Sorry for the delay, all done now.
Back Buttons for Phases
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The online game really needs back buttons for moving between phases… The game is currently very frustrating because you will make a mistake, click accept, then it cannot be undone. This can be totally solved by adding back buttons to navigate back to previous phases.
This is actually what tends to happen in OTB games… People tend to place units while they are making their noncombat moves. They also tend to make purchasing changes when they start making combat movements. Obviously, as soon as combat begins, there’s no going back.
—Rambling Begins Here—
On the software side, you just need to do two things. First, disable the back button in the combat phase as soon as the first attack is made. Second, disable the the back button during the entire noncombat phase.
Depending on how you have your database set up, things could get slightly more complicated. You’re all set to go if the actions of every phase are recorded and kept (which they really should be… eventually you’ll want to be able to query this data to know things like what percent of winning Allied games started with the British player buying just three tanks). However, if you’re just keeping the present game state (bad idea) and writing to it each turn, then you’ll need to treat phases 1+2 as a single phase, and 4+5 as a single phase and just keep a temp file after phases 1 and 4. Anyways. Great game, but the lack of a back button is really frustrating.
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@0verki11 said in Back Buttons for Phases:
On the software side, you just need to do two things. First, disable the back button in the combat phase as soon as the first attack is made. Second, disable the the back button during the entire noncombat phase.
The developers gave tremendous lashback over the suggestion that defensive profiles be able to be turned off, saying not that it would be inconvenient or costly (which I’d agree with) but literally impossible.
So when you say here’s a feature, ought to reasonably be implemented, and “just” xyz, well, realistically, just don’t expect anything.
As to disable “back” during noncombat, nah. Don’t know if you misspoke and it isn’t going to happen anyways, but I’d say rewind should be:
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Until first combat rolls are made, can rewind to any previous part, including purchase to change purchases.
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Addition of confirmation for each battle before dice rolled as battle order does make a difference and 1942 Online UI handles awkwardly
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Post-battle rewind when a retreat action taken, allowing retreat to a different territory / sea zone than initially selected or cancelling retreat (provided dice weren’t rolled for remaining attackers/defenders). Again, 1942 Online UI is awkward. Even if you jumped through all the hoops and were attentive, if you misclicked, dead.
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After combat finished, allow rewinding to any post-combat point with additional rewind as described in 3 if retreat was the last action chosen.
Why disable rewind function during noncombat? Then players take triple the time to try not to make mistakes and end up making mistakes anyways? IRL someone forgets to noncom their stack it’s not great, lot of stuff to keep track of so maybe something gets messed up. But in a computer game, the program keeps track so things don’t get messed up. And if it’s sloppy for someone to do takebacks in IRL, you don’t want people trying to do takebacks all the time, waste of time? Considering 1942 Online literally compromised the gameplay to accommodate casuals, better think it through. Call something chess and use checkers rules, then shout it needs to be touch move because it’s serious? Come on! Serious game is serious, casual game is casual.
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@aardvarkpepper I play a lot of OTB and online chess… online chess never uses “touch” rules. Too much chance for miss clicks.
A&A online has two strikes against it. One there is often a day break between every single turn. Second, you can’t really see the whole board at once. There’s a lot of opportunity for errors.
Anyways, basically you just don’t want the back button active anytime it can “undo” a battle. In noncombat it should be off because going “back” would put you in the combat phase, etc.
I feel like the developers are likely to say that this would be impossible because I’m thinking they’re just updating the game state in the database rather than logging each move players make. The game would be much more robust if they did the latter, but I just threw out a rough data model for the former on the off chance a dev was reading this thread.
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