Roads and RR construction in pwhexe files: Finished

[el cid again]

In the just completed RHS pwhexe.dat file set there is one file for each season of the war. The infrastructure changes over time are summarized by the following table.

Spring 1942
Reactivation of minor RR on New Caledonia (1 hex NW from Noumea)
Monsoon 1942
Fall 1942
Winter 1942
Completion of Iranian National RR spur (2 hexes E from Abadan/Khorramshahr)
Completion of ALCAN highway as pioneer road (segments of 10 trail hexes, 8 trail hexes, and upgrading of 4 winter tail hexes to year around trail in 3 segments between existing road and rail lines in Canada and Alaska)
Spring 1943
Upgrading of Whitehorse & Yukon RR to main line completed (2 hexes NW from Skagway)
Monsoon 1943
Road along Burma-Siam RR line completed (5 hexes SE from Ye)
Winter 1943
Completion of Burma-Siam RR (5 hexes SE from Ye)
Completion of ALCAN highway as secondary road (segments of 10, 8 & 4 trail hexes upgraded to minor road)
Spring 1944
Upgrading of Bengal & Assam RR to main line completed (15 hexes from existing line near Jessore to Ledo including major river bridging; 8 hex spur to Chittagong)
Monsoon 1944
Ledo Road completed to Myitkyina (upgrading 4 trail hexes to minor road)
Winter 1944
Ledo Road completed to existing Burma Road near Lashio (upgrading 3 more trail hexes between Myitkyina and Lashio)
Winter 1945 (OPTIONAL)
Upgrading ALCAN to primary road (25 minor road hexes upgraded IF construction not suspended as IRL)
Fall 1945
Completion of Sumatra RR (5 hexes SW from existing RR near Tandjoengbalai to existing RR near Padang)
Winter 1945, Spring and Monsoon 1946 (OPTIONAL)
Completion of Burma-Yunnan RR (8 minor RR hexes IF construction not suspended as IRL)

The relatively long construction projects - notably the Ledo Road and the ALCAN Highway - grow slightly at the trailheads every season
until completion

[drw61]

This sound interesting, are you using Dave Bradley's Launcher utility to achieve this?
Daryl

[el cid again]

No I aa not - although I was considering an installer of some kind - for the moment we just keep a folder with seasonal files
names things like

41WINTERpwhexe.dat
42SPRINGpwhexe.dat

and so on - renaming the next on on the first day of the new season

Which follows the AE season system

where Winter is November to February
Spring March and April
Monsoon corresponds to summer May through August
Fall September and October

Thinking about this yesterday, I wondered if perhaps a next generation WITP system might not have pwhex filed defined for
every month of every year - with changes loaded automatically on the first of each month? While changes to the files are significant,
they tend to cycle with the seasons, and monthly changes would moderate the impacts - and provide for hex by hex construction as
well. One could even simulate historical events (like a washoout of the Ledo road) if one was not restricted to multiple month events.

Dave Bradley did an installer for RHS in WITP days - but I am not familiar with his AE product. I assume it would need changes
to handle a dozen or so pwhexe files - which is the order of magnitude we face with seasonal ones.

These files are, however, based on the stock map system, and will work with any art reasonably close to that - use reveal codes to show
roads and rail line changes when and where it matters. Ideally we should also create modified art panels in due course. I also can make variants
to reflect construction in an ongoing game - of any mod - if that is of value. Changing a few hexes is easy (compared to reworking the entire map -
which I have just done - and which I hope never to do again!)

[SuluSea]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

In the just completed RHS pwhexe.dat file set there is one file for each season of the war. The infrastructure changes over time are summarized by the following table.

Spring 1942
Reactivation of minor RR on New Caledonia (1 hex NW from Noumea)
Monsoon 1942
Fall 1942
Winter 1942
Completion of Iranian National RR spur (2 hexes E from Abadan/Khorramshahr)
Completion of ALCAN highway as pioneer road (segments of 10 trail hexes, 8 trail hexes, and upgrading of 4 winter tail hexes to year around trail in 3 segments between existing road and rail lines in Canada and Alaska)
Spring 1943
Upgrading of Whitehorse & Yukon RR to main line completed (2 hexes NW from Skagway)
Monsoon 1943
Road along Burma-Siam RR line completed (5 hexes SE from Ye)
Winter 1943
Completion of Burma-Siam RR (5 hexes SE from Ye)
Completion of ALCAN highway as secondary road (segments of 10, 8 & 4 trail hexes upgraded to minor road)
Spring 1944
Upgrading of Bengal & Assam RR to main line completed (15 hexes from existing line near Jessore to Ledo including major river bridging; 8 hex spur to Chittagong)
Monsoon 1944
Ledo Road completed to Myitkyina (upgrading 4 trail hexes to minor road)
Winter 1944
Ledo Road completed to existing Burma Road near Lashio (upgrading 3 more trail hexes between Myitkyina and Lashio)
Winter 1945 (OPTIONAL)
Upgrading ALCAN to primary road (25 minor road hexes upgraded IF construction not suspended as IRL)
Fall 1945
Completion of Sumatra RR (5 hexes SW from existing RR near Tandjoengbalai to existing RR near Padang)
Winter 1945, Spring and Monsoon 1946 (OPTIONAL)
Completion of Burma-Yunnan RR (8 minor RR hexes IF construction not suspended as IRL)

The relatively long construction projects - notably the Ledo Road and the ALCAN Highway - grow slightly at the trailheads every season
until completion

I know little to nothing about the pwhexe file but I have to say I like what I'm reading..

[el cid again]

Special Case: The Copper River RR is present in ALL versions of the pwhex files. It runs from Cordova, Alaska to Kennicot, a wholly undeveloped dot location. This RR was abandoned in 1938 when the copper mines were closed due to low copper prices. Other copper mines were reopened in WWII (for example in Michigan and in Montana). This copper mine can be reopened IF an Allied player moves engineer to the dot location along with lots of supplies – in which case the RR will function. The Million Dollar Bridge remained in tact until the 1964 earthquake. This location and RR may be ignore by any player who does not want to use them – and NOTHING will move along it – since there will be no production unless the damaged resources are repaired.

If these files are used with most mods or stock, this RR becomes a useless thing - there is no way to move anything along it because Kennicot is not a dot location - and there is no reason to move a unit into the St Elias mountains. It won't be noticed even - lacking map art - short of turning on the Y reveal RR key - and it may be safely ignored. Only in the case the location exists, its button to move supplies is turned up, and engineers are sent there - and replair resources is on - will it eventually become a minor factor sending resources to Cordova, Alaska. Kennicot is not a good place to build a large airfield - and it
is not suitable for any sort of port - so it will remain a mining site for resources even so.

[el cid again]

I know little to nothing about the pwhexe file but I have to say I like what I'm reading..

Pwhexe.dat files can be edited in a special editor still in beta - or by any hex editor - if one takes the time to learn the
record format - which comes with the pwhexe editor. Anyone can change a few hexes - as described here - to change
infrastructures. What is daunting is to attempt to redo the entire map - which was done for this file set. Every land and
coastal hex - plus most of the sea hexes in the far North (Sea of Othosk, Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean) - had most or
every hexside edited - a time consuming process that requires lots of review because (a) human data entry always involves
errors and (b) the editor itself sometimes likes to throw in blocked hex-sides (usually four on the same hex) or even truncate
the entire file. To redo the map in four major variations - each of those with up to four minor variations - took a lot of time.
But at the end of the day, I am surprised it was not done - since it really matters in terms of matching the game to the
way things move in the real world. But I myself only proposed it for WITP - and in three years of work - never got around to
actually doing it. The sheer amount of data is even more in AE than it was for WITP. But it would be more elegant for the
game to have even more - and automatically install a new one at the start of every month - so gradual construction and seasonal
changes would occur. This fits much better the great detaill of other aspects of the game and of the map itself.

We should, however, be very pleased that the pwhexe.dat file was allowed to remain user accessable, and doubly pleased that
eventually an editor was permitted to be released for general use to edit it. This created the opportunity exploited here. Intended
mainly for use by (not yet released) RHS for AE - it is also a demonstration of the concept - and it is usable with any mod or stock game
as long as the map art is not radically different. It would be better still if map panels could be modified to change with the seasons
and construction - but I am not going to do that - as I lack the tools and time to become this sort of map artist. [In other worlds, I make maps -
traditional and also computer - but not in the Matrix world. It takes tools and time to master them before the time to implement them.] But if
we get lucky, someone someday may do seasonal map art. It would mainly only affect pack ice - obvious anyway because of the red hex sides -
but pretty. It could also show odd things like the break in the minor road on Great Bear Lake in the spring season only (when neither ice
bridge nor local ferries work - a very peculiar case of stock art and pwhexe showing an ice road at all - and only here and to Shikoku do
stock pwhexe files contain ferries in any season. But in a perfect world - the seasonal gap on that road would be in both the map art and the
pwhexe file - reflecting what happens every year. Other things that might be done is showing the ice roads on Lake Baikal (whose bottom is said
to be littered with cars and trucks that occasionally fell through over many decades of time). These things, however, are pretty marginal in most games: on needs more than stock locations for it to matter much - and one needs players doing things like invading Russia or North America for these things to
become vital. More significant is the seasonal closing of ports - one is going to notice why Vladivostok (ice free year around) is important - at least to the Russians. More significant still is the effect of the Monsoon season in heavily contested areas of the map - and these seasonal files may need still more work to show all the impacts of the monsoon. A British joke was that ADMIRAL Lord Mountbattan was appionted to command in Burma because a sailor was more suited to a country in the monsoon than a soldier! It is hard to grasp the impact if one has not actually witnessed it - and it takes only a few seconds after the first rain comes to begin to get the idea (it just gets worse as the ground saturates and the rivers and streams flood). At this time, the only further changes I am contemplating is in the Monsoon set of files - and I am awaiting test results and comments - and time to think of how to do it - before implementation.

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: SuluSea

ORIGINAL: el cid again

In the just completed RHS pwhexe.dat file set there is one file for each season of the war. The infrastructure changes over time are summarized by the following table.

Spring 1942
Reactivation of minor RR on New Caledonia (1 hex NW from Noumea)
Monsoon 1942
Fall 1942
Winter 1942
Completion of Iranian National RR spur (2 hexes E from Abadan/Khorramshahr)
Completion of ALCAN highway as pioneer road (segments of 10 trail hexes, 8 trail hexes, and upgrading of 4 winter tail hexes to year around trail in 3 segments between existing road and rail lines in Canada and Alaska)
Spring 1943
Upgrading of Whitehorse & Yukon RR to main line completed (2 hexes NW from Skagway)
Monsoon 1943
Road along Burma-Siam RR line completed (5 hexes SE from Ye)
Winter 1943
Completion of Burma-Siam RR (5 hexes SE from Ye)
Completion of ALCAN highway as secondary road (segments of 10, 8 & 4 trail hexes upgraded to minor road)
Spring 1944
Upgrading of Bengal & Assam RR to main line completed (15 hexes from existing line near Jessore to Ledo including major river bridging; 8 hex spur to Chittagong)
Monsoon 1944
Ledo Road completed to Myitkyina (upgrading 4 trail hexes to minor road)
Winter 1944
Ledo Road completed to existing Burma Road near Lashio (upgrading 3 more trail hexes between Myitkyina and Lashio)
Winter 1945 (OPTIONAL)
Upgrading ALCAN to primary road (25 minor road hexes upgraded IF construction not suspended as IRL)
Fall 1945
Completion of Sumatra RR (5 hexes SW from existing RR near Tandjoengbalai to existing RR near Padang)
Winter 1945, Spring and Monsoon 1946 (OPTIONAL)
Completion of Burma-Yunnan RR (8 minor RR hexes IF construction not suspended as IRL)

The relatively long construction projects - notably the Ledo Road and the ALCAN Highway - grow slightly at the trailheads every season
until completion

I know little to nothing about the pwhexe file but I have to say I like what I'm reading..

The pwhexeditor really isn't too much of a beast to master, its just a lot of work considering the shear number of hexes on the map. [X(]

[el cid again]

By the 1945 Fall edition, we complete all the historical construction of WWII infrastructures: the "second death railroad" on Sumatra
technically was completed on VJ day - and never did run a train down its entire length - in August. But had the war gone on, by 1 September,
the first day of the Fall season, it might have been an operational line. But it is so far South that it is doubtful it would have been much use?
Would the port on the Northern end have been able to load slow ore carriers regularly? Would the Allies have spared it bombing - as they did
to the Burma Siam line and to the line in Indochina when the Japanese tried to use it as a way to export from SE Asia without using ships?
Probably not. So this line is something of a technicality inclusion - it is not going to be operational very long even if it is completed - as IRL.

After 1945 Fall I create three more seasons - optional seasons - for campaigns that go into 1946. Players may either use these files - or
repeat the three from the year before (1944 Winter for 1945 Winter, 1945 Spring for 1946 Spring and 1945 Monsoon for 1946 Monsoon).
Optional because they add the Yunnan Burma (or Burma Yunnan) RR - it had both names. Also the ALCAN continues upgrading to primary
road - something that was not done because the war was going so well. In games the Allies may elect to include these - or not - depending
on cricumstances in the game world.

It was designed to have the bed, tunnels and bridges built over time
but the track laid all at once at many points

This was not completed, but it was begun in 1941, with the US Army providing medical
infrastructure for what was to eventually become 250,000 workers - and 24 narrow gage engines
- and the track itself. It was to complete by 1943, but Japanese control of Northern Burma
prevented that. Here we assume the Allies retake the area and decide to complete the project
- at least one tunnel was not completed - and no doubt some other things needed repairs
- so work had to occur before the bed was ready - but then the plan to lay the track proceeded
as intended - in a single bound. Which is done to rationalize not doing the line as other railroads
are - gradually expanding until completed - permitting it to appear all at once as an optional
file after the strictly historical file set is completed in Fall 1945 season.

[el cid again]

The pwhexeditor really isn't too much of a beast to master, its just a lot of work considering the shear number of hexes on the map.

Except for the spelling of sheer - I agree wholeheartedly. The amount of work to issue what turned out to be four major rewrites and about 5 variations
on each is enough to make one worry about carpel tunnel syndrome! The time required is vastly more than just data entry might, if one takes the time to actually study satellite imagery and other maps of the area, which also was a factor in this case. Because of scale, there are also judgment calls to make - and compromises - which may require more time still to agonize over. Is this more in the spirit of the game, or that? And also, sometimes, is this closer to the existing art - or that? Sometimes I changed hex sides because, as the art ended up, "both" was wrong - it was all land, or all water - and even if that is technically false - it seems better for the computer map to look like the player map. Anyway - I am glad it is behind - not ahead - as a task.

[el cid again]

A complete set of 20 pwhexe files for every season of the war is completed. From 1941 Winter until 1946 Fall.
It took longer than expected (large software files always do) to get it right - and then I decided to change
something - and had to change it in all of them

There is also a ROOT pwhexe file for anyone not interested in changes over time - but who likes the philosophy
of the RHS pwhexe set - or who wants a starting point for a file of their own. This file is slightly retrograded -
the "road" over Three Pagoda's Pass is a trail for example - because it was a "little used ancient trade route"
for most of its length. [There is one hex of RR and primary road and one of secondary road at the South end -
both associated with towns of some note IRL] Also - there are a few "broken" RR connections which are not
broken - notably between Russia and Manchukuo - and in China (where the rail lines really connected and
were ultimately captured as such between Indochina and Shanghai).

The files may be requested from Mifune or myself. They are 2.5 mb uncompressed each - so 20 times that for the set.

[berto]

This project of yours is worthwhile if only for the monsoon effects. A Burma Theater without monsoons is just not "realistic".

Thanks for this. [&o]

[Sardaukar]

I think best way to manage different PWHEX-files is JGSME.
 
http://www.users.on.net/~jscones/software/products-jsgme.html

[elcid]

Thanks - that is a very interesting product - although I don't have any problem renaming a file to use once every few months -
it is a nice option.

While monsoon effects are, indeed, important - it may be we should add more effects. I have toyed with the idea that
a secondary road turns into a trail in the hex of a large town - because the supersaturated earth foundation and high
traffic mess up the road in a sense impossible for a paved road or rail line. My intent is to make supply along secondary
roads limited - so operations are limited by that unless a town is on a rail line or a primary road. But it is at the tirtiary
road level that we have monsoon effects writ large: in the monsoon area (which I define as the malaria area plus a bit
of adjacent India and China) tirtiary roads disappear altogether. They are present in other seasons - making for
example a move on Ledo or Imphal barely feasible - but not in monsoon.

A larger and wholly unexplored by players at this point is the impact of seasons in the North. You get remarkable ice roads
that really matter to logistics (it is why they are made every year) - but at the same time rivers in the area are frozen -
and so are ports. In the fall, ice melts to the point rivers in the Arctic (two each in Siberia and North America matter) can
send or get shipping from the ocean - and other rivers (e.g. the mighty Yukon and the Ussuri river system) are open to
navigation in Monsoon and Fall seasons both. Since most players ignore North America and Siberia as contested areas, these
effects may be marginal in most games - but they are really significant if there is a contest in this vast section of the map.

I am considering adding the extended map by Andrew Brown - if only so Peshiwar (which I have) can be in the right hex. In that
case I will support both map systems - stock and extended - and issue seasonal files fo the extended one as well. But the
present files only work with the stock map system.

In the test RHS file set, Recife Brazil replaces Port Stanley (both locations in the former WITP RHS system). In spite of this,
stock and similar mods that use Port Stanley will still work as was. In the medium term, if I master certain tables not documented,
Recife may move to a slightly more correct location in terms of transit times. But for now I have no intention of changing these
files unless an error is discovered in them.

[topeverest]

El Cid,

This is excellent work, and I have wanted to do a less ambitioius effort for several years (ALCAN highway), but never forced myself to learn what I needed.

I have new and customized bases in several mods that I think would benefit from your work. WIll that have any effect if I wanted to use these files? Can you restate the install & attachment process to get these sequential files linked to any one mod?

Thanks

[elcid]

First - these files will work with ANY mod that uses stock map art - or map art compatible with stock. As far as I know, only
an extended map by Andrew Brown for Babes scenarios is not stock in format - and would need different pwhex files. In the
long run, there may also be RHS maps that differ from stock - but for now we use stock - and we are looking at using Andrew
Browns extended maps instead of making separate ones. But - for now - we are working only with stock map art - and that is
the only thing that matters. If you use regular maps - or map panels that replace them exactly - that is all that is needed.
The pwhexe.dat files are translations of art into data that the code can understand - the "real map" - as it were.

Second - all you need to use any of this file set is to decide which season you want to use - and rename the file - and put it in
the top level AE folder. The files should be kept in a separate folder. Rename 41WINTERpwhexe.dat = pwhese.dat and copy it
over to start the game.

Third - if you want special roads or railroads in any file - just tell me. I can modify it in minutes.

To get the seasonal files, pm me or Mifune.