Slitherine

GS v2.10RC11 is finally completed and Ronnie / Paul will now make the complete installation back so you can download the updated version soon.

So soon we can resume testing and have rail depots to support the new rail rules.

The major change besides rail depots is that it's now possible to rail in French North Africa if Algiers is friendly controlled (functions as a capital for Vichy France / Free France). Because if that change I added rail depots in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. You can't rail from these countries to Egypt because there was no rail lines in Libya.

Good work! Well appreciated.

Stauffenberg wrote:GS v2.10RC10 is finally completed and Ronnie / Paul will now make the complete installation back so you can download the updated version soon.

So soon we can resume testing and have rail depots to support the new rail rules.

The major change besides rail depots is that it's now possible to rail in French North Africa if Algiers is friendly controlled (functions as a capital for Vichy France / Free France). Because if that change I added rail depots in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. You can't rail from these countries to Egypt because there was no rail lines in Libya.

RC 11 or RC 10 ? should be RC11 , right ?

Yes. Ronnie called it RC11 since it was released after the bugfix he called RC10

Stauffenberg wrote:Yes. Ronnie called it RC11 since it was released after the bugfix he called RC10

Would you please advise the final release time of GS 2.1 ? this month or next ?

I guess next month because Slitherine needs to build the installer. The sooner we know that Barbarossa is not broken (from testing) the sooner we can ask them to start making the installer.

So just make some speedy runs and check if you can still make good progress against Russia in 1941 without coming all the way to the Caucasus and Urals.

Stauffenberg wrote:I guess next month because Slitherine needs to build the installer. The sooner we know that Barbarossa is not broken (from testing) the sooner we can ask them to start making the installer.

So just make some speedy runs and check if you can still make good progress against Russia in 1941 without coming all the way to the Caucasus and Urals.

I will try my best sir ! But since 1939 version is quite different from 1941 version .I quit 1941 version . How about to use 1940 start ? Maybe it will save some time .

Hey guys,

again, congrats on all the work for the new update.

But... isnt the point of a beta tester to test?

I didnt have time to properly test the RC9-10 versions out of early 1940 that its changed again.

I believe that some time should go by before we make full upgrade like that...

Its kind of hard to follow how all of this is unfolding.

Just my 2 cents this morning.

The point is that people meant that with the changed rail rules it would be hard to do a decent Barbarossa. So we better have to deal with it now rather than wait until we discover that there are too few places to rail to. The alternative was to add new cities, but people voted against that.
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I have to say I'm starting to become rather irritated having to read the complaints from some people complaining about us trying to fix important aspects of the game.

We discussed this earlier and we voted that adding rail depots would be best even though it meant a restart. I want to tell all of you that being a beta tester means you're supposed to contribute to get rid of bugs and fix game imbalances. If you don't want to get interrupted with patches etc. then you should not be a beta tester. Then you can wait till we release v2.1 to the public.

The situation would have been different if the patches have been sent constantly to the public. THEY should expect a version that won't change often. This is why we need to do this as beta testers so we spare the regular players from the agony of installing patches and even having to restart.

Stauffenberg wrote:The point is that people meant that with the changed rail rules it would be hard to do a decent Barbarossa. So we better have to deal with it now rather than wait until we discover that there are too few places to rail to. The alternative was to add new cities, but people voted against that.
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I have to say I'm starting to become rather irritated having to read the complaints from some people complaining about us trying to fix important aspects of the game.

We discussed this earlier and we voted that adding rail depots would be best even though it meant a restart. I want to tell all of you that being a beta tester means you're supposed to contribute to get rid of bugs and fix game imbalances. If you don't want to get interrupted with patches etc. then you should not be a beta tester. Then you can wait till we release v2.1 to the public.

The situation would have been different if the patches have been sent constantly to the public. THEY should expect a version that won't change often. This is why we need to do this as beta testers so we spare the regular players from the agony of installing patches and even having to restart.

Please not be upset sir ! Supermax is an excellent beta tester which has well hold his responsibility . Anyway , most of us are volunteers , we all have our own job , we have invested most of our spare time to do the beta test for the GS which we do love . I know you make great effort to accomplish the new patch ! It is a great change . The most important thing at present should be respection & responsibility ! We do need understand eachother !

I spend a LOT of my own time making all these updates when I could have fun doing something else. I don't make updates for no reason. They're done because it's needed to fix something.

I know that beta testers volunteer to beta test and we appreciate the help we get. But if some people have problems with time testing then it's a fair thing to wait for the final version to be released. It's not like we demand people to do any playing here.

We, the alpha team, discuss all updates before we make them and often make votes before they're done. This way we know that nice to have updates, but not important updates, are stopped before we go ahead with them. So the updates we actually make are updates SUPPORTED by most of the people here.

If some don't like the updates then that can't be helped.

Look at the alternative with RC9. Let's say we had given you more time to test and then you would report back that it's too hard for the Axis to rail units eastwards during 1941 Barbarossa. THEN we would have to make a fix and that would be to have more places to rail to (that can be linked up with the standard gauge rail network). The end result would be the same, i. e. that we would either add more cities or create rail depots.

So rather than making the discussion later we made it now since we realized what was going to happen. I think it's better to restart NOW rather than play for 1-2 weeks and have to restart once you've come to December 1941. Now we can hope to not have to make changes that would create restarts.

If something should be criticized then it should be that we released RC9 without having thought of the need for having more places to rail to. Then we could have combined the releases into one. But people usually won't see the consequences of a big change before they can actually play through themselves. So we needed RC9 out to actually see what we needed to improve.

Next weekend is a 4-day weekend pour moi, so I'll try to work through a hot-seat game and see if I can bumble my way into Russia! If one of my opponents from the two games we had started with RC9 (I think) would like to restart, let me know. Other than that next weekend, time and energy levels with be low, but I will try to crank out a turn most nights. Sometimes exhaustion and desire to shut off brain win out!

Stauffenberg wrote:I guess next month because Slitherine needs to build the installer. The sooner we know that Barbarossa is not broken (from testing) the sooner we can ask them to start making the installer.

So just make some speedy runs and check if you can still make good progress against Russia in 1941 without coming all the way to the Caucasus and Urals.

If you get a chance, could you describe what testing the alpha-team has done with RC11? It seems to me that the changes made could affect more than just Barbarossa (ie new rail in Africa, restrictions on landing air units in zero supply areas). It might be needed to actually play games through from 1939 to the end to assess the balance and play of RC11. Is there any particular reason that the mod needs to released next month? This seems very ambitious given the time required to play through a game.

By the way, RC11 looks amazing! The time you and the alpha-team spent on it looks like time extremely well spent! Thanks for sharing it with the rest of us.

It's not like the mod will be out next week. It can be later if we discover things. I just answered the question whether it will be out THIS month or next month. I said this month is out of the question.

For what its worth, can I just add that if the advantage I get of running a few games and being able to have a small imput into the direction of this game is counterbalanced by upgrading and starting again (so to speak) and feedingback here and there into this process, then thats what I signed up to.

I hope that the changes (which I think make sence and look encouraging) do give a reasonable balance, but if not, better to find out now.

Fingers crossed.

Now back to 1940.

That's the spirit we want from the beta testers, Timrt.

Another thing to think about regarding adding a big change to a system is what's called regression testing. That means you test other parts of the code that's not supposed to be affected by the change.

Ronnie did this and noticed that the game crashed when DoW'ing Denmark. The reason was that Aalborg was found via the routine northernmostcity. Since it was changed to raildepot I had to make a similar routine called northernmostrailrepot.

So by restarting we actually do the regression testing because we check the stability of the code from the start of the game and not from where we would be in existing games. Let's say most of us had already played RC9 past the DoW of Denmark. Then the bug would not have been found.

So making restarts is actually not a bad thing when we make a big change. Then we get verification that the game balance is not disrupted and we find bugs via regression testing.

PS: The bug I mention was fixed in the alpha testing so the RC11 version you're playing has no bugs we're aware of.

My experience with RC11 so far is that Case White is as easy as before and the Germans have no problems railing units to the west. So the game is unaffected at least up to Case Yellow. I expect case yellow to be the same as before too because we've made very minor changes in the west.

So I think we should all be able to play rather fast to the start of Barbarossa. How the Axis deals with the Balkans and maybe Sealion will be interesting. I don't think the changed rules in RC9 + RC11 will make these operations harder, but time will tell.

Stauffenberg wrote:Another thing to think about regarding adding a big change to a system is what's called regression testing. That means you test other parts of the code that's not supposed to be affected by the change.

Ronnie did this and noticed that the game crashed when DoW'ing Denmark. The reason was that Aalborg was found via the routine northernmostcity. Since it was changed to raildepot I had to make a similar routine called northernmostrailrepot.

So by restarting we actually do the regression testing because we check the stability of the code from the start of the game and not from where we would be in existing games. Let's say most of us had already played RC9 past the DoW of Denmark. Then the bug would not have been found.

So making restarts is actually not a bad thing when we make a big change. Then we get verification that the game balance is not disrupted and we find bugs via regression testing.

PS: The bug I mention was fixed in the alpha testing so the RC11 version you're playing has no bugs we're aware of.

No problem , we have already back to start & move forward again . we do hope the 2.1 release will come earlier .

TotalerKrieg wrote:

Stauffenberg wrote:If you get a chance, could you describe what testing the alpha-team has done with RC11? It seems to me that the changes made could affect more than just Barbarossa (ie new rail in Africa, restrictions on landing air units in zero supply areas). It might be needed to actually play games through from 1939 to the end to assess the balance and play of RC11.

The alpha team mainly tested the new functionality for bugs and just did a general check from 1939 to see that all was fine. That's how Ronnie found the game crash regarding DoW on Denmark.

We have not tested the game balance. That's for the beta group to do. We have a lot of experience, though, about how GS works so we can anticipate the effects.

No air rebasing to supply 0 hexes (except islands) will have very little effect on the game. The only hexes that will have supply 0 are isolated hexes with no link to a city. If you make an invasion and support it with surface ships you get supply level 1 (or 2 with Mulberry). Then you can rebase air units to the beachhead area.

So this change will only affect hexes where partisans free up some hexes. Before the Allies could e. g. send bombers to Yugoslavia and attack Ploesti. That was not historical because the bombers could never operate from isolated hexes within enemy territory.

Another exploit was that the Allies could send bombers from England to north Africa via partisan hexes in France. That was also not historical. Besides this the change will not affect the game. So I think this change is very minor.

Adding a rail network in French North Africa will have some impact on game balance, but I don't think much. It will make Torch more interesting. Control of Algiers control the rail network. It means France can e. g. rail a unit from Oran to Casablanca in 1940 to fend off a German invasion. That's good in my opinion. With Vichy France installed you will see that the Allies will go after Casablanca, Oran and Algiers. The Axis can rail other garrisons from Vichy France to these cities, but they can't stop the invasion. So these cities should fall and then the rail network will be taken over by the Allies. So the Axis will have a hard time getting German units to Algiers. They can get into Tunisia, though, but can't rail there.

The Allies have to link up the Allied control areas from Torch before they can rail between them. So the rail capability won't speed up the march on Tunis. The Allies still have to move the hard way to liberate hexes. Where you actually will see a difference is when the Allies send reinforcements in 1943 that should be used in Italy. The transports can now disembark in Casablanca and rail the units to Tunis. That means they don't have to transport all the way from USA to Tunis. It will not speed up the time the land units are available because you
need time to disembark and reembark in Tunis. Transport movement is 17. The main difference is that the escorts will be free sooner to do other escort duties.