There were three main goals with a fourth one emerging in the middle of development:
1) Add the first operational command: Assault
Assault is the most basic attack command. Once a unit has reached the form up position (FUP) combat can occur. At this point, the invading player is considered to be on the border of the combat cell while the occupying player is considered to be in the middle of the cell had will have automatically formed a defensive perimeter along all invaded hex sides.
2) Implement the combat control panel.
This panel pops up when a combat cell is clicked on. It shows a blown up view of the hex along with all active invading and occupying forces. The active player clicks on the combat list button which then brings up a drop down list of all available commands. Once a command is selected, the units that can participate are highlighted and the user can select as many or as few as needed. If the occupying player is active, he also must select a target side to attack. Finally, the execute button is clicked and the combat is calculated and displayed in a multi line text toolbar that the user can page up and down through to see the results.
3) Implement the combat model.
This is the first stab at implementing the actual combat. However, as soon as I started, I realized that it would be nearly impossible to implement without really good feedback on the effect of the combat on the units themselves. This led to the need for number 4.
4) Implement the unit details panel.
This was originally going to be part of 0.1.9 - Complete the Interface. However, it makes much more sense to at least have a preliminary version done now so I can see what is happening to all the affected units. The problem here is screen space.
The combat panel and combat results panels take up 2/3rds of the minimum screen while the main, cell info and unit info (not the same as unit detail) toolbars take up the rest. After playing with a few pretty iffy ideas I came to the conclusion that there are 2 reasonable alternatives:
A) (preferable) There is currently about a 450 x 200 rectangle of unused screen space below the combat panel that could possibly be used to display the unit detail information. If this is big enough, I will use that.
B) Hide the main / cell / unit toolbars and replace the free'd area with the unit details toolbar while it is being views. This is a bit more complicated but doable and would afford me a lot more space than (A).
Either way, once this is done, I can begin implementing the actual combat model. At this point, I will start to have the first glimpse of a playable game although without a supply model or victory conditions.
