Bug Report: Amphibious Capacity increases...

[JAMiAM]

Hi,

There is a problem with Amphibious capacity being positively incremented in certain conditions, allowing for an exploit that can be used to recover and increase previously used capacity in a sea zone. How to accomplish:

1. Have a stack that has amphibious initiative. Make sure there are some cavalry leaders and units in the stack.
2. Invade a land region, using one of the cavalry leaders, and some of the others. Make a note of the remaining amphibious capacity in the sea zone.
3. Conduct a raid or scouting mission with the cavalry unit. When it finishes, it will return to the transports in the sea zone.
4. Notice that the amphibious capacity used by the cavalry unit has been reclaimed, and incremented.
5. You can continue sending cavalry units on missions and each time they will not only not permanently use the capacity, but will actually increase it, for each mission.

Saved game file available upon request, if needed. Note to self "JAMvIW2_Union14".

[Joel Billings]

Added to bug list. Sounds like cav that is invading needs to be blocked from being able to scout or raid.

[Doc o War]

Indeed I had no idea you could scout from sea- reboard your craft- and do it again..Ifthis were 1944 sure- but not in the WBTS

[JAMiAM]

ORIGINAL: Doc o War

Indeed I had no idea you could scout from sea- reboard your craft- and do it again..Ifthis were 1944 sure- but not in the WBTS

That's not quite what is happening here. Cavalry units don't reclaim their MP's, so it's not like they are gaining double moves. What is happening is that when they return to the sea region or to an offshore island following the scouting/raiding mission, the transport capacity that they used, is first returned as unused, and then incremented by the used amount as additional transport capacity.

Here is a hypothetical case, to explain:

A stack of units in DC get amphibious initiative. There are 16 transports in Ac8, for a sea/amph transport capacity of 400/32, plus enough in Ac7 to lift whatever we want out of DC to move into Ac8. Our target is New Bern.

Normally, we are (and should be) limited to 32 transport points that can land in New Bern, and/or any combination of the land regions bordering it. This works out to 8 Mil/Inf/Art, at 4 points apiece, as your maximum sized force. Mtd/Cav/HA cost 5 apiece, so any total force with some of those units would be fewer units.

If you first executed a scout/raid with a Mtd/Cav unit led by a leader with Amph initiative, you'll see that the capacity drops to 27, when you move the Cav Leader's force into New Bern, and returned to 32, when the mission was finished. Essentially, not using any cap. Then, you can move Burnside's Corps with 6 Inf into New Bern. You'll see that the cap drops, as expected, to 8 remaining. Then, move another Cav unit as above into New Bern. The cap drops to 3 remaining. Now, execute another Cav mission. When it is finished, the Leader and his unit move back into the sea region (or to an offshore island) and now, you have not only reclaimed the 5 points, for the move back, but if the remaining amount was less than the nominal max cap (i.e. 32 in this case) you get an additional increment of 5 points, leaving 13 points available for further landings. You could land another small corps of 3 Inf, with 3 cap left over.

So, in short, for this example, you could gain 15 points of amphibious capacity, above and beyond what you should have had.

In reply to Joel's thoughts above, I disagree about Cavalry being prohibited from scouting/raiding from ships, as these are month long turns, and there should be some way of incorporating some scouting into sea landings. However, the exploit of gaining capacity, or even re-using it, should be plugged. My guess is that it is another bug in the move-back logic, and that the cavalry is qualifying for the reclamation of MP's based on the program thinking that there was a legitimate move back, rather than a mission.

[Doc o War]

James- wow- [X(]That is a huge thing- and you are right- it should be plugged- Since the Union Player is the only one doing this I suppose until the Bug fix comes along the Union Player will have to police his own amphib caps, and make sure that if some of the capacity is used for scouting /raiding that even though the number of caps left on the game counter is wrong- the player should consider the cost spent- even if the game has a bug that allows more.
 
You know the more we de Bug this game the better it is going to be in the final version.

[Joel Billings]

You should not be allowed to raid/scout with units that moved via transports (players should refrain from doing this until we fix it in the code).

[JAMiAM]

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

You should not be allowed to raid/scout with units that moved via transports (players should refrain from doing this until we fix it in the code).

Hi Joel,

If it's going to be "fixed" that's your call, but I just thought I'd point out that it was the AI that taught me to do it. So, you might want to check that, too.

I still believe that if coded correctly, the limited scouting that the units could do would not be inappropriate given the scale of the game. The cavalry only gets one chance to scout, and then reboards the ships, so it's not like it can infinitely rescout the region. Just my 2 cents.

[Doc o War]

Joel- Then are we to assume that cav ops from Shipboard is NOT to be allowed?  I will consider that players should refrain from doing so.