Scenario Editor crashes when starting custom Estab

[Pergite!]

Hello

I have recently taken some time to play around with the estab editor, with the goal to portray 1980´s infantry battalions on platoon level. I have finished a test estab with two mirrored sides, whit two units each, three weapons and four types of ammunition.(no problems with the compilation) I want to start small and just make sure that the estab values for those units act realistic in a test scenario.

I am however unable to start new project with my estab in the scenario maker, since it just crashes. The two standard estabs works fine, but the new one seems to bring some kind of trouble.

What am I doing wrong?

[Lieste]

Being too ambitious for a first project?

I'd have just added two 'forces' to (a copy of) the existing Estab, and then played about with that first...
I know that there are some hiccups you can have when starting with a blank Estab, do you mind sharing the file 'so-far' so it can be looked at?

Might be a few days before I can poke around with it (a lot), as I've just grabbed the latest build and need to do some more testing. As it is small, it might be easy to spot problems though...

[Pergite!]

Who Dares, Wins! [;)]

Thank you for your help, because now of a sudden it seem to work. I added different formation for one side, instead of mirroring it like previously and now the scenario maker accepts the estab. Rather strange behaviour.

[Pergite!]

Oh, it seems that I spoke too soon.

Now the Scenario Maker instead crashes when I want to add subordinate forces to a side.[:(]

[Lieste]

That is almost certainly my favourite bug, where you are adding forces without first defining the superior Estab.

Try being more systematic, rather than trying to build the structure then detailing.

[Pergite!]

ORIGINAL: Lieste

That is almost certainly my favourite bug, where you are adding forces without first defining the superior Estab.

Try being more systematic, rather than trying to build the structure then detailing.

Thank you, it worked like a charm.

Now I just need to figure out what I need to do to get a reasonable result from my estab. My platoons ran out of ammo in around 45 minutes of fighting. This is of course not totally unreasonable, but its clear that companies suits the Command Ops engine best.

There is also an odd behaviour that units somehow lose equipment when engaged. They did not take any losses, but just lost half of their assault rifles for some reason. Is this also a unknown feature or have I screwed something up again?

[Lieste]

Too many weapons for the persQ - in the engine each man can only do one job - use an assault rifle, or form part of the crew for heavy weapons or vehicle etc. So long as the ratio is not too extreme, the excess will be retained, above some ratio the excess will immediately cull.

Once the unit is retreat/routing there is a (moderate/small) chance that heavy weapons will be abandoned, and everyone else will just carry one rifle (smg etc) the rest will be lost.

Personally I'd make that more controllable by setting crew sizes/equipment numbers so that persQ = equipped weapons & vehicle crews, even where that results in lost small-arms. I would then consider increasing the small-arms allocation of ammunition in a 'typical' ratio to account for the 'lost' ammunition.

[Pergite!]

ORIGINAL: Lieste

Too many weapons for the persQ - in the engine each man can only do one job - use an assault rifle, or form part of the crew for heavy weapons or vehicle etc. So long as the ratio is not too extreme, the excess will be retained, above some ratio the excess will immediately cull.

Once the unit is retreat/routing there is a (moderate/small) chance that heavy weapons will be abandoned, and everyone else will just carry one rifle (smg etc) the rest will be lost.

Personally I'd make that more controllable by setting crew sizes/equipment numbers so that persQ = equipped weapons & vehicle crews, even where that results in lost small-arms. I would then consider increasing the small-arms allocation of ammunition in a 'typical' ratio to account for the 'lost' ammunition.

Details I never knew existed, thank you for the information.

I have an idea to try out "weapon roles" instead of pure weapons in the estab would be a way to work around this. For example "AK74/RPG7" would mean a weapon that fire both 5.45 rounds anti personnel and PG7V rockers as anti armour. I will probably however stick with your recomendation of keeping it simple. Its the effect of modern combat that I am after, not accuracy in numbers.

[BletchleyGeek]

It's very weird, but I'm having a problem similar to that Pergite! reported a few months ago. I created a Estab - starting from the BftB estab - and compiled it without problems with the Estab Manager.

Then, when I try to make a new scenario with a simple map I created, Scenario Maker crashes on me without giving me any message. I see that the problem is not in the map, since I can use it to create new scenarios using BftB original estab.

Could you guys take a look at it? (It's attached on the post)

Thank you

[BletchleyGeek]

Ok, I think I figured out two possible culprits for this poblem.

After walking in circles around this issue - figuratively and in fact - I decided to do something I didn't want to do... which was to eyeball Estab XML documents plain text and look for differences. Then I remembered about xxdiff-like Windows app Winmerge (doh!).

I found two differences.

One, regarding to the insignia pictures assigned to the new nations and services I had added. I noticed
that all nations/services have pictures marked as "enabled". I hadn't. So I made duplicates of some other nation and placed
them in the corresponding Estab images folder.

Two, for some reason I can't fathom, the Estab Editor application produced an XML with the elements in the following order

<image>
<side>
<vehicle>
<weapon>
<vehicle>
<radio>
<weapon>
<ammo>
<vehicle>
<formation-effects>
<ammo>
<formation-effects>

while in the original BftB estab XML document I found that elements come ordered and separated by XML comments like this:

<image>
<side>
<vehicle>
<weapon>
<radio>
<ammo>
<formation-effects>

that is, elements of the same type coming together.

[Lieste]

That is only because you added some elements in that sequence - no issue, but you will have to scroll through several sections to locate all 'weapons' etc. I think you can minimise this by duplicating entries into their 'correct' sequence as you go, rather than adding new entries at the end, but I am slightly unsure.

The issue with flags is an order of magnitude more likely to be the problem with your new estab.

[Arjuna]

B_G,

I took a look at your estab file and created a scenario in the SM using it. The problem is there are no small image for the side estabs. You must have a small image for all side, nation, service and unit estabs for the application to build the force tree. I will discuss with Paul the options for using a default image but we don't have one for the moment, so please ensure you add your images.

[BletchleyGeek]

ORIGINAL: Arjuna

B_G,

I took a look at your estab file and created a scenario in the SM using it. The problem is there are no small image for the side estabs. You must have a small image for all side, nation, service and unit estabs for the application to build the force tree. I will discuss with Paul the options for using a default image but we don't have one for the moment, so please ensure you add your images.

Thank you Arjuna, the thing with the pictures seemed to me to be a better explanation, the layout of the XML document elements theory didn't hold much water (but made a good reading ).

Re the pictures, I hope Eddy will appreciate the very much intended pun

[BletchleyGeek]

ORIGINAL: Lieste
That is only because you added some elements in that sequence - no issue, but you will have to scroll through several sections to locate all 'weapons' etc. I think you can minimise this by duplicating entries into their 'correct' sequence as you go, rather than adding new entries at the end, but I am slightly unsure.

The issue with flags is an order of magnitude more likely to be the problem with your new estab.

My job has taught me to be systematic Lieste