Straggler Chasing makes v1.06.98 Unworkable

[anthonykevinluke]

Hi Simovitch,

Thought I'd play on a bit further but it seems a bit of a waste of time due to the chasing stragglers issue. Had several hundred Italian and German acft waiting near Rome for an incoming allied raid. Bounced an unescorted B26 Gp with 0ver 200 acft; first contact was by 24 x Macchi 202s which shot down 1 and damaged 2. Next pulse 113 acft were after 2 x B26. Two minutes later after committing the rest of the interceptors I had 132 acft chasing a group of 3 x P38s that had been damaged by a Stab of 4 x 109s Sorry mate I know you are working hard on this but it sure isn't fixed in this version and makes it a bit pointless as an axis player to go on. I will await the next iteration. For your consideration and many thanks as always.

Cheers, AKL

[simovitch]

That's a bit harsh, I would like some more opinions. There is too much variability going on and it will take more than one adverse report for me to ever revisit the code again. Unless it's a real game-stopper this is the end of the line. Sorry.

[anthonykevinluke]

Hi Simovitch,

You know I am never harsh in my judgements and have followed the game and your excellent work for over 20 years now. Perhaps in my frustration I may have appeared more direct but I assure you the bug is there still and just as grim as before; from an axis point of view it does make the game extraordinarily difficult and frustrating as you watch most of your assembled strike force chase one typhoon or two B26 etc. By playing it through to where I did I was able to reproduce this effect many times, especially with larger groupings of Interceptors. If they are all in the immediate loc of the first intercept that hits many if not most will follow the stragglers that were damaged. I checked this by looking at the interceptors flight info (nice addition) and the best way was looking at the raid info and seeing how many acft were chasing which raid. Apologies if you perceived any offence in my comments. Happy to wait for others thoughts but for now I'll step back or perhaps see if I can find a copy of v1.06.92 which didn't seem to have this issue. For your consideration.

Cheers, AKL

[simovitch]

OK, I'm getting a similar observation over on Discord, and I verified that something isn't right; in fact my changes compounded the problems by filtering the stragglers from the attack code and not the target selection code.

It's fixed now and I'm testing it. Looks good so far. What it may mean is that if you want to target the smaller straggler groups you will need to do more patrolling with the "launch 4" option on the return leg. It's not so easy to get the AI to do it right though.

If the fixes are consistently working then I will issue a hotfix.

Thanks for your input.

[anthonykevinluke]

No worries and thanks for the reply; I will never criticise the excellent work you do and will only try and provide accurate feedback. I must admit that I had a feeling that the actual reverse of what you trying to fix had occurred in that last patch. Looking forward to having another crack at it. Many thanks.

Cheers, AKL

[simovitch]

I also am noticing (and recall hearing reports from players) that sometimes interceptors will start heading toward the Northwest corner of the map (Ireland) for no reason. I found what is likely causing that.

[JeffroK]

Guinness, and the Craiq!!