MarshallsGilberts Raid: "missing_unit" Half Strength Bug

[bru888]

One of our forum members reported this bug when he began the Marshalls-Gilberts Raid scenario in U.S. Pacific:

All units start at half strength bug?

It is a definite issue, as I confirmed with the scenario editor. Notice all of the units on the scenario editor map are at strength 10. As a test, I placed a PT boat of my own as well:

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But when the scenario is started, all units are at strength 5, including my PT boat and including the enemy:

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Plus there is that strange message which may be due to the aircraft carrier being at half-strength and therefore half-supply? Anyway, I found what I believe is the cause. At some time, apparently there was an intention to weaken certain units on the map with this Setup trigger at Scenario Start:

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Note where I boxed something called "missing_unit" and below it the effect of Strength 5. I am only guessing but somehow, perhaps when this campaign was redone with the new campaign editor or maybe it was just inadvertently altered with the scenario editor, the units to which these several effects were linked were deleted and this value was automatically substituted. A further guess is that "missing_unit" is now applying strength 5 to ALL units in the scenario, American and Japanese.

The reason why I am saying this is that when I removed the four "missing_unit" effects from this trigger, leaving the five others that were all linked to Japanese units to reduce their strengths, the scenario started fine - all units at full strength - and the strange message was gone:

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[Mujado]

Hey I was wondering, could I as well edit the scenario so that I could continue my campaign? Or is the only option just re-starting the whole campaign after they fix it?

[bru888]

Hey I was wondering, could I as well edit the scenario so that I could continue my campaign? Or is the only option just re-starting the whole campaign after they fix it?

Sure, you would do the same thing I did. Now, this is Windows PC so if you are on a Mac, you'll have to ad-lib a bit:

1) Find the official campaigns folder in the OOB program files and drill down to the MarshallsGilbertsRaid folder. Copy that folder to your My Games OOB scenarios folder (look carefully at the folder trees in each window and realize this will not be how your file explorer will look because I use a special program with two windows):

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2) Start the Scenario Editor, click Load & Save (the diskette in the lower right), and load the MarshallsGilbertsRaid scenario:

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3) Click Scenario Settings (the gear in the lower right), navigate to the Triggers tab, select the Setup trigger, and delete the four effects that say "missing_unit" where I boxed in this image. Don't click the "X" though. CLICK THE MINUS BUTTON NEXT TO THE EFFECT TO BE DELETED as shown where the arrow is pointing to here. Leave the other effects alone, I suppose:

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4) Save the scenario by clicking Load & Save (the diskette in the lower right), make sure MarshallsGilbertsRaid is highlighted and its file name appears, and click Save. Say "Yes" to overwriting the old file and "No" to generating a new map preview:

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5) Copy the MarshallsGilbertsRaid folder from scenarios back to the program folder (reverse step 1).

Bear in mind a couple of things. First, by reporting the bug here, we have asked the developers to fix it in a future patch so that all customers, old and new, have a properly working scenario. That means, though, when they do patch it, it will overwrite whatever you do here to temporarily fix this.

That leads me to the second point. It may be that this scenario is borked in other ways and will not work properly anyway. This may compromise the rest of your campaign; I don't know. So if you do proceed, do so at your own peril (heh, let's remember it's only a game) and know that whatever else you are tempted to do in the scenario editor here will eventually be overwritten by the official fix.

[Mujado]

Thank you, got it working! Much appreciated.

The developers really ought to hire you at this point So helpful

[bru888]

Thank you, got it working! Much appreciated.

The developers really ought to hire you at this point So helpful

My pleasure. Eh, it's a labor of love.

I'm glad you could get it working, though please heed my caution about proceeding with the campaign. I think it should be fine; I believe what they were doing was knocking down some of the Japanese unit strengths at the beginning of the scenario with that trigger and if anything, without that, it should only be a bit tougher and not affect anything else.

[Shards]

Good detective work Bru! I'm guessing that the latest version gets a bit over-zealous when it's firing a trigger that's pointing to a UNITID that's not there any more!

[13obo]

Good detective work Bru! I'm guessing that the latest version gets a bit over-zealous when it's firing a trigger that's pointing to a UNITID that's not there any more!

Bump to fix this in Open Beta. Stumbled upon it in current version and didn't read anything about it on patch notes so thought it may not be fixed.

[Shards]

I think that this trigger was one of the things that Adherbal fixed in the open beta. It would be good if people could test it out?