Matrix Games Forums

EDIT: It appears in general that trails are not present as advertised. While SOME hexes have trails, it appears many were ignored altogether.
Those that were not did not, in general, get a trail (unless there is a road, blocked hex or some other cause not to have one) in all directions.
Rather - even in such cases - trails are selective - not universal. At least China follows the same pattern as the big islands like New Guinea and
New Britain in this respect. There may be a good reason for this. But it isn't what we were told was the SOP.

ORIGINAL POST:
You may remember, some weeks ago, when I suggested that there was a problem trying to go from Buna to Port Moresby sans any sort
of roads. There were comments to the effect that "trails" were coded in every direction for every hex.

Guess what? Not so. Not on New Guinea. Not on New Britain either. There are rump trailheads and roadheads in hexes with ports in some
cases - but nothing more. I can see it if you want to represent some directions as impassable, but ALL directions? In this case, my original
complaint is validated: units will not tend to do better taking a historical route - with a trail - vs any other route. And the lines on campaign
maps become wholly unrelated to what makes sense in our games.

So - now I am pwhexing again (I used to do that for WITP) - I have put in the trails. Not some simplistic "trails in every direction" - but trails where they
were. I also have liberated Dacca as a non-port port - and similar other places. You can sail up the Road to Mandalay (which is the river, if there is somenone who does not know) - or the River of Kings which has a similar function in Thailand. There is a reason heavy stuff goes to Fairbanks - or Whitehorse - by water - the mighty Yukon. And that river which mysteriously is invisible at Magadan - four times the flow of the Mississippi and able to take large ships to both ports inland from there - needs to be "dredged" in due course - with later editions of pwhexe. Finally, I have made it possible to go from Batavia to its neighboring island, or from Java to Bali, or from Sumatra to Java - or from Leyte to Samar - as if you are crossing a river. Note STOCK does that for Shikoku - except they don't code it as a river - but as a wide strait! They rate land units able to transit as a major road - which makes me think someone has looked at a new map: there is a huge bridge there NOW - but it never was that easy to move stuff before this generation.

I am about to test a slightly modified Scenario 1 with a team. The art is compatable with Scenario 1, but Mifune has added more. I am sure he will post the pwhex versions - which we intend to keep issuing over time - with ever more data plugged in - ever more options for players.

But that stuff about no trails - it probably applies other places - and it may be grounds to have a pwhexe done - if you ever want to go overland - or have units use historical routes under AI control.

Sid,

I am curious. On what basis do you assert that there are no trails in those places?

What you were told, by two developers IIRC, is that "trails" are built into the unit and supply movement rates (or 'cost' for supply) in the game, and that is the reason they are not in the pwhex data.

How have you determined that to be false?

Make that 3 ex developers all saying the same thing but he aint listening

- if you are adding a secondary road between Buna and PM that is of course your right but it will now make the campaghn ahistorical but hey dont let me me interfere with your prejusdeices

ps there is no key that you can press to show a trail map like you can for roads and rail because EVERY HEX has trails

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Sid,

I am curious. On what basis do you assert that there are no trails in those places?

What you were told, by two developers IIRC, is that "trails" are built into the unit and supply movement rates (or 'cost' for supply) in the game, and that is the reason they are not in the pwhex data.

How have you determined that to be false?

I also dont know what Sid is basing his assumption there are trails across the Owen Stanleys.

He bought this up in the WITP days as well.

I would assume a trail is capable of taking at least a Jeep, neither the Kokoda or Kapa Kapa tracks took motor vehicles and the route from Terapo to Wau involved small boat/canoe, man packing and motor vehicle.

If you want to look at Maps the Perry Casteneda Library has US Army survey maps of PNG.

From US Army History    http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA ... pua-5.html
A commonly used word on PNG is "undeveloped"
The Kokoda Trail The best overland route to Port Moresby passed through Kokoda, a point about fifty miles from Buna and more than one hundred miles from Port Moresby.  At Wairopi, about thirty miles southwest of Buna, a wire-rope bridge, from which the place took its name, spanned the immense gorge of the Kumusi River, a broad turbulent stream subject to dangerous undertows and flash floods. Between Buna and Wairopi the country is gentle and rolling. Past Wairopi it suddenly becomes steep and rocky. Kokoda itself is set on a little plateau between the foothills of the Ajura Kijala and Owen Stanley Ranges. On this plateau, which is about 1,200 feet above sea level, there was a small airfield, suitable only for use by light commercial planes and the smaller types of military transport aircraft. From Kokoda, the trail leads southward along the western side of a huge canyon or chasm, the so-called Eora Creek Gorge. It passes through the native villages of Deniki and Isurava to a trail junction at Alola, where a cross-country trail from Ilimo, a point southwest of Wairopi, joins the main track via Kobara, Fila, Missima, and Abuari, a short-cut which makes it possible to bypass Kokoda. From Alola, the trail crosses to the eastern side of Eora Creek and climbs to Templeton's Crossing, where the immense spurs of the main range are met for the first time at an elevation of 7,000 feet. Just past Templeton's Crossing is the Gap, the mountain pass that leads across the range. The Gap, which is only twenty miles south of Kokoda, is a broken, jungle covered saddle in the main range, about 7,500 feet high at its central point. The saddle is about five miles wide, with high mountains on either side. The trail runs about six miles through the Gap over a rocky, broken track, on which there is not enough level space to pitch a tent, and room enough for only one man to pass. From the Gap, the trail plunges downward to Myola, Kagi, Efogi, Menari, Nauro, Ioribaiwa, the Imita Range, and Uberi, traversing in its course mountain peaks 5,000 and 6,000 feet high, and sharp, eastwest ridges whose altitude is from 3,000 to 4,000 feet. The southern edge of the range is at Koitaki, about thirty miles from Port Moresby by road, where the elevation is 2,000 feet [blockquote] From Kokoda to Templeton's Crossing the trail climbs 6,000 feet in less than twenty miles as it crosses a series of knife-edged ridges. The peaks in the area rise as high as 9,000 feet, and the valleys, whose sides slope as much as 60 percent from the horizontal, descend as low as 1,000 feet. Ridges rising from creeks and river beds are 1,500 to 2,000 feet high, and the soil in the valleys has up to thirty feet of humus and leaf mold. The area is perpetually wet, the rainfall at 3,000 feet being 200 and 300 inches a year. The situation is only slightly better between Myola and Uberi. There are still knife-edges and razorbacks, but now they are not as precipitous as before. The gorges, though deeper and with denser undergrowth, are less frequent, but they are still extremely hard to cross. Not till the trail reaches Koitaki does the going moderate. It was a moot point whether a large, fully equipped force could complete the difficult march from Kokoda to Koitaki, in the faceof determined opposition, and still be in condition to launch an effective attack on Port Moresby when it got there. Yet it was by an advance over this trail that the Japanese proposed to take Port Moresby.[/blockquote] The US Flanking moves      http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA ... pua-6.html

General MacNider's group had no sooner arrived at Port Moresby than it discovered that the route proposed by General MacArthur's staff for the advance to Wairopi was an impracticable one. Not only did it intersect the Australian rear and extend into an area where troops using it could be cut off by the Japanese, but it was so rough and mountainous that the only way to supply troops using it would be from the air. Consideration was then given to an alternative route--the eighty-five mile trail, Port Moresby-Kapa Kapa-Kalikodobu-Arapara-Laruni-Jaure. From Jaure lesser trails led to Wairopi and Buna. Little was known about the route for it had not been used in years. The coastal natives avoided it because they believed it to be haunted, especially at the divide; and no white man had passed that way since 1917, a quarter of a century before. Although the route had the advantage that troops operating over it could be supported logistically by land and sea for about a third of the distance, it had also a very serious disadvantage--a 9,100 foot mountain crossing, which the Australians feared was impracticable for marching troops. General Rowell strongly opposed using it and favored an alternative route running from Abau to Jaure where the crossings were under 5,000 feet

Jeff you're wasting your time...

Let him create his own mod afterwards when it is released we will see if it works.

ORIGINAL: treespider

Jeff you're wasting your time...

+1

I'm only going to say one thing. If it's your goal to have a more historical game, then how is adding a road that'll let armour drive from PM to Buna in 4 days and Infantry in 7 going to help ?

ORIGINAL: che200

Let him create his own mod afterwards when it is released we will see if it works.

No one is in any way trying to stop him. Making a mod is a lot of work. He says he is aiming to get it more and more historical, and there are folks both working with him and who are also looking forward to playing it when it's completed. So when it is really, really obvious that he is making a big mistake, pointing that out and trying to get the message across is an attempt to help him and the people who want to play his mod.

I know it is most likely futile but when I saw his post I decided to try anyway.

ORIGINAL: witpqs

ORIGINAL: che200

Let him create his own mod afterwards when it is released we will see if it works.

No one is in any way trying to stop him. Making a mod is a lot of work. He says he is aiming to get it more and more historical, and there are folks both working with him and who are also looking forward to playing it when it's completed. So when it is really, really obvious that he is making a big mistake, pointing that out and trying to get the message across is an attempt to help him and the people who want to play his mod.

I know it is most likely futile but when I saw his post I decided to try anyway.

\
I also think that many others who might assume Sid knows what he is on about might need a reasoned reply rather than ignoring him.

Next will probably be that the first models of the F4U only had 1 x50cal and 1 x 30cal and lots of little bombs.

PS sorry about the underscore on my post, looked great when I cut and pasted it!

Yes he will probably change so much data that it will be unworkable but the differance between WITP and AE is that stock AE has a working AI not like WITP so he will be judged by Andys work which IMHO is great. Even the Babes team did not mess with the AI that much so imagine what Cid will do. The differance between then and now is today we still have an active DEV team who know how this baby works.

 

merely by looking at the data in the pwhexe file
which defines them

ORIGINAL: el cid again

merely by looking at the data in the pwhexe file
which defines them

I know I've explained it a few times already, but I will do so again: trails are not defined in the map data in AE. They are assumed to exist in every hex and their implicit existence is built into the supply costs of the terrain (and, to a certain extent, movement rates).

The old value for trails is instead used for railway lines (where no co-existent roads exist) for the use of non-rail movement along rail beds.

Andrew

The movement rate for hexes without roads was changed from non-road to trail movement rate.  It's built into the code, there is no value to change in the map files.

Bill

ORIGINAL: JeffK

I also dont know what Sid is basing his assumption there are trails across the Owen Stanleys.

.

It is not an assumption, in game terms, that the hexes are not coded with trails in all directions, as we were told.
It is what the pwhexe file data says.

It is also not an assumption that the 144th Regimental Combat Team came across the Owen Stanley Range using
the existing trail system. Or that it was driven back by the Aussies, down the same trail system. The point of
my comments is that, sans trails in the game, there is no reason to use one route over another - so the games will
not tend to follow historical lines of advance. In this case, players might not even attempt to do historical things.
Maybe not re PM, but what about Hollendia? The two pronged invasion makes no sense sans a trail to make the
Western approach feasible.

Anyway - everyone is free to do whatever they like with the information. But do not assume there are trails as we were told.
Take a look with the pwhexe editor - which reads the code with respect to communications and several other perameters -
for whatever hex you like.

ORIGINAL: el cid again

ORIGINAL: JeffK

I also dont know what Sid is basing his assumption there are trails across the Owen Stanleys.

.

It is not an assumption, in game terms, that the hexes are not coded with trails in all directions, as we were told.
It is what the pwhexe file data says.

But do not assume there are trails as we were told.
Take a look with the pwhexe editor - which reads the code with respect to communications and several other perameters -
for whatever hex you like.

WRONG!!!!

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

ORIGINAL: el cid again

merely by looking at the data in the pwhexe file
which defines them

I know I've explained it a few times already, but I will do so again: trails are not defined in the map data in AE. They are assumed to exist in every hex and their implicit existence is built into the supply costs of the terrain (and, to a certain extent, movement rates).

The old value for trails is instead used for railway lines (where no co-existent roads exist) for the use of non-rail movement along rail beds.

Andrew

As Andrew points out the data values in the code were changed from War in the Pacific to assign trail values to any hex that does not have any other transportation route assigned. In the case of rail assignments rail hexes use Trail values for non-rail movement.

As such hexes no longer have to be explicitly assigned Trail transportation routes.

You are not playing with War in the Pacific values....you are playing with Admiral Edition Values... and in AE every hex is coded as if it has trails in it.

ORIGINAL: el cid again

ORIGINAL: JeffK

I also dont know what Sid is basing his assumption there are trails across the Owen Stanleys.

.

It is not an assumption, in game terms, that the hexes are not coded with trails in all directions, as we were told.
It is what the pwhexe file data says.

It is also not an assumption that the 144th Regimental Combat Team came across the Owen Stanley Range using
the existing trail system. Or that it was driven back by the Aussies, down the same trail system. The point of
my comments is that, sans trails in the game, there is no reason to use one route over another - so the games will
not tend to follow historical lines of advance. In this case, players might not even attempt to do historical things.
Maybe not re PM, but what about Hollendia? The two pronged invasion makes no sense sans a trail to make the
Western approach feasible.

Anyway - everyone is free to do whatever they like with the information. But do not assume there are trails as we were told.
Take a look with the pwhexe editor - which reads the code with respect to communications and several other perameters -
for whatever hex you like.

You are making absolutely false statements here. You have not been told that trails are coded in the pwhexe file for all hexes. You have been told that trails are coded in the software code itself in the form of the movement rates for all hexes. You have been told so a number of times. You have seen the many posts from the actual game's actual developers on the matter. You know what they said, and you are misrepresenting what they said.

I hope those you take up your scenario(s) see this so that they are not misled by your deliberate misstatements on the matter and realize the deficiencies that you are building in so they will know what they are getting.

I have been following this discussion and to this point have not commented because I judged that I had nothing useful to add. But some of the comments of late have raised at least a bit of doubt in my mind about my understanding of some aspects of the pwhexe.dat based transportation network. I hope that my comments and questions below can be answered to clear up my doubts and perhaps (if we are lucky and I am skillful enough in stating my questions) provide a bit of clarity for others.

First, let me say that I am not herein addressing any aspect of the content of the pwhexe.dat. I am not competent to say whether a particular portion of the map should support such-and-such movement rates based upon historical data, personal experience, or any other source for that matter. Rather, I want to address the structure of the transport net and how that may be manipulated by the modder

I base my questions on the work I have done with the pwhexe.dat as evidenced by the Launcher (see tm.asp?m=2823538&mpage=1&key=&#2823554 ) and the pwhexe.dat editor (see tm.asp?m=2632394&mpage=1&key=&#2653163 ).
If there are errors in my understanding then these are likely to have found their way into these utilities and I would seek to correct such errors ASAP.

My question(s) concern the definition of road-type within a single hexagon. I will be overly simplistic in the following definitions in order not to miss any important points. Here is what (I think) I know about this:

1. For each hexagon, there are six fields (E, SE,SW,W, NW, NE), one for each of the six directions leading from the center of the hexagon to the adjacent hexagons.
2. Each of these six fields may have one of four possible values as follows:
1. 00- This represents the baseline condition and corresponds to the generic trail (or so I now think) being described by the comments of Andrew Brown (and others).
2. 01- I have been calling this a trail and I think that may have led to some of the confusion I have and that I see reflected in other comments. For now, at least in this post, I will call this the RR-trail. There is a convention used in the making of the pwhexe.dat that where a RR line exists without other developed roads, this RR-trail is added to the hexagon definition. This makes perfect sense as we can easily agree that where a train may pass the way is eased for non-entrained units, at least compared to the terrain without a railroad line. It is probably important to note that my experiments have shown that this trail value can be used without an accompanying RR line. I have more to say about this below.
3. 02 – Minor Road (Secondary Road)
4. 03 – Major Road (Main Road)
3. Unit movement is calculated as a function of the field described above, terrain type, unit type, and other parameters such as fatigue. The table in section 8.3.1 of the manual describes the movement rates for various combinations. It is my understanding that the row in the table labeled “trail” is what I am now calling (in this post at least) the RR-trail. The generic trail(s) are represented by the rows for various terrain types. Note also that the movement rate is the mean of the movement rate of the hexagon the unit is in and the hexagon it is moving toward/into (for example, you could have a jungle-RR-trail connecting to a jungle-generic trail. The resultant movement rate for infantry would be (10+5)/2=7.5 miles).

So, as a modder wishing to customize any particular hexagon's road characteristics you would know the above. The selection may not be as rich as you might like but it is a great step up from WITP and it is, as they say, what it is.

So my questions are:
What portions of my description are not correct?
Does the table in 8.3.1 and accompanying text still reflect the most current release(s) of AE?

Thanks for your patience in wading through the above.

Dave Bradley

Dave,

I'll let the developers with direct knowledge answer your questions, I just have one comment. Regarding the RR-Trail as you aptly call it, it is certainly feasible that in those rare places where it exists without an accompanying RR that the bed was either prepared (or partially prepared) but the actual tracks and ties not laid down. And of course it can be used in-game to represent something better than generic trails but less than a secondary road.

ORIGINAL: dwbradley
So my questions are:
What portions of my description are not correct?
Does the table in 8.3.1 and accompanying text still reflect the most current release(s) of AE?

Thanks for your patience in wading through the above.

Dave Bradley

Dave, you have pretty much got it. The "trail" code (value of 1 for road type) still exists in AE, but it is used, exclusively, for allowing non-entrained movement along railway lines, which would be slower than true road movement, but faster than following a foot trail.

Although the road value of 1 is used exclusively to represent railways (for non-entrained movement), there is indeed nothing stopping modders from using this value to represent trails or minor roads if they want to, and use it anywhere on the map, regardless of whether a railway is also in the hex.

To reiterate, yet again, how foot trails are represented in AE - they are NOT represented in the pwhexe data. They are assumed to exist in every hex because, pretty much, they DID exist in every hex. The movement rates on foot trails are not fast when the terrain is bad, because I believe that is accurate. But the big difference between the old WitP and AE is that the supply costs of bad terrain are greatly reduced to account for the ubiquitous existence of foot trails in most places.

For example, in the old WitP, you could not move more than 1 off-road hex away from a supply source before your supply path was exceeded and your units could not be resupplied. In AE, you can move 5 hexes through jungle terrain, away from a supply source, before you exceed the supply range. You have a lot more ability to move "off road" in AE, due to the impled existence of trail networks.

Why was it done like this? Because there are foot trails all over the place. If you draw ALL of them on a map you will have a spider web of foot trails all over the place, even in places such as PNG.

Just to repeat - the map was left moddable on purpose - there is nothing stopping people from modding it as they wish. I am just explaining the design philosophy behind the absence of trails from the map data (and map art) in AE.

One other correction - movement rates between two adjacent hexes are NOT based on the average of the two movement rates for the two terrain types (if there are no roads present). Consider the following example, of two adjacent hexes, one with jungle and the other clear:

1) If it was an average of the two movement rates, an armoured unit would have a movement rate of (3 + 30)/2 miles per day. That is equal to 15.5 miles per day. To move between the two hexes, a distance of 46 miles, would tale 3 days. Too fast.

2) How it is meant to be calculated is as a combination of two half-hex moves. So for 23 miles (a half-hex) of jungle, the rate is 3 miles per day, meaning that it should take 8 days to travel the half-hex of jungle. For the 23 miles of clear (a half-hex) the rate is 30 miles per day so it should tale 1 day. So the total travel time to move to the next hex would be 8 + 1 = 9 days. This is the correct value.

You can see that the second way of calculating movement rates (9 days to move 1 hex of half jungle half clear) is more accurate than simply taking an average of the two movement rates (resulting in 3 days to move the same hex).

Andrew

PS: I HOPE that is how movement is done in AE. I specified that method in the design documentation at least (but I am not a coder)...