@Joel - demo of what we were discussing beta thread

[MarkShot]

I got you a series of screen shots.

First, air assist (3 freight hauls).

Second, I put priority on some rail repairs.

Third, I try air assist again. (2 more freight hauls).

[MarkShot]

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[MarkShot]

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[MarkShot]

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[MarkShot]

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[MarkShot]

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[MarkShot]

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[MarkShot]

Joel,

This was the end of my turn last night (above).

I took a save. I reloaded it for tonight's gaming.

Before running the NEXT TURN, I reran AIR ASSIST just to see what would happen. I got fresh freight drops. Also, the ones above were not in the save files (although other battles and air missions) were.

I am absolutely positive there are bugs here:

* Failure to fully track AIR ASSIST state of execute freight delivery.

* Cascading into a failure to capture AIR ASSIST in the save game.

I stake my reputation as a software engineer on this.

Please take a serious look at the behavior and associated code.

Thank you.

[Joel Billings]

There are two parts to this.

1) Saving drop info - I was not able to replicate the air drop battle sites not being retained in the save. I had AI do drops, saved it off, exited game. Loaded game and save, and saw battle sites for the drops. Are you sure you saved it off after your air drops? If you can repeat this, please provide a save for us to try to repeat it as well with info on what to do.

2) Additional drops with repeated pushing of AI assist button - I was able to replicate this, in that sometimes, the AI assist air missions will stop flying additional missions (not consistent, but then the damage to a/c can change from test to test so condition of unit may not be exactly the same). It may be because it doesn't want to push it's units, or it may be because of some limits Gary has instilled, or it may be because with the current settings being used in the air transport routine, a mission tried to fly but something scrubbed the mission and it bailed out of the routine. It doesn't take anything but pushing the button again to sometimes see new flights start up. From the testing I've done, it seems it won't stop until the number of available transports are getting fairly low, but I can't say for sure without a lot more testing. A player has to option to push the button again or to try to create a manual mission if they want to push things to the limit (unless on auto AI assist in which case they are limited to the one pass). Players may want to have certainty that every unit has flown the most it can possibly fly, but I don't think we can provide that, and I'm not sure that's the best strategy in most/all cases. Not trying to diminish your discovery of the way this works, but I'm not sure it's worth trying to figure it out as I'm not sure what we'd want to change.

[MarkShot]

Joel,

I understand your points about randomness causing flights to behave as such. I had not considered that.

As for the save, it is late. I will try to reproduce tomorrow. If I can get it to happen, I will give you an MP4 demonstrating.

Thanks.

[Joel Billings]

No rush. I'm unplugging tomorrow and don't be back online until next Thursday. BTW, a 1.01.09Beta version is in the works already with some small improvements with fighter escorts of air transports (sometimes getting too many miles flown for escorting air transports and sometimes being blocked from flying if they had miles flown). Doesn't seem to impact what you have been reporting, but better nonetheless.