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I am playing a pbem game as the Americans and was watching the combat replay. The replay showed an American CVL which took three torpedoes and had the air-groups redirected. When I looked at the saved game file, not only was the CVL unscathed, but the Airgroups were still on the ship. Was this just FoW?

ORIGINAL: Honus

I am playing a pbem game as the Americans and was watching the combat replay. The replay showed an American CVL which took three torpedoes and had the air-groups redirected. When I looked at the saved game file, not only was the CVL unscathed, but the Airgroups were still on the ship. Was this just FoW?

You are bitten by the sync bug. I forget what causes it, and I'm not sure there's a fix. You may want to try searching that term.

I thought that might be the case, but it didn't match the descriptions i read in my searching. One thread mentioned replaying the file and getting different results, which was not the case here (maybe that refers only to the Japanese player). Apparently one cause is escaping through combat animations.

ORIGINAL: Admiral DadMan
You are bitten by the sync bug. I forget what causes it, and I'm not sure there's a fix.

In broad strokes, the idea is that given the starting state of the turn, the orders from both sides and a fixed random number seed, both player's computers can run the identical calculations and present identical combat replays to the respective players. The replay is not something that exists in the game data that is exchanged -- it is something that is computed separately for the players as the turn is viewed.

If one side or the other generates one random number too many or one random number too few, the random number seed can get out of synch and the resulting computations can diverge. Various cases where this had happened were squashed by the developers. The case(s) that remain have proved elusive.

Since no development or maintenance of the engine is ongoing, that situation is likely to remain indefinitely.

The big cause is not having the same version of the game as your partner. Check that first. I think there is something about comparing the combat replays or something. Someone will chime in on that....GP

So what is ground truth proceeding to subsequent turns? What one sees in the Game save file? Will it be the same for both players?

ORIGINAL: Honus

So what is ground truth proceeding to subsequent turns? What one sees in the Game save file? Will it be the same for both players?

I am sure that if you searched the forum, you will have the answer provided by players who have suffered through these things.

Yes, the game save file will be the same for both. As the Allies, when you load the turn file, the correct combat report will be written into the save directory. You can use that to see where the error crept in, and to see the correct combat. Not as good as seeing the combat replay, but it is better than nothing.

Well that does not appear to be the case, as far as the reports are concerned: The combat report and combat events files show the CVL taking three torpedoes, but the saved game file shows the CVL in fine shape. If we accept the results of this turn as displayed in the Game Save file that the Allies are looking at can we proceed accepting the fact that the CVL is unscathed, ignoring the anomalous Combat Save and generated results files?
I think from the second half of your post, that the answer is yes.

thanks to all who've responded, synch bug virgin here (at least never noticed it before).

I guarantee you that it does update the combat report text file. Run the combat replay, open the save directory of you game, note the time on the combatreport.txt file.
Load the turn file and then look again at the time stamp on the combatreport.txt file, it will update. The combat report in the archive subfolder will not be updated.

Well golly, never saw (noticed) that before. Crazy.

michaelm added in one of the patches a long time ago.

As to reasons the sync bug occurs, one developer suggested that over-use of the Esc key could cause it. In games against the AI I have noted that if I use the Esc key to back up too far such that there is no hex on the map selected, some of the subsequent play can have strange effects - like animations not showing the ships or aircraft involved.

The only solution to clear that kind of hiccup is to save the game, exit and restart it.

Isn't it that Japanese player's combat report is always correct?

ORIGINAL: Sardaukar

Isn't it that Japanese player's combat report is always correct?

Yes it is, and that is why the turn file is always correct.

Is pressing "Done" equivalent to "Escape" in this context?

ORIGINAL: Honus

Is pressing "Done" equivalent to "Escape" in this context?

No - pressing "Done" is always safe because it does not deselect your location on the map. Esc was never intended to be used as a back up step because the game provides buttons and hypertext to do those sorts of things.

Good to know, thanks.

I just spoke to my opponent who assures me that he does not ever use the escape key, only the Done button, so Apparently it is equivalent.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding how this bug works. I got the impression from my reading that it was caused by the Japanese player using the escape key to jump through the animations. Is that incorrect?

ORIGINAL: Honus

I just spoke to my opponent who assures me that he does not ever use the escape key, only the Done button, so Apparently it is equivalent.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding how this bug works. I got the impression from my reading that it was caused by the Japanese player using the escape key to jump through the animations. Is that incorrect?

The question is whether you are the one who may have used the Esc key - it is your replay that got messed up because the random number seed did not match the Japanese one. The Japanese one is the one taken as gospel in all cases.

Keep in mind that the developer's thought about the Esc key was a suggestion. There was no official effort to fix anything that may have been triggered by the Esc key (there were fixes to other issues that caused Sync Bugs though).

So we don't know for sure what the issue was - could have been a hiccup during the transmission of files for all I know. The experience of others is that it will happen occasionally and all you can do is ensure you get the full turn file before you run the animations (if I understand the process correctly). If does happen, just save the game and restart it to clear whatever bugs might be stuck in the execution path.