Scourge of War Boards

J Canuck wrote:

Well since that would seem to knock the wind out of the sails of this thread, can we expect to come across any rogue regiments, batteries or ammo wagons?

Occasional detached regiments, maybe a few other surprises, but no rogue ammo wagons. :laugh:

All I am saying is that if a unit (of any kind and any rank in any structure) is not fully in the control of the player, if the scen making tools have a MASK to specify this then players won't go crazy, team won't follow bogus reports and moderators won't have to answer the same questions over and over again (every time a newcomer buys the game and goes crazy).

There are many games out there with hundreds of community based mods and scenarios but the best are those where there's been some sort of official recognition from the DEVs on such work (which is also giving a prestige prize to the authors of course).

Do mind that once the glitches present and features missing will be ok, a LOT of players will go for Historical settings. You CANT expect everyone to cope with detached troops if they don't know those troops are detached. Most of the times players can't even see them.

I have been stuck on GB04 because I am beyond frustrated due to this issue alone. Been waiting for a patch to do something. The scenario is confusing enough as is with mcphersons ridge being your first objective and Heth just sitting there with a full division doing nothing to support you. Then you take the ridge and the wall area pops up a strategic point, then you move to assault it and the rest of the union army comes and crushes you on the ridge.

Having to fight O'neal and Doyle the entire time doesn't make it any easier. Is the point of the designer that we should just leave these brigades alone? Whatever is going on needs to at the very least be better explained in the scenario description.

Sorry to the devs I posted in the patch thread before finding this one, I am still confused , stuck on GB04 after buying the game at release cause I figured this was either a bug or a game mechanic that was so horribly changed from TC2 that i didnt want to play anymore.

If their not under my control turn off the buttons. Also you can kinda control them and when you do i guess the script is breaking down somewhere cause all sort of screwy things can happen. They wont respond to courier orders or changing the stance through the order menu. I have also seen them detach thmselves. then not detach themselves fo a long period of the battle then start detaching themselves again all of a sudden. If you tc the entire brigade you can come back to find the general just walking straight into the enemy without their brigade.

Is the early poster correct, is this and 01 the the only scenarios where this happens? I'll suffer through 04 if thats the case, also can someone post a good strategy to get through this scenario considering the script?

jam3 wrote:

Is the early poster correct, is this and 01 the the only scenarios where this happens? I'll suffer through 04 if thats the case, also can someone post a good strategy to get through this scenario considering the script?

Like I said, leave O'neal and Doles alone. You're wasting valuable time trying to tame them. I'll have to play it again to remember exactly what I did (hopefully other players that have beat it can chime in) but only concentrate on one of the objectives. Clear the yankees off of the ridge as instructed, don't even think about the McPherson's farm objective. Or vice versa.

Also: I'm going to bring up this scenario with the team. I've always been a fan of the script controlling O'Neal and Doles, but I can understand how other folks don't like it, especially since they mistake it for a bug. Stay tuned.

Little Powell wrote:

Like I said, leave O'neal and Doles alone. You're wasting valuable time trying to tame them. I'll have to play it again to remember exactly what I did (hopefully other players that have beat it can chime in) but only concentrate on one of the objectives. Clear the yankees off of the ridge as instructed, don't even think about the McPherson's farm objective. Or vice versa.

Actually, I got irritated with O'Neal and rode his butt using the TC order on him and each of his regiments for the first twenty minutes, directing him to attack McPherson's farm from the eastern edge of the Union defenses there in coordination with two other brigades. I left Doles alone at first, then, when he began his attack towards the second Victory location, I wheeled O'Neal and a couple of other brigades to help him out. It was time consuming riding herd on O'Neal, though; I really wasn't able to concentrate on anyone else and had to rely on general commands to the brigade commanders to get anything done.

Also: I'm going to bring up this scenario with the team. I've always been a fan of the script controlling O'Neal and Doles, but I can understand how other folks don't like it, especially since they mistake it for a bug. Stay tuned.

I think the scenario is fine as it is; the best fix might be to put something in the scenario description telling people that O'Neal and Doles commands are scripted to "do their own thing" to reflect the issues Rodes had with them in the actual battle and that the scripting might, at times, override the player's control. I certainly wouldn't remove the scripting -- it would make this scenario too easy.

Steve

I certainly wouldn't remove the scripting -- it would make this scenario too easy.

Steve

I agree, good suggestion. Or maybe it could even come in a courier message "Sir, O'neal has already started his attack and is completely out of touch...." or something like that..

Thanks for the input McSpkr!

I agree with Gshock here, and just to clarify, the issue is mainly one of clearly signalling to a player what they can and can't do and with what. It certainly isn't an issue of trying to make the scenario any easier. And I like the suggestion of a courier message that tells you the O'Neal etc. have gone rogue. But the basic principle here is something that it would be valuable for modders and scenario designers to remember in the future (and this is why I value Gshock's point): if a unit isn't, in effect, going to be under a player's control, don't mislead them by suggesting it will be. This is the big problem with GB01, but we've beaten that particular horse to death.

But there is another issue here, I think, that is important for scenario designers to think about. Most of us are here because we're interested in historical realism. But from a player's point of view, what you want is behavioral realism (i.e. you want the units to behave realistically, to have the abilities and level of experience they had historically, for the commanders to have something approximating their historical personalities, and so on). What I--and, I suspect--most players are not interested in is historical recreation. I have no interest in watching battles play out as I know they did historically. That would be a movie. So, historically, it may well have been that Doyle and O'Neal charged impetuously into the fray. But this is a game version of that historical engagement. So if both those brigades are genuinely under my command, when I take control of them, I don't expect them to continue to go off and do their own thing (unless it is line with the orders I have given them or the situation in which they are engaged (i.e. I don't expect to be able to magically halt a routing unit). I personally think that if you TC a unit it should clear any pre-assigned orders. If you TC O'Neal and it automatically cleared that attack order, we wouldn't even be having this discussion (contrary to Little Powell's advice to leave these two units alone, when I did figure out what the problem was and cleared their pre-existing orders, I was able to mount a devastating attack that steam-rolled the center of the Federal line). However, Norb has said this isn't going to happen, so I'll shut up now!

But, as I said above, if we're not supposed to have real control of these units, if their precipitous behavior is an event that we're supposed to contend with in the scenario, that is awesome. . .just don't pretend to give us control in the first place!

So, the lessons for scenario designers:
1) Don't pretend to give us control of units; if a unit not being under our control is vital for the way you want the scenario to play out, make that clear from the start or use a device like the suggested courier message.
2) Don't get so fixated on trying to make an event "historical" that you forget many of us are here to re-write history.

"So, the lessons for scenario designers:
1) Don't pretend to give us control of units; if a unit not being under our control is vital for the way you want the scenario to play out, make that clear from the start or use a device like the suggested courier message.
2) Don't get so fixated on trying to make an event "historical" that you forget many of us are here to re-write history."

Yeah, I agree. I learned a way back that scripting that interferes with player control can be very unpopular. Now, I still use it some, mainly to just steer a historic course, but I acknowledge this up front.

This testing is taking all my time now, hope to be scenario designing soon...there's so much potential here. :laugh: B)

I couldn't agree more with Taiaha's post. I honestly thought the game was broken and was waiting for it to be fixed, theres no way thats the intended result.

So, the lessons for scenario designers:
1) Don't pretend to give us control of units; if a unit not being under our control is vital for the way you want the scenario to play out, make that clear from the start or use a device like the suggested courier message.
2) Don't get so fixated on trying to make an event "historical" that you forget many of us are here to re-write history.

Unfortunately the scenario designer disagrees with these ideas. I argued the same thing and got nowhere.
http://www.norbsoftdev.com/index.php?op ... 0&id=17098

The obvious solution is to await the SDK and fix these issues ourselves.