Erik's campaigns, mods and multiplayer scenarios

[GabeKnight]

From where was taken your screenshot ? What campaign ?
I don't have this option (Importable Cores) in my Campaign Editor ?

Yes, that is a head scratcher. Perhaps he is using the Campaign Editor from beta? But in that case, I see that you are over there as well, so you should also have the same Campaign Editor if you are participating in beta.

The beta is actually closed. I wait for his answer.

Yeah, I was a little hesitant to post it here, and the "v7" under the screenshot was meant to imply where it came from.
(If someone official wants to remove it, please do)

I know the beta ended, but what's the FIRST thing you try, when some DATE-timer runs out?
(But to be fair, it was not supposed to be any copy-protection)

Remember, beta is beta. Just because you are seeing a new feature, which may or may not be from beta (but I think that's a good guess), it does not mean that the feature will make it into final production. Stuff is floated, fails, and gets pulled all the time in beta. Remember skirmish mode?

There's still leftover stuff for "skirmish" in all the current updates, so it may not be "dead", yet. But you're right, of course.

I remember the core import being doable in custom campiagns previously, but I guess that was the time of the campaign text files, before they've changed it with the campaign editor.

So what's the best solution with Erik's GGC now? Split with no core import, wait for the update or leave everything as it is?

[Horst]

10Limay: deployment zones in the lower right corner without own territory

The campaign got quite intense with the many enemy commanders now. No idea how it plays with the whole RP income from start now. While you can usually bombard hero land-units before attacking, it’s not possible against air units which dramatically climb the casualties and cost.

GGC: split with core-import of course! Dunno how importing works with banned units like maybe in AK. It possibly only prevents the purchase of these units, not the ones from the graveyard. I haven't tested this yet and won't as long as it's buggy that you can simply reload a savegame to circumvent the ban.

11Lamao: I don't think that destroying all units there is possible in 15 turns, but a spec point isn't that important anyway. It also doesn't look fine that you fail the "not loosing tanks" from beginning; open status is better. That objective is pointless without a reward.
It's typical in campaigns that all these star+1 specs become too quickly obsolete from the first couple of scenarios on.

12Cabcaben: "clear of mines" objective can't be done if still counting neutral mines.

Alright, the last scenario was rather too easy again.
By the way, it sounds strange that you are suppose to be only a battalion. It looks more like a regiment but rather a tank division in the end.

[Horst]

Wacht am Rhein
The fat crate on the strategic map blocks too much view. I'd rather see the pretty map.
The texts at beginning don't give a clue when this actually happened.
It's strange that the first mission starts with muddy/wet weather condition. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

"Heavy snowstorms engulfed parts of the Ardennes area. While having the effect of keeping the Allied aircraft grounded, the weather also proved troublesome for the Germans because poor road conditions hampered their advance. Poor traffic control led to massive traffic jams and fuel shortages in forward units."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge
The mud gives the false impression that the weather is still fine enough for air support. Making it rain would be wrong too.

Here is a useful PDF about the weather conditions during BoB:
http://dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a121480.pdf
It's not always the same weather in each region, but the weather summary on pg. 19+ mentions that it was rather foggy with light rain. It reads that it rather started snowing during January. Alrighty, I can accept this. Adding some snowy fields among mud is sadly not possible in the game.

[Erik2]

6Second Offensive:
Removed misplaced deployment hexes.
Reduced the number of deployment hexes in the south to the default around towns.
It may be that the game only recognizes a captured objective with the flag raized.

9Halfa:
Fixed secondary objectives.

11 Palestine:
Changed the Arab AI orders a bit.
Added one more Arab unit to each oil pump.
Added a few more turns.

Link updated to 2.2 in first post

[Erik2]

Philippines:
This campaign is based on the old (but still good) John Tiller's Campaign Series: Rising Sun.
The unit sizes are platoons.

10Limay:
Fixed deployment zones.

11Lamao:
Added more turns.
Added scenario end trigger and reward to tank objective.
Added missing Allied specialisations.

12Cabcaben:
Fixed mines objective.
Removed a few turns.
Allied unit experience = 2

Link updated to 2.2

[Erik2]

Wacht Am Rhein:
This campaign is based on scenarios from the excellent Command Ops:BFTB.
The research is very detailed and I trust the weather forecast
Mud was a compromise, I'd prefer to be able add some snow as well.
Thanks for the pdf link.
Added 1944 to the header and moved the create.
No update yet (of course).

[Horst]

The first scenario was a nice race and I made it.
It puzzles me, like in Desert Rats, why I already had to overrun Bastogne in scen-1 just to repeat it in the following scenario(s). Okay, it's a different scale from map to map maybe, but it simply feels like another mission-not-really-accomplished. Maybe declaring some special locations as impassable area would make it look more plausible to rather surround the locations at first to zoom-in on them in later scens. Just my feeling about this again.

[Horst]

2Roadblocks: counting M18 instead of the used M36 here
3Cracking: nice infantry bashin in close terrain there! I'm still fighting there. Unfortunately, I've noticed a 17 cm arty-reinforcement in a Blitz truck which can't be unloaded. You need to be careful as unsupported transports don't allow switching anymore.
"do not loose..." objectives have to either completed from start or finished on scenario end, otherwise minor victory in the end.

[JackoBongo]

Hi,
I went across a bug on the 3rd scenario (I think?) of the latest Afrika Korps version (2.2).


I have attached a save file for debuging.

[JackoBongo]

Ups, I've seen same issue was raised in the beta thread.

[Horst]

7Mayhem: another "do not lose..." objective doesn't complete for major victory.

[Horst]

The Wacht-maps have somewhat too many flag-less supply points on the map edges, although they obviously are important for occasional reinforcements there.
The scenarios play pretty fine so far with a good mix of defense and offense. I'm rather used to less-useful infantry vs. vehicles but the late-war ones kick them quite good in close terrain.

[bru888]

7Mayhem: another "do not lose..." objective doesn't complete for major victory.

There are several things wrong here and one of them may be the answer.

First, the scenario does not point to the six objective hexes but I do believe that there are indeed six primary VPs. However, the objective says "Hold at least 6 villages and towns" implying that there are more than six. The objective trigger says Value = 6 so perhaps the objective should read "Hold the 6 primary villages and towns at scenario's end."

Because that is how it is set up; you need to play all 24 turns to meet that objective. Let's assume, though, that you know this and that was not your complaint.

Perhaps, then, you were looking for a major victory because you had achieved this primary objective and the two secondary objectives. Did you get a minor victory instead? In that case, I think I know what the problem is.

This trigger only fails the "Do not lose any panzer units" objective. There is no other trigger that marks it as completed:

Screenshot 1.jpg (211.22 KiB) Viewed 3642 times

That's fine, as long as the objective is marked as completed at the beginning of the scenario so that it will be counted as achieved at the end of the scenario if it is not failed in the meantime:

Screenshot 2.jpg (163.36 KiB) Viewed 3642 times

If I had to guess, I would say that this is the answer. You may not have lost a panzer unit but the objective was never awarded for this reason.

[Horst]

Wacht
It’s disappointing that in 8Widening and 9Bastogne with a turn-limit of about 35, the AI is already losing its offensive momentum in about 20 turns. Afterwards, these scenarios are only a cleaner job. It’s a pity the AI has almost no default-sense coded for efficiency and unit strength. No, the units must rush back and forth on no matter how battered they currently are.
It’s still fearsome at beginning when the AI assaults with a large gang of M7 SPGs hammering your units to pie, but sooner or later AI-arty turns into hopeless junk with reddish numbers.

[Horst]

10Hell: two objectives require a fix. This scenario was way too easy to justify the name "hell".
I liked the first scenarios of the campaign more than the later ones, as they had more action until the end. 3Cracking is a fine example that good action doesn't require a huge map.
Eh, what next...? I still miss a defensive campaign for Japan from 42-45 where specs like Defensive Doctrine and Kamikaze could become useful. If it is similar like Wacht with some counter-attack and maybe some naval-evacuation elements then on-the-losing-path could still be fun maybe. There are so many kamikaze-variants of planes that badly need some proper objectives in 44-45; perfect for added aux-units.

Cheers!

10Hell.jpg (458.6 KiB) Viewed 3569 times

[bru888]

10Hell: two objectives require a fix.

Oh, Hell. Yes, there is something wrong with the "Hold at least 2 villages at end" primary objective, Erik. Namely, you don't have a way to complete it!

This trigger only fails the objective if the Axis does not hold 2 villages at the end:

Screenshot 1.jpg (221.34 KiB) Viewed 3532 times

Depending on the nature of the scenario, you need to either mark the objective as completed in the beginning (say, for example, the objective is to never lose more than one) or to provide another trigger which will award the objective if two villages (Value >1) are held at the end of the scenario (say, for example, that villages could change hands during the course of the scenario).

As for the Panther, I believe Horst is mistaken on that one. I johnconnor'ed the hell out of Hell to get to the end and I was awarded that objective properly:

Screenshot 4.jpg (474 KiB) Viewed 3532 times

[Horst]

10Hell: that Panther objective is really strange: it starts the scenario counting my three German core Panthers in the reserve too. That’s why I had 4 in the end. If you test the scenario alone, you obviously won’t have any other units in the reserve list.
It’s a rare condition that the game should count for units that aren’t spawned yet. I can’t remember any other scenario with the same condition. Maybe we just have found another bug.

[Erik2]

Wacht Am Rhein:
Changed the handling of Axis specialisations ('standard' campaign-style).
Changed secondary objective rewards (mainly from resources to specialisation points).
Doubled Alllied resource income.
Added more experience to Allied units in the later scenarios.
All Allied units are now 10-strength.
Added Allied historical 'no-show' units to some scenarios.
Fixed dense forest/road locations.

1Race:
Cropped west part of map leaving Bastogne on the edge.
Reduced number of primary objectives (removed Bastogne).

2Roadblocks:
Removed Bastogne objective.
Fixed dense forest/road terrain.
Added missing experience to a few US units.
Fixed secondary objective.

3Cracking:
Fixed 17cm artillery transport.
Fixed secondary objectives.

7Mayhem:
Added primary objective map markers and changed txt.
Fixed secondary objective.

0Hell:
Fixed primary objective.

Link updated to 1.7

[bru888]

0Hell:
Fixed primary objective.

Oh, Hell again! You'll want to fix the secondary objective as well because Horst is right (apologies, Horst). I missed the "4/1" Panther count in his screen print which indicates why the trigger failed.

You call for a specific Panther to be not lost. That can be done, AFAIK, only if the unit is already on the map. A spawned unit cannot be similarly tagged:

Screenshot 3.jpg (207.49 KiB) Viewed 3484 times

So, when you require one Panther unit to be on the map at the end of the scenario, it in fact is looking for any Panther units. Horst had 4 on his map and your trigger will not fire if the number is not exactly Amount = 1:

Screenshot 2.jpg (220.54 KiB) Viewed 3484 times

[bru888]

The same thing could happen with the StuG objective, by the way:

Screenshot 4.jpg (221.84 KiB) Viewed 3481 times

I'm trying to think of a way to do this. Maybe create the Panther and the StuG and put them in reserve at the beginning? Then you could specifically tag each in the triggers. Prevent the player from deploying them until they are due by limiting land command points, then increase them accordingly?* I've never tried doing something like that but I believe you have in the past.

*Edit: No, that wouldn't work because you would need to make them core units and that would probably goof up your campaign design. Heavy is the burden that OOB designers bear!