[SOLVED] Can I make a "reverse objective"?

[Hook]

I'm making changes to the French full battle scenario, mainly to balance the various objectives.

I'd like to change Plancenoit in such a way that the French player gets no victory points for holding it, but loses points if it is held by the enemy. Is this possible?

If it is possible, the most likely variable to change is the Occupied Modifier in the maplocations.csv file but I can't find any documentation on what it does, and every scenario in the game has it set to 1.

We can make sure the player understands what is happening, or will happen, by giving him messages.

Hook

[mcaryf]

Hi Hook

The AI player can earn objective points - you can see that if you examine the end game screens and check the grade values for the AI officers. However, the game does not automatically subtract these from the human score. I have never tried multiplayer but I assume both sides must be able to accumulate points to cater for that.

An objective location can give other benefits e.g. to morale and fatigue but I do not know if the AI player would get those as well as points. One problem with the AI and objectives is that it is easily distracted and tends not to keep its units in place to earn hold objective benefits so if you do want to have it earn VPs it is better to give the objective relatively short times to trigger and make it a way point type objective rather than a hold one.

Possibly the easiest ways to "punish" the French player for not defending Plancenoit would be either to give it a high value hold score for the French player e.g. 1000 points every 10 minutes for the final hour of the scenario and factor that into the VP target. A different approach would be to have some additional Prussian reinforcements appear if they take Plancenoit. Historically one Prussian Brigade/Division from II Corps was sent to Maransart to guard against a sudden flank appearance by Grouchy so you could make that Brigade appear to the South of Plancenoit if the Prussians capture it.

Hope this helps

Mike

[Hook]

Thanks, Mike.

I'd already been using similar techniques in the other objectives, but I was hoping for a good way to punish the player for not keeping the Prussians out of Plancenoit.

I hadn't thought of your idea of giving the Prussians additional forces if the Prussians take Plancenoit. That might work, but I'm trying to basically force the player to not ignore Plancenoit. There are some gamers who wouldn't care if the Prussians overran his entire line of communications and line of retreat.

I'm trying to balance this so that the pure gamers can have fun with it without having so many exploits (like being able to ignore Plancenoit) while the reenactors will find it historical.

I doubt many people will be comparing the scores of the two forces to determine actual victory. Given the high negative scores the Allies have been getting in this scenario, the player would end up with an insane number of points if they were combined (player score minus Allied score). Even a gamer watching his score go down because he didn't keep the Prussians out would cause him to react.

Hook

[Hook]

First of all, many thanks for Biondo for pointing me in the right direction on the Steam forum.

While it is not possible to directly create an objective that causes a player to lose points if the enemy holds it, there is still a way to perform this function.

I created an objective on the Waterloo map at the coordinates 350000, -1. This will be far off the south edge of the map in the southwest. It is far enough away that it cannot be seen if you move the camera to the southwest corner and will not show on the map display. The only place it can be seen is in the ESC->Objectives display during the game. This VP site requires zero troops so it can be taken by a lone officer (who does not contribute his headcount of one). It awards -50 victory points to the player when held.

Next, I selected an unused officer from the OOB files, in this case one of Grouchy's cavalry officers, and gave him an altstart location the same as the new VP site. Grouchy does not activate in my mod. None of this officer's troops show up, only the officer himself.

The VP site is not activated until either side takes the Plancenoit objective. At this point I activate the new VP site, and unlock and show the officer, although he cannot be seen or accessed in any way, as you cannot navigate to him with the arrow keys and he does not appear in the OOB. The VP site, now held by the French, gives -50 victory points per minute. Plancenoit, if held by the player, gives +50 points per minute, for a net total of zero. If Plancenoit is activated and not held by the player, or contested by the Prussians, the player gets -50 points for the hidden VP site but none for Plancenoit. The player must hold Plancenoit, uncontested, to keep from getting -50 points per minute.

The only down side to this is that once taken, Plancenoit must be held for the remainder of the battle. I experimented with ways to turn the VP site off and back on again but was unable to find a trigger to do this.

Hook

[RebBugler]

If it is possible, the most likely variable to change is the Occupied Modifier in the maplocations.csv file but I can't find any documentation on what it does, and every scenario in the game has it set to 1.

The "Occupied Modifier" must be set to 1 for the objective to behave normally, that is, the player must have 2x more troops than the enemy within an objective radius to keep it activated. If the Occupied Modifier is set to 0 or left blank the enemy can deactivate said 'player occupied objective' with a single unit, regardless of size, by merely touching the outside of the radius.

The "Occupied Modifier" is otherwise a player reward function for recapturing a previously occupied objective. For example, if the modifier is 2, the recaptured objective will double the amount of points received per cycle, if its a 3 then three times the points, and so on. In theory this is an appropriate feature, but unfortunately seldom used, never by me, because it can slant scoring toward the player too easily...IOW, gamied.

Regarding the last post in this thread, Hold objectives can't be triggered off. I requested a fix for this years ago and it was denied. Still, over the years there have been many requests granted, just wish I had pressed this one harder, along with some other requests, that lie dormant in the now defunct Future Depot.

[Hook]

Darnit, I posted a Quick Reply but didn't keep a copy of the post and now it doesn't show up.

Thanks for the info, RebBugler. Using an Occupied Modifier might be useful in some cases.

The whole point of my modified scenario was to let me fight the battle without having to intentionally ignore objectives in order to get a reasonable score, which I believe can exceed 230,000 points when a major victory is only 30,000. The La Haye Sainte objective alone will give over 50,000 points and is easy to take early in the battle and not very difficult to hold.

Hougoumont, Woods, La Haye Sainte and Papelotte are now waypoints that give 500 points each. LEFT and RIGHT have been cut from 200 to 20 points per minute. Mont St Jean was cut from 200 points to 30 points per minute. An additional CENTER objective on the crossroads just north of La Haye Sainte gives 20 points per minute. LEFT, CENTER and RIGHT all trigger counterattacks. Two new waypoint objectives that reflect the end point of the Imperial Guard attack give a total of 10,000 points, but must be held for 10 minutes each, and the first triggers the second. I wanted Plancenoit to lose points for the player if the Prussians took or even contested it so the player couldn't just ignore it, and now that works.

I have played through the whole battle and parts of the battle many times while testing intermediate versions of the mod. It is still easy enough to get a major victory if the player knows what he is doing and doesn't make too many mistakes, but I've gotten a minor victory once and in a couple of battles the major victory was in doubt, a race with the clock at the end of the battle. If a player wants more of a challenge, he can bump up the difficulty in the options. So far my highest score has been 40,000 points, 36,000 was the previous high, and typically it is 32,000 and I had to work for all these. And now, a player who ignores the Prussians or waits until it is too late can lose as much as 10,000 points total, although I've had no problems keeping the Prussians away from Plancenoit.

I've been posting documentation on all this as "rough draft" on the Steam forums, while the final versions will be posted here. The mod has not been published yet, pending a couple more test battles. My current playthrough is Waterloo #11 and I think this will be the final form of the scenario.

Thanks again.

Hook