CSI Sweep: US Navy Campaign 1941-1946

[bru888]

Hawaii v. 3.0

Scenario Name: "Hawaii - Hypothetical"

Scenario Description: "The US Fleet still operated from Pearl Harbor . . . The objective is Pearl Harbor" (With OOB, I always honor and defer to the British spellings of certain English words but in this case, the American version of "Harbor" is certainly the accurate choice.)

Primary Objective Description: "Not a single transport must enter port."

Secondary Objective Descriptions: "Get 1 specialisation points."

Indeed, "what was that line about God and big battalions?" It turns out it's from Voltaire (and not Napoleon, as some people think): “It is said that God is always on the side of the big battalions.” How that applies to this situation is a bit beyond me . . . if anything, it sounds like a pep talk for the Japanese here . . . but I'll think about it.

The Keiyo Maru, one of the "Hawaii transports," is on AI Team 21 "Hawaii Invasion-2" by mistake, I believe; their mission is is not the Primary VP but a hex eastward, out to sea. The Keiyo Maru should be in AI Team 22:

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For reasons stated previously - multiple ships heading for one hex; warships racing ahead and perching on the VP hex - I would make this Distance = 1 for all of these "Hawaii transports" triggers:

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For an exciting objective like this one, I am sure that linking this trigger to it would be appreciated so that there is a running tally of merchant ships sunk:

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Hmmm. Come to think of it, it's uncertain which tally it will pick up: "Scenario Variable" or "Check Unit Count." I tell you, to me, it would be worth the extra work to have these objectives split - two primary objectives - so that there could be two separate counts to follow. I have a feeling that this scenario is going to be a cliffhanger! It's a bit sad to know that players will never see this scenario unless they lose at Midway but one of the perks (an Americanism? Means "rewards") of doing CSI Sweeps is that I will know it's there!

[bru888]

Hawaii v. 3.0 (continued)

Since this is one of the two scenarios so far to have an AI objective, there should be another Effect that fails that objective ("Hawaii") for the AI on the "Hawaii saved" trigger and completes it for the AI on the "Hawaii lost" trigger.

If I am reading this right, I say to myself, "Why just the Akebono Maru, the only merchant ship in AI Team 11?" If you mean to abort the invasion, I would add AI Team 22 to the "Setup AI Team - Exit the Map" Effects of this trigger:

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Another AWOL! Curiously, Japanese morale does not seem to be what it should be at this stage of the war, considering they are winning. Sluggards must be ruthlessly rooted out and punished. That guilty looks says it all . . . for this fellow, a demotion and assignment to the boiler room of the Akebono Maru! :

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Were the Air Patrol points omitted for this AI team?:

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Interesting: I noticed that you neglected to include a Check Turn / Turn = 1 Condition for this trigger:

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So I decided to test it and it worked properly anyway (whether it was at Scenario Start or the start of Turn 1 cannot be known):

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And, for that matter, so did the Japanese sub deployments:

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So from this point on, I am going to dispense with my repetitive "See my comments in the Coral Sea post about two sets of random triggers both named 'Sub-1, 2, 3,'" (much to your immense relief, no doubt ).

Thread to be continued . . .

[bru888]

Santa Cruz v. 3.0

No AI objectives means human Defeat is not possible.

Secondary Objective Description: "Get 1 specialisation point for each oiler sunk."

Air supply is short for both sides:

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And land supply is either missing or short in these areas:

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This looks like an error but may in fact be due to you having forgotten to rename the ship in question. Also, in this situation where its only warships approaching Lunga Point and only one needs to seize the Victory Point, setting the Distance = 0 is the right thing to do, in my opinion:

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The Japanese pilot morale crisis continues. You must crack down on these malcontents or you will have no Japanese Air Force left! Here is the latest miscreant, followed by my suggested "reassignment" :

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[bru888]

Santa Cruz v. 3.0 (continued)

Random triggers are missing for these:

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And the wrong triggers are selected for this one:

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I have been bugging you about these Air Patrol Points being "missing." At one point, I asked whether the planes would patrol anyway, in a random fashion, I suppose:

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At last, I have decided to find out for myself! (Which I should have done in the first place. ) So, here is a patrol plane in that AI Team:

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And it does indeed move away, en route to someplace, who knows where:

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This is another perk of doing these CSI Sweeps: I learn.

So from this point on, I am going to dispense with my repetitive "Were the Air Patrol points omitted for this AI team?" (much to your immense relief, no doubt, but I am not giving up on my "No AI objectives means human Defeat is not possible." ).

[See my post on Rabaul about US carriers possibly being missing in this Santa Cruz scenario.]

Thread to be continued . . .

[GabeKnight]

I have been bugging you about these Air Patrol Points being "missing." At one point, I asked whether the planes would patrol anyway, in a random fashion, I suppose
[...]
And it does indeed move away, en route to someplace, who knows where:

Did you try it in a "long run"? Where do they fly to? Supporting the own AI units or flying into nirvana?

Never tested this myself. The Soviet recons in the WinterWar DLC seem to do a decent job, but with custom stuff, I've also seen some units fly to the map's corners and staying there...

[Horst]

This remembers me of the recon plane in Endsieg which became stuck on the same spot too:
viewtopic.php?f=541&t=91172
If there is already an Air Patrol task for fighters and/or bombers, it should also work for recon planes.

[bru888]

Did you try it in a "long run"? Where do they fly to? Supporting the own AI units or flying into nirvana?

To run off a test of 25 turns or so, I "idled" all of Erik's AI teams in the Santa Cruz scenario, save for AI Team 19:

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( "Herregud!" I can hear him saying. "My beautiful AI teams, ruined!" Don't worry, Erik, I didn't save it. )

I also removed the other planes from that team so I could run the 25 turns expeditiously. Then I just watched that one plane.

Here is a PDF file of the screenshots: Air Patrol Test. Rather than previewing in your browser, download the file and open it in a PDF viewer. Maximize your screen and scroll down.

If this test is typical, then it appears a plane on air patrol travels randomly each turn but never more than 10 hexes or so from its point of origin (or its base, if that is set, I presume).

[GabeKnight]

To run off a test of 25 turns or so, I "idled" all of Erik's AI teams in the Santa Cruz scenario, save for AI Team 19:
[...]
If this test is typical, then it appears a plane on air patrol travels randomly each turn but never more than 10 hexes or so from its point of origin (or its base, if that is set, I presume).

On the one hand, this wasn't meant as "work order" for you, so a huge thank you for testing and the presentation. But on the other hand I'm kinda feeling a bit sorry for you, because you must be incredibly bored at the moment...

In conclusion, "air patrol" is working alright even without trigger-specific orders. Good to know, thanks again.

[Horst]

Bru, you should create an animated GIF instead of PDFs for showing such an air show!
I've just recently added some recon planes to vanilla campaigns too and abused the existing air patrol tasks there. Interesting if it's really random instead of following the click-order. I really must test this too once. If someone really wants to follow a certain pattern, I guess there is no way around than switching to new air patrol tasks at certain turns. Or better: use several Setup AI Team triggers whenever the recon plane arrives at certain hexes. This should work better if the plane has returned to base for repair and can possibly be trigger-looped somehow.

[bru888]

(Thanks, Horst, I may try doing that next time. )

Rabaul v. 3.0

No AI objectives means human Defeat is not possible.

This poor little fellow lacks nourishment (supply):

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I'm going to change my tune a little about this bit of advice. I had been saying that it might be better to set Distance = 1 so that you don't have a "logjam" at Empress Augusta Bay (i.e., a single port hex VP) but then again, perhaps it should take 6 turns to land the transports, given logistical restraints. How big a port could this one have been to handle such an influx in a short span of time? So, I bring it to your attention again but this time I advise you to think back on when I have mentioned this in the past and use your judgment in each case, of course:

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As a matter of fact, better leave it at Distance = 0 if your placement of the convoy so close to Empress Augusta Bay was intentional! Else, this objective would be too easy to attain. I get the point, if so: The player must hold off the mounting Japanese air and sea attacks long enough to get all six nearby transports into port safely. I was thinking of the convoy starting from further away, in which case the point would be to consolidate U.S. warships and defeat the enemy so as to clear the way.

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Here's your latest truancy:

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But I noticed something else. You have three pilots assigned to a Japanese aircraft carrier named "Hornet" (including the quotes). Now, the real USS Hornet was at the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands and, according to Wikipedia, "was irreparably damaged by enemy torpedo and dive bombers. Faced with an approaching Japanese surface force, Hornet was abandoned and later torpedoed and sunk by approaching Japanese destroyers." Are you implying a subtle "alternate history" subterfuge whereby the Japanese seized the carrier instead and somehow got it back into service? If so, then you may want to include an Event Popup which explains this when the "Hornet" is sighted. (**See next post.):

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[By the way and speaking of which, going back to Santa Cruz, your briefing states "only two flat-tops are available to keep the life-line open" and one of the objectives is "Do not lose more than one carrier." Where are the carriers? No US carriers are on the map, waiting for deployment, or spawned later in the scenario that I can see.]

The Unit Designation of "Carrier" is missing for this trigger:

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[bru888]

(**Something like this.):

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[bru888]

This could be the most important post in this thread because, if I am right, it affects how you do things not only in scenarios of this campaign but others as well.

It's this: Are you assuming that, by naming a plane for an aircraft carrier, that the plane will be deployed with the carrier? Or, to give you more credit than that, are you assuming that a carrier that is loaded with planes retains those planes when undeployed in the editor? Because I don't think that is the case.

Those "Hornet" pilots drew my attention and I noticed that they never appear in the scenario. Here is the situation, for example, after 5 turns. The carrier is there but no air units:

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If you look at those "Hornet" planes in the editor, you notice that there are no hangar or, in this case, carrier designations shown on their tiles:

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This means, I believe, that those planes are just like any other undeployed aircraft. Even though they may be named for the aircraft carrier, they are awaiting deployment by the AI and since there are no aircraft deployment hexes on the map for them, they will never appear. Nor will your other carrier-based planes.

You may have been under this assumption: Place the aircraft carrier on the map along with three planes; select each plane; CTRL+click and assign it to the carrier; then undeploy the carrier. I tried this but what happens is, undeploying the carrier strips it of its planes. Thus, your CV-1,-2,-3,-4,-5,-6 triggers are only deploying the carriers, not their planes.

So, I would think the thing to do would be either to place aircraft deployment hexes somewhere at sea near where you deploy the carriers or provide for the planes to be deployed along with the ships in your CV-X random triggers.

See if I am right and correct me if I am not - I hope I am wrong and have overlooked something. If you agree, though, now I give you permission to shout "Herregud!" for real (just warn your family and pets first, perhaps). This will need to be looked at and corrected in every scenario in which you have carriers deploying without their planes. Sorry, my friend.

Thread to be continued . . .

[bru888]

Tarawa v. 3.0

No AI objectives means human Defeat is not possible.

Numerous AI teams are making it difficult to detect proper unit/team assignments. Not only are some blank on the map - we've dealt with that before - but now, past a certain point, I'm getting "false readings" such as these; I thought the Makin transports were all orphans when in fact they are in team 35. The Tarawa transports are in team 36.

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The cutoff is 35 teams, at which point the numbering scheme on the map ("j" key) starts again. 35 = no team, 36 = 0 (whatever that means), 37 = 1, 38 = 2, etc. These four destroyers have been assigned 35, 36, 37, 38:

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For that matter, you must have a much bigger screen than mine because I cannot select AI Teams 1 through 8 because I cannot reach them. That's the top of my screen up there and the list does not scroll.

So here's a bit of constructive criticism (please take it or leave it, no hard feeling if the latter) which I touched on earlier in the thread: Try to consolidate and reduce the number of AI Teams. Too many cannot be good for the scenario, either in gameplay or design.

In some scenarios, you have left several sequential AI teams blank, skipping ahead for some reason. In some scenarios, you create superfluous AI Teams; this scenario is a good example: You have 14 sets of "fighters" and "bombers" teams, 28 total, all doing the same "Air Seek & Destroy" thing and with no provision for any specific programming by trigger. Thus, the only reason why you might need separate sets for each island is if you were to Set Base for each group individually, but you don't do that here.

In other campaigns, I have seen you lump fighters and bombers into a handful of teams which seems to work. I don't know why you are going overboard in this campaign but it leads to unnecessary complication and it obscures the one easy method of checking whether you have AI teams assigned correctly.

[bru888]

Tarawa v. 3.0 (continued)

I would make the Makin and Tarawa location names prominent by moving their locations from the village hexes to the VP flags:

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This is probably an error; not enough turns:

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As a matter of fact, it would take these 7 turns to clear the Tarawa transports! Which reminds me to bring up the recommendation once again that you consider Distance = 1 for the Makin/Tarawa transports triggers. If you want there to be a delay, possibly reflecting logistical difficulties, then leave them at Distance = 0.

Since it is required that "You must eliminate any land unit on the island" for both Makin and Tarawa invasions, I believe you need Check Unit(s) Near Hex, no Japanese land units, for both of these triggers:

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Now that I am aware of it, and fairly sure of it, I will again mention the situation described in the Rabaul posts about carrier-based planes not being deployed. Either air unit deployment hexes or including the planes in the CV-X random keys is called for, I believe.

[bru888]

Philippine Sea v. 3.0

No AI objectives means human Defeat is not possible.

*Sigh.* You know that I am the self-appointed president of your fan club so please take the following with a grain of salt.

74 AI teams?!? Dozens of repetitive one- and two-plane Air Seek & Destroy teams and a couple dozen more blank or unpopulated teams. (I just took a look ahead: 47 for Leyte Gulf and 61 for Coral Sea so you missed the "Century Mark"; i.e., 100 teams. You need to try harder! )

Well, I said what I had to say about this in the Tarawa post. For this scenario, I honestly cannot tell whether there are any orphans or errors in unit/team assignments. Just as an example, the "j" key shows this test unassigned Type 2 Ka-Mi as Team 1 so that tool is useless here:

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Ah, great minds think alike! At least with this idea, as I suggested for Tarawa. I would just add "NW" and "E" to coincide with the objectives:

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For Saipan East, the mission says "All 5 transports must enter port" and for Saipan North-West it says "All 7 transports must enter port," for a total of 12. However, there are 15 merchant ships and according to the triggers, the numbers in the objective descriptions should be "8" and "7" respectively.

Here's the same decision for the transports: For "Check Unit(s) Near Hex," Distance = 0 or Distance = 1?

For the "Saipan E secured" and "Saipan NW secured" triggers, you usually use Unit Definition = Land because the hangar and AA gun are not infantry:

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The Japanese alliance needs to be selected, else this trigger will apply to US carriers as well:

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Now that I am aware of it, and fairly sure of it, I will again mention the situation described in the Rabaul posts about carrier-based planes not being deployed. Either air unit deployment hexes or including the planes in the CV-X random keys is called for, I believe.

Thread to be continued . . .

[GabeKnight]

So here's a bit of constructive criticism (please take it or leave it, no hard feeling if the latter) which I touched on earlier in the thread: Try to consolidate and reduce the number of AI Teams. Too many cannot be good for the scenario, either in gameplay or design.

In some scenarios, you have left several sequential AI teams blank, skipping ahead for some reason. In some scenarios, you create superfluous AI Teams; this scenario is a good example: You have 14 sets of "fighters" and "bombers" teams, 28 total, all doing the same "Air Seek & Destroy" thing and with no provision for any specific programming by trigger. Thus, the only reason why you might need separate sets for each island is if you were to Set Base for each group individually, but you don't do that here.

In other campaigns, I have seen you lump fighters and bombers into a handful of teams which seems to work. I don't know why you are going overboard in this campaign but it leads to unnecessary complication and it obscures the one easy method of checking whether you have AI teams assigned correctly.

Bruce, I might be able to explain this - to a degree, at least. There were huge AI thinking time problems with too many units within one AI team while I was "beta testing" this campaign about a year ago. After testing, I suggested then to split the AI teams to a max of 6-8 units max. per team, I think.
The whole numbering mumbo-jumbo and blank AI teams may be a result of this "splitting".

You may remember this thread: "AI-team tests"

[bru888]

I see. And as we know from experience, deleting things in the editor like AI teams can have unfortunate consequences. Still, he's got teams in here with one or two planes all doing the same thing and while you may have explained the gaps (unused AI teams), I also think Erik may have taken your advice too far.

Look, if it still all works, no harm done. The difficulty lies in editing and verifying team assignments (and looking for "orphans") but if everything was done properly, it should be fine. That is, if the number of AI teams is not another factor in AI thinking time along with the amount of units in each team.

My advice was more about future development, hitting a happy medium or balance of unit/team assignments. I would advocate keeping the number of teams at less than 35 for sure because, as we saw above, the program is not tracking them properly beyond that number if the "j" key is any indication.

[GabeKnight]

This campaign was no PC conversion, if I recall correctly, and had many scens cropped and changed. And with the AI team splits, you may encounter more "weird" stuff going on...just sayin'...

[bru888]

. . . you may encounter more "weird" stuff going on...just sayin'...

I always expect weird when I look at Erik's stuff. Just kidding.

[Erik2]

Herregud...