winSPMBT V13 ( 2019 ) Upgrade

[Suhiir]

Originally Posted by DRG

I've mentioned this on the WW2 forum but I will here as well.

There may be a delay releasing both patches as a very serious issue has been discovered in the code added to try "level up" the AI's force when it hit the units/points limits and it was set to advance or assault but that unfortunately also effects low point / low unit count games as well giving the AI in some extreme cases troops with the maximum experience level on low point/ low unit count battles.

How long the delay might be or even if this will cause a delay has yet to be determined

Don

Take your time.
I think I can speak for most of us when I say we'd rather have it right rather then fast.

[DRG]

As do I but to give this in metaphor we are at the end of a long hard road this year and now we have a 15 foot wide chasm to cross and we are both hobbling from the stress of the journey........maybe too dramatic but it's been a hard day and there is no resolution in sight ATM.

The "good" news is it has no effect on a human bought game so PBEM are not in any way affected and if you play solo games but get other players to purchase the P2's units and allow him to deploy for you it will not affect you and if you play even a small 1000 point game against the AI using peer nations and the AI buys for P2 you won't see much out of the ordinary but if you fight USMC vs ISIL in modern day they end up about equal but should not be but lets say you turn country training off and give the USMC 80 and ISIL 40....... you're going to be really surprised when the 95-120 experienced Jihadis cranked on steroids and Methamphetamine swamp your positions.I have seen Russians from June 1941 get 140 experience points when they were set to give 30 turning them into something that would give you more " game" than you probably want.

So yeah ...... we have a problem and it might be simple to fix or not but it is confined to the computer purchasing routine but not in any way I can find to human purchases. I assume this extends to generated computer campaign games as well but there is no way to check.

The reason it took this long to spot.....because I am sure some of you are thinking that..... was that the code was added to deal with the extream conditions that can crop up when the human player had a high unit and point force and the AI is tasked to assault it......and in cases like that it does what it was intended to do..... buy better units and if that isn't enough adjust troop experience upwards..... it was not tested on little games because we thought those were too low in points and units for this change to have any effect...... HA! we were wrong

[Felix Nephthys]

Just a question, why would the levels have to be adjusted higher instead of stay the same? I guess what I'm trying to say is that if a battle is fought in 1973 and the Egyptians are assaulting or advancing on an Israeli force (which has higher experience and morale ratings) why would the Egyptian force if under the conditions you outlined as far as units and points are concerned need to suddenly get higher ratings as well? It seems to me that it doesn't work that way in real life. That's kind of a "hulk-mode engaged" type of moment right?

[Mobhack]

Originally Posted by Felix Nephthys

Just a question, why would the levels have to be adjusted higher instead of stay the same? I guess what I'm trying to say is that if a battle is fought in 1973 and the Egyptians are assaulting or advancing on an Israeli force (which has higher experience and morale ratings) why would the Egyptian force if under the conditions you outlined as far as units and points are concerned need to suddenly get higher ratings as well? It seems to me that it doesn't work that way in real life. That's kind of a "hulk-mode engaged" type of moment right?

Levelling is only there for the situation where player 1 has spent a lot on points and player 2 (the AI) has bought its troops, but still has points left to spend.

The human player may buy a zillion tiger 2 say, and the AI then does its buy with infantry units etc and hits its limit of 500 elements, with points in the kitty still.

The levelling code then runs through incrementing troop quality (experience and morale) until the outstanding points are used up, the experience levels are maximised, or the loop has been through 50 times.

So levelled up AI is only really for the sort of player who buys 500 MBT and expects the AI to match that. The AI buys a standard buy, not a fleet of MBT (even on tank heavy!).

(If I redid these games from the ground up then I would probably have another 500 slots free, that the human never would be allowed to have but the AI (or a scenario designer)could.)

[Mobhack]

Originally Posted by Mobhack

Levelling is only there for the situation where player 1 has spent a lot on points and player 2 (the AI) has bought its troops, but still has points left to spend.

The human player may buy a zillion tiger 2 say, and the AI then does its buy with infantry units etc and hits its limit of 500 elements, with points in the kitty still.

The levelling code then runs through incrementing troop quality (experience and morale) until the outstanding points are used up, the experience levels are maximised, or the loop has been through 50 times.

So levelled up AI is only really for the sort of player who buys 500 MBT and expects the AI to match that. The AI buys a standard buy, not a fleet of MBT (even on tank heavy!).

(If I redid these games from the ground up then I would probably have another 500 slots free, that the human never would be allowed to have but the AI (or a scenario designer)could.)

It looks like that level-up feature won't be making it into the release as testing brought up some oddities.

[Suhiir]

Originally Posted by Mobhack

It looks like that level-up feature won't be making it into the release as testing brought up some oddities.

Sounds like a rather complex piece of code to test.

If you need some testers to help I'm certain a few of us wouldn't mind installing a second WinSPMBT variant and doing some of the grunt work on variations and recording what we come up with.

[DRG]

We are done testing.

Changes made were showing some progress and seemed to be working well but it was totally screwing up low point games where a player might deliberately set the P2 AI player using Country training OFF for low experience and it was turning them into Rambos on steroids and meth and we are, to be honest, too way past the point of being interested in endlessly tinkering with this trying to get a marginal item working so it is being pulled from the list of changes.

It did, however, show some improvement with some tweaking in how it handled normal games against the AI and was no longer "levelling up" low point -low unit games as it had been. As I said earlier we had initially tested it for what it was supposed to help with and it did....but it was seriously making a mess of lower point games levelling up the experience points in battles outside of the battle types we had hoped it would help balance things a bit more in some cases 20 points higher than the same nation under the same battle conditions as P1 so you could have two nations evenly matched normally but the one as P2 would be getting an experience boost that was not intended to happen on low point games

[luigim]

Thanks to all guys

[Oche]

This year's patches go way beyond expectations. I can't thank you enough .Congratulat ions.

[SaS TrooP]

Damn, scenario list is already closed? I might have one half-tested to add as of yet, if there's time.