[General Battuta]

So. The reinforcement menu. It's really weird.

As I'm sure I've mentioned to the point of disgust by now, I've been fine-tuning an RTS-style point buy system for reinforcements.

This system is contingent on making a number of reinforcement wings all available simultaneously, each with an associated point cost. When the number of wings called in exceeds the available point value to the player, the remaining wings become unavailable.

This is fine. It all works dandy. And, so long as all the wings are of the same cost (for example, 1 point) there are no issues at all. Say you have five points available and ten wing you can call in, each at a cost of one point. You call in five of the wings, the reinforcement menu greys out. All cool.

BUT.

The reinforcement menu cannot remove one item at a time. For some weird reason, it either needs to show all the wings in the list as available, or none.

So if you have variable point costs - for example, ten wings that cost 3 points each, and a single wing that costs 1 - but only 2 points remaining to spend - the 3-point wings will not be greyed out. They will all appear as available (incorrectly) alongside the 1-point wing (correctly available.)

Now, this isn't a big issue, because if you actually try to call them in they'll vanish from the list and won't show up.

But it would be awesome if unavailable wings could be pulled from the reinforcement list on a per-item basis, instead of the whole list needing to be unavailable before it will 'tell the truth'.

Does that make sense?

so, tl;dr version: In a situation where some but not all of the wings on the reinforcement list become unavailable (because their departure cues become true, or their arrival cues are no longer true), I want the reinforcement list to remove those wings.

The problem is not that they still arrive - they don't - I simply want them to also vanish from the UI.

Frankly I imagine this change can be made without touching retail or any existing campaign. But I could be wrong.

EDIT: illustrated example

In this scenario we have four wings on call and three points remaining to spend. Point costs are listed by each item.

This is what you'd see if you went into the reinforcement menu:

REINFORCEMENT MENU
Strike Bombers - 4 Points  (should be greyed out or removed; currently displays as still available)
Uhlan Wing - 1 Point         (should remain on list)
Precision Strike - 2 Points  (should remain on list)
Fleet Bombers - 6 Points    (should be greyed out or removed; currently displays as still available.)

With the current behavior, all these items will remain on the list until there are zero points remaining, because only then will all the items on the list be unavailable. The reinforcements option will then grey out.

I want the indicated entries to vanish instead of remaining.

[General Battuta]

Oh, and I'll add again that these 'falsely available' wings will vanish from the list once you attempt to call them, so there is clearly some way to remove them on a per-item basis. The ships themselves never turn up, but the item does vanish.

The problem is that this behavior could be deceptive to the user, because it gives the impression the wing has been successfully called in.

[karajorma]

Sounds like a bug to me. The reinforcements menu needs to calculate what is available every time it is called rather than preserve the list it generated last time.

Doubt it's particularly hard to solve. Stick it in Mantis with a simple test mission (2-3 wings, no more) and I'll test it myself.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

On a side note the current engine limit is 8 reinforcements.  I've had my builds at 32 for quite awhile without issue though. 

[General Battuta]

I would love to see a bump on the reinforcements limit.

Karajorma: issue is mantised now here, and I attached a lovely little test mission I am quite proud of.