Hi Ed,
WOW, you've been busy, huh?
I'll go through and answer these as best I can, if you want to reply, send it over to the Bugs thread, okay?
Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:
a) In the scenario editor, I'm getting an error message every time I move (Alt-M) a corps. Sometimes the error specifically refers to something about low supply level for the square, but mostly its just "not allowed".
b) When trying to move a unit *from* a corps with 8 units (A-H) the game won't let you transfer that unit directly to another corps, you have to transfer it to an HQ then to the destination corps. This occurs in the scenario edit mode too, so its not an issue of readiness.
This may be a function of changes in the Special Supply rule however. The error message you mention sounds VERY MUCH like the message Arnaud said would appear if Special Supply was inadequate to cover the requested event. Why this would work the same in the Editor as the game, however is beyond me.
Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:
c) Can someone double check the tank pools at the beginning of the Campaign '41 scenario for accuracy? It looks like the Campaign '41 scenario was edited by the game's scenario editor which automatically adds tanks to the pool. There were only 200 R35 tanks in the tank pool at the start of Campaign '41 in the older game (no other tanks for *either* side). Should Germany really start the invasion with 800 PzIIs and several hundred PzIIIhs already in the pool????
See the posts in the Bugs thread, but I think some of this is due to more accurate information we were able to access as to tank totals at the start of Barbarossa.
Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:
Small requests (Ok, they aren't all small):
1) Can we allow the plots to be a little longer, say by 2 spaces? It seems the plot length is too short for some complicated, but perfectly normal, moves. I don't understand this arbitrary limit.
You could modify the actual max value in the code fairly easily. The problem would be in how those extra plots are stored in both the memory and to a save file. Extra moves requires extra memory allocation for all the units in a running game. Save files would have to have those extra moves written to the file somewhere, with the associated actions for each of the new moves. The data structures would have to be completely rewritten as the offsets now would change. My guess is that the original game was limited in doing this due to the DOS memory limitations. We'd have the same issues without a DOS extender, which would require licensing as well. A good idea, but dsometimes the things that seem easiest to impliment are the most involved from a coding standpoint.
Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:
2) Why are the number of HQs so restricted? The Germans could really use a couple of extra HQs for air defense of important locations (but I'm advocating we alleviate this restriction for both sides, not just the Germans). There is no logical reason why we need an Army Headquarters organization just so we can station fighters at Ploesti. Making air groups independant of HQs is ulitmately the answer, but for now the simple solution is to allow both sides more HQs, maybe 3-5?
The header file limits the maximum number to 50 HQ's - 25 Axis, 25 Soviet. Without being redundant, I'm guessing the difficulties as to making this change are as above.
Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:
3) The Urals can hold one more factory over its current limit (the limit being the alphabet), why not let it hold one more? I've haven't checked this, so if you've made changes to the number of factories which eventually will be in the Urals, then ignore me here.
Arnaud was wokring on modifying the factories just prior to release, so it is possible that this has been changed. Look to the '41 Campaign sceanrio to check thisout. Unfortunately, a good portion of the game data is written to the Scenarios files, so any data change in one file has to be manually written to ALL the files to make it work across the board.
BTW - the maximum number of factories allowed in the game is 400. There are several dozen slots currently left open. If thee is a version 3.0, we had hoped to take full advantage of those extra spaces.
Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:
4) How about letting the player decide the strength of the formula for the shattering of the West and Italian fronts? How about letting the player decide the denominator for the formula, as an example? Just add the feature in the EditWir program, nothing fancy is needed. (Using a debugger I was actually able to do this with the older game)
Not a bad idea - maybe several of these types of vaiables could be included to simulate "what-if" types of scenarios.
Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:
5) Can we get a "what if" set of options that the player can try. For example, disabling partisan activity and allowing towns to keep all or some of their population as a benefit to the conquerer in the example of a hypothetical "benevolent" Germany. How about no West and Italian fronts, no bombing from the West, and no Murmansk for the "Soviets are on their own" hypothetical scenario? What about a "preserve factories" option that allows a conquerer to use captured factories instead of them being automatically destroyed (is that historical btw?). The factory is reset to "1" with a *long* startup time, of course.
That's it ... for now.
These are all grat suggestions - I had thought about a setup similar to the preferences setting you find in Steel Panthers 2, 3 and SP:WaW. This kind of end product takes a lot of new code to be written and debuged. In many cases when you make large scale to the game engine and try to do it using an exisitng structure, you are almost better off to rewrite the whole code from scratch. These were things we had thought about for Ver. 3.0...we'll have to see what we can do with the existing code and Aranaud's time.
Thanks for the post Ed.
Nick
