Slitherine

Kerensky wrote:

lwbloomer wrote:So my last issue is the invisible Supply Depots. I'm going to try uninstalling the campaign, then re-downloading and installing it. See if that fixes the oddity.

In the past, invisible units has typically been a result of user modifications. If you have any mods, especially ones that modify the equipment list, this could be responsible for your invisible depots. I would check that first.

We may be getting somewhere. I don't have any mods right now, but I DID have a couple of them a couple months ago. One of them could easily have modified my equipment list. I think I have a backup equipment list from before I was fooling around with mods. But it would also have been before '44West was installed ...

I think I'll try to resurrect my old pre-mod equipment list, then install 44 West once again and see what happens.

Thanks, Kerensky, you at least have given me something to try and it sounds likely!

lwbloomer, I've zipped up the newest original equipment file in case you need it, just unzip it and put it in your data directory, standard path is *yoursystemsprogramfiles*\Slitherine\Panzer Corps\Data

This might save you some time from re-downloading the most recent patch version (600 Mb), which you can also do to overwrite any modded files if this doesn't work.

lwbloomer wrote:We may be getting somewhere. I don't have any mods right now, but I DID have a couple of them a couple months ago. One of them could easily have modified my equipment list. I think I have a backup equipment list from before I was fooling around with mods. But it would also have been before '44West was installed ...

I think I'll try to resurrect my old pre-mod equipment list, then install 44 West once again and see what happens.

Thanks, Kerensky, you at least have given me something to try and it sounds likely!

This is usually exactly what happens. Old equipment files modders create don't always get updated with the new units we patch into the game, which has the unfortunate side affect of making said units 'invisible' when you combine an old equipment file with new units in a campaign. Hope you get your issue resolved!

lwbloomer wrote:You make a persuasive argument.

Thank you.

lwbloomer wrote:Incidentally, if German infantry had attacked Omaha beach near the height of the battle there, they probably could have pretty much exterminated the Allied troops in that section and the further landings there would have been called off. It was very close as it was on that beach.

Yes, very likely. However, the relevant mobile reserve (915 Regiment of 352 Division) spent the night cycling from Bayeux to Isigny and the morning cycling back to Bayeux to counter attack the British on Gold beach. One battalion was detached to Omaha where it turned up in the afternoon and got bogged down trying to hold the Americans who had by this time worked their way into the villages behind the beach.

lwbloomer wrote:So all in all, I'll retract my labeling of the unmoveable units as a "problem" and instead call it a "challenge" built in by the programmers. My apologies to the programming staff; I should have thought about all this a bit more before calling it a problem.

Most people don’t realise just how patchy the quality of German troops was by this time. Some – 2nd SS Panzer, Panzer Lehr – were superb; some were ok (21st Panzer was partially equipped with French tanks captured in 1940); and some were rubbish. For example, the average age of the 709 Division (which held Utah beach) was 36. (For the American army it was 25.) Most infantry divisions had at least one Ost battalion attached; made up of Russian ex-PoWs. Over a sixth of German rifle battalions in Normandy were Ost battalions.
An anecdote on this. Some ‘German’ troops were captured on Utah beach. They were Koreans. Korea was a Japanese conquest and they had been drafted into the Japanese army. And captured by the Russians at Khalkhin Gol and drafted into the Russian army. Then captured by the Germans at Moscow and forced into their army. They manned their trenches on D Day with a German sergeant standing behind them with a drawn pistol. In game terms, can you imagine what would happen if this lot were sent over the top to counter attack the beach?
Not to mention that Rommel’s emphasis on constructing fortifications and obstacles inevitably came at the expense of training. The beach front troops were so focused on the former that most had done little or even no training over the previous 6 months at even small unit level, much less at battalion or regimental level.

Kerensky, you solved the problem. I swapped out my current equipment file for the backup that I had saved before fiddling with some MODs, and the Supply Depots are now visible!

Thank you!

Also thanks to ThvN, for the up-to-date equipment file, which I will download and install since the backup is pretty old.

I'm grateful to everybody for helping me with this: thank you all.

Just to wrap up my experience here, I'd like to thank everybody who responded here and at Matrix to my "problems." You folks are terrific, and every word was helpful.

For those interested in the GC '44 West campaign, it's worth every penny and more. My problems were mostly just that: mine!

1. Immovable units - forum participants have given me compelling reasons to agree that the programmers designed these units the way they did to enhance the general realism of the particular battle, so I'm ready (mostly) to concede that these were features rather than bugs. I still find the immovable anti-air units on the D-day beaches to be a bit off track, but maybe that's just me!

2. Invisible Supply Depots and Minefields - this proved to be an artifact of changes made in my equipment file by custom mods. Everybody has been very helpful to my recovering from this, but I learned two things that might be of benefit to other non-experts like myself, as follows:
A. MAKE BACKUPS OF CRITICAL FILES if you plan on using custom mods. Especially your equipment file!
B. Download and learn to use the GME program for handling custom mods. It prevents EXACTLY the kind of problem I had. It's an investment in learning how it works and how get custom mod files in the right places in your computer file structure, but once you get the hang of it GME handles custom mods for you in a very painless fashion, and one nice result is that you can simply de-activate the custom mods and your normal, basic Panzer Corps system will be fine.

So, thanks everybody and have fun! By all means download '44 West, it's a lot of fun. Looking forward to the Big One - '45 West, presumably containing an exciting and lengthy Battle of the Bulge sequence!

Wow you are fast. Thx everyone. I will sure like this one. More is never enough. :DDDD

Finished my 44 West 2 days ago and really loved it. The change from huge armor battles to smaller scale, more inf oriented combat was very nice. I had a strange feeling that importing a few planes for the first west scenario is a bit unbalancing since I have the advantage in the air all the time and a 17str Me 262 is really just overkill.

I did find it a bit strange that in the Market Garden operation even if I captured all objectives in the first missions, the last one still had some of the towns occupied by allied paras.

A question - why are some towns in Market Garden marked as German on the main screen and as allied on the mini map? They do get me the standard 50 prestige/each for taking them so it was nice.

Aloo wrote:A question - why are some towns in Market Garden marked as German on the main screen and as allied on the mini map? They do get me the standard 50 prestige/each for taking them so it was nice.

This was done to prevent unit purchases in these locations. For example in Arnhem, if towns past the Allied lines could be used to place units, you could simply do just that instead of having to fight your way through the Allied para-drops.

lwbloomer wrote: the unmoveable D-Day units were labelled "Machine Gun Nest,"

I was under the impression that those units were, historicly anyway, pillboxes and other similar strongpoints. Having them as such on the map would also solve the movement issue without having to add special heros. You could vary the strength to denote their various abilitys. The few infantry divisions available on D-Day were "moveable", but movement was restricted due to previous carpet bombing by the allies.

Kerensky wrote:

Aloo wrote:A question - why are some towns in Market Garden marked as German on the main screen and as allied on the mini map? They do get me the standard 50 prestige/each for taking them so it was nice.

This was done to prevent unit purchases in these locations. For example in Arnhem, if towns past the Allied lines could be used to place units, you could simply do just that instead of having to fight your way through the Allied para-drops.

Can the allies buy units there? Do the allies buy units in those scenarios at all? I didnt notice regular unit spam at all.