Building Forts

[bgiddings]

I understand that Fort Level I and II can be build by armies in the field but they never seem to appear. What am I missing? Please help.

[Hard Sarge]

one, are you sure you have enough resources to build them (one change we working on is to have it greyed out if you don't have what is needed)
 
also, when they are built, they start damaged and then repair as time is spent on them, so they may be faint when they first show up ?
 
 

[General Quarters]

ORIGINAL: Hard Sarge

one, are you sure you have enough resources to build them (one change we working on is to have it greyed out if you don't have what is needed)

also, when they are built, they start damaged and then repair as time is spent on them, so they may be faint when they first show up ?

On "faint" point: if they exist at all, you should see them listed if you right click on the province.

On building them, I still find this a mystery. I make sure I have the 100-100-100 it takes, but sometimes it just seems as if they do not appear the next turn. So I do it again, usually letting my resources build up a bit higher, and after two or three turns they appear. I thought maybe they take several turns to build. I don't know, but they do eventually show up.

[christof139]

On "faint" point: if they exist at all, you should see them listed if you right click on the province.

On building them, I still find this a mystery. I make sure I have the 100-100-100 it takes, but sometimes it just seems as if they do not appear the next turn. So I do it again, usually letting my resources build up a bit higher, and after two or three turns they appear. I thought maybe they take several turns to build. I don't know, but they do eventually show up.

Ihad a CSA level 1 Fort appear in a West Virginie province I captured from the Union, but it didn't have a Union Fort when I captured it nor did I build a Fort, it just appeared in a turn or two, not that I mind anyway. [;)]

Chris

[General Quarters]

ORIGINAL: General Quarters



On "faint" point: if they exist at all, you should see them listed if you right click on the province.

I take this back. I am not sure if you can see them until they get up to 100 percent or something.

[Gil R.]

Forts definitely take multiple turns to build. They start off just as a flag, but eventually should become visible. It's a good idea to leave your division/corps/army in the province, since otherwise the enemy can come in and undo your work.

[Twotribes]

Be aware that when a Unit builds a fort it does not subtract the resources until the end of the turn. So while you may have had 100 of all you needed at the instant you clicked to build, if you then spent it on other things it wasnt there at the end of the turn.

[Hard Sarge]

ORIGINAL: christof139

On "faint" point: if they exist at all, you should see them listed if you right click on the province.

On building them, I still find this a mystery. I make sure I have the 100-100-100 it takes, but sometimes it just seems as if they do not appear the next turn. So I do it again, usually letting my resources build up a bit higher, and after two or three turns they appear. I thought maybe they take several turns to build. I don't know, but they do eventually show up.

Ihad a CSA level 1 Fort appear in a West Virginie province I captured from the Union, but it didn't have a Union Fort when I captured it nor did I build a Fort, it just appeared in a turn or two, not that I mind anyway. [;)]

Chris

that sounds like a bug we found and corrected at the start of the patch, it looks like some of the forts being captured are then being moved, it has been corrected

[christof139]

that sounds like a bug we found and corrected at the start of the patch, it looks like some of the forts being captured are then being moved, it has been corrected

OK, thanx for the info. HS. I never saw a teleporting fort before, but i knd of enjoyed it, csince it belonged to my side. [:)][:D]

BTW, I now have 24,000 full strength CSA Indians, all the Inf. has at least Minie Rifles, 1 has an Arty. Attribute, 1 a Sharpshooter, and i think 2 are Engineers, plus a Supply and Medical etc. The Indian Cav., now 2 Bdes., is all equipped with Burnsides, and 1 has an Horse Arty Attribute and Quality Horses to offset speed loss, 1 has Qh's and Zouave Attributes, and i forget what the 3rd and last recent Cva. bde. has. topeka will be within the CSA soon, as there is a Siege Arty. unit with these folks.

Also have 2 Gunboats now, 1 Ironclad, but only 1 Runner, as I haven't replaced the lost Runner yet. Interesting.

Chris

[christof139]

Where in the Manual does it say how to save a screen as a snapshot?? I know someone just explained this, but I canna find it.
 
Thanx, Chris
 

[Gil R.]

That's not in the manual. The way to do it is to hit CTRL-SHIFT-PRINTSCREEN, which copies the image of whatever's on your screen, and then go into a graphics program (such as the free "Paint" program that probably was installed on your machine at the factory) and hit PASTE. You then would need to save the image, and should do so as a JPEG (especially if you plan to post it on this forum), since any other file type will be much larger.

Just to freak everyone out, I'm posting a screenshot of my screen as I write this message.

[christof139]

That's not in the manual. The way to do it is to hit CTRL-SHIFT-PRINTSCREEN, which copies the image of whatever's on your screen, and then go into a graphics program (such as the free "Paint" program that probably was installed on your machine at the factory) and hit PASTE. You then would need to save the image, and should do so as a JPEG (especially if you plan to post it on this forum), since any other file type will be much larger.

Just to freak everyone out, I'm posting a screenshot of my screen as I write this message.

Gil,

Thank you very, very much!!!!

I am saving this post for reference!!!

I have some neat screenos and may try to post a few. I now have 24,000 CSA Indians getting ready to attack Topeka. They tried before when 16,000 strong but had to back off to stop more casualties.

Plus, 2 CSA Gunboats are up by Memphis, an Ironclad in a Fleet container is in NO, but for some reason I couldn't get a Gunboat to join the Fleet container.

The CSA holds western Kentucky in considerable force, but they still need more 'cruits.

However, I never mentioned I lost Richmond and Petersburg [:(][&:], but regained Petersburg. Don't think I can retake Richmond, nor Norfolk I believe it is that I also lost.

To counter these losses, I was lucky to take all of Missouri and Neosho south of the Missouri River, except for St. Louis, so I get a good amount of supplies from these additional provinces. Fun!! [:D] Good game balance here. Losing Richmond wasn't the end of the CSA.

I am in late 1864 and maybe early 1865 with the game setting at Major Level and no Power Advantage to either side.

I took the Counterfitting upgrade and that seemed to thow a large monkey wrench in the dastardly Yankee economy. That's whay there is 15% unemployment in the City of Detroit at the present time no doubt.

Take care, and thanx agin for the instructions, I tried to use a combination of keys to save the screen but obviously used the wrong ones, [&:] as I haven't done that in many years.

Cheerios, Chris

[christof139]

That's not in the manual. The way to do it is to hit CTRL-SHIFT-PRINTSCREEN, which copies the image of whatever's on your screen, and then go into a graphics program (such as the free "Paint" program that probably was installed on your machine at the factory) and hit PASTE. You then would need to save the image, and should do so as a JPEG (especially if you plan to post it on this forum), since any other file type will be much larger.

Just to freak everyone out, I'm posting a screenshot of my screen as I write this message.

Oh, I forgot something: Aren't GIFs generally smaller in size than JPEGs?? I have compared the two before, and sometimes it seems that GIFs are smaller and sometimes bigger than JPEGs, but usually smaller. That is my experience.

I have used Adobe photoshop a lot to mod BMPs, and have an upgrade for OCXs, so I am pretty familiar but a slight bit rusty on most and a few things respectivelly.

I have many BMPs for the old TalonSoft Battleground games, including a very large amount of ACW ship icons that I made that are very good, and fun to use in mods.

Thanx again, Chris

[Jonathan Palfrey]

ORIGINAL: Gil R.
That's not in the manual. The way to do it is to hit CTRL-SHIFT-PRINTSCREEN, which copies the image of whatever's on your screen, and then go into a graphics program (such as the free "Paint" program that probably was installed on your machine at the factory) and hit PASTE. You then would need to save the image, and should do so as a JPEG (especially if you plan to post it on this forum), since any other file type will be much larger.

The JPEG format will generally give you the smallest file size for photographs, which contain blends of many different colours. However, for screenshots containing areas of solid unvarying colour, you will get better quality and often smaller files too by saving as PNG.

Important: avoid saving as JPEG and then converting to PNG. You won't get smaller files that way. Saving an image as JPEG distorts the image in a way that can't be easily repaired; it turns the solid colours into subtle blends that require more space to save in PNG.

The GIF format is basically obsolete. It has similar characteristics to PNG but operates in 256 colours only, whereas PNG can save 16 million colours.

BMP is OK for quality but will give you large file sizes.

TIFF is a good and versatile file format but tends to give somewhat larger file sizes than PNG.

Incidentally, Ctrl-Shift-PrintScreen is a new one on me. The PrintScreen key by itself normally copies whatever's on the screen, while Alt-PrintScreen copies only the currently-selected window.

[Gil R.]

Hmm. I've never tried just PRNTSCRN.

An important thing to consider if making screenshots for the Matrix forum is that the forum permits only 2-3 types of images to be uploaded. I can't remember if PNG is one of them. I know that JPEG's work, which is why I recommended them, but I'm pretty sure that one or two others would work as well.

[pixelpusher]

[/quote]

Oh, I forgot something: Aren't GIFs generally smaller in size than JPEGs?? I have compared the two before, and sometimes it seems that GIFs are smaller and sometimes bigger than JPEGs, but usually smaller. That is my experience.

Short answer; no not necessarily. It depends on what you're doing.

GIFs use a lossless LZW compression algorithm, but are limited to 256 colors. They also can animate. Suitable for precise pixel-edge work, and areas of repetitive color. (I assume you understand how LZW works.)

JPGs use a lossy block sampled compression. This makes them better for photographs, but very bad for precise color work. Using Pshop's 'save for web' feature you can get jpgs very small and optimized. Compression artifacts are very common things on web images.

For reference, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison ... le_formats

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compression_artifact

[christof139]

Short answer; no not necessarily. It depends on what you're doing.

GIFs use a lossless LZW compression algorithm, but are limited to 256 colors. They also can animate. Suitable for precise pixel-edge work, and areas of repetitive color. (I assume you understand how LZW works.)

JPGs use a lossy block sampled compression. This makes them better for photographs, but very bad for precise color work. Using Pshop's 'save for web' feature you can get jpgs very small and optimized. Compression artifacts are very common things on web images.

For reference, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison ... le_formats

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compression_artifact

Nope, don't know about LZW nor how it works, and take your word for it.

i always wondered why sometimes GIFs were smaller than JPEGs and at other times JPEGs were smaller than GIFs. Beats me, but now since you told me this and provided some links it sheds some on on the subject for me non-partioned FAT32 brain (not converted to NTFS or whatever the acronym is, the smaller bit storage spaces/regions whatever, have hard drives with NTFS and FAT32, just not the brain yet for NTFS).

I like BMPs. Easy to work with, but big files. I haven't converted back and forth between BMPs and PCxs for a few years now, and did that with Legion and Spatan and Troy and I think Medieval Total war, can't remember. BMPs in the old TalonSoft battleground and East/West Front games are easy and fun to diddle with.

The 9-inch Blakely in the game, its pic, is a pic of a Blakely that had its barrel cut-off for scrap and the barrel was replaced with a pied of plumbing or whatever pipe. That is what you have for a pic of the 9-inch Blakely in the game. There are photos of other big Blakely's, like a 7-inch or so that are available at some of the Arty sites I posted. Things like that bug historical type people, and I like Arty. anyway, except I don't like being around it when it's fired, too loud, especially 8-inch howitzers and tank cannon etc.

I like peace and quiet, usually.

Chris

[Jonathan Palfrey]

ORIGINAL: Gil R.

Hmm. I've never tried just PRNTSCRN.

An important thing to consider if making screenshots for the Matrix forum is that the forum permits only 2-3 types of images to be uploaded. I can't remember if PNG is one of them. I know that JPEG's work, which is why I recommended them, but I'm pretty sure that one or two others would work as well.

I've just checked, and according to the message displayed when you try to upload, this forum accepts only GIF and JPEG, which is pretty old-fashioned! PNG is accepted all over the Web these days and is probably the best and simplest format to use for screenshots.

If we're not allowed to upload PNG, I'd recommend saving a screenshot in some decent lossless format, such as PNG or BMP or TIFF. You can then convert the saved screenshot to both GIF and JPEG at leisure, and find out (a) which looks better and (b) which gives the smaller file size. If you can be bothered. Be aware that GIF may be better for some screenshots while JPEG may be better for others. Also, an image with more than 256 colours needs to be reduced to 256 colours to be saved as GIF, and there are clever and not-so-clever ways of doing that, which will give dramatically different results.

[pixelpusher]

ORIGINAL: Gil R.
Just to freak everyone out, I'm posting a screenshot of my screen as I write this message.

Hey Gil, remember that one time over at Eric's old place; you had your laptop hooked up and we had the 2 other comps setup in the back room. When you weren't looking we put a screenshot of your desktop as your screensaver, then set the screensaver to 20 seconds or something. I still laugh when I think of it.

[Jonathan Palfrey]

I've now experimented with a FoF screenshot myself: saved it as PNG and then converted it to JPEG and GIF. Result: the JPEG version looks better and is somewhat smaller. This is because a FoF screenshot contains a very large number of different colours and therefore converts rather poorly to the 256 colours required by GIF.

I attempted to upload the PNG version, but the forum software rejected it. Furthermore, although the PNG version is of better quality than either the JPEG or the GIF, it is also considerably larger than either of them. This doesn't always happen -- PNG files are often smaller than GIF files and sometimes smaller than JPEG -- but with FoF screenshots it seems that Gil got it right at the beginning: we should use JPEG.

I can confirm that the PrintScreen key works perfectly well by itself (at least on my system): there's no need to press Ctrl-Shift as well.