Desert Rats 1940-42 beta testing

[Erik2]

Race For Tunis:
Assigned Axis units to AI Teams.
Fixed sec objs.
Set income to correct nations.
Fixed Axis AI orders. The idea is to lead each formation by its nose across the map.
The supply trigger is for the Brandenburger unit arriving on the southern map edge.
And yes, this scenario was the most difficult get correct giving the unusual battle conditions. Still do not know if it will play OK...

Kasserine:
Fixed orphaned German units including reinforcements.
Fixed primary objs (so you know how my mind works, or rather does not).
Added German supply (and I will check earlier scenarios).

Fixed Campaign branch Kasserine/Pass.

Mdauuar:
Fixed primary obj.

Kasserine Pass:
Fixed primary and secondary objectives.
Added sec obj rewards.
Fixed AI unit assignments.

Medenine:
Fixed primary and sec objs.

Mareth:
Added unit AI assignments.
Replaced comma with punctuation mark in briefing. Forensic work.
Fixed primary objective.
Added specialisations.

Tunisia:
Fixed AI player.
Added unit AI assignments.
CHanged primary obj to allow for defeat.
Added more turns.
Upgraded some Axis armored units.
Increased Italian experience.
Assigned Axis commanders.

Link updated to v4.1

And this campaign would be in a partially sorry state without Bru's investigations. A big thank you!

[terminator]

First Bardia :

The secondary objectives are not clear for me :

- what type of unit is exactly an Italian armor ? -> tanks
- what type of unit is a fort ? -> fortress
- Sink all Italian vessels -> only one ?

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[Erik2]

Armor is a common name for tanks, but I've changed it.
Forts and fortresses are the same as far as I know. Fort is the more common name.
There's only one Italian vessel, I've changed the txt.

[ALP071]

Lads, I'm having trouble with Border Raid, as even after taking care of all trucks, plus the armour, plus the landing ground, all I get is a bloody draw!

BTW, how do I know I kicked the arse of all the Italian forces, and there is no die-hard unit hiding in a remote spot of the map? I used the anti-fog of war cheat to make sure .

Bug?

P.D. I'm playing 4.3, supposedly the ultimate "bug free" version

[Erik2]

I wonder if I should change the trigger to just check for number of alive Italian trucks = zero.

[GabeKnight]

P.D. I'm playing 4.3, supposedly the ultimate "bug free" version

Whoever told you that?
Be glad that Erik actually does update and fix his scens really fast and in regular intervals...

I wonder if I should change the trigger to just check for number of alive Italian trucks = zero.

No, all you have to do is to add a "win" trigger for the player, like this:

Screenshot 603.jpg (214.9 KiB) Viewed 3265 times

Also with the changed units, the player starts undersupplied "-2". And after a few turns with the new unit's spawns, also the AI trucks get undersupplied.

Screenshot 603.jpg (214.9 KiB) Viewed 3265 times

Screenshot 604.jpg (602.29 KiB) Viewed 3265 times

[GabeKnight]

Erik, if interested fixed scen attached.
This time, I also changed the supply like indicated in the above screenshot.
As always, feel free to use it inside the DR campaign or just as template.

[Erik2]

I 'borrowed' Gabe's Border-fix and updated the link to v4.4.
Thanks.

[goose54]

Eric, finished up to Bardia. Won't let me advance game. Says I've put to many aircraft done not enough support. Need to take some off.
Problem is I didn't put any aircraft on board. There is a Hudson III lower right corner that was there before I deployed my units. ?????
Didn't know how to remove it if that's the problem. Good game so far hope I can move forward.

Goose

[Erik2]

This is about Second Bardia.
There are two Allied non-core units spawned on turn-1 in addition to the pre-deployed Hudson.
The offmap air supply spurce is checked and there is are air exit/re-entry hexes. So it should work...

Anyway, I have placed the spawned air units on map.
Attaching zip files in posts does not work, so you need to download the latest campaign.

Link updated to v4.5

[goose54]

Thanks, my friend.

Goose

[SirAllan]

Hi Erik - Denmark calling
In First Bardia (vers 4.4) I noticed Italien armor drove threw the minefields, is this intentionel
I havn't tryed vers 4.5 yet

[Erik2]

Crazy Italians...
I've seen this behaviour earlier and it was reported as a bug a long time ago.
Nothing a scenario designer can do.
The only thing I can think of is that assigned mines to a faction may allow units belonging to the faction may ignore the mines...?

[SirAllan]

Sounds fair enogh - afterall they lay all those mines and have a map over the area

[bru888]

Wait, what the heck? So, if you lay mines down but not as neutral but assigned to one of the factions, that faction will "know" the placement of the mines and therefore be able to safely navigate through them?

Because that's what you must have done, Erik; here I have placed three conventional mines above your Italian "units" and noticed for the first time that unlike mine, yours are indeed "owned" by the Italians. So if they can walk through them, this makes sense and is very handy to know.

Speaking of which, who knew? Learn something new every day about this game, I always say.

This is not a bug. It's genius. Sheer genius, Erik! Yours for finding it somehow, whether it was intentional on their part or not.

Screenshot 2.jpg (325.38 KiB) Viewed 3084 times

[bru888]

Interesting stuff. Notice how I cannot move onto the mined tiles themselves (hovering over the two adjoining hexes shows no possible movement arrow) because they are co-units of mine and two units cannot occupy the same hex.

However, if I have enough movement points, I can walk "through" the mine field to the other side. And quite safely, I might add, like tiptoeing through the tulips!

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Screenshot 7.jpg (412.45 KiB) Viewed 3075 times

I dub this the Erik Faction Mine Effect!

[GabeKnight]

Speaking of which, who knew? Learn something new every day about this game, I always say.

You really didn't know this? Aren't you Moderators supposed to know such things?

I was wondering if it may even be better if my engineers laid mines that belonged to my faction...?

Screenshot 637.jpg (527.45 KiB) Viewed 3072 times

[bru888]

I was wondering if it may even be better if my engineers laid mines that belonged to my faction...?

That's a great question, so I tried out an engineer using the same handy test scenario as before (don't mind those pesky IAR 80'S - they are part of the test scenario but also a clue as to what I am currently working on ). It turns out that your engineer lays only the neutral kind of "eggs":

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Screenshot 3.jpg (389.15 KiB) Viewed 3069 times

So that would be a great suggestion, yes, but frankly, I think this is just an oversight but not really a bug. The developers probably never intended mines to be anything but neutral or else they would have placed mines on the units toolbar for all factions in the scenario editor.

As it is, what Erik did (genius, sheer genius) was to make mines a factional unit and while I said that friendly units can "walk through" their own mines, what my test really showed is that the game considers them just another friendly unit in whose hex you cannot stop while moving. As in the game, you can move through such friend-occupied hexes if you have enough MPs but not stop in them.

So don't look for the developers to pick up on this but it's a nice thing for scenario designers to know.

[Erik2]

An additional scenario creator feature would be to use a mixture of neutral and faction mines. You could create gates through minefields and steer the AI units through a minefield.
Engineers should probably lay faction-mines. It would add some uncertainty to multiplayer games, which is a good thing.

[GabeKnight]

You could create gates through minefields and steer the AI units through a minefield.

Good idea! If you also reveal the "hidden" mines to the AI, it could be used for some interesting design concepts.

There are some scenarios in the Sandstorm DLC that could benefit from this... (or rather: could have... or could have had... )