The Fate of Gunboats

[Twotribes]

I have a gunboat stuck at little rock. Been there for quite some time, there has been no Confederate controlled territory near there in months.

[Gil R.]

Well, that too should be zipped and e-mailed. Thanks.

[dude]

ORIGINAL: Gil R.

Dude, do you still have save files with those immortal gunboats? If so, you should zip them up and send them to ericbabe@west-civ.com, with a detailed explanation of what was happening. This seems like a bug which, while rare, still ought to be fixed.

... I started to write that I didn't ... but then remembered I copied them to a safe location when I was trying to figure out if I could edit the file and either remove or move the offending gunboats... so yes.. I'll send them on.

Dude.


ps... my game has proceeded after editing the locations... only to have me take the new location a few months later... now the darn Gunboats won't die or leave again... this time I'll probably just leave them where they sit since they are not harming major production this time. (I hadn't realized I wasn't getting any production from St. Louis or Cairo for nearly 14+ turns!)

[cerosenberg]

I am using the newest patch and have an imortal Confederate gunboat in the same location noted above.  It appears that hte cobination of location, side and unit type confer immortality.  Sorry, I am not sufficiently familar with the details of saving games to send files.

[Gil R.]

I'm moving this thread to the Support forum, since if the problem is still in the game post-betapatch it definitely deserves Eric's attention.

[Gil R.]

I've just witnessed Eric doing something at his keyboard, and he claims that something was fixing the gunboat bug. We still need to test it, of course, but it appears to have been solved.

[Anthropoid]

I had a similar thing happen with an ironclad. It just disappeared off the coast of Norfolk. I had the impression that it was because it was not part of a fleet. When I had the same thing happen to a gunboat in Lower Miss province, I guessed that it was also because the gunboat was not in a fleet.
 
Can anyone direct to the pages in the manual that talk about gunboats? Are all boats (frigates, ships, ironclads, gunboats) that are not in a fleet at some kind of higher risk or something? Does being in a fleet somehow make them safer or stronger or something?

[pzpat]

After winning as the South a few times I finally tried my hand as the North.  There were some things I wanted to try out.  I was using 1.10.10, 1st Sgt level, balanced scenario.  I couldn't believe how screwed up (I mean unprepared) the North was at the start.  I don't know how the North in the July '61 scenario could ever catch up to the way it is at the beginning of the November scenario.
     My support-related issue is this:  during the first turn I noticed the presence of two gunboats on the Mississippi and two siege art units at the Potomac.  I sent one siege unit by rail as far west as it would go, and ignored the others for that turn.  On the next turn, all those units had disappeared.  Now I have no gunboats and no siege artillery.  Is this supposed to happen?  And, come to think of it, as the South I have never had to deal with Yankee gunboats.
     And, I read in the manual that during a siege only 3% of the besieging infantry's value is used in the combat.  What is the exact effect of adding the engineer ability to the besieging infantry (beforehand)?
    

[ericbabe]

I haven't heard of gunboats or siege artillery disappearing as this before.  Is it possible they are just not seen from the main map because of the overflow button (the big '+' symbol)?

The siege isn't a combat as such, but rather uses its own procedure.  So it isn't really that its only 3% of infantry that participate in sieges, but rather that infantry have a small chance of causing damage to a city's/fort's defenses.

[pzpat]

     I'll look again for those units when I get home.  What exactly is the effect on sieges when the infantry have the engineer ability?

[Anthropoid]

Haven't noticed them disappearing again. Maybe they were just overlooked. I'll keep an eye out for it, and save the file if it happens again.