New Supply Rules / Overextended Supply questions

[76mm]

ORIGINAL: Zovs

Well folks sad news indeed. Steve is helping out, but it seems something maybe corrupt, its a shame, its so close but something is amiss.

I'll try to salvage it if I can, but I may end up going back to Steel Panthers after this one...man ...

I'll try a few more experiments...

Very sorry to hear this. Have you thought about adding another couple of events to raise the shock value, again? Or raising the supply levels to some crazy levels, just to see what happens?

[Zovs]

I and Steve tried that, the closest that he came was to set it to 999 but that just seemed weird.

Good news though. I still have back up copies, unfortantantly all my back up copies that I modified exhibit this behavior. However, I still had a virgin copy of my scenario from 2002 (COW) and I opened that up in TOAW III saved that, opened up the game and played the first turn and all was good.

Then I took that saved scenario opened it TOAW IV and saved that. It also worked as you would expect.

So (lucky for me) I then imported my new custom map that I did over the last week into this working scenario and after the map imported and was saved started a scenario and it worked okay.

Next I started where I started two weeks ago. I noticed that Finland, Ireland and the Russians in the Baltic were out of supply (the Russians are in an exclusion zone). So first test was with Finland (all it's normal Supply Points are in cities (ports mainly) that I put exclusion zones on so that players would not abuse the system and sail into the port prior to Finland being activated. So now with TOAW IV your have to put a value of 1-100 for a Supply Point for it to be on the map. First test I set a Supply Point on a RR in Finland (was not happy about it because it should be in the city but apparently exclusion zones prevent supplies). Saved it and started a scenario and presto the Finns are back in supply.

So now I just need to do the easy part and set some Supply Points with values, somehow the system auto magically assigns supply values from the ones I placed on the map in TOAW III but I have no idea how or why or what. But I can see values ranging from 58 to 33 to 25 etc.

So if the "powers that be" can let me know if I do need to set these Supply Points to some value or if I can just leave them "empty" which is odd because I'd rather have more control over that with out breaking the supply system. For example all capitals should be 100, next up cities and industry and oil 75, smaller yet, and ports 50 and 25 for even smaller areas or smaller ports.

I'd love to use the new supply rules but somehow it got all whacked in my first try or some data corruption occurred with my using XML imports.

So I can rebuild the units later. I have back up of my eqp file and just want and need to get the supply system aok.

Another question, since I did too many things at once (supply, added new units and formations and add in HQ and try to use the new supply rules), would HQ's command squads and support squads effect any of this?

Determined to bring this to fruition.

[Zovs]

Well good news. With test 8 I placed Supply Points as either 100, 75, 50 or 25 as I thought appropriate and all is looking good. I think even in the exclusion zones as well (tired eyes). So it seems that when you convert a TOAW III or CoW scenario you should take great care in setting the Supply Points to some value. It seems that sometimes the game will set them but in more complex ones it may or may not.

So I'll have to play around with what I got. Even the ones set at 100 are not giving 100% supply. I still have to set the other rates. Currently it's set to 10 for both sides (the map is 25km per hex at one week turns).

Once I get the supply and "hopefully" extended supply sorted out and it works as I intend then I'll go back recreate my HQ units and insert then and then with the base formations I have (30 infantry, 4, Panzer, 4 PanzerGrenadier, 1 Motorized, 1 SS, several AA, several Air and a Mountain for just the Germans for an example, go back in update some of thier TOEs and then I'll need to add back the US from 42-45, and then the CW from 43-45 and then the Germans and Russians from 43-45.

This may be my summer project.

[Zovs]

Yes, I am really happy with the supply now it makes sense. I set the capitals (Berlin, Paris, London and Rome) to 250%, I set Moscow to 250%, + 100% + 100% (there are three hexes of Moscow). Most minor capitals are 100% and most industry is at 75 or 100. Ports are mostly at 25 or 50 if bigger.

So now just need to figure out the new extended supply rules and apply that.

[Lobster]

Importing/exporting XML is something that always scares me.

[Zovs]

It’s really not that bad if you follow a good routine .

Open scenario save as 1.1
Map done and export save as 1.2
Add units save as 1.3
Make formations save as 1.4
Deploy save as 1.5
Set supply save as 1.6
Test
Tweak supply save as 1.7
Test
Tweak stuff save as 1.8
Make eqp save as 1.9
Export as *.gam
Load in editor tweak import xml save as 1.10
Test
Fix stuff save as 1.11
Export gam and save game and eqp as 1.12
Rinse repeat

If the import hoses something go back to previous version and rethink what gacked you and change directions and save as 1.13

Rinse and repeat

The TOAWXMLTool is fantastic but you to be prudent and save.

Luckily my map was good and I learned a lot on what not to do too much of.

[Lobster]

Problem is the XML export is still bugged. It spits out units as parents of themselves. Like they are bacteria or something. [:D]

So anyway, that leads me to not entirely trust the format. Backup everything constantly. And as you pointed out, incremental changes.

[Zovs]

Yes I also noticed the PARENT tag, there were 41 of them in my export and as a designer I never split units so in VSCode it was a simply search and replace to fix that in 3 seconds, the problem is the uninitiated would have to ask or dig in to find out why. I saw a list of my US units in the in game editor as being un-selectable in the Force editor but place-able on map.

Saw that they were showing Divided in Toms editor and looked at the XML and put two and two together and removed the offending PARENT tag and presto all was good again.

I suspect that my woes are still related to supply, overextended supply and the HQs I created. I added command squads and support squads. I’ll find out in my tests today. Or it was just some data corruption I either self imposed, was exported out or some other means.

I am not afraid of exporting out of the game and using Toms tool, I have seen both work really well. You can start in the editor with nothing loaded and take a *.gam file and import it in and your off, you’ll have to save it and the eqp but you can work like this back and forth.

[76mm]

ORIGINAL: Zovs
Yes I also noticed the PARENT tag, there were 41 of them in my export and as a designer I never split units so in VSCode it was a simply search and replace to fix that in 3 seconds, the problem is the uninitiated would have to ask or dig in to find out why.

I just wanted to point out that TOAWxml now fixes this XML export problem automatically when TOAWxml opens, or when it loads a new gam file.

But every time you export a new gam file from the in-game editor, you must either restart TOAWxml or reload the gam file in TOAWxml--otherwise TOAWxml does not fix this XML export problem.

[Zovs]

Thanks for that Tom! By the time I saw them and fixed them you probably fixed the code lol.