Kokoda Trail Stuck in first mission

[Gunja]

Hi there,

I am stuck in the fist mission of Kokoda trail, after fulfilling the 2nd secondary objetcive (defending the second town) I get a militia, but when I hit end turn, the ai is stuck (no bar showing the process of the turn) just nothing happens. Has anyone any ideas what could be the problem?

EDIT: Ok, it seems, that the problem is not getting the aux. unit. Just positioned my units in the south without defending anything, the AI is still stuck after turn 8, so it seems to get stuck no matter what. What is strange though that some people did manage to play this scenario. Maybe it is because of a newer version of OOB? Did anyone play this campaign lately? (I have no mods installed btw., just a couple of user campaigns).

[bru888]

I will lapse into my bad habit of speaking out of turn for Erik (the man is a paradigm of forbearance and tolerance in this regard ).

I can confirm that the 0Gorari scenario fails each time at Turn 8 whether or not the Australians still own Gorari. I think I have found the cause.

This scenario, and the entire campaign, should still work in version 9.X because it is relatively simple and nothing has basically changed about the game even though Kokoda Trail was written for version 4.X. Well, maybe I'm wrong in one respect.

For each of the secondary objectives, the prize is to "Get a Native Irregular unit" according to the mission descriptions. For "Defend Nambisset for 4 turns," we are spared the issue that I believe is at the bottom of this anomaly by the fact that the "Aus Nambisset" trigger is missing a spawn unit effect.

However, for a successful completion of "Defend Gorari for 7 turns," the game attempts to spawn a Colonial Infantry '41 unit and here, I believe, is the rub.* This is the "Aus Gorari" trigger:

Screenshot 3.jpg (544.18 KiB) Viewed 962 times

The unit to be spawned belongs to the British India faction. The designer must have this faction present while designing the scenario in order to place such a unit on the map (while changing the faction, say, from British India to Australia) — and he can subsequently delete the British India faction and still have the Australian hybrid unit on the map (the scenario starts with such a unit in Nambisset) but he cannot subsequently SPAWN such a unit during the course of the scenario with the British India faction missing.

Screenshot 4.jpg (470.04 KiB) Viewed 954 times

This is why the scenario freezes at Turn 8 and it happens consistently because the trigger is being evaluated whether or not the conditions are met; as part of the processing, it looks for a unit that is not among the factions included (Australia, Japan, and Impassible Area), and the game crashes.

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* Not really — see my subsequent "Actually, scratch all that" post below.

[bru888]

This scenario, and the entire campaign, should still work in version 9.X because it is relatively simple and nothing has basically changed about the game even though Kokoda Trail was written for version 4.X. Well, maybe I'm wrong in one respect.

By this, I mean that perhaps way back in version 4.X the game would allow spawning a unit without its native faction present in the scenario, but these days it does not. That could be why this scenario has stopped working.

[Gunja]

Thank you very much for you answer. I might have misunderstood something, but shouldn't the problem occur before the unit is spawned? I'm pretty sure, that the colonial infantery was spawned in one of my tries and the problem occured after I obtained the unit.
Anyway this seems to mean that the campaign in unplayable as of now, a pity of course.
Is there any rule of thumb, which campaigns are playable and which not, what to look for etc? It's just a little frustrating to play and then to realize that the campaign isn't playable any more. And while I understand that in same cases I am just too late for the party I would like to avoid getting my hopes up in the first place...

[bru888]

It's funny, though. As Gunja mentioned, you do see the bonus unit spawn at River Crossing:

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but the scenario freezes at that point:

Screenshot 6.jpg (334.53 KiB) Viewed 947 times

I still think it's related to the missing British India faction. The Colonial Infantry '41 unit can be labeled as Australian, but the British India faction must be present in the background, I believe.

[bru888]

Anyway this seems to mean that the campaign in unplayable as of now, a pity of course.
Is there any rule of thumb, which campaigns are playable and which not, what to look for etc? It's just a little frustrating to play and then to realize that the campaign isn't playable any more. And while I understand that in same cases I am just too late for the party I would like to avoid getting my hopes up in the first place...

This might have crept in when the designers changed something that removed the flexibility of having spawned units that are native to missing factions. This is only a theory, however.

[bru888]

Actually, scratch all that (although I do think it's good housekeeping to keep the native faction in the scenario, neutral/inactive in this case).

When I inserted British India in the scenario, and I recreated the spawn effect in the "Aus Gorari" trigger, it still failed in Turn 8.

Harking back to my CSI days, the next step involved the process of elimination. When I turned this folder off, the scenario allowed advancement past Turn 8:

Screenshot 11.jpg (490.56 KiB) Viewed 943 times

Note that it is timed for Turn 9. This now makes sense in that the player can play Turn 8, with the spawned Colonial Infantry '41 unit, but fails when the scenario is about to advance to Turn 9. Turn 8 is complete but the scenario is frozen with the timer still showing Turn 8:

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With that folder, and its only trigger, "Aus t-9," de-activated, one may advance to and play Turn 9:

Screenshot 13.jpg (362.93 KiB) Viewed 943 times

So, what I did was to "refresh" that Australian Infantry '41 unit in the trigger's Spawn Unit effect, and here we are!

Screenshot 14.jpg (369.68 KiB) Viewed 943 times

So NOW, the theory is this: Didn't they add Australian infantry units in a recent patch? I wonder if they also made a change to Australian Infantry '41 at that time which broke this trigger and the scenario. If so, Erik needs to refresh any such spawns of this unit in all scenarios.

[Erik2]

Hi Bru

Good to see that you have not forgotten your old CSI-tricks.
I'll take a look at Kokoda after the new OOB version has been published.

Thanks
Erik