Hierarchy Module Document

[kutaycosar]

There is no "outline" format on this board, so I used the Outline mode of Word and saved it as an attachment:

There are two things I've noticed, and perhaps many others know.
First: helicopters cannot be targeted by enemy aircraft or ground defenses during transport or empty flight. i suspect toaw III 3.4.0202 patch break something.
Second: air-lift(by airplanes) missions can be targeted by enemy aircrafts, but not by ranged ground defense systems such as SAM.
Can we have hope for improvements to these issues in the upcoming update, or will solving these problems lead to other issues, and is there no easy way? I don't want to be misunderstood, thank you for the innovations you brought to the game, i think most of them needed. But especially the thing about the helicopter can be quite a disappointment for the Vietnam scenarios.

Ralph lowered helicopter vulnerability back in TOAW-III as shown in the attached. Perhaps he went too far in that direction? I'll look at it. I'll look at air-embarked units vs. AAA as well.

Not gonna lie, it feels really good to know these issues are being looked into. Thank you very much, and keep up the great work!

[Curtis Lemay]

After posting about my update of my France 1944 D-Day scenario, I then intended run the scenario to the end to illustrate the suite of events that the scenario employs. BUT!! most of those events didn't work!! I've spent the last three weeks trying to fix them so that I could finish that step. The issues I encountered were as follows:

1. The US First Army was to be transferred from the UK 21st Army Group to the US 12th Army Group (also US VIII Corps was to be transferred from US First Army to US Third Army). I was using the available "Detach Formation" and "Attach Formation" event effects. But the problem was that those event require that the formation to be transferred couldn't have any subordinates attached. Of course it had three corps and eleven divisions attached. Only through a sequence of detachments and attachments could the process have been completed in that fashion. And event sequence is sort of random, so it would be very hard to get sequenced correctly anyway. My solution to this was to create a new event effect called "Transfer Formation" which shifts a formation that has subordinates whole, without detaching any subordinates. This was finally made to work.

2. Eisenhower was to transfer from his base in England (Southwick House) to the SHAEF HQ in Normandy on turn 26. This requires to "Flag" to transfer between two units in the SHAEF formation. I had to create an event effect for that as well. That's two new event effects.

3. Many formation reinforcements in the scenario weren't supplied with commanders => intending to only fill those commands upon their arrival on map. But the auto command-vacancy fill procedure didn't check for the formation being on map and filled all those vacancies on turn 1 (with inappropriate commanders). I had to change that procedure so that only on map flag units were subject to auto filling.

4. That same auto vacancy fill procedure had only been designed for New Turn Order. I had to make it work for Old Turn Order as well.

5. Commanders set to arrive by turn never arrived. This was because I never coded the part that delivered them to the map. Only the User-Interface setting their turn had been coded. Fixed.

6. Even when commanders do arrive by turn, it was impossible to assign them by event that turn. This was because events are evaluated prior to reinforcements arrival. I changed the event so that it would work even if the commander was still set to "unAvailable".

7. This, however, met an additional issue: after being assigned by event, the following reinforcement phase changed the commander back from "Assigned" to "Available" => canceling the assignment. Fixed this so that if assigned by event, the reinforcement routine won't change it to "Available".

8. News items had had their max length increased from 56 to 112. But the News Dialog hadn't increased the length of text it would display. Fixed this.

Finally, I could run the scenario to the end will all events successfully executing. The following shows the movement of the US First Army and the US VIII Corps that takes place on turn 17. It also shows the replacement of multiple commanders by the end of turn 29. The orange rectangle shows a spawned commander filling a vacancy due to combat loss. There are still some issues, but they were in the design of the scenario, not the execution of the game itself. Note that the Hierarchy on the left is from turn 1 and on the right from turn 29:

[Curtis Lemay]

Here is the new event effects list:

[Curtis Lemay]

Here's the event to shift the flag slot of a formation:

[Curtis Lemay]

Here is SHAEF on turn 25, before the flag slot shift:

[Curtis Lemay]

And here it is on turn 26, after the shift:

[Curtis Lemay]

Here is the Transfer Formation between Superiors effect. Note that the subordinate formation is in x, the original formation is in value and slot in y, and the new formation is in contingency and slot in chance. (The event has 5 parameters to enter, a new record. Required some coding skill for that!). Note that the chance parameter is now unavailable for its original purpose and there can't be a chance setting for this event. However, the event can be given a huge turn # and be triggered by some other event => which CAN have a chance setting. So, designers aren't limited, they just have to be a little clever.

[Curtis Lemay]

Here's the limit for News Item length before:

[Curtis Lemay]

And here's the News Item length now (I'm kinda stealing from "The Shining"):

[Curtis Lemay]

Here's the Hierarchy bugs 25 - 30 fixed. Also new features 25 & 26 effected:

[broccolini]

When do you think this might be ready for a game? Seems like there is still a lot to work out.

[Curtis Lemay]

When do you think this might be ready for a game? Seems like there is still a lot to work out.

Considering how many issues just running through the events in the above revealed, actual play will probably reveal far more. But there's no other way to sort those issues out.

But there's also the issue of how few players have the new version. Still waiting on Erik to green-light a beta test.

[broccolini]

When do you think this might be ready for a game? Seems like there is still a lot to work out.

Considering how many issues just running through the events in the above revealed, actual play will probably reveal far more. But there's no other way to sort those issues out.

But there's also the issue of how few players have the new version. Still waiting on Erik to green-light a beta test.

If I can help with playtest at some point just send me a PM.

[rhinobones]

Considering how many issues just running through the events in the above revealed, actual play will probably reveal far more. But there's no other way to sort those issues out.
But there's also the issue of how few players have the new version. Still waiting on Erik to green-light a beta test.

So far the testing appears to be focused on scenarios which have been fully updated with the new features. Is testing being performed on stock TOAW III and TOAW IV scenarios which are not updated? It was mentioned before that existing scenarios will play without modification/updating . . . is this being tested? There are hundreds of TOAW III and IV scenarios available and you’ve provided a long list of bug/feature fixes. Do these fixes apply to scenarios without updating/modification? I don’t foresee many existing scenarios being fully updated and six years of effort shouldn’t be applicable to only a handful of scenarios.

Also, you might want to consider opening a folder for TOAW IV.I updated scenarios. Keep them in a separate pile, make them easy to find.

Regards

[Curtis Lemay]

Considering how many issues just running through the events in the above revealed, actual play will probably reveal far more. But there's no other way to sort those issues out.
But there's also the issue of how few players have the new version. Still waiting on Erik to green-light a beta test.

So far the testing appears to be focused on scenarios which have been fully updated with the new features. Is testing being performed on stock TOAW III and TOAW IV scenarios which are not updated? It was mentioned before that existing scenarios will play without modification/updating . . . is this being tested? There are hundreds of TOAW III and IV scenarios available and you’ve provided a long list of bug/feature fixes. Do these fixes apply to scenarios without updating/modification? I don’t foresee many existing scenarios being fully updated and six years of effort shouldn’t be applicable to only a handful of scenarios.

Very little actual play-testing of anything. Again, waiting on the green-light for the beta test.

Also, you might want to consider opening a folder for TOAW IV.I updated scenarios. Keep them in a separate pile, make them easy to find.

There is now a Hierarchy folder, where I'm putting all my modified ones into. We'll stick with that at first. Down the road that may become obsolete if it swells to overflowing.

So far, there are 21 updated scenarios in it: