CSI Sweep: US Corps 1943-44

[bru888]

By invitation from Erik. Version 1.0.

Here is the Campaign Tree in spreadsheet format; this one has two "Crossroads." Note the pink highlighted box and its footnote:

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Speaking of the "Crossroads," they both have the same name. To be sure that they branch properly given certain scenario outcomes, you may want to rename them "Crossroads 1" and "Crossroads 2." If you do, don't forget to remap them wherever they occur in the Campaign Tree:

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This should be "postponed":

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All along, the US earns 5 specialisation points after each scenario. Here, however, it appears that the "5" has been entered in the wrong box:

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This probably will not affect anything, but I see these restrictions in the Campaign Editor; no Navy and U.S. Marines eliminated:

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Yet, in the first scenario, I am able to purchase Marines:

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and even a battleship if command points had been provided:

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So, what are those restrictions for? Do they function in some way that I am not aware of or are they just dysfunctional? If the latter, you may want to remove them so that they don't cause an issue.

Lastly, I just want to point out the shortage, nay, the lack of presentable U.S. Army commanders. These guys hardly look like they are high-ranking and one looks like a lunatic:

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This one isn't too bad; he's next in line on that screen (which cannot be scrolled but the thumbnails can be reduced in size to see them all):

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This is the only fellow showing any stars but alas, he lacks any useful traits which is probably why you didn't include him:

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Which is all neither here nor there. I just thought I would mention it so that you might put it on your list of lobbying items. Goodness knows how you have such influence with the developers, yes?

[Erik2]

Here's the original campaign tree (it is in the campaign folder).

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[conboy]

Gents, meet Pfc Edward J Foley, US Army Sniper. He's very intent, is he not, in cleaning his M1903 Springfield sniper rifle?

https://world-war-2.wikia.org/wiki/M1903_Springfield

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[conboy]

Other guys, in various stages of action.

these guys are used in OoB -- I don't think they should be too offended by their renderings.

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I hope this guy made it home ok!

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This guy is on many, many magazine covers. the image is cropped, another guy in the original photo made it to OoB stardom. I'll post it if I find it. Now I find he's identified as: Marine Sgt. Angelo Klonis.

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Sad to say, this link says he was captured at Saipan.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... aipan.html

conboy

[bru888]

Here's the original campaign tree (it is in the campaign folder).

US Corps 43.jpg

Yes but note what I said about a Draw at Naples bypassing the second crossroads. At Palermo, before the first crossroads, Draw, Minor, and Major Victory all went to that crossroads.

[bru888]

Gents, meet Pfc Edward J Foley, US Army Sniper. He's very intent, is he not, in cleaning his M1903 Springfield sniper rifle?

https://world-war-2.wikia.org/wiki/M1903_Springfield

US Army Sniper Eward J. Foley.png

It's the eyes, especially at smaller dimensions. If you look at larger and larger depictions, they begin to make sense but in the dimensions that you see in the game, he looks like a lunatic (at least to me):

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But the point remains that none of these fellows look like commanders. As I said above, the only two that have airs of authority are these; the first by stretching the imagination a bit (helmet turned to the side so that stars cannot be seen and other markings of rank removed due to concern for snipers) and the second is a brigadier general at best; he'll do for briefings:

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The reason for this paucity of American land commanders? Why, there's only been two American-played DLC for this game: U.S. Pacific (primarily naval-led) and U.S. Marines (technically a component of the U.S. Navy). That's why you see at least two or three commanders who could pass as U.S. admirals, but barely one guy of U.S. general rank (without any special capabilities, by the way).

[bru888]

I was kind to PFC Foley in my previous post, but to me this is how he looks in action - staring fixedly, maniacally at his weapon, like this:

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Incidentally, here is his buddy, he of the brass-knuckled bayonet:

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If these guys are my platoon leaders, I'm going AWOL first chance I get!

[Horst]

Nice finds, conboy!
Better post your findings here where the rest of the commanders are:
http://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewtop ... 74&t=88312

That Foley dude is indeed a good candidate for having nightmares while playing US. It's in the eyes...

I'm pretty sure there will be more real US commanders after Soviet DLC for the Liberation DLC, like Patton and Montgomery. The anonymous trend luckly vanished quickly after the original campaigns.
It's always to give these rather unknown people in the game their proper names as they have suffered much more like most in their whole life.

[conboy]

Bru,
I fully agree with all your points. The game was not kind to Pfc Foley, who actually looks to be a serious, sober, and handsome chap, much unlike myself.

Horst, ok, will do.

There are so many tough-guy generals to pick from in the US WWII panoply, I wonder why they picked the most harried-looking GIs they could find.

Only reason I brought it up is because I had seen most of the OoB stars while looking for Pop-Up pictures. But poor Pfc Foley got the worst treatment though. At least now he's remembered -- at least among us.

conboy

[bru888]

Good thoughts, conboy. But gentlemen, we digress. Back to the business of sweeping this grand campaign in-the-making!

Gela v. 1.0

"It is good to see you up and about, Sir. I sincerely hope that you have fully recovered . . ."

"The dreaded Tiger tanks are heading for your troops."

Only because of the "and hold" portion of the objective do I bring up the usual debate. Do you want the scenario to end as soon as all 4 primary VP's are captured? Or do you want the player to last all 24 turns and turn back any Italian counterattacks? If the former, then this is quite correct, of course:

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If the latter, then you would want "Turn Start / Check Turn / Scenario turn limit." I'm thinking, though, that you have it the way that you wanted it in that the Italian AI Teams start out relatively passively - Static Defense, Local Defense, Defend Hex. Below is the only trigger that I see which makes the Italians more aggressive and it's set for when the U.S. has taken its third VP, a sort of last ditch effort; once that threat is met and overcome, and the fourth VP is in the bag, then I believe the scenario should end:

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[bru888]

Gela v. 1.0 (continued)

Some trigger errors follow.

Wrong link to objective here:

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and a double-whammy here:

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You say nothing of specialisation points here:

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yet you award them here:

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(Speaking of which, isn't 5 specialisation points for each secondary objective a bit hefty? I have never seen you award more than two for any objective, yet in this first scenario, the player could come away with 15 total. You may have worked this out already and this is your intention, of course.)

The Visible Unit alliance should be Green in this trigger, else I don't think it will work. The Visible should be Green and the Viewer should be Gray:

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[bru888]

Gela v. 1.0 (continued)

Actually, make that a quadruple-whammy on this one. I just happened to notice the third and fourth things just as I was deleting the image. It should be marked as Core Units with the Unit Definition as Land:

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[bru888]

Gela counter-attack v. 1.0

I believe this should be set for Scenario Turn Limit:

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On all three of these Tiger-X triggers, the tank is not assigned to an AI team:

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This additional income is being assigned to the Neutral Faction:

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These triggers have me puzzled: "Manfria-1," "Gela," "Germans," and "3 objs." The reason is, each of them is activated by the Axis taking ownership of one (or all three!) of the U.S. primary VP's:

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The puzzling thing is, according to the "Hold all 3 objectives at all times" primary objective, "The scenario should end if the Axis capture their first objective." The associated trigger will ensure this happens.

So, what are the purposes of these four triggers? I mean, I see what you were trying to do. The Gela team heads to Gela, but once Gela is taken, you wanted them to move to Manfria. It's the Condition that is the problem in that none of these triggers will ever fire as the scenario immediately ends when the U.S. loses a primary VP.

I'm thinking perhaps it would be better if, say, the Gela team falters and is decimated, have the remnants merge with the Manfria team and add their weight to that assault. After all, the Axis must take only one primary VP to win this thing, and for the U.S. player to lose.

[bru888]

Agrigento v. 1.0

". . . even if it means you have to bypass Italian pockets of resistance."

I was confused by this until I realized that it means the three secondary VP's. Perhaps point to them in the mission description:

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We cannot call these secondary objectives because the briefing says "you must secure the town of Agrigento and the nearby port of Porto Empedocle. Since Patton wants to reach Palermo as soon as possible, he considers securing those roads the primary objective." Perhaps describe the mission like this?:

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In any event, the promised 5 specialisation points are not awarded by the trigger:

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Pursuant to our conversation in another thread, did you want to generate these mines as Italian instead of Neutral?

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Thread to be continued . . .

[bru888]

Palermo v. 1.0

Clever use of the Bulgarian faction to represent Italian prisoners! Their flag's colors are the same as Italy, turned vertical and rearranged. Clever also the mechanism involved but it's got a couple of flaws.

First, you need this trigger to repeat so "-1" frequency is called for here:

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The second issue is that this trigger doesn't do anything to resolve the secondary objective itself, "Escort prisoners to the POW-camp.":

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A Major Victory would not be possible as this objective will always remain open. Now the question is, what can you do about this? You cannot award the objective with this repeating rewards trigger unless you want to award the objective merely for the first prisoner's safe arrival.

Perhaps instead you want to make the objective "Escort ALL prisoners to the POW-camp" with the description that 5 safe arrivals are needed to fulfill the objective. If so, here is how I would do it:

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By the way, how did you get "Bandits" into this scenario? They only occur with British India. Did you do what I did just now, and add British India to the scenario temporarily? If so, will "Bandits" work without British India in the scenario?

[bru888]

If so, will "Bandits" work without British India in the scenario?

Well, I'll be hornswoggled! They sure do work! I got my 10 resources and presumably my 1 specialisation point:

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[Incidentally, I should mention that 18 turns may not be enough for this scenario. The POW spawn site that I chose was the second nearest to the POW camp and you can see that it took me half the scenario just to go get those guys (the Italians were #johnconnor'ed into passivity) and march them back to camp.]

[bru888]

Palermo v. 1.0 (continued)

This image file is not in the folder:

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As a matter of fact, these other images are in the folder and I wonder what they were to be used for:

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[bru888]

San Fratello v. 1.0

"It might require several attempts to dislodge . . ."

Remove the break mark: "<b>You are strongly advised to keep a few units in reserve for future deployment."

Now, on this scenario, I need to skip ahead of the objectives to the Sant'Agata module, because I think there may be difficulties therein. Let's see if I can lay out how this is supposed to work.

The Sant'Agata objective and an associated one are not active in the beginning:

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When the scenario starts, we have this message pop-up:

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It's only a message. Then, on Turn 3, there is this additional message-only pop-up:

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[By the way, that screen print was "live" so that means the image, "amph2," is not in the folder.]

The message says, in part, "You can deploy up to four units for the amphibious assault this turn only" but I don't see the mechanism that restricts the opportunity to Turn 3 only. Unless . . . you made these deployment hexes available for Turn 3 only:

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So that trigger enables the "Capture Sant'Agata" objective. Whereupon the player moves to do so and when he does, it activates this trigger which enables the "Don't let any German units escape" objective:

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[By the way again, the image file "retreat" is not in the folder either.]

All right, I have it down. Only minor issues: two missing images and that business about restricting this only to Turn 3, perhaps by limiting the turn availability of the deployment hexes.

[bru888]

. . . perhaps by limiting the turn availability of the deployment hexes.

Yep, that's how you did it, alright. I couldn't tell in the scenario editor but a quick playthrough shows the availability of the deployment hexes on Turn 3 only:

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Genius. Sheer genius.

[bru888]

San Fratello v. 1.0 (continued)

HOWEVER . . . there's always a "however," eh? . . . there is a more significant problem in that the "Capture Sant'Agata" objective was NOT enabled, as you see here:

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I think it's because of this stipulation as a Condition:

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When I changed that to Class: Transport (Naval), the trigger did in fact work:

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Here's a design suggestion: There is no supply at Sant'Agata so the troops that land there get pounded and are pretty much powerless to stop German troops from exiting:

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If your intention was to force the player to break through and relieve this "pocket" as soon as possible by establishing a supply line, then fine. If not, though, I would suggest either:

1. Placing supply at Sant'Agata (remembering, though, that it takes 3 turns to get the benefits of a captured supply source), or
2. Spawn a U.S. supply ship alongside the deployment hexes during Turn 3.