Questions re: Directive 21 scenario

[larryfulkerson]

The scenario designers put that supply point just offshore from Odessa on purpose. I asked why one time and I don't remember the answer but it made sense at the time. It confers some kind of advantage for the Soviets but I don't remember how it works. We'll have to ask Rick or Steve.

Um...The change in the character of the Soviets might be accounted for by an event that changes their strategic bias. There's several settings for that and one of them is "berserk" but there are others you can assign too: "cautious", "aggressive", "berserk", and something else I can't remember. This bias can be set by events to trigger off of the turn, or....well, there's several ways to trigger the change in bias.

[sPzAbt653]

I was wondering if some sort of event was triggered, or an objective changed for the AI, or what might have driven Elmer

D21 uses five Objective Tracks for the Soviet PO. Which one is used is based on the current situation, so yes it will change Elmers' behaviour during the scenario.

Axis Engineer units DO NOT have any bridge repair capability

So I don't have to go thru the OOB to find such a unit, can you tell me which ones you are talking about?

that Soviet supply point out in the ocean next to Odessa EVER go away or change color?

Sea Supply, it represents port supplies. I think it is for the Soviets only. Some versions of D21 don't use them.

[Hellen_slith]

I must be going crazy, I tried to find those lazy engineers today at the start of my move 27, and I went through the entire OOB for all Axis engineers. They all had a % chance for engineering / bridge repair ... so now I'm not sure what I thought I was seeing or thinking, but I could have sworn that some were not showing any % chance!

Thank you for the port supply and event answers! Fun scenario!

[Hellen_slith]

Re: the engineers. I see now that as an engineering unit expends movement points, its chance of repairing goes down. So that when I had moved a unit, then looked at its properties, it was not showing any chance to repair, b/c it had fallen to 0% (it just didn't show a 0% chance.) Mystery solved! Thanks!

[Hellen_slith]

Well, now that I have reached turn 30 ... the game seems to not want to finish the phase of "Checking Replacements: Axis" so that I can start turn 31. This is my third try at a starting my turn 31.

My first try, the game finished "checking replacements", then decided to show all objective paths (so that my screen was covered with the blue lines). It would not respond to clicking "begin Axis turn 31."

Second try: (reloaded my last saved game, let Elmer move again)....the second try: the game again froze during the "Checking Replacements: Axis". I waited for 30 minutes. "Not Responding." So, I killed the process via Task Manager.

THIRD TRY: this time, I reloaded my last saved game, set the map view to "2D TINY", turned off all sound ... and it seemed to be working well, no "black screens", no "freezing" during Elmer's move, I watched happily as he moved his little ant army. Even the railroad moves went smoothly across the map. The game froze during "checking replacements: Axis". I've been waiting a good 45 minutes, and the little progress bar is stuck halfway, with the message bar stating, "(Not Responding)".

Needless to say, it is disappointing to have to endure these reloads, fingers crossed, hoping that the game doesn't freeze. I'm not interested in going through all the "uninstall this", patch that, patch again, try Steam, etc. to get a game working.

For $60, I hoped to get at least a fairly stable game, especially considering that I purchased it LONG after it was released, and "patched".

So, cheers to you all, and I hope you enjoy your games. FWIW, I got to within 100 kilometers of Moscow.

I won't be back.

And, if Matrix reads this, I will NEVER AGAIN purchase another of your products. Have fun, everyone! Cheers!

[Lobster]

What are your machine specs? If you check the AARs you'll see that others play this without troubles. I've played it and no problems. Perhaps your machine isn't up to the effort. There are many other smaller scenarios you can play. You have not wasted your money, simply some time finding out you can't run this one scenario out of hundreds.

[sPzAbt653]

I've only played D21 once with IV [first 260 turns during July to October 2018] and I don't recall having any such issues [I'm sure I would remember something like this]. I do play with my own version, which separated from Rick's version around 2015. Yet, I wouldn't know precisely what might be causing such a thing. D21 is one of the larger scenarios and sometimes it can create situations that we haven't seen before. I'd like to see a .sal file for this, because maybe I can peruse it and notice something odd, then maybe we all can figure it out or get Ralph's help.

I can understand why you would blame Matrix, but actually they have little to nothing to do with us here at TOAW.

[larryfulkerson]

I hate to be the one who suggests this but maybe you just didn't wait long enough for the interturn process to finish. D21 used to seemingly stall for me too when I was playing on my older machine ( the one that crashed ) and I remember having to wait for as long as the periods you spoke about. Maybe you could start the process again and then go eat your lunch or watch TV or go check your mail, or whatever you have to do to give it at least 45 minutes. I had to wait that long one time, a long time ago. Send me a copy of the offending file and I'll see how it behaves on my machine. Okay?

[sPzAbt653]

He did say that he waited 30-45 minutes. That is too long to be reasonable, but it does depend on the machine as I do remember similar reports years ago. I wonder if the TOAW Log generates any report.

[larryfulkerson]

I never thought about the log.....good catch. Um...but if he has to kill it with task manager the log probably won't cover the part where it stalled ??? It probably quit printing to the log when it stalled, l'm just guessing. And there wouldn't be any crash log to read either. It actually has to crash to write that file. I'd still like to see how it behaves on my machine. I've got 16 cores in my CPU and 16 Gigs of RAM and it runs at 3.74 gigahertz. I love it. It's brand new.

[sPzAbt653]

I like your scheme with the black background. The Windows white background has always been an affront to civilization, and is a classic example of changing something for the sake of change and then being too pigheaded to make the correction.

[tigercub]

Directive 21 scenario this is a very good best one I have played so far!

[larryfulkerson]

+1