The Elephant Vanishes : obvert (J) vs Historiker_SqzMyLemon_Canoerebel (A)

[obvert]

ORIGINAL: Lowpe

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

So the answer is to get a mulligan to freely redo movement now that you know the rail will be blocked?

Hardly seems fair to the player who risked his unit to block the rail.

My solution with Obvert was to take my lumps and play on. It has happened a lot, and at the most inopportune times, but always in China/Manchuko/Korea.

I would have asked you to redo if I knew this was going on. I don't want to play a game where the rules are not consistent if it's possible to go back and alter the outcome to work for both sides. I'm sorry if I didn't understand, but I think from what I remember you haven't told me all of the details to avoid OPSEC issues. Please do just tell me to redo if it happens again.

In this case he's not "risking" anything. That unit is probably small fragment of a para unit, as he lands just about everywhere he wants to block movement.

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: obvert

This is akin to a train moving out 40 miles down the track, then stopping, dumping the troops and their gear with lightning speed next to the tracks, and speeding away back home! It's not just for one unit, and it's so far from the destination I never would have considered that could happen.

What really stinks is when they are dropped in bad terrain far from a base and have to walk back along the tracks. Out of the game for a long time.

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: obvert

I would have asked you to redo if I knew this was going on. I don't want to play a game where the rules are not consistent if it's possible to go back and alter the outcome to work for both sides. I'm sorry if I didn't understand, but I think from what I remember you haven't told me all of the details to avoid OPSEC issues. Please do just tell me to redo if it happens again.

I knew you would, but I couldn't figure out any way to redo the turn.

I bet you dollars to donuts that even if you redo the turn, some units will still get dropped out of SR mode especially those on rail lines between bases -- those seem most vulnerable.

[adarbrauner]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

Mines don't work in rivers. I tested it thoroughly on this very river in my current game.

Hankow has been under siege for 4 years in my game and the AI kept running shipping up the river to supply it.

I tried everything to stop it to no avail. Mines simply don't work in rivers because rivers run on hex sides.

Hans: I saw a game, with my own eyes on the replay, where they worked, and how they worked; I was part on that game , a cooperative, with RHS; they hit and sank, and right on this river, the Yangtze, even though much more upriver I think;

And, again, El Cid sustains that shore guns fire at ships in river, even though this is not shown in animation; one have to check for eventual damage

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: adarbrauner

Hans: I saw a game, with my own eyes on the replay, where they worked, and how they worked; I was part on that game , a cooperative, with RHS; they hit and sank, and right on this river, the Yangtze, even though much more upriver I think;

And, again, El Cid sustains that shore guns fire at ships in river, even though this is not shown in animation; one have to check for eventual damage

It is nice that El Cid got it to work in one of the most heavily modded mods around. He did very substantial map changes, bless him.[&o]

Point to an example of where it worked in a stock game. I tried and failed running head to head games thru many tries, and also in a real pbem stock game.

[Lokasenna]

From a code perspective, I wouldn't call this a bug.

Putting it kindly, it would be a quirk.

If there were a part of it that would be a bug, it would be the change in mode from Strat to Move and the fact that they moved 1 hex to begin with (the cutting of the rail would have occurred before the unit moved 1 hex). The cancelling of the movement would be WAD without a rather long (well, from my perspective) check of where the unit could move to along the route instead. Rather than trying to deal with all possible weird situations, simply cancelling the movement is by far the best solution and not terribly implausible.

[JohnDillworth]

Hardly a bug if this is how it always works. Will there be re-do's of future turns if rail lines get cut again? Tough call here but the game, and it is a game, is working as designed. My 2 cents

[HansBolter]

From a standpoint of realism, Obvert's suggestion that the units be allowed to make it to the first railhead backward from teh rail break point sounds like the best solution to me.

In reality the train would be stopped in the hex where the break occurs and the units detrained there. They should have to spend their normal down time switching from strategic to move mode or combat modes.

That the game only models rail movement between rail heads with no provision for stopping in between seems to be what causes the hiccup.

Either they shouldn't move at all or they should move to the break point and detrain they most certainly shouldn't move one hex and detrain overnight.

A break is deserved for that result alone in my book.

[GetAssista]

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth
Hardly a bug if this is how it always works. Will there be re-do's of future turns if rail lines get cut again? Tough call here but the game, and it is a game, is working as designed. My 2 cents

Umm, bugs also always work. Until squashed that is.

Is hardly an intended behaviour too by all reasonable accounts. transportation should not be critically disrupted hundreds of miles away from the point of disruption. If anything, trains should continue on the route until they arrive at the point of disruption. Not to mention instant switch of modes that just should not be possible

I suppose cutting the live rail lines is so rare in PBEMS that this behaviour is not well known. When known, people will make adjustments. E.g. Eric would set strat RR destinations closer to the start and update them as movement happens

ORIGINAL: HansBolter
That the game only models rail movement between rail heads with no provision for stopping in between seems to be what causes the hiccup.

Trains can stop just fine in the middle of nowhere wif met by enemy units sitting in a contested hex with still open hex sides. So it is the closure of hex side (from within) that messes up train movement algorithm

[JohnDillworth]

So going forward every time this happens the turn will be redone? Is this the way the game is supposed to work? We could argue "real life" for many points in the game. In this particular case it is entirely possible that the train starts, a phone call comes saying the rail line is cut, train returns to origin point, orders come for everyone to get off until we figure this out. It seems like if an exception is made here every time a rail line is cut and a unit falls out of strat mode the turn will need to be redone.

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth

Hardly a bug if this is how it always works. Will there be re-do's of future turns if rail lines get cut again? Tough call here but the game, and it is a game, is working as designed. My 2 cents

This quirk, bug, or whatever is definitely not WAD. The unit will make a partial move on the rail line, and then seemingly at random be dropped from the train usually but not always in an off base location and immediately transfer from SR mode to move mode no destination with 0 delay. I have had units in a base knocked back to move status.

It would be a lot more tolerable if the units weren't kicked out of SR mode and simply stopped.

Also, this effect rears its head in strange ways...I can't figure out what triggers it as I have had it happen many times. Setting closer base destinations is not a guarantee of it not triggering (uh, what bad English) as I have had it happen between two bases where one was origination and the other destination with 0 cuts in the line and 0 bases between origin and destination.

Given that the fighting will be here, I bet it happens again.

[Lecivius]

As I recall, this actually happened to a Russian unit shipping from Siberia to the eastern front. A junction or something was damaged, and forced a march. And a Panzer division was sidelined and forced to march when a Russian partisan unit dynamited a bridge in the Ukraine. It's your game, I'm just an idjit on the sidelines. I even hesitated to put this down. It's not exactly what you are describing, but it is within the realms of thought.

[witpqs]

The game abstracts rail lines by using the physics of wormholes. Sometimes things don't work as expected.

[obvert]

Dan has decided he will redo the turn. It feels like it's with some reluctance though. This is his email to me to "consider." [:D]

[font="Trebuchet MS"]Consider this and discuss in your AAR:

I am assuming that you have all kinds of troops strategically positioned in Strat Mode to respond at a moment’s notice to emergencies in distant places. You triggered those emergency movements, planning to move those units to the point of invasion rapidly. You could have set transport to closer, less vulnerable bases but aimed instead for maximum speed and efficiency (or just got lazy and set them for Shanghai). You knew this feature of the game, having recently (on Hokkaido) experienced it on a smaller scale. Your plan got messed up by an (apparently) unexpected but nevertheless predictable Allied landing. So instead of you being able to rail divisions (maybe many) to the scene quickly, now you’re caught in a bind with units auto-switched to Move mode far away from the closest base. It’s gonna slow you down rather than speeding things up. Your plan was a good one but blew up on you.

If you set up an elaborate, crafty defense and had that spoiled by a known feature of the game because you didn’t anticipate an Allied move….is it fair to re-do the move?

That’s a tough question but one worth discussion amongst you and your readers. Is this really a do-over situation or a tough lesson?[/font]

Dan likes to spin things like this. I don't need it spun. It's not a big thing, but my example is that it's like a knight on a chess board suddenly behaving like a bishop for one turn and going to the wrong spot. It's a break in the rules that will hopefully be easily fixed (Lowpe I hope you're wrong about the likelyhood of it happening again). It's also quite different to what happened to units on Hokkaido, which didn't jump out of strat mode, they just lost accumulated movement.

In this case he now has the only advantage from this situation of knowing that units will definitely be railing in instead of just assuming that. My stuff will still be bak at square one.

I found Dan's message a bit too much and told him so. He didn't like that so sent a terse reply. He'll probably do some more spinning in his AAR. [;)]

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: obvert

Dan has decided he will redo the turn. It feels like it's with some reluctance though. This is his email to me to "consider." [:D]

[font="Trebuchet MS"]Consider this and discuss in your AAR:

I am assuming that you have all kinds of troops strategically positioned in Strat Mode to respond at a moment’s notice to emergencies in distant places. You triggered those emergency movements, planning to move those units to the point of invasion rapidly. You could have set transport to closer, less vulnerable bases but aimed instead for maximum speed and efficiency (or just got lazy and set them for Shanghai). You knew this feature of the game, having recently (on Hokkaido) experienced it on a smaller scale. Your plan got messed up by an (apparently) unexpected but nevertheless predictable Allied landing. So instead of you being able to rail divisions (maybe many) to the scene quickly, now you’re caught in a bind with units auto-switched to Move mode far away from the closest base. It’s gonna slow you down rather than speeding things up. Your plan was a good one but blew up on you.

If you set up an elaborate, crafty defense and had that spoiled by a known feature of the game because you didn’t anticipate an Allied move….is it fair to re-do the move?

That’s a tough question but one worth discussion amongst you and your readers. Is this really a do-over situation or a tough lesson?[/font]

Dan likes to spin things like this. I don't need it spun. It's not a big thing, but my example is that it's like a knight on a chess board suddenly behaving like a bishop for one turn and going to the wrong spot. It's a break in the rules that will hopefully be easily fixed (Lowpe I hope you're wrong about the likelyhood of it happening again). It's also quite different to what happened to units on Hokkaido, which didn't jump out of strat mode, they just lost accumulated movement.

In this case he now has the only advantage from this situation of knowing that units will definitely be railing in instead of just assuming that. My stuff will still be bak at square one.

I found Dan's message a bit too much and told him so. He didn't like that so sent a terse reply. He'll probably do some more spinning in his AAR. [;)]

Sounds to me he doesn't really understand what has happened.

[ChuckBerger]

Fundamentally it's for the two players to work out their tolerances for re-do requests under various circumstances. There's no right answer, and I think players can legitimately disagree, which unfortunately can sour a game.

No comment on the current situation, but for a long-haul game like this it might be useful to consider in advance of games the circumstanaces under which re-dos can be requested, eg

1) Bug (game not working as designed)
2) Game mechanic that is WAD, but counterintuitive and works to a player's serious disadvantage, and player didn't know about it. (Is that this situation?)
3) Game mechanic that is WAD, but counterintuitive and works to a player's serious disadvantage, even if player did know about it. (eg, random invasion of Russia due to cargo ship running the wrong way from a sub or whatever) (in these circumstances, how will players prevent a great many re-dos?)
4) Player serious stuff-up
5) breach of house rules
6) x number of re-do requests per game - either for cause, or not for cause? (Like jury selection!)


etc etc

[CaptBeefheart]

It's unfortunate you haven't seen this before, Obvert. I've seen it in games vs. the computer and since I don't begrudge handicaps to myself in those games, I play on. Too late now, but one way around it is to break up those long strat journeys into shorter segments.

You might accept his offer and change the strat movement destinations of your affected units to bases close to where they are now. That way you'll lose a little bit of time getting them into action but not 4+ days.

Regardless, I hope you gentlemen come to an amicable agreement on this. You have a great game going.

Cheers,
CB

[brian800000]

ORIGINAL: CaptBeefheart

Regardless, I hope you gentlemen come to an amicable agreement on this.

I'm not optimistic. Even before this they were fighting a virtual war against each other. I suspect in a few months it may even go nuclear.

[ChuckBerger]

ORIGINAL: brian800000

ORIGINAL: CaptBeefheart

Regardless, I hope you gentlemen come to an amicable agreement on this.

I'm not optimistic. Even before this they were fighting a virtual war against each other. I suspect in a few months it may even go nuclear.

Sly, that...

[tarkalak]

This isn't the behavior you see but here is another quirk of train movement:

1. Sometimes Units sent to a contested hex in Strategic Mode via railroad will stop one hex short of the target and start unpacking. It seems that this happens when their last leg of movement ends one hex short of the target. Other then that Strategic move can and will end in a contested hex.
Link to begining of discussion.