Current Bugs - Version 8.1.0

[PoorOldSpike]

..it seems that the engine cannot take screenshots during movement, so there is a delay and I can't capture this bug..

There are at least 3 other ways to do it-
1- Hit the PrntScreen key and save it to Paint, then crop it if necessary.
2- Install the FRAPS screenshot capture app.
3- Point your camera or smartphone at the screen to capture the bug.

With all 3 methods, save the screenshot to desktop, upload it to an image host like Photobucket, then copy the link into this forum, I do it all the time..

[GabeKnight]

I'm not absolutely certain why, but the "Hold 3 secondary for 2 - FAIL" trigger in the RedStar/09-Raseiniai scen does not work..

It worked for me mate (below) unless I've misunderstood you.
PS- this was the standalone scen.

Yes, I meant that failing the first primary objective does not work.

[bru888]

The description of the Guards Infantry specialisation needs to be completed:

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Based upon an Event Popup message that occurs in Yelnya, announcing the introduction of Soviet Guards, the missing phrase could be "combat morale in all our units" but of course, I am guessing:

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I submitted this to the bugs database.

[Thales99]

I've just started playing Order of Battle (Sandstorm campaign, recently switching to 8.1.0) and observed the following bugs/inconsistencies:

- If you have enough resource points remaining to upgrade a unit, but not enough to also upgrade to the selected transport, you can perform the upgrade *anyway*. On top of this, you pay no resource points *at all* in this specific situation, neither for the unit upgrade nor for the transport.

- Land commanders that increase the attack values of units don't seem to work with indirect fire in most cases. While the unit stats of artillery units increase accordingly when a commander is attached, the combat predictions (and probably results) in most cases do not. I've observed this with both Rommel and Navarini. This might be by design, but in case of Mickl combat predictions were increased correctly when attaching him to an artillery unit in the Buq Buq scenario (but strangely not in the Alam el Halfa scenario).

- There is a typo in the tooltip "Unit most [sic] be on an airfield in order to board a transport aircraft."

- The "Flight School" specialization is missing from the German specialization screen after the upgrade to 8.1.0 (at least I seem to remember it was there before), but German aircraft still receive the +1 experience bonus.

- The "Centimetric Radar" specialisation reads "Adds a Radar range of 5 to all aircraft" but I observe an increase in range from 6 to 8 hex fields.


I also made the following observations (i.e. not necessarily bugs):

- There are some odd situations if you have increased starting experience due to specialisations for some unit classes and not for others. For example, with the "Tank School" specialisation you can buy a StuG with +1 experience as a tank while you don't receive extra experience when buying it as an artillery unit (even though it's the same unit and you can switch between direct and indirect fire mode). Furthermore, you can buy a StuG as a tank, switch it to indirect fire and upgrade to another artillery unit, keeping the experience. If you do this upgrade immediately after buying the StuG, you don't even pay more than for buying the artillery unit outright. Similarly, with the "Flight School" specialisation you can buy a recon plane with +1 experience and immediately "upgrade" it to a recon vehicle, keeping the experience and without added cost. However, strictly speaking all of this is in line with the game mechanics.

- Paratroopers don't lose their transport when performing an airborne operation. It seems strange to keep moving by truck or halftrack after parachuting behind enemy lines.

[bebro]

Hi, thx for reporting those issues, we check them.

Quick answers:

As for Flight School - I can't test it in 810 right now, but in the latest dev version it is present in Sandstorm, just a bit to the right in the spec screen. So I had to scroll a bit to see it. Is that what's happening to you, or is it indeed lacking?

Land commanders and indirect fire: indirect fire damages mostly the target's efficiency, so does not always cause strength damage, so I'm not sure right now there is a prob. We check that.

[Thales99]

Thank you for the quick response. You are absolutely right about the Flight School specialisation: it's of course present in the specialisation screen, I just completely overlooked the scroll bar

Concerning the commander issue with indirect fire, I'm very sure about my observation. You should be able to reproduce it by launching the first scenario of the Sandstorm campaign:

1) Buy one 75mm FK18 and one 10.5cm leFH18 and place them both in range of the dug-in QF 2 Pounder. Both guns have no experience, and the 10.5cm gun has one more attack point, 9 instead of 8.

2) Start the first turn and check the combat prediction against the QF 2 Pounder for both units. The 75mm gun has a predicted damage of 1, the 10.5cm gun of 1+.

3) Now attach Rommel to the 75mm gun. The attack values both against infantry and mechanised targets will now correctly show 10 instead of 8. However, the predicted damage still remains at 1, even though it should be at least as high as the 10.5cm gun without attached commander.

For direct fire units the combat predictions seem to adapt without problems.

[bru888]

- There is a typo in the tooltip "Unit most [sic] be on an airfield in order to board a transport aircraft."

You made some great observations. Pending developer review, the only one that I can offer anything is this one and it depends on how passionate you are about this type of thing (obviously you care enough to take the time to report it).

There are certain customizable files included in this game, which is one of its strengths. They are contained in two major folders:
C:\Program Files\Slitherine\Order of Battle - WWII\Order of Battle - WW2_64_Data\Content\Data
C:\Program Files\Slitherine\Order of Battle - WWII\Order of Battle - WW2_64_Data\Content\Language

Text issues can be found in the files contained in the latter folder. The typo that you reported, I found in english.txt. They are up to english_15, so that tells you how old this typo probably is but since you mentioned it, I have corrected it in my game - read on.

A robust search will reveal the file containing the error. In Windows, there seems to be a constraint against editing files directly in Program Files folders. Accordingly, one must copy the file elsewhere, say to the desktop, to do the editing and then copy it back over the original file (you may want to keep a copy of that original someplace, for reference).

I keep a list of the changes that I make to my game; here is the portion of it that deals with typos and other nitpicking things. Not bad, I'd say, in that the chief designer is not a native English-speaker, to my very limited knowledge, and the fact that there are files dealing with six other languages in that folder.

Bear in mind one significant drawback: Every time the game is updated (or reinstalled), program files are overwritten. Because it cannot be readily determined whether changes were made to the original files by the developer since the last update, these alterations must be repeated for every new version of the game. However, it only takes minutes if you have the changes laid out as I do in this list; just copy, find, and paste.

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[Thales99]

Thank you for the detailed instructions on how to deal with the language files, Bru.

In the meantime I've made a few more observations:

- The manual states that "if the scenario is completed faster than the turn limit, any RP for the remaining turns are automatically added to the stockpile." However, you actually get one turn's worth of RP less if you finish a scenario early instead of waiting until the very last turn.

- Upgrades seem to cost 80 % of the unit price for normal upgrades and 50 % for discounted upgrades, if the upgraded unit doesn't have to be repaired. But sometimes I observe increased upgrade prices for a specific unit, e.g. +5 RP across all upgrade options, even though I have an absolutely *identical* unit in my force pool that displays the usual upgrade costs (both units being at full strength).

- If a depleted unit is upgraded, it is automatically brought to full strength via Elite Repair (you keep the XP) but for the lower cost of a normal Repair (manually repairing a unit before upgrading is therefore a bad idea). I assume that this is by design?

[bru888]

Unfortunately (for me), most of what you bring up is way beyond my pay scale.

However, I do have a some comments on these items:

- The manual states that "if the scenario is completed faster than the turn limit, any RP for the remaining turns are automatically added to the stockpile." However, you actually get one turn's worth of RP less if you finish a scenario early instead of waiting until the very last turn.

I don't know about this - you may want to double-check it. A while back, we discussed that topic here and the consensus seemed to be as follows:

Resource Points Formula

Opening RP's for this scenario + (RP's per turn x number of turns) - RP's used during scenario + RP's earned or given during scenario + Opening RP's for next scenario = Total RP's to begin next scenario

This part of the formula is the same whether you win early or play the scenario out to the end and still win: (RP's per turn x number of turns)

- Upgrades seem to cost 80 % of the unit price for normal upgrades and 50 % for discounted upgrades, if the upgraded unit doesn't have to be repaired. But sometimes I observe increased upgrade prices for a specific unit, e.g. +5 RP across all upgrade options, even though I have an absolutely *identical* unit in my force pool that displays the usual upgrade costs (both units being at full strength).

How about experience? The manual states, "Elite reinforcements will maintain the experience level, but becomes more expensive as experience grows."

- If a depleted unit is upgraded, it is automatically brought to full strength via Elite Repair (you keep the XP) but for the lower cost of a normal Repair (manually repairing a unit before upgrading is therefore a bad idea). I assume that this is by design?

I think so. No one has ever complained about it, although I am sure that it's been noticed. I have. Maybe it's a designer's gift? If so, I hope he doesn't take it back. And yes, repairing a unit before upgrading it is therefore a waste of resource points.

[Thales99]

This part of the formula is the same whether you win early or play the scenario out to the end and still win: (RP's per turn x number of turns)

I think I found the reason now: if you achieve the last objective on the last turn (e.g. 20/20) and then press the End Turn button you will see the victory screen while an extra turn is displayed in the turn window (e.g. 21/20) and you receive another turn's worth of RP. You don't get this when doing an early finish.

How about experience? The manual states, "Elite reinforcements will maintain the experience level, but becomes more expensive as experience grows."

Yes, experience makes Elite Repair more expensive, but I observe this effect when upgrading full-strength units with no reinforcements involved. And I've seen both higher and lower XP units (than the identical "reference" unit) affected by such higher costs.

I think so. No one has ever complained about it, although I am sure that it's been noticed. I have. Maybe it's a designer's gift? If so, I hope he doesn't take it back.

I'm fine with that

[bru888]

Good talking to you, Thales. Stick around - you sound like an aficionado in the making.

[CoolDTA]

Yes, experience makes Elite Repair more expensive, but I observe this effect when upgrading full-strength units with no reinforcements involved. And I've seen both higher and lower XP units (than the identical "reference" unit) affected by such higher costs.

This is because the game uses fractions for calculations, but shows only integers (whole numbers) to the player. For instance you could have two similar units both showing 10 strength, but actually one has a strength of 9.6 and the other 10.0. This means the upgrade cost will be higher for the first unit, though it looks like they are identical.

[Thales99]

This is because the game uses fractions for calculations, but shows only integers (whole numbers) to the player. For instance you could have two similar units both showing 10 strength, but actually one has a strength of 9.6 and the other 10.0. This means the upgrade cost will be higher for the first unit, though it looks like they are identical.

Ah, so even if a unit shows 10 strength and can't be manually repaired, it can be slightly understrength? Thanks a lot, that explains it!

[CoolDTA]

Yep, that's the case. Also for example when in the beginning of a scenario you make an attack with a "10" strength unit and the prediction is 0 losses (not 0+) and you still annoyingly take a loss -> same thing. OoB is very precise with its fractions.

[prattaa]

In this latest build I seem to have an issue where loading a save game will occasionally open the game as a replay instead. Anybody else running into that?

[GabeKnight]

In this latest build I seem to have an issue where loading a save game will occasionally open the game as a replay instead. Anybody else running into that?

Yep, but not just since the last build. But it happens so rarely and arbitrarily, that I didn't care about it TBH.

[GabeKnight]

- If you have enough resource points remaining to upgrade a unit, but not enough to also upgrade to the selected transport, you can perform the upgrade *anyway*. On top of this, you pay no resource points *at all* in this specific situation, neither for the unit upgrade nor for the transport.

Maybe I didn't understand it right, but I can not confirm this. The upgrade button is red and inactive when I'm short on RP. Or are you talking about units from an imported core?

- The "Centimetric Radar" specialisation reads "Adds a Radar range of 5 to all aircraft" but I observe an increase in range from 6 to 8 hex fields.

Oh yes, you're right, good catch. Should be an easy fix, though.

- There are some odd situations if you have increased starting experience due to specialisations for some unit classes and not for others. For example, with the "Tank School" specialisation you can buy a StuG with +1 experience as a tank while you don't receive extra experience when buying it as an artillery unit (even though it's the same unit and you can switch between direct and indirect fire mode). Furthermore, you can buy a StuG as a tank, switch it to indirect fire and upgrade to another artillery unit, keeping the experience. If you do this upgrade immediately after buying the StuG, you don't even pay more than for buying the artillery unit outright. Similarly, with the "Flight School" specialisation you can buy a recon plane with +1 experience and immediately "upgrade" it to a recon vehicle, keeping the experience and without added cost. However, strictly speaking all of this is in line with the game mechanics.

Yep, that's a well-known "exploit", so to speak.

[Thales99]

Maybe I didn't understand it right, but I can not confirm this. The upgrade button is red and inactive when I'm short on RP. Or are you talking about units from an imported core?

In my 8.1.0 version (I hope it's not somehow corrupted) the Upgrade button stays active if I can afford the main unit, but not its transportation (e.g. if I can afford a gun upgrade, but not the additional cost for the upgraded truck).

I can reproduce the problem by starting up the first scenario of the Sandstorm campaign, buying two SM.79 bombers to bring down the Italian RP to 160, and then upgrading the Italian 75/18 gun to a 149/19 gun with mandatory Breda 61 truck (the cost for the truck is displayed in red because I can afford the 144 RP for the gun, but not the extra 32 RP for the truck). If I press the Upgrade button then both gun and truck are upgraded with no cost incurred (RP stay at 160).

[airboy]

I've seen three bugs in Red Star. First was Rostov scenario victory condition failure due to AI controlled Russian troops officially holding victory hexes. This was discussed on a separate thread and a hotfix was provided. This should be included in the first patch.

The second error has no gameplay effect, is funny, and quickly vanishes. Giant Finns or Germans will appear on the first couple of turns before the models revert back to normal. Only seen it for one unit on the board during the AIs move - and then it reverts to normal. I've attached two screenshots. I've seen it happen several times.

For some reason I cannot get the screenshot to post - I have captures.

[GabeKnight]

I can reproduce the problem by starting up the first scenario of the Sandstorm campaign, buying two SM.79 bombers to bring down the Italian RP to 160, and then upgrading the Italian 75/18 gun to a 149/19 gun with mandatory Breda 61 truck (the cost for the truck is displayed in red because I can afford the 144 RP for the gun, but not the extra 32 RP for the truck). If I press the Upgrade button then both gun and truck are upgraded with no cost incurred (RP stay at 160).

Holy cow, good catch (again)! Yeah, I could reproduce it exactly as you described. The upgrade's possible with no costs. Thanks for reporting!

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