bunch of folks.


Keep those cards and letters coming about bugs and new features.
 

TopT

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Man, you guys are friggin' awesome! Thank you all.
 
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bprobst

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Is there just one casualty bin for each side? I'm thinking it would be useful to have a separate bin for "captured". If you have a captured unit/gun, you get the appropriate CVP immediately and then get the extra CVP at game end (or immediately if eliminated prior to game end). Or will this fall into the category of "manual adjustments" to the CVP value? If so then you need to track eliminated stuff vs. captured stuff (not difficult to do, just use a label). If you do it automatically though, you need to recall that some nationalities have special considerations for captured gear (e.g., Chinese guns are worth triple not double).
 

Michael R

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I searched for "burnt-out wreck". I received the message "Result Found. Try different search term or use Scroll method". I believe the message should be "No result found..." Same for "burned".

Edit:
Found the counter on my own and then played with the finder. It finds "burned out wreck". It does not fine "burned". It does not find "wreck". I can understand that you might want it to work that way.
 
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Michael R

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The new button adjacent to the Move button (on its left) shows the letters CPV. Should that be CVP?
 

DougRim

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Is there just one casualty bin for each side? I'm thinking it would be useful to have a separate bin for "captured". If you have a captured unit/gun, you get the appropriate CVP immediately and then get the extra CVP at game end (or immediately if eliminated prior to game end). Or will this fall into the category of "manual adjustments" to the CVP value? If so then you need to track eliminated stuff vs. captured stuff (not difficult to do, just use a label). If you do it automatically though, you need to recall that some nationalities have special considerations for captured gear (e.g., Chinese guns are worth triple not double).
They certainly fall into the category of manual adjustments for now. The might well be good "enhancements" in future versions. I want to be sure that the basic implementation is working well in 6.5.
 

DougRim

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I do not like the permanent labels on these counters:
Let's see what others think. My idea was that they are easier to pull off the tray wit the label and then see at glance which is which of the map. But if the tide runs against them, they can be removed. . . .
 

DougRim

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I searched for "burnt-out wreck". I received the message "Result Found. Try different search term or use Scroll method". I believe the message should be "No result found..." Same for "burned".

Edit:
Found the counter on my own and then played with the finder. It finds "burned out wreck". It does not fine "burned". It does not find "wreck". I can understand that you might want it to work that way.
Michael, just tested this. The full text "No Result Found. Try . . . ." is being written. You are not seeing all of it because the Counter Search Window is not opening wide enough on your machine. If you make it bigger by grabbing the border and pulling it, you will see the full text. Of course I will try to resolve this so that the window always opens large enough. Users shouldn't have to mess with the window. Thanks for noting this.
 

Tuomo

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So it seems like there's limited backward compatibility with previous VASL versions... I have v6.4.4 and while I can open a 6.4.5b3 vsav file, I only see the maps and not the counters.
 

DougRim

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So it seems like there's limited backward compatibility with previous VASL versions... I have v6.4.4 and while I can open a 6.4.5b3 vsav file, I only see the maps and not the counters.
Yes that is correct. To add the casualities bin counter I had to alter virtually every unit counter so backward compatability is not there. You CAN open a 6.4.4 file in 6.5 and play it, you just won't be able to use the casbin functionality without switching out the counters. Just replace them with a "new" counter from the counter palette every time you want to send some unit to the casualties bin.
 

esparver73

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I would also like that the EC/Weather counter labels could have the option to be removed or change its content to "".
I like to have an HTML table with these counters and their fixed labels overlap with each other and its a mess.
Thanks for the hard work!
 

DougRim

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I would also like that the EC/Weather counter labels could have the option to be removed or change its content to "".
I like to have an HTML table with these counters and their fixed labels overlap with each other and its a mess.
Thanks for the hard work!
You and 3 other people. But that's enough. I will make the change in the next version.
 

von Marwitz

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I would also like that the EC/Weather counter labels could have the option to be removed or change its content to "".
I like to have an HTML table with these counters and their fixed labels overlap with each other and its a mess.
Thanks for the hard work!
Until then, you can simply click on the counters in a way that the labels of all but the leftmost one are obscured by the others. As the weather is unlikely to change during a scenario, usually it is sufficient to do so once during setup of the scenario.

von Marwitz
 
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