Slitherine

Brittany v. 0.91

We have the same situation as I described for the Avranches scenario: 3 German-held objectives plus Avranches itself = a total of 4 primary VP's on the map. One is already in the bag at the very start and only two of the German-held objectives are required:


So please see what I recommended in the Avranches scenario to address this situation. Meanwhile, I noticed something. See above how the count is shown? That's the way it should be. Recall how it was shown in the Avranches scenario:


That's because, in addition to the "US 3 objs" trigger being linked to the objective, so is the "Ger 1 obj" and, being later, the "Ger 1 obj" governs and flips the count:


When I removed that link, here is how it looked:

Brittany v. 0.91 (continued)

For reasons stated previously, I would make all these "Towns" triggers activate on a Capture VP Event:


Two recommendations with this trigger. First, make it a Combat Event. Second, linking it to the objective might be fun; a "body count" if you will:


Same argument about the non-necessity of an AI secondary objective and the unnecessary risk it entails of an error that affects the human secondary objective.

Caen v. 0.91

Heh: "Thank Montgomery after the British are finished." Better make sure, mate! 'E's a jealous cove.

"The Battle of Caen has been raging on for a couple of weeks but little progress has been made so_far." (Insert a space between "so" and "far.")

I see that you took this approach in this scenario, as I recommended for Avranches and Brittany!


As far as I can tell to this point, the two "Repair both bridges" objectives are the only ones that would force the player to go through all 25 turns for a victory:


You may be able to get around that by doing both triggers this way (but only if you trust that Trigger Event) [Caution - It does work, but it's not usable in this situation. See my post below.]:


With these "Ger Troarn" and "Ger Cagny" triggers, I recommend setting them for the Axis Alliance rather than Germany Nation. I'm not sure if it's likely but it is theoretically possible that the Waffen SS could end up in control of these points:


Same argument about the non-necessity of an AI secondary objective and the unnecessary risk it entails of an error that affects the human secondary objective. That said, my compliments on this array of complicated objectives; flawlessly done.

Caen v. 0.91 (continued)

This probably should be "Turn = 10":


On the "Zone-2x" triggers, you deploy the Tiger tank only with the "Zone-2a" trigger. Intentional?

While the Target Hexes for "Check Unit(s) near Hex" are correct, ALL FOUR of these "Bridge-X" triggers point to the same hex for the "Destroy Bridge" effect:


Also, "Bridge-1" and "Bridge-2" triggers both require an Allied land unit within "Distance = 2" whereas "Bridge-3" requires only "Distance = 1" and "Bridge-4" requires "Distance = 0"; i.e., an Allied unit must stop directly on the hex. Intentional?

I decided to test what I said in the Caen scenario about "the two 'Repair both bridges' objectives are the only ones that would force the player to go through all 25 turns for a victory" and "You may be able to get around that by doing both triggers this way (but only if you trust that Trigger Event)."

I was referring, of course, to the "Construct/Purchase/Upgrade" Trigger Event. It turns out that it would work but there is a big reason why not to use it in this situation.

Here's how I tested this.

I placed two U.S. engineer units near these bridges:


I wrote a trigger to blow both bridges to start the scenario:


With #johnconnor protecting my engineers from being hassled by nearby German armor, I had them repair the bridges:


Success! Apparently the "Construct" portion of the "Construct/Purchase/Upgrade" Trigger Event does work:


The trouble is, so does the "Purchase/Upgrade" portion. To test this, I moved the engineers away from the bridges and deleted the trigger that destroyed the bridges at Scenario Start:


Then I merely purchased an infantry unit:


Bingo! Objective achieved even though the bridges were never blown or repaired:


Long story made short, better leave the "US/Brit Bridges" triggers in Caen alone. The player will have to go through all 25 turns - he'll probably need nearly all of them anyway - unless you can figure out a different way of doing this.

Thread to be continued . . .

Falaise v. 0.91

Two orphans:


I usually look for only red numbers concerning supply, but these land supply surpluses seem rather low. Only +2 for Germans, which may be fine barring any deployments or spawns, and only +10 for U.S. land before the deployment of core units:


I see that all of the U.S. units on the map are core so maybe I am misunderstanding the situation. Still, the scenario begins with those units on the map and 123 U.S. land command points so I assume the player's core is supposed to be deployed. Given the existing supply, though, only a couple of such core units can be deployed.

We have the same situation here that we had with Avranches and Brittany; 3 German-held objectives plus Parigny itself = a total of 4 primary VP's on the map. One is already in the bag at the very start and only two of the German-held objectives are required:


See the Avranches posts for what I recommended.

I'd like to see this vignette when I play this scenario sometime. In order to do so, I encourage you to make this "Check Turn / Turn > 2" because the Königstiger must be visible only during Turn 3 this way; any other time when it is sighted and the trigger never fires:


I don't understand the "Puma" trigger, however. Destroying the German airstrip also enables the "Destroy the King Tiger tank" objective? There doesn't seem to be a logical link to the two events. Moreover, the Königstiger hunt is not mentioned in the Event Popup:


Last but not least, "A number of fully functional 234 Puma Aufklärung vehicles have been captured in the repair shop. These are fexcellent [drop the "f"] for some recon in force operations." This implies the U.S. will own these vehicles but the spawn is of a German unit:

Aachen v. 0.91

This "Shoot down all V1 rockets" is sort of a "gimme" (an Americanism, I believe).


The Ohka is listed as "kamikaze" for weaponEffect in units.csv so, no matter where it spawns, it will shortly destroy itself in its attack:


So when that Combat Event happens for the second time, this trigger will detect that, fire, and award the goodies. All the player needs to do is endure two attacks:


You want to make it more of a challenge? Maybe see if this works; I'm not sure if "Kill" includes a kamikaze self-destruction but if not, this may do the trick. Indeed, it might be too hard to achieve in the little bit of time available while the Ohkas fly to their targets:


Or maybe this, again provided kamikaze self-destruction is not a "Kill":


By the way, I would name both Ohkas "V1" because, as we saw earlier, the V2 was another weapon. Also by the way, since this has all been in the nature of a design discussion, you've scored an ACE in Aachen! I couldn't find anything wrong with it.

Rur v. 0.91

Once again, this will not work for the same reason seen earlier:


Aachen is also a primary VP, the possession of which means the player must take only 5 of the 7 Rur bridges. Again, I am tempted to either demote Aachen to ordinary capture point or to make this "Value > 6" (capturing at least 6 Rur bridges + hold onto Aachen = 7) but the same objections that I had earlier come to me again. Yet the solution that I recommended in those earlier scenarios will not work either because it's an "at least" instead of "all" objectives situation.

This is a tough one. I can't think of what to recommend, so I will fall back on my function of merely pointing out that there is a problem here and I will leave it to your designer discretion to come up with a solution. I am sure that you will think of something; if you do decide to change objectives, don't forget to revisit the missions and briefings.

Speaking of which, the briefing says, in reference to the Rur dams, "three key areas have been marked with an Control Center on your map." Is this a holdover from Panzer Corps? Because I see nothing in those three hexes (I was looking for concrete bunkers, maybe):


Doing this trigger in this fashion, evaluated at scenario-end, means the player must play out all 26 turns. Would it be better to mark "Hold Aachen at all times" as completed in the beginning and just have the "Ger Aachen" trigger to fail the U.S. objective and award the German objective of "Aachen"?


This image is not in the folder:

Incidentally, I went looking around and found this information on the Rur dams:

https://history.army.mil/books/wwii/Sie ... d-ch14.htm

which is neither here nor there except it contains a picture of one of the dams, the Schwammenauel, in case you want to use it in the scenario:


I also happened to find this Panzer Corps Wiki entry, which confirms my suspicion expressed earlier:

https://panzercorps.gamepedia.com/Rur



Thread to be continued . . .

Erik, can we make sure there are waffen SS units in appropriate scenarios? Nothing is more fun than smashing SS.

prattaa wrote: ↑Mon Aug 19, 2019 2:09 pm Erik, can we make sure there are waffen SS units in appropriate scenarios? Nothing is more fun than smashing SS.

I would imagine that he has them in there according to history. Of the 18 scenarios, Waffen SS appears in 10 of them: Carentan, Contentin, Avranches, Caen, Falaise, Aachen, Sankt Vith, Bastogne, Houffalize, Remagen. In a couple of these scenarios (Aachen and Sankt Vith), eliminating Waffen SS units is one of the objectives.

Sankt Vith v. 0.91

At first, this seems like a contradiction:


in that "Hold all 3 objectives at all times" would be violated if one objective was lost at any time but this trigger evaluates only at scenario-end. You had to do it this way, however, because only one primary objective is active in the beginning and you could not mark it as completed to start with, only to fail if one of the primary VP's was taken. It being the only active primary objective, the scenario would end immediately with a victory. Fortunately, there are other primary objectives waiting to be activated.

Moreover, the situation is handled nicely by this trigger:


and by the switch of primary objectives on Turn 12:


Now you are probably saying to yourself, "I know all this. Why is he telling me what I already know? Gå til helvete for guds skyld!" Well, I sometimes lay things out so I can understand them, you see?

So now I can get back to the triggers themselves and browbeat you with my objections. Such as this one; how did you calculate the "Amount > 28"?


How do you know, at this stage of the campaign (the 10th scenario), how many core units the player will have? Going by the 140 land command points and an (arbitrary) average of 3.5 CP's per unit, the player could have 40 core units on the map.

Instead, I would do these triggers in this fashion:


Note that you also need to evaluate "Lost exits" at "Turn Start / Check Turn / Scenario turn limit." Same with "Waffen survive":

Sankt Vith v. 0.91 (continued - IMPORTANT)

Before we go any further, I need to point something out to you. In testing the "T12" Dialog, I could not get it to work at all. The Event Popups would appear, but no Dialog Popup.


At first, I thought "Oh no. They didn't break the Dialog effect in 8.1.0, did they?" No they did not, as I saw when I called up my Aleutian Crisis scenario:


But then I found the difference. See here, where I select the Alliance:


Your trigger, on the other hand, does not specify the Alliance:


What is happening, then, is this: On each new turn in this scenario, the AI goes first. That is the first instance of Turn Start. When the human player goes first, then there is no difference but the AI going first records the first instance of Turn Start. So, the Event Popups go off during "his" Turn Start as does the Dialog Popup. Since the Event Popups are not earmarked for any Recipients, they linger and can be read by the human player in his Turn Start. The Dialog Popup, however, does not persist and the human player never sees it.

When I made the correction, the Dialog Popup came up and I was able to make a choice:


Not meaning to toot my own horn - far from it - but this is a great example of why CSI sweeping can be very important. A beta tester can play through this entire scenario, all 30 turns, with the same objective of "Hold all 3 objectives at all times" and never realize that there were alternative primary objectives. Thus they give no feedback on this; thus the designer never knows that there is a problem and thinks that everybody is playing and enjoying his scenario as designed (unless he himself plays it. )

Sankt Vith v. 0.91 (continued)

The Event Popup for "Weather" says: "The wetaher . . ." (swap the "a" and the "t"). Also, there is no "air" image in the folder. I suggest this one, which seemed from the context in which I found it to be related to the Battle of the Bulge:


Also, I think this is an error; the trigger is meant to deploy air units when the weather clears but these air units are already on the map and active from the start:

Sankt Vith v. 0.91 (continued)

In the "T12" trigger's Event Popup, it says "Your core army must be evacuated at once by placing each unit on any of the locations marked with an A on your map." That's left over from Panzer Corps; the hexes on your map are labeled "Core unit exit" (and you missed labeling the one in the southwest corner).

It goes on to say "If you decide to act against these orders, then the only way to emerge victorious is to destroy all German ground forces." There is a subtlety here in that you say "all German ground forces" but the objective becomes "Destroy all Waffen SS units." It's an unlikely objective, given the dire situation - for what reason would the U.S. Army give priority to destroying Waffen SS units given how many regular German army units there are on the map?

I don't know how you are going to handle this - perhaps you will leave it as it is - but I would be disappointed if the decision was to take this module out of the scenario. If this were my scenario, here's what I would do (only differences are posted - look carefully):


I caught my own error in that last screenshot; it should be "Enabled"; that is, if the player chooses "Kills," the St. Vith objective stays on and these two kill objectives are added.

I usually will not do this - these are your creations, not mine, and you deserve all the credit - but in this case, I made so many changes on the fly that I thought I would offer this version of 12Sankt which contains everything that I have talked about here. Use part of it, all of it, or none of it. I'm serious; I am not going to check on whether you did or not.

[Members of the public: This scenario contains no provision for "Extra compensation resource points given to human players due to the absence of core units if the scenario is played in stand-alone mode outside of a campaign." As such, it cannot be played independently of this campaign. If you downloaded the file prior to 11PM U.S. EST on August 21, download it again.]

Bastogne v. 0.91

May I make a request: Would you make it "Keep at least 5 of the 101st paras alive."? The way it is, it seems there may be 101 paratrooper units on the map.

Wrong objective linked:


As with Sankt Vith, I would make this Team 1 instead of Green Alliance because the Blue U.S. Army units are allowed to roam two hexes in Local Defense and there could be a situation where the Germans took one of the primary VP's and lost it again to a Blue Army unit:


I would love to see Event Popup messages for each of those T5, T10, and T15 "Change Supply Output" triggers. Nothing that mentions an abrupt change (even though it is, but that's fine) but something like "Warning! Supply continues to dwindle in Bastogne while the 101st Airborne is surrounded. Expend every effort to relieve the town!"

If you wanted to get fancy, perhaps you would include 10 of these triggers, taking supply down -2 for each hex, each turn. Then only one message in Turn 1, say, would suffice.

I assume the 200 supply in the southern hex is enough for Bastogne's needs? Don't forget that it has to cover the player's core units as well. If it's not enough, then you may need to build in an Effect to turn off remaining "Change Supply Output" triggers once the supply line is established (and turn them on again if supply is cut; I guess it would be easier and simpler if you just make sure that core plus Bastogne have enough supply in total and let the game handle the supply connection).

Nice touch, in any event. I'm looking forward to playing this entire campaign but this one in particular piques my interest. My gosh, does this game need American land commanders such as George Patton. Heh, I'm surprised the Defeat outcome is not "By failing this very important mission, you have stepped on Patton's toes. In an outburst of rage, he slapped you in the face, decided to strip you of rank and signed your immediate transfer to some backwater place."

By the way, a bit of nitpicking. The "Supply" secondary objective requires a connection to the northernmost point of Bastogne while the "Bastogn(e) contact" trigger requires a link only to the southernmost point. Intentional? Perhaps it is; a truly effective supply line would reach to all of Bastogne while a "contact made" message would be first contact; i.e., the closest hex in Bastogne. If it was not intentional, though, you may want to consider this and decide.

Houffalize v. 0.91

This orphan Gebirgsjäger is looking for his lost mountain!


Only 10 turns for this scenario? OK, if you say so.

That's all for this one! The evening ends on a quiet note.

Thread to be continued . . .

Remagen v. 0.91

Objective description: "The bridge must be intact. The Germans . . ." (lower case "h")

Draw outcome: ". . . aircraft bombing, direct artillery hits, near misses and deliberate demolition attempts. (insert a "t")

Orphan here:


Here's a question or two about the bridge. All this trigger requires for completing the mission is to have the U.S. holding the hex; there is no requirement that the bridge be intact:


Wouldn't you need to add a "Check Bridge Status" condition like this?


The reason I am asking is that you have this 50-50% chance of having the bridge blown as the U.S. approaches and "This means you must repair it before the scenario ends.":


Speaking of the U.S. approaching the bridge, I believe you forgot to link this condition to the Target Hex (the absence of "Remove Hex" is an indication):

Remagen v. 0.91 (continued)

I noticed the image named "bridge" was not in the folder for this trigger:


If you don't have something suitable, I offer this image of the actual Bridge at Remagen after it ironically collapsed 10 days after it was captured:


It's a screen grab from the "Colour film from before and after the bridge collapse (March 14–17)" on the Wikipedia page for "Ludendorff Bridge" (a.k.a., The Bridge at Remagen). I turned it black and white.

Remagen v. 0.91 (continued)

One more thing about the bridge objective; you probably need a second "Ger Bridge" trigger like this:


This second one would cover the condition wherein the U.S. owns the hex in the end but the bridge has been destroyed and remains unrepaired.