[SPOILER] Question about the '40 DLC

rezaf · Post by **rezaf** » Sat Nov 12, 2011 11:23 pm

I'm having a question about the mission in which you're supposed to capture the french general and escort him to the evacuation zone.
I destroyed the HQ bunker and captured the city, and on the next turn a sh*tton of enemies appeared out of thin air. Fair enough, I guess that's the point of the mission - but no general unit or whatever appeared - or I just don't see it.
What does it look like? Where is it supposed to be?
Thanks in advance.
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rezaf

Longasc · Post by **Longasc** » Sat Nov 12, 2011 11:53 pm

It should be a grey Panhard armored car and you can see it in Kerensky's Wassigny replay in the AAR forum, take a look.

Kerensky · Post by **Kerensky** » Sun Nov 13, 2011 1:38 am

Yup, what longasc said

This is the unit you are looking for, it's the grey Panhard in the top left corner:

rezaf · Post by **rezaf** » Sun Nov 13, 2011 8:32 am

No such unit for me - it failed to spawn.
Also, this mission is a sound idea gone all wrong - no chance in hell can you stop the onslaught of french troops that spawns without knowing in advance what is going to happen.
A massive assault from the north, ok, but taking the hq spawns troops EVERYWHERE, in your rear, to your left, to your right.
I liked all DLC missions I played so far - but this one sucks horribly.
And as icing on the top - like I wrote - the Panhard didn't spawn for me.
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rezaf

Kerensky · Post by **Kerensky** » Sun Nov 13, 2011 8:44 am

None of our testers had any problems with this scenario either so without some kind of documentation other than 'it broke' it's going to be difficult to figure out what exactly went wrong.

The hex is unblockable, so that's not the problem. Did you try to capture the hex with an AD or artillery unit? That doesn't properly capture the hex and change the flag.

Although even *if* the trigger did fail, by some apparent method unknown to me or any of the hundreds of testers we had test the scenario, you can still fall back on the alternative victory conditions to complete the scenario.

Kerensky · Post by **Kerensky** » Sun Nov 13, 2011 8:57 am

Just tested it, didn't have a problem. Capture Wassigny, hit end turn, next turn Panhard arrives.

Without more details of your game, I don't know what else to tell you.

rezaf · Post by **rezaf** » Sun Nov 13, 2011 9:18 am

I don't know what else to tell you either. It didn't spawn - all that appeared were hordes and hordes of french troops that should be scaled down by 50%. No Panhard.
I can send you a savegame, but I don't know what good it'd do, all you could see from it is that there's no Panhard in there.

Btw., nice 15Str SE tank you got there when XP is limited to three stars... :p
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rezaf

Kerensky · Post by **Kerensky** » Sun Nov 13, 2011 9:23 am

Cheats to speed up the testing process.

But sure I'll look at all the save files, it can't hurt.
You can send any to my pubic email Uncle_Chandy@yahoo.com

Better question though, does your bug happen every time? If you replay the scenario, does the Panhard consistently fail to appear?

rezaf · Post by **rezaf** » Sun Nov 13, 2011 10:16 am

Hmph, I think I got to the bottom of the error.
When I opened the mission in the ScenarioEditor, it said "Invalid Unit" where the captured Panhard would supposed to be.
Somewhere during the patching process, something appearently went wrong. Wish I could replicate what happened.
Anyway, I've reinstalled 1.04 and now the unit is there (in the editor).
Very strange.

Edit: Oh no, appearently the scenario fails to recognize that the equipment file has changed. When is it being parsed again? Would it help if I started from a savegame from the last mission or would I have to restart the entire campaign?
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rezaf

Fimconte · Post by **Fimconte** » Sun Nov 13, 2011 10:42 am

rezaf wrote:Hmph, I think I got to the bottom of the error.
When I opened the mission in the ScenarioEditor, it said "Invalid Unit" where the captured Panhard would supposed to be.
Somewhere during the patching process, something appearently went wrong. Wish I could replicate what happened.
Anyway, I've reinstalled 1.04 and now the unit is there (in the editor).
Very strange.

Edit: Oh no, appearently the scenario fails to recognize that the equipment file has changed. When is it being parsed again? Would it help if I started from a savegame from the last mission or would I have to restart the entire campaign?
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rezaf

Restart entire campaign unfortunately.

Although it might be possible to edit the savegame somehow...

Kerensky · Post by **Kerensky** » Sun Nov 13, 2011 10:55 am

Fimconte wrote: Restart entire campaign unfortunately.

Although it might be possible to edit the savegame somehow...

This might not be true.
If there was a problem with your equipment file (missing/corrupted Panhard line) then you do have to restart the campaign (or just endscn 0 to skip the scenario).
It there was a problem with the map (invalid unit on the map that was fixed through the editor) it should be possible to load from your previous scenario and continue.

rezaf · Post by **rezaf** » Sun Nov 13, 2011 11:16 am

Obviously, the captured units were missing from the equipment file. I'm not sure what caused this - I wish I would be.
There should be a "cheat" to re-evaluate the equipment file mid-campaign. Well, either that, or the equipment file should be verified before starting the campaign.
It's a bad joke that one can be stranded like this in the middle of a campaign.

I'll get around this for now by using the cheatcode, but still ... very unsatisfactory.
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rezaf

Post by **IainMcNeil** » Mon Nov 14, 2011 11:01 am

Have you ever applied any mods to your game or attempted any modding?

rezaf · Post by **rezaf** » Mon Nov 14, 2011 11:18 am

Of course I have.
However - I'm sure none was applied with GME or whatsitsname when I installed the DLCs and 1.04.

Anyway, I've since calmed down a bit, I was pretty upset about a system in which such a f*ckup can happen and that there's no way to remedy the situation - I really think a scripting command / cheat would come in very handy, but I guess I'll survive without one.
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rezaf

Post by **IainMcNeil** » Mon Nov 14, 2011 12:11 pm

Just to be clear, this is not an issue with the game!

This is almost certainly related to the modding and unfortunately we cannot ensure the game works with modded files. We do what we can to help, but once you mod files you are doing so at your own risk.

Molve · Post by **Molve** » Mon Nov 14, 2011 12:59 pm

FWIW I agree. You simply cannot expect to have your complaints heard unless you first reinstall a clean copy of the game.

(That doesn't mean I don't see the opportunity to further strengthen the mod support for the game. Only how impossible the support technician's job would get if support weren't limited to official release configurations)

rezaf · Post by **rezaf** » Mon Nov 14, 2011 1:59 pm

All I was saying is that it'd be nifty if there was a possibility to implement a new equipment file on the fly while a campaign was already running.
Oh, I'm sure it will not be implemented, but it should be simple enough to do anyway, just theoretically speaking.

The file that was there was the vanilla 1.02 equipment file without modifications - though I'm 90% sure there were no mods applied when I installed 1.04, there's the possibility that I had a mod applied when I installed 1.04, and when I would have disabled such mod in the mod manager, it'd have copied the 1.02 equipment file from the backup folder.

I'm aware that there's always the cheap bailout "you modded: unsupported" - I even understand it to some degree.
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rezaf

VPaulus · Post by **VPaulus** » Mon Nov 14, 2011 2:54 pm

rezaf wrote:The file that was there was the vanilla 1.02 equipment file without modifications - though I'm 90% sure there were no mods applied when I installed 1.04, there's the possibility that I had a mod applied when I installed 1.04, and when I would have disabled such mod in the mod manager, it'd have copied the 1.02 equipment file from the backup folder.

It seems plausible.

rezaf · Post by **rezaf** » Mon Nov 14, 2011 3:15 pm

Well, it looks like you guys have been selling yourselves under value.
I finished the mission using the cheat and saved in the deployment phase of the next one - Dijon.
Guess what I found in my deployment pool ... a captured Char B1. Since this unit wasn't in the 1.02 equipment file, shuffling in a new one mid-campaign seems to work, after all.
At least I have no other explanation how such a thing could otherwise be possible...
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rezaf

Rudankort · Post by **Rudankort** » Tue Nov 15, 2011 1:41 pm

Just to clarify this... if you are playing a campaign, the game updates eqp table between scenarios. However, it does not overwrite existing units, it only adds the units which were not in the eqp table before, but are available in the equipment file now. This way we try to avoid technical issues without changing the stats of all existing units.