Battle of Midway - carrier bug

[Mojko]

Hi,

I'm playing Battle of Midway (Japan) and it seems that secondary objective "destroy all enemy carriers" is impossible to achieve. I destroyed 2 carriers in the previous scenario (so these should not be participating in Battle of Midway). I destroyed 3 carriers in the Battle of Midway, but the objective won't complete. The mission can be finished by waiting out to turn 30, but the secondary objective remains unfulfilled.

I'm using version 1.9.3c (with 1.9.3d hotfix). I attached a save file where all of the carriers should already be destroyed, but the secondary objective is not fulfilled.

Should you require any further information, please don't hesitate to ask.

Thank you for help.

[Stephen1024]

hi

Yes its true you can't complete destroy all carriers in midway if you destroy both carriers at coral sea. I suggest only destroying 1 carrier in coral sea as at midway you get 200 for every carrier you destroy at midway. There will be 4 carriers if you let one escape from coral sea.

Its not bug as your only required to damage carriers at coral sea, therefore there escape and having 4 carriers at midway. Your choices define things in game. You find at midway american campaign nice suprise if get to close to there fleet, I won't spoil by saying what but shows that your choices define what is.

Stephen

[Mojko]

Thank you for the information.

If this is really the intended behavior, I suggest to change the objective description. It should be changed to "destroy a carrier to get resource reward". An information message should be displayed each time you get resources for destroying a carrier.

Right now the description is misleading because it tells you to destroy all carriers and if you do that, no message is displayed.

[EmmetRyan]

Got here by Googling this, still an issue in 2021 and registered to say this is absolutely a bug.

"Destroy All Carriers" is the objective, yet doing so doesn't give a reward.

"Your choices define things in game" - Yeah, that's great, I chose to destroy every American carrier I found but didn't get the reward for doing so.

The idea that you should be psychic enough to know not to kill certain units because they'll show up later on and only then can you kill them is both absurd from a gameplay POV and nonsensical from a historical POV. The Japanese should be killing every US carrier they can ASAP.

Doubt anyone will even read this but wanted to get that off my chest

[bru888]

This is an old thread. There were a few others on the same topic around that time. There is a campaign variable in CoralSeaJapan by which, if the Japs sunk all U.S. carriers, it would mark the variable as shown here:

Screenshot 1.jpg (275.8 KiB) Viewed 1410 times

So, in MidwayJapan, there is a trigger that checks for the campaign variable, and if it equals "1," removes the carrier Lexington:

Screenshot 2.jpg (271.26 KiB) Viewed 1410 times

which is one of four U.S. carriers on the map to start. From what I can guess, the error maybe was in requiring this trigger to see four U.S. aircraft carriers destroyed but that was changed long ago to requiring zero to be alive:

Screenshot 3.jpg (281.28 KiB) Viewed 1410 times

So it would appear that the bug was addressed some time ago, but . . . There is a small bugaboo in that, if I were doing this trigger, I would have made it fire on a Combat Event instead of Turn Start. The reason is, if you accomplish this objective on your very last turn, I don't think it fires during that turn and you don't get credit for completing the objective.

Is that the case with you? And/or, are you looking for the objective to be achieved now, in your current turn, before advancing to the next?

One other design flaw is, as Mojko pointed out in one of those other threads five years ago, "from the RP gain point of view, it's better not to destroy all carriers in the previous scenario, because in that scenario you are not rewarded RPs." Your criticism of needing to be "psychic enough to know not to kill certain units" to earn more RPs later is well-deserved on that score but I don't see why the game would not be rewarding your secondary objective now for killing either 3 or 4 U.S. carriers as long as none are "Alive."

UNLESS . . . (Heh, it's funny how often this happens with OOB, thinking while I am typing and coming up with an "Aha!")

When the campaign variable causes the Lexington to exit, is it still technically "Alive" during the scenario? If so, then the trigger will still fail, because the Lexington is still alive, just not on the map. Maybe the condition should be set to "Deployed" = 0.

Something for the developers to consider, perhaps. Although, I haven't seen any other complaints about this problem in recent years.

TMI? Probably. And you doubted anyone will even read this.

P.S., I asked the community about exit = "Alive" in this thread.

[bru888]

Well, EmmetRyan, I can at least tell you that you are right, in my estimation. This is STILL a bug, after all these years. Why it is, I cannot say. But why it's failing, I think I know.

As a test, I removed the condition on this trigger, making the Lexington exit at Scenario Start regardless of what would have happened at Coral Sea:

Screenshot 1.jpg (261.31 KiB) Viewed 1404 times

I weakened the three U.S. carriers (the fourth, top right, is the Lexington which will exit), placed "assassination" destroyers near them, and immobilized the AI with cheat code "#johnconnor":

Screenshot 2.jpg (196.71 KiB) Viewed 1404 times

Note the 2100 RPs that I begin with; those are the 300 that the Japs get anyway to start, plus 1800 that the designer gives if you play this scenario as standalone:

Screenshot 4.jpg (279.04 KiB) Viewed 1404 times

Two carriers down, one to go. Note that I now have 2550 RPs with an additional 400 RPs for sinking two carriers and 25 RPs income for a couple of turns:

Screenshot 7.jpg (307.83 KiB) Viewed 1404 times

Three carriers down; got the RP bonus but the objective is not completed. Reason: The exited Lexington is still "Alive" out there in the program's memory. (And yes, I advanced the turn because the original trigger is set for Turn Start - still no objective completion):

Screenshot 8.jpg (256.25 KiB) Viewed 1404 times

This trigger should be set for "Combat Event" and "Deployed":

Screenshot 9.jpg (248.44 KiB) Viewed 1404 times

[GabeKnight]

This trigger should be set for "Combat Event" and "Deployed":

One could probably also change the campaign variable trigger to "remove" or "kill" the Lexington...