Beta Patch v1.020

[Lebatron]

ORIGINAL: WanderingHead

ORIGINAL: Lebatron
I don't know if this has been an issue with previous versions, but lately I've been noticing that subs somtimes don't use up a torpedo after an attack.

I think it essentially works, there is just a subtlety in how it works. I recall this coming up in beta, it relates to resupplying. Recall that all units can resupply from a territory in which they started the turn or adjacent. The sub can move, fire, then immediately (and in some cases automatically) resupply from the region where it started (or adjacent). When the resupply is automatic, it can look like it didn't expend torps to fire. But if you count supplies in the starting and adjacent regions you should notice one supply has been expended.

This is actually a handy way to keep subs at sea longer.

Let me know if you observe something that isn't explained as above.

Yes, it's a handy way to get keep subs topped off after their first shot. Now that I know what's behind the cause, I can finesse my supply movement to take advantage of this in the future.

[Lebatron]

ORIGINAL: WanderingHead

ORIGINAL: Lebatron
I've been seeing infantry that have been damaged in TLC appearing in the US for repair. It's probably due to the new factory tracing, but I don't like it when this happens, it just feels entirely wrong.

Can I assume that TLC was captured by the Germans in the case you mention? Where do you think the infantry should end up, France?

It could be related to the changes I made. Maybe I need to look at the deemphasis assigned to frozen regions, it does seem strange that it went to the USA.

Yes, Ideally France. In UV2.0, France is not frozen, so it's not about frozen regions in this case. Perhaps since I got the French factories full of qued units, the damaged TLC infantry is just looking for the most empty factory que. In the few cases I saw it happening, the TLC infantry ended up in North Central USA because obviously no ships are in the que there. I'm not sure where a damaged TLC infantry would go in the other scenarios after the new tracing rule you added, but perhaps they go to France since it's que is mostly empty. If it's just a small oddity of UV2.0 because the French que is full, I'll live with it.

[Lebatron]

ORIGINAL: WanderingHead

ORIGINAL: WanderingHead

ORIGINAL: Lebatron
I've been seeing infantry that have been damaged in TLC appearing in the US for repair. It's probably due to the new factory tracing, but I don't like it when this happens, it just feels entirely wrong.

Can I assume that TLC was captured by the Germans in the case you mention? Where do you think the infantry should end up, France?

It could be related to the changes I made. Maybe I need to look at the deemphasis assigned to frozen regions, it does seem strange that it went to the USA.

After a long time being unable to get AWD working on my home PC, (the PC died, so I reformatted the HD, but then AWD just didn't work until I spent two days monkeying with drivers), I finally have it back as of yesterday. I'm looking at some of these issues.

Jesse, what is the objection to the way it worked? That the unit went to the frozen USA?

I think that the reason this was introduced in this patch is one of the bug fixes. Recall that previously Russian units damaged in the opening Barbarosa were unable to trace to factories and were destroyed. This was because they were prohibited to trace to frozen regions. Now that prohibition is removed. Russia is fixed, but sometimes WA units can now go to frozen USA.

My current plan is to put in a bias against damaged units going to a frozen region for repair.

My objection is simply that it doesn't feel right. To be more accurate, it's simply not realistic that surviving TLC infantry would not merge with the French army, and would instead go to neutral America for reinforcement before returning to the fight. Politically, I don't think the USA would have allowed this. Isolation from European wars was the order of the day.

If you change the bias my new worry would be that any damaged TLC infantry would then end up in Britain. Again that would be a bad thing because it would give Britain free manpower plus extra Inf. The fall of France/Poland has no such effect so why should TLC? A simple solution would be to remove all TLC infantry and replace them with about 7 militia. I'll have to consider that for a future UV update. In the meantime I'd like to hear your ideas.

What about going back to leaving TLC neutral during an attack instead of it immediately turning Allied? If I remember, for TLC an exception was made because the Japs could attack the DEI without penalty. Maybe you could change things so that TLC remains neutral during conquest and if the Japs attacked the DEI the same turn it would unfreeze the USA.

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: Lebatron
My objection is simply that it doesn't feel right. To be more accurate, it's simply not realistic that surviving TLC infantry would not merge with the French army, and would instead go to neutral America for reinforcement before returning to the fight. Politically, I don't think the USA would have allowed this. Isolation from European wars was the order of the day.

If you change the bias my new worry would be that any damaged TLC infantry would then end up in Britain. Again that would be a bad thing because it would give Britain free manpower plus extra Inf. The fall of France/Poland has no such effect so why should TLC? A simple solution would be to remove all TLC infantry and replace them with about 7 militia. I'll have to consider that for a future UV update. In the meantime I'd like to hear your ideas.

What about going back to leaving TLC neutral during an attack instead of it immediately turning Allied? If I remember, for TLC an exception was made because the Japs could attack the DEI without penalty. Maybe you could change things so that TLC remains neutral during conquest and if the Japs attacked the DEI the same turn it would unfreeze the USA.

Damaged units use a lot of things in the decision where to go. The strongest is that they try to stay with their nationality. Next is the factory queue with the most available production (take factory production, subtract all non-paused units in production).

It has always been the case that TLC units will very likely go to England, so far as I can see they almost always would have done so before the bug-fix to allow tracing to frozen factories.

I think that biasing against tracing to frozen makes the most sense. The only other thing that could make sense is a small bias against moving over the sea if it can't find its own nationality, but if you have the French factories full then this won't help anyway.

IMO, it works well enough and is not in need of improvement (this is my reluctance to risk change). I have always avoided the TLC units going to England by being darned sure I was destroying them instead of just damaging them. I see that as a perfectly acceptable situation. The only time the Germans cannot destroy all of TLC in my experience is an early (Fall '39) attack.

I don't remember exactly why TLC turns WA right away, I think it had to do with the need for some special processing for the DEI (there was some gaminess to get around there, since you don't want them to turn German if the WA attack TLC). I don't want to reopen that can of worms.

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: WanderingHead
Forwarn45 reported a long standing problem with air targeting of naval units. This exists prior to 1.020 (probably all the way back to 1.000). Apparently air doesn't pick unique naval targets, frequently causing air to not find any target if its selected target has already been destroyed by a previous firing air unit.

I've checked the code. Indeed, the non-CAG-air vs naval targeting is the exact same code as air vs land. CAGs (I think) should do OK against naval, but other air units don't look for unique targets. It looks like this was unintentional, as a change for land targets was applied for naval targets.

Is it worth improving?

[Marshall Art]

With the 1.020 patch I became familiar with a new window - see below.

First I had this appear 1-2 times during play, particularly when trying to end a turn of a PBEM.

[Marshall Art]

When I tried to load a saved game the game crashed each time I hit the bring up saved games list button, No way to start a saved game...

[Marshall Art]

Note that if I check the PBEM box at the bottom right, I can indeed load PBEM saves, just not human vs. AI games....

Any idea what this is about? I never had any issues like that before. The game is a regular install (CD from matrix) upgraded to 1.008, 1.010, 1.011 and finally to 1.020 beta. Never used mods before.

[GKar]

ORIGINAL: WanderingHead

ORIGINAL: WanderingHead
Forwarn45 reported a long standing problem with air targeting of naval units. This exists prior to 1.020 (probably all the way back to 1.000). Apparently air doesn't pick unique naval targets, frequently causing air to not find any target if its selected target has already been destroyed by a previous firing air unit.

I've checked the code. Indeed, the non-CAG-air vs naval targeting is the exact same code as air vs land. CAGs (I think) should do OK against naval, but other air units don't look for unique targets. It looks like this was unintentional, as a change for land targets was applied for naval targets.

Is it worth improving?

IMHO this is well worth improving. And are you sure that cags always use unique targets? I don't have an example at hand, but I think they don't.

To make a long story short, I think that no air units should lose their opportunity to fire at a naval target - be it at sea or in harbor - just because "their" target was destroyed already. They should determine a valid target right before shooting and thus taking into account which enemy units have been destroyed already.

[xianing]

ORIGINAL: Marshall Art

Note that if I check the PBEM box at the bottom right, I can indeed load PBEM saves, just not human vs. AI games....

Any idea what this is about? I never had any issues like that before. The game is a regular install (CD from matrix) upgraded to 1.008, 1.010, 1.011 and finally to 1.020 beta. Never used mods before.

I've seen the same problem. All you have to do is to delete all the old savefiles, then it will work well.

[Lebatron]

Marshall Art, the exact same thing happened to me during testing for the lastest beta patch(1.020). It cured it by cleaning out my save folder. On the next load up I was able to access the save screen. 

[MrQuiet]

Marshall Art I think you should be having at least 2 versions of AWD.

You need 1.011 for your current 2 vs 2 games.
You need 1.020 for our current GlobalGlory game. (and your future 2 vs 2 games)

You will need another install when you get to the UV 2.1 games in the tournament. (New map needs its own instalation)

It does sound complex at first but if you send shortcuts to your desktop its pretty easy to keep everything strait.

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: Marshall Art
When I tried to load a saved game the game crashed each time I hit the bring up saved games list button, No way to start a saved game...

Sorry about this. Unfortunately, the engine doesn't have any real file compatibility checking. When you merely click on a save file, without even trying to open it, AWD tries to open the file to read the map image to display in the file menu, and an incompatible file type can cause serious problems.

I added an explicit warning and instructions to delete old saves at the top of the thread.

I've wanted to improve this, but now it would break save compatibility again. And I was reluctant to make the changes given the work it would take to verify I don't break anything, and given that I always expect it to be "the last" patch.

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: GKar

ORIGINAL: WanderingHead
Forwarn45 reported a long standing problem with air targeting of naval units. This exists prior to 1.020 (probably all the way back to 1.000). Apparently air doesn't pick unique naval targets, frequently causing air to not find any target if its selected target has already been destroyed by a previous firing air unit.

IMHO this is well worth improving. And are you sure that cags always use unique targets? I don't have an example at hand, but I think they don't.

CAGs definitely don't use 100% unique targets, they are supposed to double up on CVs. After a CV is targeted twice, however, no additional CAG should target that CV until all other naval units are targeted.

CAGs use distinct targeting code from other air units, and its actually a bit difficult to understand. I'll have to try to comprehend it again before committing to any changes here.

[Marshall Art]

Thank you all for the quick response - problem cured. It was the (1b) part of WanderingHead's added instructions. I was aware of (1a) already and do have 3 seperate installs. The 1.020 version just happened to be the one I used for 1.010 games earlier this year and I just updated it instead of creating a brand new one.

[Marshall Art]

This is some feedback on the Global Glory scenario (3.0).

After the US responds to Japanese aggression in China event was triggered in Fall 1940 (rightfully so, due to Japanese Bombings...) all of a sudden the gift went straight down to 0 in the Summer 1941 turn, without any event messages. And no I did not move a single unit into Indochina.

If the resource gift is cancelled as in the stock scenarios in Summer 1941 what incentive has the Japanese player to not bomb China?

[Lebatron]

Marshall Art, if you have suggestions and or observations about mods you should place them in the thread for that particular mod. I know both Brian, myself, and other future modders would prefer it this way. It's useful for us to have all player comments about our mods in one place. It gives us a history of issues/comments in one place. 

[Lebatron]

During my current PBEM game, I've been noticing an irritating bug with auto supply. In areas like the pre-Barbarossa front where I have 1 supply in each area along the front, the auto supply feature keeps moving a point or two around for no reason when I enter a sub-menu. I think the sub-menu in question may be the repair screen. In any case, whatever one it is, you will hear the sound of supply trucks moving when you enter one of them. Then afterword I have to scan the map to locate the supply that moved for no reason and move it back.

This may be an old problem that I'm just noticing now. I was forced to play with it on because that's how my opponent set up the game.

[Lebatron]

Sometimes in the detailed combat report screen I get repeats of nonsense combats that go on for miles. Literally you will get hundreds of lines to scroll through. Anyone else get this?

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: Marshall Art

This is some feedback on the Global Glory scenario (3.0).

After the US responds to Japanese aggression in China event was triggered in Fall 1940 (rightfully so, due to Japanese Bombings...) all of a sudden the gift went straight down to 0 in the Summer 1941 turn, without any event messages. And no I did not move a single unit into Indochina.

If the resource gift is cancelled as in the stock scenarios in Summer 1941 what incentive has the Japanese player to not bomb China?

Sorry, this is a bug in the data files. I had hoped to push out the fix with a quick patch turn around that hasn't happened yet.

**edit** I added a patched data file to the mod thread here. You can download that to correct the problem.

Unfortunately, it will only help new games, not games in progress.