Kursk - A Clunk of Steel

[kverdon]

I had imagined that after playing though the previous battles of PanzerKrieg I would be rewarded with an EPIC battle for Kursk to end the DLC. Instead I was rewarded with a EPIC Fail of a scenario.

Spoilers Below:

The scenario starts out well enough with you main objective being Oboyan along with 2 flank primary objectives. This however changes about 2/3s of the way though the scenario to move the one of the objectives from Oboyan to a major armor battle at Prokhorovka where you have to kill 15 Soviet tanks. This is going to be a tad problematical in that you have about 10 turns to do this and you will need to accumulate about 45 hits to do this give them game mechanics. I encountered the tank force at about turn 23. That is only 9 turns to wipe them out. Doable? Maybe but as I will point out later, I can't tell. There is also no way you are going to pull this off if you don’t know it is coming and deploy you heavyist forces to the east. Looking in the editor it looks if you somehow manage to pull this off you then are sent back to capture Oboyan. The secondary objective of the Kursk Railway is rather useless as it comes with command points but no resource points to by out any remaining core units or purchase new ones. It should come with 100+RP to be on any real use.

*Note: I did manage to go back a number of turns and get a save that the AI did not choke on. You do NOT get sent back to Oboyan.

And then we come to the CLUNK. After racing my units east to face the Soviets and start the Epic Tank battle, on Turn 26 the AI ground to a halt. 2.5 hours after ending my turn the AI is still "Thinking". After about 30 mins the red progress bar finally made it to the far right 100% mark but nothing has happened. The game is not frozen as I can still move the map about with my mouse but the AI is deadlocked. I'm not running this on a Laptop by the way, its a desktop system with a 4.3 ghz CPU, 8gb RAM and NVidia GTX980 video card (Which still runs the new intro choppy BTW).

It is a shame the game was not properly tested before release. A number of the beta test people on the boards admit they never made it this far. I feel a bit like instead of an Epic Tank battle, I'm getting a bit of Coal in my Christmas Stocking...

[Andy2012]

It is a shame the game was not properly tested before release. A number of the beta test people on the boards admit they never made it this far. I feel a bit like instead of an Epic Tank battle, I'm getting a bit of Coal in my Christmas Stocking...

Yes, some of us never made it this far (other life commitments, new versions etc), but others did. Maybe kondi can help you out.

[kverdon]

Thanks Andy, I certainly understand that. It is a HUGE commitment of time to get through all the Scenarios to the end.

I finally did get a save to work past the CLUNK and finished it on the very last turn or regulation. Thankfully you do NOT get sent back to Oboyan after the armor battle as the editor suggests might happen. (unless I got lucky for once and a bug worked in MY favor )

What I would recommend is that for the next playtest, is to have someone commit to playing though each scenario in the campaign once. Save after each battle. Those saves are then divided up amongst the playtest group for them to test the next scenario following each save. Each scenario should have a minimum of two playtesters. Have them play through the scenario up to the start of the next to make sure rewards, resource points etc work consistently. By saving at the end of the previous scenario the scenario assigned to the person to test will get loaded correctly even if there are were modifications made to it. This way all the scenarios can get adequately tested without a huge commitment of time from the playtest group. The test group would certainly be free to test the campaign using their core force when they had extra time.

[kondi754]

It is a shame the game was not properly tested before release. A number of the beta test people on the boards admit they never made it this far. I feel a bit like instead of an Epic Tank battle, I'm getting a bit of Coal in my Christmas Stocking...

Yes, some of us never made it this far (other life commitments, new versions etc), but others did. Maybe kondi can help you out.

I managed to play 3 or 4 turns of this scenario.
Then the tests ended and the Beta version expired.
Unfortunately I am not able to help.

[bebro]

edit:

To be more clear:

The change in objectives is WAD. It is also WAD that you do not have to go to Oboyan again after defeating enemy armour. The editor does not suggest anything else, this seems to be misunderstanding.

The only real problem here is the long/stuck AI turn, which did not seem to occur later? If we can't reproduce the prob I'd advise to shut down the game if the AI takes too long, and do a restart. Could be even something Windows related (like some process with high CPU usage in the back), so sometimes even a reboot might help.

[kverdon]

Hebro - No it was not CPU related once the AI Bar reached 100% the CPU utilization of the application was <2%. Overall CPU utilization was < 30%. I did kill the process and after going back and restarting from about 6 turns prior, was able to get past the place the scenario hung. As I noted earlier, the game was responsive as I was able to move the map with the mouse. I was also able to minimize the app and launch other apps without issue after the AI froze.

[Andy2012]

And then we come to the CLUNK. After racing my units east to face the Soviets and start the Epic Tank battle, on Turn 26 the AI ground to a halt. 2.5 hours after ending my turn the AI is still "Thinking". After about 30 mins the red progress bar finally made it to the far right 100% mark but nothing has happened. The game is not frozen as I can still move the map about with my mouse but the AI is deadlocked. I'm not running this on a Laptop by the way, its a desktop system with a 4.3 ghz CPU, 8gb RAM and NVidia GTX980 video card (Which still runs the new intro choppy BTW).

Okay, I have now encountered the same issue. Exactly the same. Not the same turn, but the same AI thinking forever during the tank battle at Prokhorovka. I am currently alt-tabbed out while writing this - so it is not with my desktop, Windows is running fine. Something is clunking in the engine room of that mission.
And this is just the AI stuff - the imbalance in player resources in the late missions reaches its peak in Kursk. I mean, I try to defeat 15 soviet tanks with my three tanks (one Pz IV, two Pz III) and some Stugs, which are currently deployed on the other end of the map. Yep. 25 CP Waffen SS and Wehrmacht undeployed, 6 air CP undeployed. Just no money in the bank. (And I do this well.)

[CoolDTA]

I didn't have any of that forever thinking. But there must be something there if and when it happens to people and kverdon even playing with a highend pc.

[bebro]

Okay, I have now encountered the same issue. Exactly the same. Not the same turn, but the same AI thinking forever during the tank battle at Prokhorovka.

Do you got a savegame and/or a log file of that? I dare to say it's nothing that can be fixed by scenario editing.

[Andy2012]

Okay, I have now encountered the same issue. Exactly the same. Not the same turn, but the same AI thinking forever during the tank battle at Prokhorovka.

Do you got a savegame and/or a log file of that? I dare to say it's nothing that can be fixed by scenario editing.

Hope this helps, see attached. End turn is fine, right?
BTW, I have an AMD FX 8350+, 8gigs RAM, 4 gigs R9 370 graphics, fast SSD. So it is not my desktop.
But you are probably right, this is not an scenario editing issue. (Even though they will need a patch, too...)

[bebro]

Thanks, I look into the save, but it's probably something for Ad.

[Andy2012]

Thanks, I look into the save, but it's probably something for Ad.

Yeah, that's what I thought. With the latest version, I had some crashes and freezes. But nothing persistent...