3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

I think this campaign is not actually from the latest patch but the one before, but I only now have the free time to actually play a lot myself.
I ran into the following problem:
The first scenario was relatively easy with the AI not making much headway: total victory.
However, in the second one I got utterly wiped out by a strong position of dug in Marders and tanks with long 75mm guns. In fact, I am pretty sure they had more tanks than me, even though I was the attacker in an assault scenario. So I checked out the scenario in its standalone version and there you have tons of more assets including heavy artillery (in the campaign you only have two mortar sections).
I would suggest either assigning some aux troops or mentioning in the campaign briefing that the player should enhance his core force quite heavily. I read the briefing and it says "fixed core campaign". Because of that I assumed that the campaign was tailored to the force you get in the beginning, but in my opinion that second scenario is basically impossible to win with it.

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

To give you an example, in my Caucasus campaign briefing I wrote:
"Expanding your core force will not be necessary, however, upgrading some tanks with better armed models is recommended."
I think something like that should be included in most campaigns.

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

This is what the Germans have in the second scenario
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/attac...1&d=1586626727

The majority of the armour is reenforcements and the arty is a four gun battery of 105s and they have hardly any infantry. It looks tough but not impossible and everything Don releases is playtested and critiqued before it goes into the game. There may be the occasional thing missed but an impossible to win scenario node is doubtful.

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

Well that is 23 armored vehicles vs 14 of yours (in the core force), with your only artillery support being two mortar squads. Your core force is worth around 1500 points, give or take. The German force comes out at around 2500 points and they are defending and dug in. Now maybe it is not "impossible", maybe there is a way it can be done, but as someone who has some experience playing this game and making scenarios for it, I would say it is at the very least quite unfair.
And the fact that the standalone version of the very same campaign mission gives the Russian player a significantly bigger force leads me to believe that there was some kind of oversight here. Maybe the standalone one was made first, tested and then added to the campaign, but he forgot to set some of the forces to aux?

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

Sometimes I design them hard to make it more of a challenge, the play tests ensures that they are not impossible to win.

Sounds like a good replay ability aspect and therefore I attained one of my design goals.

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

Alright then. If anyone manages to win it, please give me some pointers.

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

Well it's turn 14 and I'm at the furthest V hex west. My scout teams killed the German Commander and the PzIV are sitting in the map hex they arrived in confused as to what to do next. I did some dumb things with my tanks that I regret but so far I am not unhappy they are confused
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/attac...1&d=1586635140

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

I ended up with a marginal Defeat but I was doing two other things as well so I can accept that but my rump wasn't handed to me steaming on a platter either . None of the German reinforcements made it to the front and the German commader was one of the first to go and I am in decent positions behind the lines so I can live with this

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/attac...1&d=1586638696

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

So basically you ignored the main position (that you are supposed to take) and drove behind them to kill the commander? And lost 11 tanks in the process, compared to two German ones? Alright...
And with that result you can advance in the campaign either.

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

That V hex was worth over 3x the ones on the main position and I thought getting behind would allow me to bypass the main defence but I got too cocky too early with the tanks but the advance scouts did their job.

However, yes, the marginal defeat did end the campaign and if I'd handled my tanks a bit better than I did I could have forced a draw and I would have advanced.

HOWEVER...... that did point out something unrelated to this campaign that I may investigate. I had restarted the autosave of that campaign and at games end, I got the message you see pasted into the results but then the game started to go through the procedure of updating unit experience then shut down which is what the Freyberg campaign did as well on the last node so I need to go back and see how that was put together as it may be possible to save it

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

One thing I noticed is that the Panzer IV F2s fired bombardments, is that new?

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

I did not see that happen. In my game they never left the hex they entered the game on and I attributed that to the Commander being killed and that far V hex I took

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

For me they fired bombardements with HE. I was wondering if this was a new AI function because I used a lot of smoke.

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

It's new to me but IDK if perhaps some of the F2s were set up as SP arty.

It's the Easter Weekend in the middle of a Pandemic so eventually, the guys who built and playtested this campaign will chime it

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

Here is proof.

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

No image

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

Of course, the no screen capture program will record bombardments so this was one of a series of HE strikes not just one ?

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

Yes, several.

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

Or the AI may have Z-fired at you? - there is code in there for it to do that, though I have never seen the AI actually do it. I think the "firing bombardment" message comes up in Z-firing? - I hardly use Z-fire myself so cannot qiute recall if that is the case.

If that message came up during the AI turn, and not in the enemy artillery fire phase, then it was definately Z-firing at you.

cheers
Andy

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

Errr... look at the top of my screenshot.

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

Ah sorry, didn`t read the last message and I can't edit my message. That was my question / suspicion actually, that it is some AI function. But I had never seen it happen. I wonder what triggers it?

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

Was it in the regular turn, not the artillery phase at the start of the AI player's turn though?

If it was in the regular course of play, it was direct area fire (Z fire) and not indirect.

If it was in the artillery fire phase - something needs debugging (if it can be persuaded to do it regularly, one cannot really debug 1 in a 10000 events that easily!). Or something might be wrong with the tank data, unit class wrong, etc.

So was it arty fired in that phase of the AI turn, or an impromptu Z-fire in the normal turn?. It would be handy to know precisely which.

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

Just fired up a savegame and fired a Z shot - confirmed that it showed KV-2 firing bombardment, ie the message shown on the screen shot.

So long as that happened in the regular to and fro of the turn, it was a rare as hen's teeth occurence of the AI deciding to use it's "Z-key".

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

It starts at the beginning of the ai turn, seems to be one round of firing by the tank. Then the 10.5cm battery fires (with message "spotter has no los"). Then the rest of the German units fire directly at my units.

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

I think I will have a look at the code later - it may be that the Z fire request for the AI is "queued" and then serviced in the arty phase.

And that may be why I have never seen that AI behaviour before - my attention is usually on the impacts on my forces, not the messgaes about who is firing what.

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

Tobias...... had you expanded your code with any arty?

Andy... I sent you a test game.....if you expand the core and buy Hvy Mortars even the German 50mmAT guns will fire indirectly

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/attac...1&d=1586715027

If the core is NOT expanded I have not seen any messages like that

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

No, didn't expand the core.

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

Won’t be back till Tuesday, but I may have something to report, I sent a message to Don.

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

Andy and I are investigating.......it's not like we have anything else to do.......

RE expanding the core.. neither Andy nor I have seen the German tanks firing indirect without arty being added into the core ( Specifically Hvy Mortars) but testing is just beginning and it can become involved

If I run it with no expansion the German tanks do not fire indirect...if I add the Hvy Mortars to the end of the Russian core......they do, every time and that's 6 tries at it. We suspect there may be underlying corruption to the DAT file. The fact that some of the German dug in positions are shown at the start is a hint of that

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

Tobias, your original assumption was correct. There is a SERIOUS shortfall of troops for the Russians in that scenario in that campaign. It was based on scenario 547 and that scenario has the same German troops in the same positions but the Russian have 3925 points in the scenario to attack with but the campaign version only gives 1540.....that's a 2385 point shortage!

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/attac...1&d=1586724638

.....Lucy has some 'splaining to do :doh:

(a cultural reference to the old TV show "I love Lucy" which may not be familiar to everyone and ran probably well before many of you were born)

There are other issues we are investigating as well but I would suggest if anyone does want to play this campaign in it's present form they open the in game campaign editor and add a couple thousand support points to that second node.

EXPECT that this will be rebuilt and re-issued at some point but there are some code issues but we don't know yet if they are new or legacy issues from the conversion of the original scenarios.

Resurrecting and breathing new life into old scenarios that had not been updated yearly was a noble idea that we fully supported but I think from here on we need to stick with new only

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

Ok. Kind off relieved, I was starting to doubt my skills for a second... :D

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

Well Andy did say he had his butt handed to him as well but when you are 2300 points short it's as futile as the Charge of the light brigade

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

I’ll take a look next week and make any needed corrections. AFK/PC till Tuesday.

It’s supposed to be hard, not impossible. Sorry for any issues.

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

It may not be quite that simple.......still investigating

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

EDIT....... OK there is something very odd going on with this scenario/node that's going to take some time to sort out. I did see reports of Marders and StugIII's firing smoke indirect when I set it up as a scenario


Further EDIT and Info


What started off innocently enough has spun into a major project not just for the scenario but for Andy and I as well ( but especially Andy )

That campaign had not been tested......the scenarios it was built from had been but things went wrong with the campaign and it slipped through the cracks. There will be a re-issuing of that campaign at some point I just don't know when but if anyone does want to give it a try I would highly recommend you open it up in the campaign editor and give the second scenario at LEAST 4500 support points.

But during the investigation into that we discovered something that has been going on probably since SP2 was first created but because we've been adding to the game it finally revealed itself

The editor was holding info in memory of any previous game you played or scenario you edited and adding it to the main DAT file of the scenario being edited. In that one we found evidence of British equipment and Hindi names...... all of this was flagged inactive and Andy tells me that is SOP for MS to do "soft deletes" it retains all this junk but hides it in the basement so to speak behind "inactive" markers and that's worked OK for decades but in this case, when we put a scenario into a campaign all the editing and re-editing shuffles around a lot of phantom junk and in this case finally found a way to interfere.......THAT is why you saw the German tanks firing indirectly. It had picked up the fire plan orders from the RUSSIAN guns in the original scenario and that wasn't a lot of fun wading through code to discover. ( I know that because I watched both and where the German tanks and AT guns were firing indirect matched the Russian barrage in the original scenario :shock:)

We have an EXE now in testing that eliminates that junk and fortunately these "soft deletes" do not cause any real issues in 99.99% of the cases.......you just found the one that did and that has led to a journey we really hadn't planned on but since everything is pretty much locked down we had the time to dig it out

So if you do want to continue on with that campaign add those extra support points and it will play OK except for some oddities with the german tanks but that stops after a turn or two and doesn't really affect anything and when we have a fix for the campaign one will be issued but don't expect anything super quick

Don

Re: 3rd Guards Mech Corps Campaign feedback
 

Yep - soft deletion was what used to bloat Microsoft Word files - lots of no-longer used data (like embedded pictures say) was still stored in the file after a zillion edits. The SOP for those docments was to save it to a temporary file, delete the old working copy and then rename the temporary file back to the old filename. Apparently saving as a new file did not carry the cruft over. Not sure if that applies to modern editions of Word, but was cerainly true back around 2005. I use LibreOffice now, with it set to save as a docx type (so if I send it to oters they do not get confused) so have not had to suffer Word and its foibles in a decade+:)!

So I now have a "cruft clearance" routine run over files on load, and will do so on save as well. That may save a fair few bytes since the run length compression will pack a load of 0's down to a couple of bytes.

This scenario's cruftiness was shown up by the user campaign's reshuffling of the unit deck to insert the campaign core troops and supports etc, so some cruft tables then found themselves aligned with reshuffled 'live' units, and the cruft had been tabled to fire a programmed routine. Hilarity then ensued!:doh:. Cruft removal ensures the side tables are deleted as well as zeroing the crufty "inactive" units lying around in the main unit table.