CSI Sweep: Forgotten Army 1941-42

[bru888]

Bilin-Sittang v. 1.0 (continued)

Just continuing to check on this: If you include "Scenario Turn Limit" on the Japanese triggers, you are allowing the British to lose these Primary VPs and regain them before the end of the scenario. If your intention is instant defeat should one of them fall, then you don't want "Scenario Turn Limit" (and you would change the Trigger Event to "Capture VP Event"'):

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[This post to be continued . . . wife wants to shop! ]

[Aaah, that's over. Now back to the important things in life, such as this! ]

With the exception of the Paung trigger, all of the Japanese Secondary Objective triggers are set to "Open" instead of "Failed." Also, this set of triggers is just mislabeled; they do correctly point to Kamamaung:

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As with the previous scenario, it appears none of the Japanese regiments have a Target Hex assigned for their "Setup AI Team - Move to Hex" orders. This is easily detected by the missing Remove Hex button:

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A Japanese plane is likely to set off this bridge demolition if you don't specify Unit Definition Category as "Land." Also, the popup message is incomplete; no image and no text:

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[bru888]

Rangoon v. 1.0

No corresponding AI objectives (human Defeat not possible) and no outcome descriptions.

Orphan here:

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The Japanese start off with inadequate land supply:

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One of the Primary Objectives, Pyu, is not named nor is it furnished with a Primary VP flag.

There seems to be a disconnect with this scenario as well concerning its Primary Objectives. They all require holding VP's for 20 turns but the scenario contains 24 turns. What do you intend? Are these scenario-end goals and, if so, should they be set as such (24 turns) or should the scenario contain only 20 turns?:

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And the same things that I have been saying over and over apply here; that is, the Japanese should have 20 chances (Turn >20 or Turn =21) because otherwise the scenario will end at the beginning of Turn 20. This is true of all other objectives; i.e., increment Turn +1:

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Also, all of the Japanese Primary Objective triggers merely reopen the objective instead of failing it:

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[bru888]

Rangoon v. 1.0 (continued)

The "Aussies" module is cool, with the Dialog Popup. Just a couple of issues with it.

First, you have it set for Scenario Start. At least on my PC, with my installation, it pops up before the scenario even starts so the game player does not know to what it pertains:

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Instead, I set the Dialog Popup for Turn Start / Turn =1 and it looks more appropriately placed here, right after the Deployment Phase is finished:

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But here's another recommendation: Unless the game player thoroughly read the scenario description before launching it in the campaign module, he's still not going to know what you are talking about. That's why I would move or copy this portion of the scenario description to the briefing:

"He [General Wavell] was expecting substantial reinforcements from the Middle East, including an Australian infantry division. These Australian troops may be deployed at a cost of resources."

Now if the player did not read the briefing, it's his fault.

Here's something else. Note carefully that even before the question is answered, the Australians already have 39 land CP's and 6 air CP's. After the question is answered with "Yes," those numbers are doubled to 78 and 12 respectively:

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That's because this trigger is set to fire at Any Event (probably Scenario Start) and it awards the first set of CP's anyway. Answering "Yes" to the question effectively doubles them. For the Dialog Popup message to work effectively, this trigger should be inactive (clear the box):

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One more consideration. What is the true cost of choosing the Australian division? You say that it will cost 50 British and 50 Indian resources but they may have none to begin with; no RP's are given in the scenario start:

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In this case, it does not appear to create a deficit when the player chooses "Yes" because, by Turn 2, those factions have the same resource point balance whether the Australian division is present or not:

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I think the trigger would work, reducing resources for each by 50, but only if they had a balance to start with. Now, some RP's may be rolled over from the previous scenarios, of course, and that would be the "bank account" to be debited. I wonder, though, if the player would ever have an RP balance to roll over in this campaign.

[bru888]

Rangoon v. 1.0 (continued)

None of the "Setup AI Team - Move to Hex" orders on any of the triggers for 112.Reg, 143.Reg, 55.Cav, 214.Reg, 215.Reg, and 143.Detach have a Target Hex assigned, as evidenced by the missing "Remove Hex" button. All of this careful choreography and none of it is going to happen unless I am completely misunderstanding the "Setup AI Team - Move to Hex" effect (kindly inform me, if so):

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I wonder . . . and this is sliding back into "CSD" so please forgive the impertinence . . . but I've been thinking this for the past few scenarios: Is this amount of choreography a bit of overkill? Obviously it is a ton of work; just looking through the Jap AI folders in these scenarios is a chore for me. I can imagine how much time it has taken for you to lay it all out and, if I am not mistaken about the "Setup AI Team - Move to Hex" feature needing Target Hexes, well, that is what I wonder: Whether you had "choreography fatigue" starting perhaps with Hong Kong but most evidenced with Moulmein and onward.

Is it necessary to plot each AI team's movements from point to point or can their movements be more generalized? I mean, if they start at point A and there are VP's at points B, C, and D, would it suffice to just command them to move from point A to D as long as B and C are not too far out of their way? I believe the AI "sees' VP's as well as we do and will go for them as long as it's logistically feasible.

There are 15 scenarios in this campaign and the amount of work needed to orchestrate each of these AI teams in every scenario must be tremendous. And, of course, the more complicated you make things, the more likely are errors and omissions.

[bru888]

Toungoo-Prome v. 1.0

The Japanese start out short on supply:

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No outcome descriptions and "Draw" has become "Daw." Also, I think this is a typo, as I could not find any reference to "Youngoo" as an alternative spelling (also, the "Y" key is right next to the "T" key ).:

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Just another reminder that, with this "Scenario Turn Limit" on this trigger, it means the scenario must be played out until the end and the British have a chance to win back the second Primary VP before then:

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Also the usual reminder that all of these Secondary Objectives should be advanced Turn +1:

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All of the Japanese objective triggers are marked "Open" instead of "Failed":

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The Allied rewards are all "Get a specialisation point" but this one changes income (by a factor of zero) instead:

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All of the Allied objective triggers refer to the Neutral faction with the third Effect. Perhaps you meant Nationalist China:

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There's a problem with the Allied Oktwin and Tantabin triggers. Both require the British to hold these VP's, whereas the Chinese possess them at the beginning of the scenario. Unless they lose them to the Japanese and the British retake them in time, these objectives cannot be won. At best, if the Chinese hold onto Oktwin and Tantabin, the objective will remain open:

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For that reason, and to be on the safe side for all of these objectives (Secondary and maybe even Primary), you may want to consider setting them for Team 1.

Lastly, check your choreography here. You resumed setting Target Hexes for "Setup AI Team - Move to Hex" but roughly 50% of them are still missing.

[bru888]

Indian Ocean Raid v. 1.0

A bit of "CSD": Bombay looks like a village compared to the three cities along the coast east and south of it, and those locations are unnamed. (On closer examination, I see that you named hangars and an AA gun as "Calcutta" and "Rangoon." I recommend naming hexes for these important cities instead.)

No outcome descriptions. No AI objectives means human Defeat is not possible.

"If you attempt to go after the Japanese, try to cherry pick some targets and then withdraw - shoot and scoot!
The Americans have canceled their Doolittle raid and thus made available their carriers Enterprise and Hornet. (This is an usual divergence from historical reality for you.)

The five Japanese submarines are "orphaned":

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No land supply is provided for any of the AA guns on either side. The Japanese AA guns suffer from the outset whereas a couple of British AA guns will begin withering as soon as ships sail away. Don't forget the AA guns on islands.

This can be a sign of trouble - there are only 10 ships in the Bombay convoy - but in this case the 11th erroneous unit is the Sabang hangar. Still, just to be on the safe side, I would "unteam" the hangar:

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[bru888]

Indian Ocean Raid v. 1.0 (continued)

All of your "Do not lose" objective triggers, Primary and Secondary, are faulty. I proved this by flying a Swordfish across the waters (and barely making it) to create just one Combat Event:

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The moment the plane attacked the AA gun, all of those objectives were marked as completed and the scenario was over. That's because you have them marked as Combat Event and, at the first occurrence of combat, if those units have not been destroyed, the objectives are achieved:

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This is difficult to explain and visualize, I know, but let's try: You need to redesign the Primary Objective triggers so that the "Do not lose" include the Condition of Turn Start / Scenario Turn Limit and, at that time, if nothing has been lost, then they are achieved. OR, you can design them so that the objectives are achieved at the start and if Destroyed Amount = 1, then they are failed. However, in this case you need another objective that is not achieved at the start or the scenario will end immediately. As for the Secondary Objective triggers, those you can mark as achieved from the start, only to be failed if a merchant ship or supply ship is lost (Destroyed Amount = 1).

[Duty calls again. I will continue with this scenario at a later time.]

[bru888]

Indian Ocean Raid v. 1.0 (continued)

The mission reads, "Do not lose the Bombay convoy" but it's clarified: "You must not lose any transports." However, "Do not lose the troops transports" implies both while the criterion according to the trigger is to not lose any. Same for "Do not lose the US oilers." Perhaps inserting the words "any of" after "lose" would be better.

[Be prepared for the complaint/request that the human player should be able to play the U.S. Navy (AI Teams 4 and 5). With the British looking after the Bombay convoy and the troop transports (Teams 1 and 2; AI as they should be), they would hardly be expected to lend support to the U.S. oilers (Team 3; AI as it should be) which are guarded by a sizeable U.S. fleet. Probably the human player will not be able to spare any British units for their defense, so he must merely watch AI Teams 4 and 5 seek and destroy, hoping for the best to accomplish one of his objectives.]

I would set these to Distance = 1 so as to alleviate pushing and shoving in an overcrowded port hex. As it is, it would take 10 turns to get through exiting 10 supply ships, if they all make it to Bombay:

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By the way, the Scenario Variable seems to be a leftover but in fact suggests a better way of handling the Bombay Convoy objective; that is, maybe requiring 8 of 10 of those ships to arrive to complete the objective. Seems more reasonable to allow a few such losses; they are not the same as a capital ship or a carrier where losing one of those is a catastrophe (strategically speaking, of course).

One last thing. You say, "Get 10 resources for each transport that reaches port" but there is no provision for this in your triggers.

[bru888]

Yenangyang-Meiktila v. 1.0

No outcome descriptions. No AI objectives means human Defeat is not possible.

All Primary and Secondary Objectives should be advanced Turn +1 so as to conform to the stated objectives.

As was the case with Toungoo-Prome, there is a possibility that Primary and Secondary VP's may end up occupied by the Nationalist Chinese. If you require only the British alliance to control them, it may cost the player some objectives. I recommend setting all of the Allied "Hold" triggers to Team 1.

"We must deny the Japanese access to the important oil fields at Yenangyang.
Destroy the facilities if the enemy comes too close."

"We will hopefully get help from the Chinese Nationalist forces.
But their commanders are finicky and difficult to cooperate with.
So you may need to divert some forces if the Chinese do not fulfill their promises and Meiktila is threatened."

Once again, all of the Japanese objective triggers are set to Open the Allied objective instead of Failed. Perhaps I am not understanding what you have in mind - it's difficult to know that of course - perhaps you want to give the Allies a chance to win back VP's before time expires. I look for Primary objectives at least to be resolved one way or the other in the end but I will have to let you think about this and decide.

There are three definite issues with one set of these triggers, however.

The Target Hex for the Allied Meiktila trigger points not to Meiktila but the partial hex above it; you can just see a remnant stub from the hex position locator here:

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The trigger itself refers to the wrong number of turns and the wrong objective:

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All three issues are found with the Japanese Meiktila trigger as well, with the additional issue that its "Check Hex Owner" refers to the wrong alliance.

Regarding the "Yenangyaung oil fields" trigger, the mission is to "Destroy the oil fields on or after turn-30." Perhaps, then, this should be Turn >29?:

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I'm not sure what you were trying to accomplish here. Please recall and consider:

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This also might be a problem with the "Yenangyaung oil fields" trigger in that you have them set up as belonging to the neutral faction but here, you are requiring them to be Japanese. In fact, this Condition would qualify instantaneously in that I don't think the Japanese have any of their own oil pumps on the map. To my knowledge, the oil pumps cannot be conquered and converted, only destroyed, so what was in your mind needs to be revisited:

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When you do straighten out the "Yenangyaung oil fields" trigger, don't forget to create another one that fails it.

[bru888]

Yenangyang-Meiktila v. 1.0 (continued)

This trigger refers to the wrong alliance:

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You seem to have recovered from your choreographic malaise, swoon, whatever it was! EVERY "Setup AI Team - Move to Hex" Effect has a Target Hex assigned! (Hint, at the risk of beating a dead horse: Simpler choreography in this scenario helped, I have no doubt. )

[bru888]

Monywa-Mandalay v. 1.0

No outcome descriptions. No AI objectives means human Defeat is not possible.

All Primary and Secondary Objectives should be advanced Turn +1 so as to conform to the stated objectives.

See my previous comments as to why you are holding open Allied objectives instead of failing them with Japanese objective triggers.

As was the case with Toungoo-Prome and Yenangyang-Meiktila, there is a possibility that Primary and Secondary VP's may end up occupied by the Nationalist Chinese. If you require only the British alliance to control them, it may cost the player some objectives. I recommend setting all of the Allied "Hold" triggers to Team 1.

In the previous scenario, you had at least one Primary objective that was the same number of turns as the scenario itself. Here, though, the longest of these Primary objectives end at Turn 35. What are the remaining 5 turns for in this scenario?

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This objective points way over here for some reason:

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And, both of the corresponding Lashio airfield Allied and Japanese objective triggers point to a hex off the map as indicated by another one of those hex location pointer remnants:

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If you are going to award additional Resource Point income for "Hold all eastern objectives for at least 15 turns," you might as well say so in the objective. (By the way, here's a good example of what I said previously: All three eastern objectives are being held by the Nationalist Chinese. If that situation continues for 15 or more turns, the human player still does not achieve this objective because it calls for the British alliance to hold them. Better to use Team 1.)

Note: ALL Secondary objectives are set for Capture VP Event. They should be Turn Start except for the Japanese eastern objective triggers.

For example, this should be Turn Start because if the Chinese do hold on to all three VP's, the trigger will not fire anyway (no Capture VP Event):

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As I said, the Japanese eastern objective triggers can remain Capture VP Event if that is what you wish.

Your recovery concerning "Setup AI Team - Move to Hex" Target Hexes continues! May it continue for one more scenario!

However . . . the vast majority of those triggers, if not all of them, have the Capture VP Event. That does not seem to make sense in that there aren't that many VP's to capture in the scenario. My hunch is that you made an error and copied it over and over again for the rest of the choreography.

In general, throughout this campaign, you would do well to review all of your AI movement triggers. I do look at each one but I don't trace out what you are doing, nor do I check whether the target hexes make sense (I only check to see if you have target hexes) and, frankly, you have so many of them that I get glassy-eyed and may have missed such nuances such as the prevalence of Capture VP Event that I picked up just now.

[bru888]

Arakan v. 1.0

No outcome descriptions. (Note: This scenario and the previous one still have the default 0,1,2,3,4 outcome numbers instead of your customary 0,0,1,1,1.)

No AI objectives means human Defeat is not possible.

See my previous comments as to why you are holding open Allied objectives instead of failing them with Japanese objective triggers.

The Japanese are short on air supply which I don't think is intentional. They have "Off-map Air Supply Source" but lack Exit Hexes / Allow Redeploy:

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Since the objective is to "Capture and hold" all of these secondary objectives, all of the Allied triggers need to be set for "Turn Start / Scenario Turn Limit":

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Which leads me to speculate once more as to why you have made all of these Japanese Secondary Objective "Open" triggers for many of the scenarios in this campaign. They seem superfluous . . .

Again, nearly all of your AI Team orders are set for the same Event but this time, it's Combat Event. It seems unlikely, but who knows. I urge you once again to check all of your choreography in all of these scenarios because it would be a shame to waste any of the time and effort that you put into it.

This trigger is interesting. It's labeled "1+2/50.Paratroop" and it says "Two battalions of the Indian 50.Paratroop Brigade are available" but it generates a couple of Spitfire Mk.II's?:

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It also omits an image for the Event Popup message:

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You know better than me on this: When you want the player to build his own airstrip, do you spawn the airstrip or a construction group?:

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The reason I am asking is, this message says, "Maungdaw airstrip available for construction." And it, too, is missing an image:

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That wraps up this CSI Sweep. It's been a pleasure as usual and I hope that it helps. It's a long thread, I know, and many issues have been raised. Although I would not change anything if I had to do it all over again, please, as usual, feel free to disregard whatever you consider unimportant and concentrate your efforts on what does matter to you.

[Erik2]

Wow, that was some sweep
Excellent stuff, we should publish this as 'Scenario creation for Dummies - All the things you really should avoid'

All these scenarios were created/started way before the official Burma campaign, so I was very much in learning mode.
And to make matters worse, I used a template Burma map (big & beautiful) and of course cropped the scenario maps to death afterwards.
All in all, no wonder there is so many errors here.

A big thank you, Bru.
You're the Man.

[bru888]

My pleasure.

One thing that I feel the need to periodically point out to people is how very complicated just one scenario can be under the hood. Then multiply that by 15 or so and package it all up into a campaign with its own settings.

My point is, there are many things to work on in this campaign but overall it is well-designed, as always. People should not get the wrong impression. The maps are great, the planning is great, and the execution will be great once most of these matters are addressed.

Keep going, Erik, and I will be glad to lend a hand again when you are ready.

[GabeKnight]

A big "Thank you" from me, too, Bruce!

Besides being good - and sometimes funny - reading material, I just know I'm gonna benefit from all your work later on when playing the campaign...