Afrika Korps beta test

[Horst]

Are there still people playing the game or is hanging around in the editor the only activity left?
Can't wait to play it after Desert Rats (and maybe Sandstorm). I still remember how I had heavily modified this PzC campaign too in the past. It was simply the best DLC to play.

[Andy2012]

Are there still people playing the game or is hanging around in the editor the only activity left?

bru is a spreadsheet warrior at day and an editor savage at night. This comes naturally.

[bru888]

I never make any bones about what I do being very useful to eliminate bugs and improve performance but no help at all in evaluating actual gameplay. That is, determining whether the scenario is balanced, enjoyable, and accomplishes what Erik has in mind. Hopefully there are guys such as yourselves willing to pitch in for that. My advice is, in a situation like this, to follow along as we go through the initial editor review and clean up phase and wait to play each scenario until Erik has made any changes that he deems necessary. I noticed with Desert Rats that more stuff gets reported as people do play the campaign, as would be expected, but my goal is to help him eliminate most of it up front if I can.

[Horst]

The world would be a better place if it had more of your kind, Bru! Thanks a lot!

[bru888]

I blush.

[Andy2012]

I never make any bones about what I do being very useful to eliminate bugs and improve performance but no help at all in evaluating actual gameplay. That is, determining whether the scenario is balanced, enjoyable, and accomplishes what Erik has in mind. Hopefully there are guys such as yourselves willing to pitch in for that. My advice is, in a situation like this, to follow along as we go through the initial editor review and clean up phase and wait to play each scenario until Erik has made any changes that he deems necessary. I noticed with Desert Rats that more stuff gets reported as people do play the campaign, as would be expected, but my goal is to help him eliminate most of it up front if I can.

Three cheers for you!
(Right now, I can check back here a few times, but playing, well...maybe in a few days. )

[Erik2]

Suez Canal:
Removed gunboat, an editor classic
Assigned orphan to AI team.
The Chinese wall was a (rather poor) substitute for decorations like these:
I wish campaigns had added stuff like the Eiffel Tower, Kreml etc as new decorations. I have removed the Great Wall.
Moved and changed the Panzer/LW/naval primary objectives to secondary.
Added event graphics.

Palestine :
Fixed orphan.
British pump-1 attack delayed and Oil pump obj moved to secondary.

Syria:
Created new AI team for front units.
Pink panther stuff; Finished the missing Abwehr parts. I would very much like Bru to take a look at the solution... 'Secondary objectives' folder -> Spawn/Abwehr triggers.
Fixed FJ obj.
Typhoon. Now that was easy.

Link updated to 1.5

[bru888]

Syria (revisited) v. 1.5

Pink is out; brown is in. Pink can be a manly color for men who are secure enough to sport it, you know.

I see that you decided to use that alliance instead of deleting it which, as we know, can have dire repercussions for units on the map and trigger conditions and effects:

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But unfortunately, you do have some lingering repercussions although not dire ones. First, this AI objective is not going to work because it is tied to an alliance (Kriegsmarine) that is a member of the human's team. It should be listed for the light blue AI alliance (Allies):

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That means the alliances in these triggers must be switched from brown to light blue as well:

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I see you went the route of evaluating this at scenario-end. With only 18 turns, that's probably fine; otherwise, if the player were to accomplish the other primary objective early, he would need to play the rest of the turns out to the end in order to be evaluated for this (the alternative, of course, is to just fail the objective immediately should a FJ be destroyed in combat). Even so, doing it this way, you need Turn Start here to go along with Check Turn / Scenario Turn Limit:

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So now for the abwehr. I like what you did, from the objective explanation to the flight automation. Just a couple of problems; first, this trigger effect is missing the objective to be completed:

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Also, when I tested this, the plane spawned and seemed to fly in the right direction at first but in the next turn (after I cleared the airfield) it returned to its original base, not the one that you designated for Return to Base. Set Base might be one of those AI commands that are "advisory" in nature in that, if another base is closer, it will go there instead. Maybe it would be better to use Move to Hex as the task setting:

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[bru888]

Iraq v. 1.5

Orphan:

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The Check Hex Owner conditions for the Ax Daz-ez-Zeir and All Daz-ez-Zeir triggers are missing a Target Hex. That is, neither is pointing to Daz-ez-Zeir.

On T12, you have three Spitfires in the [2] Bombers AI team.

[bru888]

Basra v. 1.5

I went through your triggers a couple of times and I found where you enable the "Eliminate all paratroops" objective but I cannot see where this objective is activated:

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Your event popup for Para-1a mentions an image filename of "para" but there is no such image in the folder. Also, it should read as "Paratroops! . . . Make sure your supply source and captured objectives are protected" (drop the "s" from "Parastroops!" and "captureds"). Also, the paratroops appear on the left side of the map but the event popup is located on the right side?

Every para group joins the same AI team: [1] Para-1. I believe you want Para-2 to be in AI team [2], Para-3 to be in AI team [3], and so on. This is a common oversight when cloning triggers:

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[bru888]

Persia v. 1.5

Two humans are playing this scenario:

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Scenario Description should read as "Cutting the vital corridor for the Land Lease convoys will put an end to the Allied powers mutually assisting each other."

You may want to point to Baghdad as a primary objective hex.

You have the Convoy Exit really close to the edge of the map. I wonder whether it will work properly:

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This scenario contains an entire orphanage! "Oh, joyous times, Generalfeldmarschall! Many of the Allied troops seem to lack the will to fight back and are just sitting there, passively. This will be . . . how do the Americans say, a cakewalk?"

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Strangely enough, the Prevent cargo trigger works even though all it does is complete the objective at the very beginning of the scenario (you could have just marked it as completed at the start). That's because the Cargo exit trigger will fail the objective should just one truck end up at the exit.

I think maybe you have the wrong alliance here; it's an American armored column heading for Baghdad that you want to Defend Hex when it gets there but the cross-assignment to the German alliance may prevent this from working:

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I almost overlooked it: You don't have a trigger for evaluating the "Defend Baghdad at all times" objective. I would recommend setting it as completed at the start of the scenario and failing it only if the city falls into Allied hands.

One more thing: Check the Soviet seaborne invasion. A couple of times when I ran a test, the transports came to their destination hexes but did not disembark. Thus they could not be activated to Seek & Destroy because they never reached their target hexes. They merely docked along shore. I don't know why; you may recall many moons ago when I had similar problems with Oahu Invasion. I still don't know how to get a seaborne invasion to land and move reliably so I cannot advise you on this.

[Erik2]

Syria:
Fixed objectives.
Fixed Abwehr AI order.

Iraq :
Fixed orphan.
Assigned Spitfires to fighter AI.

Basra:
'Major airfields' active from start.
Para groups assigned to correct AI teams.
Missing graphic added.

Persia:
Set Allies to AI player.
Fixed scenario description.
Added map marker to Baghdad objective.
Moved the Convoy exit 1 hex south. Could not delete the old exit..
Changed the cargo objective.
Added/assigned AI teams to Soviet and US orphanages.
Fixed US assault.
Added Baghdad trigger.
Set the seaborne invasions to ignore enemy. Maybe that will help.
Changed vicotry/defeat labels (no sec objs).

Link updated to 1.6

[bru888]

Caucasus v. 1.6

There's a problem with the primary objectives in this one. The objective is to "Capture all 5 objectives" and you do point to five flags but if you look closely, two of them are merely Capture Points. These are in the northwest, Maykop and Nevinnomyssk. The three others that the objective points to are primary VPs: Grozny, Tbilisi and Baku. Meanwhile, there is a fourth primary VP on the map, Yerevan, but that is not linked to the objective. Regardless, you have only four primary VP's on the map and the objective and trigger are looking for five, so you need to fix this.

Take a look at the Cruiser enable trigger. First, it does not enable anything (the objective, I assume); it only pops up a message. Also, you have the Germans as both the Viewers and Visible Units. Taking a guess, I think you want the Visible Units to be the Soviets and to move up the cruiser Unit Definition into this section. Then the Viewers are the Germans and, if any type of German will do, you don't need a Unit Definition in this section.

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Not sure about the Cruiser spec trigger. I think Check Last Kill means it the way you have it; if the last unit killed was a red cruiser, then award the spec points. However, you have this set for Turn Start and it may not work if the cruiser was sunk and some other unit was destroyed thereafter on the same turn. Better to make this a Combat Event (or, even better, to just award the spec points along with the objective in the Cruiser objective trigger).

One other thing: The objective says "Get 1 specialisation point p[e]r ship sunk." Is this what you mean? If so, that's rather generous but it's not what you are doing with the triggers. I see only one iteration on the first cruiser sunk, award one spec point per faction, and that's it. If you mean to repeat the award for each ship sunk, you need a repeating trigger. Maybe that's why you made a separate Cruiser spec trigger but you need the -1 in the Trigger Frequency box.

[bru888]

Arabia v. 1.6

"Rommel's DAK must stop them and claim ownership of the Axis possessions."

In the Ax 7 objs trigger, you award a specialisation point only to the Italians.

This trigger will not work because it's looking for a negative number; you need to adjust the Value:

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[bru888]

East Africa v. 1.6

"An amphibious operation is ordered to prevent [the] British from taking any strategic initiative in East Africa."

"Keep (not "Kepp") all 3 Italian prisoners alive."

"With the beach-head (drop the ".") secured, the Italian Supremo Commando has asked you (drop the second "y") to send a force down to Nairobi and release some Italian prisoners."

"Protect the Italian escaped prisoners as they (not "theu") head toward the exit."

When a plane starts out in a hangar it's hard to tell but fortunately, when it is flying, it can be seen when a plane is missing its AI team designation:

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There's something I am not understanding about the Nairobi prisoners thing. If they are Italian prisoners, why are you spawning Bulgarian Sahariana? For that matter, what are Sahariana? I can't find them under Italy or Bulgaria. [Answered, I believe, in my next post.]

There are a few more things wrong here. This trigger turns on another trigger that is already active:

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This trigger sets up the Scenario Variable okay . . .

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. . . but this trigger is not going to work because you have a typo in the Variable Name:

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The other issue with that trigger are that it does not repeat. There should be three or infinite repetitions.

I understand the Berbera objective but I believe you have it labeled incorrectly. The objective itself is enabled only when the Germans take it in the first place, so "Capture Berbera" after it has already been captured is incorrect. It looks like a British counter-attack is coming, so the objective is actually "Hold Berbera." Also, you are missing a trigger to evaluate whether the Germans are still holding Berbera at scenario-end and, if so, to complete the objective.

For Britain - East, see what I said in a previous post (Caucasus) about possibly having confused the Visible Units with the Viewers. At the very least, you have both Visible and Viewer as Germans.

PLEASE DISREGARD THIS DUPLICATE IMAGE:

[bru888]

There's something I am not understanding about the Nairobi prisoners thing. If they are Italian prisoners, why are you spawning Bulgarian Sahariana? For that matter, what are Sahariana? I can't find them under Italy or Bulgaria.

Okay, there is method to your madness. You chose Bulgaria because their flag resembles Italy somewhat (in colors, at least) and you needed a separate faction, other than Italy, because Italy is a human player faction and you planned for the prisoners to be controlled by the AI.

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And I overlooked the Sahariana; here it is, under Italy:

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[Erik2]

Caucasus:
5 primary objectives with golden flags in place.
Deleted the cruiser spec trigger and assigned the spec opints to the objective trigger.

Arabia:
Added spec point rewards for both Axis.
Brit reserves activated when the Allies are down to less than 3 sec objs.

East Africa:
Fixed various spellings.
Assigned Spitfire to AI fighter team.
Reworked the prisoner triggers.
Reworked Berbera obj.
Fixed East obj.

Link updated to 1.7

[bru888]

The Road to India v. 1.7

You are missing a companion trigger for Al Qalif and airfields:

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Oh, I see what you may have been doing here: At scenario-end, if the Germans hold "both" secondary victory points, etc. Problem is, there are six secondary victory points; one each for the towns and two for each set of associated airfields. So either this trigger should be Value > 5 and complete both secondary objectives at the same time or you should make separate triggers for each objective and make three Check Hex Owner conditions for each trigger.

The image "firefly" is missing from the folder.

This trigger may take a long time to kick in, if ever. I counted; you start with over 60 British land units. Moreover, British planes (you spawn 16 more planes over the course of the scenario), ships, bunkers, and fortress will count towards this value as well, I believe, because you don't specify a Unit Definition:

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You may end up redesigning this whole Diversion Group thing after you consider what I say in my next post. If so and you want me to lend a second pair of eyes to it, just leave a note.

[bru888]

Let me interrupt the flow here and insert this post about seaborne invasions. I noticed in Road to India that your British seaborne invasion was not working, either. I removed all the British units in the scenario and ran it, allowing Diversion Grp to spawn immediately. They moved to the coast and then stalled, just like the Soviet seaborne invasion did; here they are on turn 5, sitting quietly:

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You have the disembark hex set for one hex inland:

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When I moved the disembark point to a coastline hex, I got at least one unit to go ashore (but not the others - and note, by the way, that you neglected to provide supply to these units):

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Here's what I am thinking: If you were to go back to Persia and move all of these disembark points to coastline hexes, that may make that Soviet invasion work:

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And for Road to India, if you were to make four AI teams with individual instructions for each unit of the British invasion fleet as well as a unique coastal hex disembark point for each, that may work as well.

For, it is occurring to me that the solution could be a combination of these ideas: the disembark point must be reachable while still a sea transport and each unit needs its own set of landing instructions in order to avoid confusing the AI.

[bru888]

British India v. 1.7

Wow, this one is a humdinger. And we finally meet up with the Japanese coming from the other direction!

I notice that you date this one on D-Day. "Gott im Himmel, Generalfeldmarschall! The Americans have landed in Normandy! All available forces are here with us and our back door is wide open. We completely forgot about the Americans!"

One orphan:

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And one "Typhonn":

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In this situation, wouldn't the AI alliances fight each other as well as the human player? I tried to look at the briefing to see if you had some alternate history going on in that the Germans and Japanese would be fighting each other over India. If so then this is fine, but if Germans and Japanese are to remain allied, then they need to be on the same team [Note, later on I discovered your intention so please disregard. I would delete this but unfortunately the screenshot would remain so let it be]:

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Delete the paragraph marks:

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So let's talk about primary VP's. There are 14 on the map and you require 10. You point to 13, the missing one being Bhilai. You may want to add it; on a map of this size, it is hard to find all of the primary VP's.

This trigger could be a problem. True, if the British hold 4 objectives at the end, they win and the Germans lose. But what about those "other guys" who could end up in Rangoon, one of the primary VP's? If the British hold three or more at the end, and Rangoon belongs to those other guys, that should also fail the German objective:

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So I am thinking that this may be one situation in which instead of having an All 4 objs trigger, there should be something like "Ax 10 objs FAIL" in which, at Scenario Turn Limit, if German primary VP count <10, fail the German objective. At the same time, you would complete both the British and the Japanese objectives. It does not really matter if Rangoon is occupied by one enemy or the other in this case; the whole point is to produce a human defeat for failing his own objective.

Missing images: "refugees" and "japan"

None of the bandits or rioters are assigned to an AI team.

"There may be some Axis rivalry at work here...." (lower-case "h" in "There")