Questions on unit classes for Andy/Don

[DRG]

Originally Posted by Suhiir

Were I just adding a handful of units and doing some tweaking I'd have been done long, loooong ago. But in a fit of utter stupidity I decided to do the job "right".

Well......"right" remains to be seen.. Yes ?? It's only "right" if it "plays well with others". It might end up being so "right" it doesn't work with the rest of the OOB's in the game and you're left with 500 hours of work that is an interesting curiosity to you and handful of others and that's fine if that was your intent. Lot's of people have dumped hundreds of hours work into personal projects that were based on SP over the years that end up as a niche curiosity. There's a thread about a guy who did an SP Naval game that nobody can find a copy of now and from what I saw of the screen shots I would love to have copies of his ship Icons just for my personal records.

Everyone needs a hobby. I'm not trying to get up your nose about this but my point about your OOB is ( IMHO ) it would have been better to issue it as a WIP once it got to the playable stage then deal with the problems others find and the suggestions they make and use that as a starting point to make improvements or changes, No matter how long you tinker with it so it's "perfect" that will never be and I've been doing this long enough to know that as a carved in granite fact

Don

[Imp]

Without getting into a lot of detail the picklists look mostly at the date and the enemy OOB (i.e. a mech or infantry strong nation) and in the first pass always pick some sort of mortar and AA/MPAD unit so the AI is never completely without something in these categories. Then it cycles thru the formations available on the given date with an eye toward the enemy's mobility (i.e. if the enemy is infantry heavy select less AT weapons) selecting armor, infantry, artillery, and air type formations until it runs out of points.
This is both elegant in it's simplicity and very, VERY easy to screw up totally when you mess with the lists or (god forbid) alter the formations an OOB uses.

I bet that last statement is a major understatement but I do like to tinker stops the brain imploding what program do you use to edit them. As people should not really be messing with due to impending disaster so dont think its appropriate for forum plese feel free to PM me the details. Think this could be another case of subjecting myself to distess all in the name of fun, go figure got the swear box ready.

[Suhiir]

Originally Posted by Imp

I bet that last statement is a major understatement but I do like to tinker stops the brain imploding what program do you use to edit them. As people should not really be messing with due to impending disaster so dont think its appropriate for forum plese feel free to PM me the details. Think this could be another case of subjecting myself to distess all in the name of fun, go figure got the swear box ready.

I'm sure Mark's PM was far more informative then anything I could send you. If for no other reason then I have zero information on picklists written down (other then a few post-it notes).

[Imp]

I'm sure Mark's PM was far more informative then anything I could send you. If for no other reason then I have zero information on picklists written down (other then a few post-it notes).

Cheers for reply, suggest concentrate on OOB & let the experts look at the pick list after. Need your thinking cap on for it I feel & even then !!! Like most things in this game far easier to muck it up than make any gains, hidden for a reason.

[Suhiir]

Originally Posted by DRG

Well......"right" remains to be seen.. Yes ?? It's only "right" if it "plays well with others". It might end up being so "right" it doesn't work with the rest of the OOB's in the game and you're left with 500 hours of work that is an interesting curiosity to you and handful of others and that's fine if that was your intent. Lot's of people have dumped hundreds of hours work into personal projects that were based on SP over the years that end up as a niche curiosity. There's a thread about a guy who did an SP Naval game that nobody can find a copy of now and from what I saw of the screen shots I would love to have copies of his ship Icons just for my personal records.

Everyone needs a hobby. I'm not trying to get up your nose about this but my point about your OOB is ( IMHO ) it would have been better to issue it as a WIP once it got to the playable stage then deal with the problems others find and the suggestions they make and use that as a starting point to make improvements or changes, No matter how long you tinker with it so it's "perfect" that will never be and I've been doing this long enough to know that as a carved in granite fact

Don

Oh I know folks will scream about some of the changes I've made to weapons data.
However, the unit name/availability date data and the formations themselves shouldn't be an issue. If folk want they can change the weapon data back to the original (with the need to create data for a couple weapons I've added) and it should work just fine. One thing I've tried to be VERY careful about is making sure no existing unit is deleted (tho some are marked as "unused" and given "3" for rarity) and the availability dates match as closely as possible with those in the existing OOB is that it can be used with existing scenarios. Fortunately the USMC OOB (unlike many others) has sufficient open slots.
And it's that compatibility checking that makes this process very time consuming.

All that said, yeah, I'm an anal-retentive perfectionist, heck why do you think I started, and kept going on, this project?

[DRG]

Originally Posted by Suhiir

One thing I've tried to be VERY careful about is making sure no existing unit is deleted (tho some are marked as "unused" and given "3" for rarity) and the availability dates match as closely as possible with those in the existing OOB is that it can be used with existing scenarios.

OK, you're really not going to be very happy reading this but these are newbie OOB designer assumptions / errors the could have save you hours of time and a lot of aggravation if this hadn't been kept a state secret.

1/ any unit you want to leave in JUST IN CASE a scenario uses it but don't want to show up in the game as a pick you make nation 99 *IF* you haven't built units and formations you only want available in higher formations and used 99 for those as well. ( load US OOB, click on database check utilities,click on FORMATION CHECKS then Broken links that shows all the little sub formations that only exist in a higher formation)

If you have none of those just making the unit nation 99 will hide it but a scenario will happily pick it up if it was already used by one

1B / Want to find out if any change you make affects any scenario using USMC ?? Load SCENHack. Press ALT+T and you will get a list of all scenarios that contain any deviate data. Not all problems that are found there are the result of errors, then may be the result of a scenario designer playing around with unit data. It's a judgment call what needs to be repaired and what doesn't

2/ Scenarios don't care what the availability date is once it's been put in a scenario. It's easy to check.. build a unit 1946 - 1980 then build a test scenario using that unit in 1975 then trim back the units availability to 1950. Unit will still show up in the scenario. There are a couple dozen people on this forum that could have told you that if we'd known this was a concern

Merry Christmas BTW

Don

[Suhiir]

Originally Posted by DRG

OK, you're really not going to be very happy reading this but these are newbie OOB designer assumptions / errors the could have save you hours of time and a lot of aggravation if this hadn't been kept a state secret.

1/ any unit you want to leave in JUST IN CASE a scenario uses it but don't want to show up in the game as a pick you make nation 99 *IF* you haven't built units and formations you only want available in higher formations and used 99 for those as well. ( load US OOB, click on database check utilities,click on FORMATION CHECKS then Broken links that shows all the little sub formations that only exist in a higher formation).
If you have none of those just making the unit nation 99 will hide it but a scenario will happily pick it up if it was already used by one

I didn't know about the 99 nation code.
I've been setting them to unit types (guards infantry etc) that aren't used in the OOB and/or giving them an X3.
In the future I'll keep 99 in mind, and it's good for anyone else similarly insane to know this anyway.

Originally Posted by DRG

1B / Want to find out if any change you make affects any scenario using USMC ?? Load SCENHack. Press ALT+T and you will get a list of all scenarios that contain any deviate data. Not all problems that are found there are the result of errors, then may be the result of a scenario designer playing around with unit data. It's a judgment call what needs to be repaired and what doesn't

Useful, thanks!

Originally Posted by DRG

2/ Scenarios don't care what the availability date is once it's been put in a scenario. It's easy to check.. build a unit 1946 - 1980 then build a test scenario using that unit in 1975 then trim back the units availability to 1950. Unit will still show up in the scenario. There are a couple dozen people on this forum that could have told you that if we'd known this was a concern

Merry Christmas BTW

Don

Yeah I know an existing scenario could care less as long as the unit number matches, I'm trying to avoid having TOW missiles show up in 1950 by keeping the dates as close as possible, in theory someone could (I hope) design a scenario with the stock OOB and someone else could run it using mine and everything will match up fairly well.

I NEVER claimed to be approaching this sanely!

Merry XMas & a Happy New Year to you too