hard coded no italian tank units?

John Tiller's Campaign Series exemplifies tactical war-gaming at its finest by bringing you the entire collection of TalonSoft's award-winning campaign series. Containing TalonSoft's West Front, East Front, and Rising Sun platoon-level combat series, as well as all of the official add-ons and expansion packs, the Matrix Edition allows players to dictate the events of World War II from the tumultuous beginning to its climatic conclusion. We are working together with original programmer John Tiller to bring you this updated edition.

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slb79
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Jul 12, 2011 8:23 pm

hard coded no italian tank units?

Post by slb79 »

Hello to all forum members. Been playing jtcs since the first talonsoft releases. Lately I have been messing around with the dcgs and I have made several custom ones. What seems strange is that whatever I do with the oob file I am not able to select an italian tank formation for my core unit. The option is always greyed out when i begin a new campaign (it's not like when there is no available formation that the game reports the lack of units, it's directly greyed out from the leader selection screen). I followed the instructions on the very nice guide about making new dcgs. I designed an Operation Compass dcg, a DAK campaign from 3/41 till el alamein 11/42 with a mixed german - italian oob and various east front dcgs following the historical path of some units. The only workaround I found was to designate italian armoured formations as infantry (then I was able to select the ariete medium tank battalion but as an infantry formation). Is this somehow hard coded? The result was strange, in every mission the game gave me also auxilliary tank formations (maybe because it acknowledged my core as infantry). There are also some oob errors in the current version and some italian motorised infantry formations come with trucks not able to load them (medium trucks breda ovunque P02055).
I would appreciate if someone else knows something more and could help. I would really like to design an ariete with german aux campaign for north africa.
Thank you
Edit: Another workaround I was able to find is transferring the italians under german command. I edited a DAK order of battle added a modified ariete division ( with german nationality numeric id to the battalion level) and then I was able to select the m13/40 battalion as my core). Testing it currently on a short operation sonnenblume campaign I made. Anyway the whole procedure was a bit tedious and I would prefer to play with a normal Italian core. I'm starting to believe that for whatever reason the Italian oob cannot generate a tank leader.
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Jason Petho
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Joined: Tue Jun 22, 2004 10:31 am
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Re: hard coded no italian tank units?

Post by Jason Petho »

Good day!

Good question. I haven't looked at the files in awhile, but if I recall there is a hardcoding in one of the files, I have to do a search and remember which one.

Remind me and I'll get to it ASAP!
slb79
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Jul 12, 2011 8:23 pm

Re: hard coded no italian tank units?

Post by slb79 »

Good day Jason, as I said I have been playing JTCS for a long time and I really like your work and how you rejuvenated the game.
From the first talonsoft releases I noticed that when you select an italian campaign (new roman legions in east front) the option to command a tank force was greyed out. At the time I believed that was the case because the italians did not have any dedicated armoured formations in Russia. When I begun modding west front I also saw that whatever formation I created for the Italians in the campaign oob the option was still non selectable. I've tried virtually everything but with no success. That made me think that maybe something in the files of the game prevented the generation of an italian dcg tank commander even though there is an available formation. Never figured out what it could be, because I really don't know how these leaders are generated from the program or where there data lies.
If you could help me find a solution I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you
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Jason Petho
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Re: hard coded no italian tank units?

Post by Jason Petho »

I'm struggling to find the DCG document, I've scanned all my drives and can't seem to find it

Any chance you could post it?
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