New bugs

Josans · Post by **Josans** » Tue Aug 28, 2001 1:32 am

I think I have detected 2 bugs in the game. I dont know if are in the bug list but if not maybe must have.

- A corps receive special supply. Transfer one division to other corps resupply this one and the division you transfered gain the benefits of special supply again. You can make this many times as long as you go to a new corps. I think the engine controls the corps and not the subunits for special supply purposes.

- Also is possible to railtransfer units to a corps in a rail-line even the conversion has not been completed yet. The corps can not make use of the rail movement but can be reinforced with new units by rail.

I hope this can help to improve the game.

Josan " The Evil Spaniard " <img src="tongue.gif" border="0">

Ed Cogburn · Post by **Ed Cogburn** » Tue Aug 28, 2001 9:40 am

Originally posted by Josan:
I think I have detected 2 bugs in the game. I dont know if are in the bug list but if not maybe must have.

- A corps receive special supply. Transfer one division to other corps resupply this one and the division you transfered gain the benefits of special supply again. You can make this many times as long as you go to a new corps. I think the engine controls the corps and not the subunits for special supply purposes.

Good work, its a bug, but I'm not sure this is a bug worth fixing. First off, the special resupply will expend OPs on all units in the corps, not just the one transferred in, so you expend a lot of OPs just to resupply one unit. Second, it only makes sense with short rail transfers, with non-rail transfers the second special resupply basically just covers the cost of the transfer. Lastly, the receiving corps is barred from plot movement at the end of that turn, so the increased readiness of that unit is not "used". I also don't see how this could be easily fixed, or fixed without using too much memory, after all, if we track this by division and not by the corps, we're talking about more than a thousand divisions/battalions compared to just a hundred corps.

- Also is possible to railtransfer units to a corps in a rail-line even the conversion has not been completed yet. The corps can not make use of the rail movement but can be reinforced with new units by rail.

This one is already known, but good work spotting it Josan.

Josans · Post by **Josans** » Tue Aug 28, 2001 3:14 pm

Ed,

It can be useful for the defender. You can send a single SS panzer division to hold a city with high readiness. The loss of Ops would be not much if you get your strategic objective (not loss the city). Also you can empty corps or created new ones with no units to minimize the loss of Ops.

I know can be difficult to fix, the engine seems control the corps and yes, there are too many divisions but I still think is a important bug.

Glad to help.

Josan.

Ed Cogburn · Post by **Ed Cogburn** » Tue Aug 28, 2001 4:01 pm

Originally posted by Josan:
Ed,

It can be useful for the defender. You can send a single SS panzer division to hold a city with high readiness. The loss of Ops would be not much if you get your strategic objective (not loss the city). Also you can empty corps or created new ones with no units to minimize the loss of Ops.

I know can be difficult to fix, the engine seems control the corps and yes, there are too many divisions but I still think is a important bug.

Its on the buglist, I was just trying to understand a situation where the bug can be a serious exploit. The rename-corps exploit is far more damaging, without the negatives and limitations of this bug. They both should be patched, though, so I'm agreeing with you.

moonfog · Post by **moonfog** » Tue Aug 28, 2001 4:23 pm

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:

Its on the buglist, I was just trying to understand a situation where the bug can be a serious exploit. The rename-corps exploit is far more damaging, without the negatives and limitations of this bug. They both should be patched, though, so I'm agreeing with you.

Ed,

what do you mean with the "rename-corps exploit"? Was that one discussed elsewhere?

Moonfog

Ed Cogburn · Post by **Ed Cogburn** » Tue Aug 28, 2001 5:05 pm

Originally posted by moonfog:

Ed,

what do you mean with the "rename-corps exploit"? Was that one discussed elsewhere?

Yes, its been known for awhile now. Give a corps special supply, use F3 to change the corps's name, give it special supply AGAIN, use F3 AGAIN, ad nausiem, until the readiness is to your satisfaction. As far as I can tell, there is no way a player can tell if this exploit has been used by his opponent. That's why killing this exploit should have priority, but probably will not happen in the next version.

moonfog · Post by **moonfog** » Tue Aug 28, 2001 5:19 pm

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:

Yes, its been known for awhile now. Give a corps special supply, use F3 to change the corps's name, give it special supply AGAIN, use F3 AGAIN, ad nausiem, until the readiness is to your satisfaction. As far as I can tell, there is no way a player can tell if this exploit has been used by his opponent. That's why killing this exploit should have priority, but probably will not happen in the next version.

Thanks Ed,

never heard of that exploit until now. I agree 100% with you that it must be wiped out. Do you know when the next Matrix version WIR 4.0 (or whatever)will be released?

Moonfog

[ August 28, 2001: Message edited by: moonfog ]</p>

Ed Cogburn · Post by **Ed Cogburn** » Tue Aug 28, 2001 5:59 pm

Originally posted by moonfog:
Do you know when the next Matrix version WIR 4.0 (or whatever)will be released?

Its up to Arnaud at this point. He wants to get what we have now out the door, but everytime he gives us a beta to play with, something wrong/bad is found. I'm hoping he'll look at the rename-corps thing before releasing the next one, but if he doesn't want to do that now, then the current beta will be the one he releases Real Soon Now (tm).

Svar · Post by **Svar** » Tue Aug 28, 2001 7:54 pm

There seems to be two camps when it comes to the use of special supply. Those who rarely use it and those who abuse it. The perception by those who rarely use it is that those who abuse it have an unfair advantage. Relax, most people don’t have clear understanding of the importance of operation points (OPs) and their use. OPs are used for all operations. All movement costs OPs; march costs 1 OP per Div/Bn, transfer costs 1 OP, plotted move costs 1 OP per hex, and bombardment costs 1 OP. Each air mission cost I OP including training air groups. Support for Pz Korps/Tank Army/Shock Army costs 1 OP per turn and for the German support for the West and Italian Fronts cost one half of their available OPs per turn. Finally special supply costs 3 OPs per division plus 1 OP per battalion. For me, a typical Panzer Korps cost about 25 OPs for special supply and a typical Infantry Korps costs 15 OPs for special supply.

Adding all the heavy industry, oil, and resources together generates 1 OP each turn. For Germany, that equals about 330 per turn at the start of the war. If you set the Italian Front to replacement level 80 and the West Front to 60, you will lose 70 OPs per turn for their support. Add to that support for 10 Pz Korps and 10 air groups training for another 20 Ops and that leaves 240 OPs for operations per turn without depleting your reserve OP pool. If you conduct 20 player directed air attacks you are down to 220 OPs. For plotted moves, if you move all 10 Pz Korps 5 hexes (50 OPs) and about 20 Infantry Korps 2 hexes (20 OPs) you have 150 Ops for special supply or 6 Pz Korps. All this is without marching any Korps. When you start moving up your Infantry Korps using the march command, at about 5 units per Korps and the 30 or so Infantry Korps not plotting, you use all your remaining OPs. Now all your special supply eats into your OP reserve pool. This should explain why many people who use special supply extensively run out of OPs during the summer of 1941 when playing the Germans.

Now comes the coup de grace, using special supply to raise the readiness level of a Korps from say 50 to 80 (it depends on the weather and supply level of the receiving unit) could actually backfire if the parent HQ OP level drops below some magic number (50 OPs I think), the effective readiness of a unit in combat is divided by 2. So, in effect the unit that started at a readiness level of 50 will conduct combat at an effective readiness level of 40. Not only that but once you have depleted your OP reserves pool, you have effectively killed you offensive until you can build back up the reserve.

The moral of this long essay is that special supply needs to be used very carefully and the games that people can use to abuse the system are much more costly than they are worth when you see how valuable OPs really are.

Svar

[ August 28, 2001: Message edited by: Svar ]</p>

Josans · Post by **Josans** » Tue Aug 28, 2001 8:40 pm

Originally posted by Svar:
There seems to be two camps when it comes to the use of special supply. Those who rarely use it and those who abuse it. The perception by those who rarely use it is that those who abuse it have an unfair advantage. Relax, most people don’t have clear understanding of the importance of operation points (OPs) and there use. OPs are used for all operations. All movement costs OPs; march costs 1 OP per Div/Bn, transfer costs 1 OP, plotted move costs 1 OP per hex, and bombardment costs 1 OP. Each air mission cost I OP including training air groups. Support for Pz Korps/Tank Army/Shock Army costs 1 OP per turn and for the German support for the West and Italian Fronts cost one half of their available OPs per turn. Finally special supply costs 3 OPs per division plus 1 OP per battalion. For me, a typical Panzer Korps cost about 25 OPs for special supply and a typical Infantry Korps costs 15 OPs for special supply.

Adding all the heavy industry, oil, and resources together generates 1 OP each turn. For Germany, that equals about 330 per turn at the start of the war. If you set the Italian Front to replacement level 80 and the West Front to 60, you will lose 70 OPs per turn for their support. Add to that support for 10 Pz Korps and 10 air groups training for another 20 Ops and that leaves 240 OPs for operations per turn without depleting your reserve OP pool. If you conduct 20 player directed air attacks you are down to 220 OPs. For plotted moves, if you move all 10 Pz Korps 5 hexes (50 OPs) and about 20 Infantry Korps 2 hexes (20 OPs) you have 150 Ops for special supply or 6 Pz Korps. All this is without marching any Korps. When you start moving up your Infantry Korps using the march command, at about 5 units per Korps and the 30 or so Infantry Korps not plotting, you use all your remaining OPs. Now all your special supply eats into your OP reserve pool. This should explain why many people who use special supply extensively run out of OPs during the summer of 1941 when playing the Germans.

Now comes the coup de grace, using special supply to raise the readiness level of a Korps from say 50 to 80 (it depends on the weather and supply level of the receiving unit) could actually backfire if the parent HQ OP level drops below some magic number (50 OPs I think), the effective readiness of a unit in combat is divided by 2. So, in effect the unit that started at a readiness level of 50 will conduct combat at an effective readiness level of 40. Not only that but once you have depleted your OP reserves pool, you have effectively killed you offensive until you can build back up the reserve.

The moral of this long essay is that special supply needs to be used very carefully and the games that people can use to abuse the system are much more costly than they are worth when you see how valuable OPs really are.

Svar

Svar,

I make a long use of special suply and never run out of Ops in summer 41 playing the germans. Yes, you must use them very carefully but I think the benefits are clear . My main HQs always have more of 50 OPs to attack ( to try gain advantage of this)and have fews corps assigned to minimize the loss of Ops. I believe that special supply must be used, its a key factor of the game.Dont you uses the special supply, Svar?

Josan.

murx · Post by **murx** » Tue Aug 28, 2001 9:17 pm

I think I can add some bugs too :

1. Against the AI I randomly get 'double corps' - meaning I attack a corps (happened with a HQ too once, a corps was hidden under it) and it retreats - just to attack in the next moment at the same hex another unit (all in one and the same execution phase). It doesn't seem to be the same unit but I'm not sure. Also sometimes unspotted(but they get spotted in my turn) units attack me at the AIs execution phase.

2. I have in the '41 campaign a ?brigade? with 1-3/202 Panzer Bn but it dosn't show anywhere on the whole map (all several HQs have slots left) but it is in the ALT-(R)eport.

3. In the ALT-(R)eport the total numbers of units (tanks & aircrafts) seem to be seriously bugged. It sometimes displays very weird & wrong values like 36785 when there are in fact only 11746 planes.

4. Sometimes when I got units to surrender that have more then 1000 squads and lots of artillery the battle summary doesn't say something like 50000-60000 men but 1000. I'm not sure if the number displayed is the number of squads that got destroyed but it looks like the 65355 overflow.

murx

Svar · Post by **Svar** » Tue Aug 28, 2001 10:20 pm

Originally posted by Josan:

Svar,

I make a long use of special suply and never run out of Ops in summer 41 playing the germans. Yes, you must use them very carefully but I think the benefits are clear . My main HQs always have more of 50 OPs to attack ( to try gain advantage of this)and have fews corps assigned to minimize the loss of Ops. I believe that special supply must be used, its a key factor of the game.Dont you uses the special supply, Svar?

Josan.

Josan,

Yes I use special supply. That's how I know how to overuse it. There is a big supply of OPs in the reserve pool at the start of the the 1941 game and I don't know how to access it. I usually have depleted it by the end of the clear weather in 1941 without using the bugs that were mentioned earlier in this thread. If you watch th OP levels of OKH you will see if the pool is out if the OP level is lower than 60 minus any air group on training.

Svar

BrickReid · Post by **BrickReid** » Tue Aug 28, 2001 11:03 pm

I use special supply extensively with transferred units when playing the Soviets. I normally have 2 defensive lines (3 in front of main Panzer thrust areas) and I will special supply a corps in a line I'm about to abandon and transfer the divisions to the next line, then resupply them again. The benefit is tremendous because I don't abandon a line until the panzers have seriously compromised it. That usually means the panzers are in range of my 2nd line and, if they are agressive, they could bust it too. However, when I special supply my newly reinforced corps in my second line, they go from having tank divisions of 30-40 readiness to 75-85 readiness. Currently I'm doing this to a human opponent and I'm regularly causing his panzers to bounce and he is still in Blitzkrieg (supply 8) at the beginning of the war. My units are not causing a lot of damage to the panzers (but more than they would have to be sure), but are causing serious problems with my opponent achieving a high enough final odds to cause me to retreat.

Add to this, I deploy the reserve Soviet HQs in my first turn and use them as OP mules. I change HQs to one of my mules, special supply the corps, then change HQ command again to return the corps to a HQ with lots of OP points and a high quality commander.

So, if I made sense above, what I'm saying is that the ability to double special supply transferred units CAN make a major difference to the Soviet player during the Blitzkrieg and initial fighting withdrawals of the game. I would bet this would help the Germans at the end of the game too.

Since I've given a Soviet player an edge they may not have known of before I must give the German player the solution: During Blitzkrieg it is PARAMOUNT that, whenever making contact with the enemy, you CUT OFF AND KILL! Never setup a turn of rapid advance that you do not cutoff several divisions and make sure you always surrender them. Because if you just use a direct attack that always lets the enemy retreat you are just training that unit to fight you tougher next time.

That's it, tell me if I'm wrong. <img src="biggrin.gif" border="0">

Josans · Post by **Josans** » Wed Aug 29, 2001 12:20 am

Originally posted by Svar:

Josan,

Yes I use special supply. That's how I know how to overuse it. There is a big supply of OPs in the reserve pool at the start of the the 1941 game and I don't know how to access it. I usually have depleted it by the end of the clear weather in 1941 without using the bugs that were mentioned earlier in this thread. If you watch th OP levels of OKH you will see if the pool is out if the OP level is lower than 60 minus any air group on training.

Svar

Svar,

Is really important have the OKH with low OPs? I dont see any effect but maybe Im wrong <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

BTW, also I depleted the blitz special supply by the end of september but I still use the special supply with the panzer corps.

Josan.

Svar · Post by **Svar** » Wed Aug 29, 2001 12:49 am

Originally posted by Josan:

Svar,

Is really important have the OKH with low OPs? I dont see any effect but maybe Im wrong <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

BTW, also I depleted the blitz special supply by the end of september but I still use the special supply with the panzer corps.

Josan.

Josan,

No. You don't want OKH to have low OPs. When you do it tells you that the OP pool is depeleted. The reason OKH is low is because it transferred some of its OPs to Army Group North/Center/South. When the line HQs don't get enough OPs for their supply level they get OPs from the higher HQs so when you see these HQs low you know that at your present rate of expenditure soon the line HQs will start their turn low.

Svar

Josans · Post by **Josans** » Wed Aug 29, 2001 1:01 am

Originally posted by Svar:

Josan,

No. You don't want OKH to have low OPs. When you do it tells you that the OP pool is depeleted. The reason OKH is low is because it transferred some of its OPs to Army Group North/Center/South. When the line HQs don't get enough OPs for their supply level they get OPs from the higher HQs so when you see these HQs low you know that at your present rate of expenditure soon the line HQs will start their turn low.

Svar

Thank you Svar, your knowledge about the game surprise me every day!!!

Now I see the effects of low OPs in the higher HQs. Im playing the 43 campaign as german and now we are in march 45, will be more easy for me understand the OPs distribution with the lack of Ops I have!!!

Josan.

Josans · Post by **Josans** » Wed Aug 29, 2001 1:08 am

Originally posted by BrickReid:

Add to this, I deploy the reserve Soviet HQs in my first turn and use them as OP mules. I change HQs to one of my mules, special supply the corps, then change HQ command again to return the corps to a HQ with lots of OP points and a high quality commander.

I make this in the same way. Is very useful.

Josan.

Mist · Post by **Mist** » Wed Aug 29, 2001 6:33 pm

Originally posted by Josan:

I make this in the same way. Is very useful.

Josan.

This is obvious exploit and game spoiler.
To spoil this even more I can say that you do not need to use your own HQs - go and change to enemy HQs and steal his OPs for special supply.

Josans · Post by **Josans** » Wed Aug 29, 2001 8:26 pm

Originally posted by Mist:

This is obvious exploit and game spoiler.
To spoil this even more I can say that you do not need to use your own HQs - go and change to enemy HQs and steal his OPs for special supply.

Is this another exploit? So I cant use other Hqs to supply corps?

The other commentary seems me out of wiew. I can exploit one feature ( if really I do) but you are speaking about cheating and dont forget, Mist, I dont cheat.Maybe you do but Im not. Im beging to be tired of people like you <img src="mad.gif" border="0">

Josan.

moonfog · Post by **moonfog** » Wed Aug 29, 2001 8:50 pm

Originally posted by Mist:

This is obvious exploit and game spoiler.
To spoil this even more I can say that you do not need to use your own HQs - go and change to enemy HQs and steal his OPs for special supply.

Mist,

I don't think that using Reserve HQs as OP mules is really an exloit or even a game spoiler. As Svar has pointed out, there is a certain amount of OPs to give away for each side. When somebody has used this all up, he seems to have a big problem. So for me, there seems to be a penalty when overusing special supply.

I understand the OPs as a simulation of supplies stored in dumps at a HQ. If you want to conduct an attack at one point of the front you cannot assign a special amount of supplies for the attacking HQ (Maximum is always hex supply level x 10 after Blitzkrieg period). So why not use a reserve HQ to give its OPs to that offensive?

However, I see a problem that makes the use of HQ mules quite unfair. The Soviet player has much more HQs to use in that way than the German. In a 41 campaign, the Soviet can even use HQs that didn't show up until late 1943 like the two Belo-Fronts (could be wrong on this, though) but the German is not capable of creating Army Groups A and B in summer 1942. The soviet number of Reserve HQs is huge while the German has West- and Africafront fixed and looses also that stupid Dummy SS HQ in northern Norway (will this be fixed in the next version).

So, in my opinion it's not an exploit, but because of the balance of Reserve HQs it's a bit unfair to make excessive use of that feature.

Regards
Moonfog