Beta Patch v1.030

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: GShock
showing the wrong movement arrows because the MP are lost this way. Now if also transport movements (and strategic movement) follow the same pattern then it's a heck of a problem.

MP are not lost this way. Please be aware of the rule than a transport can move into a region with another unused&unmoved transport with no movement cost. It is a free move, the "slide" I referred to before.

The autoselected routes you show are actually the unintuitive but arbitrary selection out of 2 or more equal choices.

That is why sometimes transports can move much further than 7MPs suggests, when they can exploit preexisting transport chains.

Check the manual on transport movement.

In my view, it would be nice if this were improved to work more intuitively, but it is not worth the effort/risk to make the code change. I know that I am now so used to it that I don't think about it anymore.

[GShock]

It makes sense of course.
As long as they only move as far as they can, any path is good...what matters is whether a transport can or cannot reach the destination and eventually so fight. The most important thing to check here is the movement of the troops aboard these transports because if a trooper goes for invasion all the chain will be zeroed. That means the other transports who could still work the movement of supplies, could not do it despite not having to be used. Essentially that's what i am looking for.

As of the damaged units tracing back, i honestly think an extra cost in resources would do in case they had to be traced back more than 3 zones (land or sea). Let's not forget they aren't using transport capability and they are often exceeding the possible movement points (without paying any supply for it).

[GShock]

I wanted to push the attention again on the trace back to factory issue to show that perhaps this concept has to be revised.




Neutral units escaped from the port of Greece when the axis conquered the region. However, they were pushed into the Aegean sea where my tac bombers subsequently attacked them. Unfortunately the attack only caused a damage on the single light fleet present in the Aegean (red X). The unit was deemed damaged and not destroyed though evidently being unable to trace back any path to a friendly factory because:

1) The whole mediterranean is controlled by Axis
2) The only Allied (and not neutral!) factory available would still be in Sirya (Blue X) but there's no port so the ship couldn't go there.
3) There's an extra german sub in the waters of Sardinia
4) Access to the Black sea and to Russian ports in Crimea is inhibited by Turkey.

So...where do the damaged ships go? Ok they are neutral Greek ships so they are ininfluential? No. Because the ship has become ALLIED and changed its ownership from white circle to green circle with white star.

As you can see, the trace to factory issue is a real one. Units are passing right through enemy sectors, ignoring any sort of movement limitation and opfire. Please, tell me we can do something about this.

[Lucky1]

Check your WA production queues for new destroyers.... Then you will be able to find out where it has gone (if anywhere). I am guessing that it was simply destroyed and that you did not get a message to the effect that it could not trace a path. (Do all players get this message when it occurs?) You do raise a question that I have wondered about. For example, if I were to 'surround' Hawaii  with carriers in my Japanese opener and invade amphbiously rather than attack the fleet, what happens to the US ships in port if I am successful? I always presumed they were destroyed.... Am I wrong in this?

As for the CAG error I noticed, I have not had time to try to reproduce it. No game playing for me until finals are done....

[GShock]

Lucky, im Axis and can't see their production queue. We guess it was destroyed but the question unfortunately remains for both enemy and friendly units. The trace back to factory routines need to take into account the enemy in the zones separating them from the factory and, in any case, they should pay an appropriate number of supplies to get back to port after suffering any opfire. Then, it makes sense.

The same is relevant in the Japanese warfare. In philippines there's a light allied fleet. I bomb it and 90% times i destroy it, but some other times i just damage it. Well...there's my subs in the sea of Philippines by the port and there's countless sea units everywhere on the map. If the light fleet is damaged how in the hell can it arrive to be repaired (presumably in Australia or New Zealand or Hawaii) passing my blockade?

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: GShock
I wanted to push the attention again on the trace back to factory issue to show that perhaps this concept has to be revised.

I think that this discussion has nothing to do with v1.030 per-se and belongs in the main forum. You are talking about concepts that have been in the game *forever* and I see them as very unlikely to change.

[GShock]

That would not be so hard to change, if the trace back is more than 2 regions, the unit should not be able to trace back...it will fall prey to some enemy unit, or damage will not allow it to proceed (abstracted). A penalty on supply seems not reasonable, because the repairing will still cost an appropriate number of supplies, but don't forget the traceback is not accounted for in supplies (movement) cost so, i think it's time to do something about it.

I suppose this implies an algorythm and perhaps in 1.04 this could be done. But that's all on my part...i think the 1.03 is good and those i mentioned (this issue excluded) are just very minor things.

[Lucky1]

WH, I have sent you the mentioned files by email. Please advise if these are not received. Anyhow, I have found the following CAG issues:
 
 
 
Saves 2 and 3  and saves 4 and 5 demonstrate the same thing: a single CAG can attack a sea zone and then patrol over it. Then another CAG gets sent in to attack. Both CAGs attack again (effectively two attacks for the first CAG).
 
Save 7 (save six is the precursor save) shows the aftermath of Japanese air strike on Hawai naval base. After attacking the base, I sent the CAGs to patrol adjacent sea zones with allied transports. They were able to attack a second time etc.
 
Is this functioning as intended?

[GShock]

Working as intended that all sea units can, after attacking, still move back to safety?

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: Lucky1
Saves 2 and 3  and saves 4 and 5 demonstrate the same thing: a single CAG can attack a sea zone and then patrol over it. Then another CAG gets sent in to attack. Both CAGs attack again (effectively two attacks for the first CAG).

Save 7 (save six is the precursor save) shows the aftermath of Japanese air strike on Hawai naval base. After attacking the base, I sent the CAGs to patrol adjacent sea zones with allied transports. They were able to attack a second time etc.

Is this functioning as intended?

If the air units actually meaningfully participate in the second combat (i.e. they fire and/or are fired upon) then it is not working as intended.

However, I am aware that they can *appear* to be in a second combat, while not actually contributing (i.e. they neither fire nor are fired upon). This phenomena, which is not a real issue, is all that I was able to reproduce in the saves.

I was aware of this issue, but it seemed minor since it didn't actually give an advantage (the unit doesn't actually fire a second time) and it actually does give a disadvantage (the unit loses a movement point for no benefit to the player). So the player may do it once or twice by accident, but should self-train away from the behavior.

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: GShock
Working as intended that all sea units can, after attacking, still move back to safety?

All units may move after they have attacked, provided that they have enough movement points remaining. Since naval units have the most MPs, it is most obvious for them.

So yes, WAD.

[rjh1971]

Hi Brian:
I started a solo game against the ai and I had two CV with their cags blocking the entrance to the North Atlantic. When the AI finally decided to throw their subs to attack the allied shiping, I got a target fortification of +1 in the evasion mod.

Doesn't sound well to me, submarines with fortifications in the Atlantic? Then again reading the combat results has always been my nightmare so i could be missing something.

I'm sending you the autosave where you can reproduce the situation.

Regards Rafael

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: rjh1971
I started a solo game against the ai and I had two CV with their cags blocking the entrance to the North Atlantic. When the AI finally

It is computing some of the op-fire combat as though it were in the sub's starting location (W Germany, a winter and fortified region).

This is subtle. I think I can see exactly how to change it but I can't be sure it wouldn't introduce another subtle bug. Not sure if I will ever have the chance to pursue this further.

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: WanderingHead

ORIGINAL: rjh1971
I started a solo game against the ai and I had two CV with their cags blocking the entrance to the North Atlantic. When the AI finally

It is computing some of the op-fire combat as though it were in the sub's starting location (W Germany, a winter and fortified region).

This is subtle. I think I can see exactly how to change it but I can't be sure it wouldn't introduce another subtle bug. Not sure if I will ever have the chance to pursue this further.

BTW, it appears that this is only an issue for the AI. That is because the AI doesn't "pick up" a unit with the cursor in order to move it. This sort of hides the unit's location in the op-fire combat routines and hence makes it use the unit's original region (normally for a human player the unit's location for op-fire combat is obtained from the so-called "hand" that is holding the unit).

That may be a rather esoteric explanation, but the bottom line is that I don't see an easy way to fix it and the issue is only for the AI and even then is rather subtle and rare and I think I will ignore it.

[rjh1971]

If it only happens with the AI then I'm with you, better ignore it than trying to fix it and open a can of worms.

[Marshall Art]

I found out that not only French units try to leave via Dunkirk but French rail does, too! I even repaired it, so that England now has a rail capacity of 95. Cool, if only Scotland could catch up [;)]

Brian, if you want me to I can send you the file. PM me with your Email please.

[NerdDog]

Wanderinghead, I believe you said you are a volunteer and have been working on the bugs reported in Beta 1.030. I realize time is short at times. You mentioned you hoped to have 1.04 released in the Christmas/January timeframe. Any update on a possilbe release of the corrected beta? Thanks for your hard work.

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: NerdDog
Wanderinghead, I believe you said you are a volunteer and have been working on the bugs reported in Beta 1.030. I realize time is short at times. You mentioned you hoped to have 1.04 released in the Christmas/January timeframe. Any update on a possilbe release of the corrected beta? Thanks for your hard work.

Let me volunteer one of my flaws. I tend to like to tweak and tweak and get it perfect. I tend to be afraid to draw the line and say "it's done!".

Last Sunday I went in and made the game relatively gracefully handle different graphics resolutions. It isn't perfect, not quite what I would want out of a professional release, but you can now set it to run at any resolution greater than 1024x768 which from a practical play point of view is awesome (it looks an awful lot like Lebatron's trick and the graphics mod to support it, it is just configurable in the game and built in).

Anyway, there is a version that a few people are playing to help point out problems or bugs. It looks good to me so far. Perhaps it is time to draw the line and release it.

I'll ping the testers this weekend, see if they've found any problems. If not, I'll try to get the ball rolling.

[WanderingHead]

Here's what the recent change for screen resolution looks like. AWD is running at 1200x900, my screen at 1280x1024, and the screen capture resolution is halved to 640x512 for the JPG image.

The black fill is the easiest thing to do with the extra space for all of the windows other than the map.

[WanderingHead]

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