Northern Flank campaign bug

[TDeacon]

When playing a 2-player "Northern Flank" mini-campaign, the game locks up when all 5 of the following steps are performed in sequence:
1) German player hosts.
2) German player disbands both the 12th VG and the 3rd FJ BGs.
3) German player assigns artillery and morters to both Kullman and Peiper BGs.
4) German player moves Kullman into Krinkelt and Peiper into Losheim.
5) Both US and German players hit execute. (lockup occurs at this point).

I have seen this consistently both with a remote opponent, and also with a simulated opponent on my LAN. The problem does not occur when certain variants of the above are tried. For example, if either 12th VG or 3rd FJ are not disbanded (but the other still is), and if then the corresponding armored BG isn't moved forward to replace the disbanded BG, then this issue isn't observed.

Mark

[Andrew Williams]

When you do all 5 of the ABOVE or any 1 of the 5?

[TDeacon]

All 5; I edited the original post to clarify. I'm hoping that if you do these 5 things on your test setup, you will see the issue as well.

[Andrew Williams]

Will try it today.

[TDeacon]

Hi Andrew,
 
So, were you able to duplicate this?
 
MH

[TDeacon]

Resend...

[Andrew Williams]

Sorry, no, lost track of this hen I went on holidays.

Will take a look this week.

thanks

[Andrew Williams]

Ok

I can reproduce this too

We're looking at it.

thanks for the post

[Tejszd]

What a detailed report TDeacon, way to go.

Andrew glad to hear you can reproduce the problem and it is being looked at for the next WAR patch....

[Andrew Williams]

tDeacon  would make great tester material 

[Andrew Williams]

Ok, We've tracked it down.


The lock up issue is a sync problem between host and client. 

As part of the sync when both hit 'Execute' the host and client exchange data about locations where there might / will be a battle (depending on the phase).

When the host disbands all BGs in contact it doesn't think there will be any battle data to transmit on the first 'Execute', so it sends nothing. 

The client has not yet received the info about the disbanding and so it sees BGs in contact and sits waiting for battle data that is never going to come -- deadlock.

This will be fixed for the next patch.

Interim measure.

Don't disband all Battlegroups that are in contact.