Welington is beaten Prussians too late

[Little Powell]

Why don't you have 2 variants LP, one with Grouchy in the NE and one in the SE? Heck, why not one with him in the S near Rossomme?

If there wasn't a battle of Wavre and the other Prussian corps didn't interfere with Grouchy's march who is to say where he might have arrived? For Grouchy to be there at all means the other Prussian corps have gone far away beyond any reach of halting him so behind IV Corps there need not be a continuous procession of columns.

Good idea. I'll evaluate everything from this discussion and make a final change. Thanks everyone for the feedback.

[Jean Lafitte]

I was just going by memory, so, I could be wrong.

I have the Waterloo Companion but I have not had time to delve into it deeply. It's the Centennial for the Battle of Verdun, so, I am reading What Price Glory? right now.

I need to make a separate thread in the Mod forum singing the praises of the KS Mod. It is warranted.

[mcaryf]

Hi Little Powell

With respect to where Grouchy arrives, some people play Military simulations just as a game, whilst others of whom I am one like to experiment to try out genuine what ifs. My suggestion about moving Grouchy's arrival point was aimed to help you appeal more to that market who might be put off if it seemed none of your variants were possible historically. Someone suggested making Grouchy's arrival point variable and that is probably a sensible middle way.

I am almost ready to publish my modified version of WL10 which aims to reproduce initially an historically accurate version and then another version to include possible variations from that with Grouchy arriving in the SE.

I have encountered some interesting quirks in the game and I would appreciate your advice on one of them. I think I have also found an error in WL10 which might explain why Wellington does not counter-attack as much as might be expected.

The quirk that is bothering me is that quite frequently the list of objectives does not show up when I access that menu item but sometimes they do! Do you recognise this as something you have seen before? The objectives all appear on the mini-map and deliver points as they should. Is there possibly some sequencing requirement in the Maplocation file?

With respect to the bug in the scenario, I have experimented with creating random events after an army has gained an objective location. WL10 standard version uses that approach to create 3 different types of counter-attack by Wellington if the Left or Right objectives fall to the French. The 4th option in each set of counters is for Wellington to do nothing. Unfortunately the Left and Right objectives have been made into HOLD type objectives by the designer rather than as WAYPOINT objectives. My experiments with this approach has shown me that when the objective stays for HOLDING rather than disappears as a WAYPOINT then the random event creation command is continually triggered I guess every time the objective is held for the set period. The final result seems to be that the choice of random event defaults to the final one of the 4 and that is Wellington does nothing.

I do not know if this is an error by the scenario designer or the game software not behaving as it should. Since I only identified this by modifying the scenario to include messages in each option it may be that I did this wrong but I do not think I did and my own variant has these objectives as Waypoints and they work OK.

regards

Mike

[Little Powell]

The final result seems to be that the choice of random event defaults to the final one of the 4 and that is Wellington does nothing.

The hold objectives were by design. I do realize that every time the objective timer hits zero, it triggers the random event. However, this will basically "encourage" Wellington to shift forces there (as dictated by the random events). It doesn't necessarily mean he will actually do it since it's only a soft "orderdest" command, especially if those forces are engaged elsewhere. If I set them as way points, then they are only triggered once, which has two disadvantages. 1) Wellington will not care about those locations anymore because they were already triggered. 2) There's no reason to hold the objective locations anymore if they were way points. I'm encouraging the player to hold the vital ground, and keep it held (hence the Hold objective).

So it may appear that Wellington is defaulting to the 4th random and not doing anything, because he won't do much, especially if he's occupied elsewhere. It just tells him that "hey, the French are in this area, you should think about doing something about it".

[mcaryf]

Hi little Powell

The way I tested it was to put a message command in each of the 4 options. I only received 4 messages with the final one being the fourth do nothing option. I assumed that once a random event had been triggered it was somehow switched off from triggering again. Hence only 4 messages. I might be wrong in my conclusion but that was my logic.

Do you have any suggestions concerning my objectives failing to display on the menu issue? It does not stop the scenario from working but it is an annoyance.

Regards

Mike

[Little Powell]

Do you have any suggestions concerning my objectives failing to display on the menu issue? It does not stop the scenario from working but it is an annoyance.

This could be a bug. RebBugler - If you're around, have you seen this before?

[RebBugler]

This is too confusing for me to figure out without reference to a battlescript and questions regarding specific events on it.

My experiments with this approach has shown me that when the objective stays for HOLDING rather than disappears as a WAYPOINT then the random event creation command is continually triggered I guess every time the objective is held for the set period. The final result seems to be that the choice of random event defaults to the final one of the 4 and that is Wellington does nothing.

First sentence is accurate; second sentence, assumption, is totally off. Random events never happen by default, they happen randomly.

[mcaryf]

Hi Reb Bugler

I am most interested in whether there might be some reason why the Menu/Show Objectives command only seems to work intermittently for me and whether it is because my MapLocations file needs to be sequenced in some particular order e.g. all Minor objectives first or Alphabetically etc.


With respect to the Random Events command it seemed from my test of WL10 that if the BattleScript effectively loops through setting up a Random event and does it multiple times then the Random event that is eventually triggered seemed to be the last one in the sequence in Battlescript. That might be a function of the way I modified WL10 to test it. I suggest you can try it by putting a different courier message in each of the 4 options CounterR 1 - 4 then send a French unit to hold the Right location and see what messages you get. I tested this by hiding all but one unit of Wellington's troops so the French could move to the objective unopposed. I only got 4 messages they were in sequence R1, R2, R3 and the last one was R4. I only did this a couple of times so that could have just been an unusual random chance or some function of how I did my changes.

Regards

Mike

[RebBugler]

Don't know about the 'Menu/Show Objectives' issue you're having, someone else will have to answer that. All it's supposed to show is objectives you have activated and one's you don't. Frankly I never use it, the mini map provides all the objective data that's necessary to stay on task.

...MapLocations file needs to be sequenced in some particular order...

I've never prioritized except for convenience.

Checked out the Battlescript for WL10. The way the Hold objectives randomly send out different orders every minute when they are activated is not the way I would do it, but it's not a bug.

I tested this by hiding all but one unit of Wellington's troops so the French could move to the objective unopposed. I only got 4 messages they were in sequence R1, R2, R3 and the last one was R4. I only did this a couple of times so that could have just been an unusual random chance or some function of how I did my changes.

Now this is INDEED weird. If you just added a message to each to identify them, and they showed up in the numerical sequence as quoted, then...cue Twilight Zone music. :woohoo:

The odds that they'll happen in sequence, not once but twice, is astronomical.

[mcaryf]

Hi RebBugler

I cannot reproduce what I did now! It seems to only trigger the random event once at the moment so now it has gone the other way. I did originally find I had to try a number of times to get the format for the evtran command to function as intended. It did not like to start a sequence with a blank command or one with a location so perhaps I was doing that and somehow it was just running through in sequence. Anyway please do not worry about it - if I do reproduce it I will post again.

Sorry for a false alarm

Regards

Mike