Delayed Bombardments

[Grant1pa]

I've come a long way in scenario design from the days of simply massing an OPFOR along lines of advance towards objectives and letting the AI do it's best.

I like designing scenarios from the NATO/US/Commonwealth perspective (although that is about to change), but I want to gain more realistic Red Team tactics in the engagements.

Assigning movement way-points has been a learning curve for me, but I feel that for the most part, I've been able to better utilize terrain and tactics for an advancing OPFOR to better emulate proper tactics.

Going one step further, I've been experimenting with delayed artillery barrages in conjunction with delayed OPFOR assaults. Specifically for the case I'm presently working on, a SMOKE barrage covering an assault mid-game. I've been able to do this, and it works, but an artifact I've noticed is that in succeeding game turns from start of the game to the turn the bombardment initiates, the sound of a barrage is heard in the Opposing Force turn start (with, of course, no actual barrage hitting). It stops once the reinforcement turn for the artillery starts and the actual delayed barrage initiates.

I've gone through the game manual and I can't see this covered. It may simply be an artifact of the program. I see no harm in it, other than someone scratching their head over the noise, or it alerting a non-designer player that bad things are going to happen..sometime.

If anyone could offer a suggestion to me for doing this better, I'd appreciate the assistance.

Tom

[DRG]

Can you send us the scenario or a save for possible debugging ?

It should not be doing that..........do you notice it only with delayed smoke ?



Don

[Grant1pa]

Originally Posted by DRG

Can you send us the scenario or a save for possible debugging ?

It should not be doing that..........do you notice it only with delayed smoke ?



Don

Yes, It is with delayed smoke. I haven't tried it with HE.

I just finished a playtest and don't have a save game. I was going to post the scenario this weekend but I'll put it up in a new thread.

Tom

[Grant1pa]

Thought again about posting the scenario before I can fix the issue so I'm attaching it to this thread.

Here is the scenario as it stands.

Thanks for the help.

Tom

[Mobhack]

Is this delay done via proper programmed fire, or have you just assigned normal turn zero bombardment to a battery which is then made a reinforcement?.

The best way to do this in a scenario is to use the programmed fire technique, with the battery programmed only to fire smoke once on turn X. Being assigned to programmed fire, it wont be available to the human player for other missions till it has completed the programmed mission, unless he presses the button to cancel all programmes of course. Thus absolutely no need for the battery to be a reinforcement.

If it is a regular turn zero bombardment, then it has to be available to fire it. Making the battery a reinforcement in a later turn with a turn 0 mission is a sure-fire way to get weird results. My guess is that you have tried that way.

Artillery programmed fire is available if you have the full game (and a scenario made with a programme by a full game owning designer can be played by an owner of the free demo). The old-style turn 0 bombardment is the only one available to free demo holding scenario designers, of course.

Once I have the scenario I can look at it. If it is the turn 0 type bombardment, it may well be going half going trough the arty routine and then aborting, in which case I will need to put in a check for reinforcing batteries at the front - these will then lose any such mis-programmed fire plan.

[Mobhack]

Now have got the scenario.

So which is the problem unit(s)? What turn have you programmed them to fire on?

[Grant1pa]

Originally Posted by Mobhack

Now have got the scenario.

So which is the problem unit(s)? What turn have you programmed them to fire on?

These are the Soviet 130mm Arty units. I did not used programed fire (sorry, not familiar with it although I do have the full version of the game). I assigned the bombardment and set the artillery unit as a reinforcement. My bad (feeling stupid).

I believe the Soviet Arty is set for turns 8 and 11 (I'm at work right now and can't check it at the present).

I'll research the programmed artillery and probably will be able to fix this myself. Sorry if this has been covered before, my reading list is long and time is short.

I appreciate you guys taking the time to help me.

Tom

[Mobhack]

Originally Posted by Grant1pa

These are the Soviet 130mm Arty units. I did not used programed fire (sorry, not familiar with it although I do have the full version of the game). I assigned the bombardment and set the artillery unit as a reinforcement. My bad (feeling stupid).

I believe the Soviet Arty is set for turns 8 and 11 (I'm at work right now and can't check it at the present).

I'll research the programmed artillery and probably will be able to fix this myself. Sorry if this has been covered before, my reading list is long and time is short.

I appreciate you guys taking the time to help me.

Tom

You found a valid bug, though.

Any arty assigned a bombardment when it is not physically present should now have its mission cancelled.

One thing about this scenario that is mightily confusing, is that the A0 command unit is off map as a reinforcement on a vehicle also off map as a reinforcement. But the off-map vehicle is selected - not the on-map units there. In fact I did not discover any units to play with until I scrolled about the place.

On restarting, hitting the N key will advance the player to select an on-map unit, but even if you actually tell them in your scenario intro text, they likely will not read it (or understand it).

Off-map A0 units can cause confusion, so it is best to have him there from the start - most of the game code is based on him being there (e.g. lists, positioning of the unit selection cursor as here)...

[Grant1pa]

[quote=Mobhack;835284][quote=Grant1pa;835281]

Originally Posted by Mobhack

One thing about this scenario that is mightily confusing, is that the A0 command unit is off map as a reinforcement on a vehicle also off map as a reinforcement. But the off-map vehicle is selected - not the on-map units there. In fact I did not discover any units to play with until I scrolled about the place.

On restarting, hitting the N key will advance the player to select an on-map unit, but even if you actually tell them in your scenario intro text, they likely will not read it (or understand it).

Off-map A0 units can cause confusion, so it is best to have him there from the start - most of the game code is based on him being there (e.g. lists, positioning of the unit selection cursor as here)...

Understood and an easy fix. I'll correct that.

I did play around with the programmed fire on a new basic scenario and have gotten the batteries to fire at the assigned location at the assigned turn. However, I found that I can't set multiple units to fire at different turns. Programmed fire seems to allow only a single turn for multiple units. When I set different arty units to fire at different turns, they all revert to the last unit turn selected. I can work around that though.

Thanks again.

Tom

[Mobhack]

Ok - never mind, I have found what appears to be the problem.

Some Russian batteries are assigned to fire turn zero bombardments, but are actually assigned as reinforcements for later in the battle. Thus they arent available to fire the mission.

The code is not checking early enough here for batteries being unavailable reinforcements, and so is aborting halfway through the indirect routine, when the target is determined and the map jumped to etc.

I'll need to fix that.

Batteries as reinforcements cannot fire in turn zero - they are not there. The code dhould be silently clearing these illegal fire missions, and that will be sorted soon.

As stated before, us the programmed fire routine instead of assigning the batteries as reinforcements. If you have the full game this should (?) be fine. No need to use reinforcement rules here, the battery wont be available for the player till it has shot its pre programmed mission.

There is no way though to do this with the free demo game, of course.