Possible Change Orders card bug

[elmo3]

Playing as the Soviets and it's the 25 August turn. I spend 20 PP's to play the Change Orders card to release the 5th Army next turn. On the next turn, 29 August, Stalin has a paranoia episode. I expected the 5th Army to be available but it wasn't even though reinforcement action cards are not supposed to be affected by paranoia according to the manual. On the following turn, 2 September, the Change Orders card now costs 25PP (?) and the 5th Army still has not deployed and it still shows as the army on the card.

So not only did I apparently waste the points because the army never deployed but the PP's were incremented to 25 for the next play even though the army never showed up. I really hope that's a bug and not working as designed (WAD). If it's WAD then that is way to harsh a penalty since I spent the points, never got the army, and the points on the card were incremented too. To me, the army should have been available on 29 August as a reinforcement at the location of my choice.

Pretty sure I have the save file that you can step through to reproduce this, assuming you agree that it's a bug.

[zakblood]

upload it here for Vic to look at, thanks

[elmo3]

File is attached.

Steps to see the problem:

1. Open the file and spend 20 PP's on the Change Orders card to bring in the 5th Army as a reinforcement. End the turn.
2. On the 29 August turn Riga falls and Stalin has about an 84% chance of an episode. If he has one then end the turn and go to step 3. If not replay from step 1 until he does.
3. On the 2 September turn there is no 5th Army available but the points to play the card have been incremented to 25 and it still says the 5th Army is available.

Now what I just noticed is that the popup window in step 1 says the army will be available in 40 days (10 turns)?! I thought when you used that card the army came on in 4 days on the next turn. Is that not correct? I'm sure on previous plays of the card that it never took 10 turns for the army to show up so maybe that is part of the problem here.

[zakblood]

thanks, one for Vic to again look at, as if i answer will more than likely be wrong anyway[;)]

[elmo3]

OK, thanks. When I look at the Change Orders card on the 2 September turn it says I can activate the same 5th Army in 32 days. Something isn't right.

[zakblood]

i dont want to be wrong, but hazard a guess at some cards have increased cost when used more than once? or as you used it and had a paranoia incidents and lost the last one, the next not only costs more, but takes longer maybe? but it's a guess where as Vic will know for 100% sure so for me i'd forget my guess and wait for his reply tbh i'm sorry to say[&o]

edited typo...

[Vic]

I am going to let Cameron answer this one. He's the expert here. Hold on.

Best wishes,
Vic

[elmo3]

ORIGINAL: zakblood

i dont want to be wrong, but hazard a guess at some cards have increased cost when used more than once? or as you used it and had a paranoia incidents and lost the last one, the next not only costs more, but takes longer maybe? but it's a guess where as Vic will know for 100% sure so for me i'd forget my guess and wait for his reply tbh i'm sorry to say[&o]

edited typo...

Yes, each time you use the card the cost goes up by 5 PP. Not sure about it taking longer to activate an army each time you use the card and there is nothing in the manual about that. But I used it on the turn *before* the episode, and on the turn after the episode it is telling me I need to spend more PP's to activate the same army.

Will wait to hear from Cameron on this. Thanks.

[lancer]

Hi Elmo,

This is working as intended but it could be presented better to prevent some understandable confusion. I'll walk you through it.

The Change Orders card shows the next available army. In your case that happens to be the 5th Army destined for Central HQ. It's arriving in 10 turns (40 days) as shown on the card (left).

You can see this by checking the reinforcement tab down the bottom.

The card allows you to change the destination of the army but it, unfortunately, doesn't have the ability to make Armies form up and appear before their due date, for understandable reasons. They are already operating at full emergency mobilisation.

When you've played the card previously it must have been the case that an Army was available in a quicker time frame. Whatever that is, it's shown on the card.

Once you've played the card you've then got to wait till it arrives. To highlight the situation and to let you know what you've decided, the card (right hand side), shows you that the 5th Army is now arriving to ANY front with a countdown in days as to when that will happen (32 days).

I'll add some additional text here such as 'Card Played' to make it more obvious.

The paranoid episode has no effect and the cost of the card, like most soviet cards, ratchets up each time used.

Thanks for save game. Always a big help to see what's going on.

Might be a good time to do a rain dance...

Cheers,
Cameron

[elmo3]

OK, thanks. Yes it had me confused, but that's not hard to do. [;)]

[lancer]

Hi Elmo,

Nope, it's confusing.

Here's the improved version.

Cheers,
Cameron

[elmo3]

That makes it clearer. Thanks.