[FIXED] Northern Inferno Mission 9: Campaign-breaking bug with Bomber mission

[BobTank63]

I was playing through the Northern Inferno DLC campaign and I reached Mission 9: Fox Two. The mission involves defending Britain from a Soviet bomber attack. However, when I played in the campaign, the bomber strike never came. I decided to investigate and opened the mission standalone in the editor. I hopped onto God's Eye view and let the scenario play out at max speed. The results were that while the Fencer strikes and Tanker missions played out properly, the bombers and their escorts stayed parked on the ground. Clicking on the bombers in the mission editor screen revealed that the bombers were "plotting".

In the mission's current state, the NI campaign can't be progressed as the minimum score isn't met. Please fix this.

How to reproduce the bug:
1. Open Fox Two in the editor.
2. Switch to God's-Eye view and let the scenario play out.

[stww2]

I don't know how to fix the Soviet bombers, but I can comment on how to permit campaign progression. You have two options:

1) Play the rest of the campaign in standalone mode. You probably already knew this was an option, though, given that you referenced opening the standalone version of the scenario in the editor.
2) If you do want to continue in campaign mode, then you can edit the Northern Inferno campaign file to lower the pass score for that scenario to something more achievable given the current state of the scenario. Instructions for how to do this can be found in the CMO Manual Section 5.4.3 "Campaigns." (it's a trivial process)

[Gus112GR]

Considering that the NI campaign was released for CMANO back in 2015, my question is if it has been tested in the most recent version of CMO. I encountered another possible problem in the scenario preceding Fox Two
(there's a separate topic for this).

And yes, it is always possible to use LUA in order to assign a suitable pass score (among other workarounds) but I don't think this is acceptable for someone who wants to play through the campaign the way it's meant to be played.

[stww2]

I don't know why you would need to use LUA. The ability to edit the pass scores is literally built into the editor. And while I agree that such a solution is far from ideal, the point is that doing so will allow you to play the rest of the campaign "the way it's meant to be played," rather than being stuck on a particular scenario because of a technical issue.

FYI, I took a look at the scenario in question and the issue seems to be related to the no-navigation zone...once I turned off the no-nav zone, the bombers launched as intended. My guess is the code related to strike missions and no-nav zones got changed at some point resulting in the bombers in the scenario no longer launching.

[ultradave]

Even easier is to edit the campaign script to set a different pass score. It's just a text file. Just change the value to whatever works. I've done that on a few occasions when I just got tired of trying to "beat" a scenario.

Dave

[stww2]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's exactly the file that the editor utility modifies. I've only ever used the Editor utility, but nice to know hand-editing the text file works just as well!

[BobTank63]

Okay, thanks for the advice on the campaign score. However, I still want to play the mission as it seems like a very fun concept. Currently, I can't do that as the mission is broken. So I would prefer it if it were fixed.

[Kushan04]

I'll add it to my list of scenario fixes. Fix will be included in some future patch.

[Dimitris]

I believe this has been fixed, yes ?

[BobTank63]

Hello Dimitris.

I assume you have come here from the Steam forum thread. Thank you for your concern and willingness to help, I appreciate it.

The Steam list of bug threads I have created was intended as catch-all list of bug threads I have made that relate to scenario issues. Of the list, only two of them remain broken, this one and a bug related to HQ units in Operation Lightning Strike (see https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 0&t=391805 ).

From what I can determine, this bug was caused by an issue with the strike planner planning around NNZs. The Soviets had one over Norway and Sweden, and the strike wouldn't launch as it couldn't plan a route around it.

The NNZ issue has been fixed (thanks to a different thread I made about the issue related to Red Tide scenario 2), but before it did, this scenario received a patch that removed the Soviet NNZ. Now, the Soviet bombers launch, but they now fly directly over Sweden and Norway. This takes them through a player side NNZ, making them very hard to intercept.

Replacing the Soviet NNZ over Norway and Sweden should fix the issue.

[Dimitris]

Alright, thanks. We'll see what can be done about these two.

[Kushan04]

Replacing the Soviet NNZ over Norway and Sweden should fix the issue.

Unfortunately, it now appears none of the Soviet strike missions will generate a flightplan, with or without the NFZ. Not sure why, it's worked fine before. I'm getting a No Targets message, when there's plenty of targets and the weapons available should be valid for them.

I've created a new high priority ticket for this on our internal bug tracker (#16557).

I'll reinvestigate turning the NFZ back on when the flightplan generation is fixed.

Edit: I accidentally deleted your thread on Op Lightning Strike, I'm an idiot who clicked the wrong buttons. Please see your DMs. I am tracking the issue and am investigating it.

[Kushan04]

The Steam list of bug threads I have created was intended as catch-all list of bug threads I have made that relate to scenario issues. Of the list, only two of them remain broken, this one and a bug related to HQ units in Operation Lightning Strike (see https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 0&t=391805 ).

Since I accidentally deleted the thread, I'm going to hijack this one. Finally found the issue with Lightning Strike. Updated scenario will be included in a future update.

[Dimitris]

This issue should also be fixed on the next update.

[Kushan04]

For the next release, I've turned the Soviet NFZ back on. I pregenerated all of the flightplans for the Soviet strike missions. This should save some time on the user end and avoid some weirdness that still occurs when auto generating flightplans around NFZs.

Updated scenario should be in the next update. If there are any further issues after the release, please make a new thread.