Winter War 1939 Beta Test

[terminator]

Why a Sniper can not attack a Mechanized unit

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Maybe because only a Sniper Elite can attack a Mechanized unit

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[terminator]

How to destroy a Tiger with one bullet (Sniper Elite):

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[bru888]

Karelian Isthmus:

What the hell is "Finnish re-entry"

That is the extra hex or two which we provide in these scenarios because many of them lack flagged village hexes. They are for deploying newly purchased units or redeploying restored dead units during the scenario (as opposed to the initial deployment hexes). Sometimes these hexes are marked thusly.

No Supply in that case for the "Finnish re-entry" ?

Not necessarily.

The T... Bridge looks better like this:

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Agreed. As a matter of fact, it's already fixed in the copy that I have here:

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Moreover, the name of the bridge itself is different in my copy:

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This I remember changing. I don't know where the name "Terijokivirta" came from; both the village and the river that it is named for are "Terijoki" ("joki" is a Finnish word for "river" and so is "virta" so "Terijokivirta" was redundant). I remember making that edit. This may have happened before Erik and I worked out the post-production system of using the "Ready for Bru" and "Back to Erik" folders so that we don't inadvertently conflict on what is the official version.

Erik, attached is my text_english.txt file from 01Terijoki. I believe it will be alright if you replace the official version with this file as I don't think you have made any textual changes to post-production. Doing so will take care of correcting "Terijokivirta" to "Terijoki" for the river, the village, and where either is mentioned in the objectives or briefing. As far as the bridge crossing, changing the lake hex for a river crossing as I have it will make the bridge look better. Despite what terminator mentioned before, however, I would not widen that crossing. Let the Finns defend that bridge for as long as they can.

text_english.zip

(2.44 KiB) Downloaded 72 times

[bru888]

Why a Sniper can not attack a Mechanized unit

That's not us.

[Dwightd]

Version 1.1, lvl 3, Scenario Salla-Kemijarvi

I got a minor victory on this one.

Shooting down two bombers is impossible on this one. Due to the distance from the air entry/exit, the fighter only has 1-2 turns of engagement. I went with the unorthodox approach of flying my fighter out of fuel to give me more turns at the bombers I shot down one, but the other left the area once he was down to a strength of 4, and he never returned. I could not find him anywhere.

The extra artillary was a nice addition but very ineffective. I took them on two separate routes to the enemy. The first one did not engage the enemy until turn 20 when he got in range. The second one never did fire a shot in anger, was just too far away.

I need to phrase this next part carefully so Erik does not think of the "E" word. The Russians never got close to any of the fortresses. A few well placed AT guns, fronted by infantry, blocked up the roads and they never advanced very far.

So in my incredibly average opinion I think this one could use a little balancing.

Keep up the good work, I am having fun !

[bru888]

We just fixed the bombers objective issue. Next update, I would assume. We saw that one coming.

That artillery, did it have transportation attached? I'll check it tomorrow.

[terminator]

02Kollaa

Secondary objectives should only be validated at the end:

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[bru888]

Version 1.1, lvl 3, Scenario Salla-Kemijarvi

I got a minor victory on this one.

Shooting down two bombers is impossible on this one. Due to the distance from the air entry/exit, the fighter only has 1-2 turns of engagement. I went with the unorthodox approach of flying my fighter out of fuel to give me more turns at the bombers I shot down one, but the other left the area once he was down to a strength of 4, and he never returned. I could not find him anywhere.

The extra artillary was a nice addition but very ineffective. I took them on two separate routes to the enemy. The first one did not engage the enemy until turn 20 when he got in range. The second one never did fire a shot in anger, was just too far away.

I need to phrase this next part carefully so Erik does not think of the "E" word. The Russians never got close to any of the fortresses. A few well placed AT guns, fronted by infantry, blocked up the roads and they never advanced very far.

So in my incredibly average opinion I think this one could use a little balancing.

Keep up the good work, I am having fun !

We just fixed the bombers objective issue. Next update, I would assume. We saw that one coming.

That artillery, did it have transportation attached? I'll check it tomorrow.

Well, it's tomorrow now!

Okay, I said that we already addressed the bombers issue and a fix is in the works. Regarding the artillery, you are absolutely right. Grrrr . . . but this is what beta is for, so okay!

No horsey transportation attached means the guns are going to crawl along. A horse transport has to be attached to each gun:

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Erik, I noticed that 14Kemijarvi was still in the "Back to Erik" folder. Therefore, I took a chance by downloading it again, making this additional edit (it already contains the apparatus that addresses the bombers objective issue), and uploading it again. I hope that was the right decision.

[bru888]

02Kollaa

Secondary objectives should only be validated at the end:


02Kollaa(1).jpg

You may be misunderstanding the situation. Those two objective are completed at the beginning of the scenario, only to be lost if 3 infantry units or the one armoured train on the map (to begin with) are destroyed:

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The "Do not lose more than 2 infantry units" objective is evaluated at the "Scenario turn limit," just like the primary objective, and if it is still completed, then the specialisation point is awarded. The "The armoured train must survive" objective does not have a reward; notice that it's do this "Or else" in the description.

Notice also that there are a couple of objectives that get enabled later: "Shoot down at least 1 enemy air unit" turns on when you see Soviet aircraft. It awards a commander when the trigger is activated by a "Combat Event" and a Soviet air loss.

Lastly, there is a "Both armoured trains must survive" objective. This one should get enabled when the second armoured train arrives but only if the first train has not been destroyed. This is another objective that is on from the start, only to be lost if either train is destroyed, and it has no reward.

But, your question has led to some additional thought about those trains. What if the first train is destroyed before the second one arrives? The first objective is failed, of course, but does the second train still turn on the second objective? I need to check that.

Otherwise, though, it appears the secondary objectives in this scenario are working properly.

EDIT: Erik, please place an official copy of 02Kollaa in the "Ready for Bru" folder. I need to provide for that eventuality; that is, if the first armoured train is destroyed before the second train arrives, the "Both armoured trains must survive" objective should remain disabled, obviously. Everything else looks good but this nuance needs to be addressed. As a matter of fact, I'm thinking of merely simplifying things by having just one objective named "No armoured train can be destroyed." That's applicable whether there is only one armoured train or, later, two of them on the map.

[terminator]

02Kollaa

Secondary objectives should only be validated at the end:


02Kollaa(1).jpg

You may be misunderstanding the situation. Those two objective are completed at the beginning of the scenario, only to be lost if 3 infantry units or the one armoured train on the map (to begin with) are destroyed:

A validated objective is definitely validated. If a validated objective at the beginning is not validated at the end then what is the point of validating the objective at the beginning? It leads to confusion, we are no longer sure of anything.
This does not happen in official DlCs, example Demyansk:

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[bru888]

A validated objective is definitely validated. If a validated objective at the beginning is not validated at the end then what is the point of validating the objective at the beginning?
This does not happen in official DlCs, example Demyansk:

You can design an objective like Demyansk to be evaluated, and completed, at the end of the scenario, yes. But it doesn't mean that is the only way to do things.

The idea in our case, with Kollaa, is that the challenge is to NOT have those bad things happen before the scenario ends. Given the length of the scenario and the combat involved, it may be in fact quite difficult to avoid those things happening.

But in the beginning, the infantry are still alive and so is the armoured train. Therefore these objectives can be marked as completed to start the scenario. They are failed later, perhaps, if bad things happen. That is what the game designer intended with those checkboxes.

These are secondary objectives, so it is OK to mark them as completed until they are failed. Same thing for primary objectives, except that the procedure cannot be applied to a single primary objective (i.e., the only one in the scenario) or to all primary objectives, or else the scenario ends immediately.

Surely you have seen this in use elsewhere; I don't know about official DLC's (I bet you are wrong about that), but Erik and I and others have designed primary and secondary objectives in this manner. Again, if these secondary objectives are still completed at scenario end, they are evaluated at that time if a reward has been offered. And of course, NOT losing these objectives means a Major Victory; failing one of them means a Minor Victory.

So the challenges are valid and the objectives are working as designed.

[terminator]

A validated objective is definitely validated. If a validated objective at the beginning is not validated at the end then what is the point of validating the objective at the beginning?
This does not happen in official DlCs, example Demyansk:

You can design an objective like Demyansk to be evaluated, and completed, at the end of the scenario, yes. But it doesn't mean that is the only way to do things.

The idea in our case, with Kollaa, is that the challenge is to NOT have those bad things happen before the scenario ends. Given the length of the scenario and the combat involved, it may be in fact quite difficult to avoid those things happening.

But in the beginning, the infantry are still alive and so is the armoured train. Therefore these objectives can be marked as completed to start the scenario. They are failed later, perhaps, if bad things happen. That is what the game designer intended with those checkboxes.

These are secondary objectives, so it is OK to mark them as completed until they are failed. Same thing for primary objectives, except that the procedure cannot be applied to a single primary objective (i.e., the only one in the scenario) or to all primary objectives, or else the scenario ends immediately.

Surely you have seen this in use elsewhere; I don't know about official DLC's (I bet you are wrong about that), but Erik and I and others have designed primary and secondary objectives in this manner. Again, if these secondary objectives are still completed at scenario end, they are evaluated at that time if a reward has been offered. And of course, NOT losing these objectives means a Major Victory; failing one of them means a Minor Victory.

So the challenges are valid and the objectives are working as designed.

Other Official examples:

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[bru888]

Yes, I know. As I said in my first sentence, that is not the only way to handle the situation. Erik and I, as designers, are taking advantage of a feature provided by the game designer in order to do things differently. How the designer of those Krieg scenarios did his objectives works. How we do it in our Kollaa scenario also works. That's as much as I can say.

Erik, there have been many posts today, all good. I know you would think of it but just as a reminder, there is new stuff starting on the previous page that you probably have not seen yet.

[Erik2]

Bru:
01Terijoki, 12Uomaa2 and 14Kemijarvi are updated and 02Kollaa moved to your folder.


Everybody else:
Link updated to 1.3 in first post.

[terminator]

The AI really has a lot of trouble trying to cross the bridge whose name I forgot, even my gamer computer starts rowing
The passage should be widened to try other units to be able to pass the river beside: deep water->frozen lake or river?

I'll let Erik pass judgment on this. The point of this scenario is to have an outnumbered group of Finns prevent the Soviets from rolling on north. That bridge is a key defense point. But the situation is compromised anyway since the Soviets are also coming from north of the river. I figure that stalemate at the bridge does not last long, does it?

The answer is on the image:

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I don’t think it’s good to stay too long for the Soviet troops :

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[bru888]

The AI really has a lot of trouble trying to cross the bridge whose name I forgot, even my gamer computer starts rowing
The passage should be widened to try other units to be able to pass the river beside: deep water->frozen lake or river?

I'll let Erik pass judgment on this. The point of this scenario is to have an outnumbered group of Finns prevent the Soviets from rolling on north. That bridge is a key defense point. But the situation is compromised anyway since the Soviets are also coming from north of the river. I figure that stalemate at the bridge does not last long, does it?

The answer is on the image:


Karelian Isthmus(1).jpg


I don’t think it’s good to stay too long for the Soviet troops :


Body-of-frozen-Soviet-soldier-propped-up-by-Finnish-fighters-to-intimidate-Soviet-troops-1939-small.jpg

You are a good player, you knew what to do there (such as the AT gun placement) and you succeeded although I notice in the background the other Soviet column closing in; you must have held them off as well. Still, let me take a look at it. Maybe a couple more turns added?

Regarding that photo, I have been avoiding it even though it is famous. You will not see it in these campaigns. Too gruesome.

[Dwightd]

Version 1.3, lvl3, scenario Petsamo

The phrase shooting fish in a barrel comes to mind on this one! The Russians never got a chance to advance. Got a major victory, so all objectives/triggers worked well. All deployment and exit hexes worked well also.

Time to melt back into the forrest and wait for the next ambush

[bru888]

EDIT: Erik, please place an official copy of 02Kollaa in the "Ready for Bru" folder. I need to provide for that eventuality; that is, if the first armoured train is destroyed before the second train arrives, the "Both armoured trains must survive" objective should remain disabled, obviously. Everything else looks good but this nuance needs to be addressed. As a matter of fact, I'm thinking of merely simplifying things by having just one objective named "No armoured train can be destroyed." That's applicable whether there is only one armoured train or, later, two of them on the map.

Indeed, that's what I ended up doing. Sometimes, most times, the simplest solution is better. Revised 02Kollaa is in the "Back to Erik" folder.

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[Erik2]

Link updated to 1.4 in first post.

02Kollaa:
Brakeman Bru fixed some choo-choo stuff

15Petsamo:
Increased Sov unit exp (some of the units had none...)
Added Sov commanders
Added a few Sov air specialisations
Decreased Finnish resource income
Increased number of Finnish unit exits from 7 to 10 units

Edit: Added a couple of txt files correcting a Finnish location name

[ColonelY]

Awesome campaign! I do like its flavor, how things are presented.

Two small points on the first scenario (v 1.3):
1. Blowing the bridge doesn't actually seem to slow down any unit (allied or not)...
2. I'm wondering whether the name "1/1 AAMG" should be on the spawn_name 11 instead of the 35th? Thus, I assume there was more tanks (BT-5) previously.