Expanded Toolbar - Grog

[mcaryf]

Hi Reb

I had a look at the screen function to see if it might be useful as a tool for the AI to use in scripted activity. I found that the unit with the screen command seems to be very aggressive changing its position by over 700 yards to go and pick a fight with an enemy unit it has spotted which is that distance away.

I had rather a complicated situation with several battalions to which I had given screening commands having run off to pick fights with some distant enemy unit. At some stage one of them started displaying an unsplit (or skirmisher recall) button I pressed it and was told that you cannot do that to an unsplit battalion. I am sorry I cannot be very precise about the circumstances when this occurred as I was trying to stop the screening battalions from running off and it could even be that this particular battalion with the unsplit button was one the AI might have created. I only mention it in case it rings a bell with you.

I had hoped to use the screen command coupled with the Divisional command to form squares with artillery between them so that the AI could set up a strong defensive "Rob fortress" type structure. The screening unit seems to base its position on its brigade officers location so not really screening the guns that are sitting between the two brigade sets of squares but given the aggressive reaction of the screening unit it might work. Unfortunately the vulnerability to cavalry and the likelihood of extreme fatigue probably makes this facility unsuitable for AI scripting.

What I would really like to achieve is for AI artillery to have effective infantry guarding units that would deploy against threats in advance of the artillery rather than behind it and act as skirmishers if the enemy is infantry or a square if the enemy is cavalry. As things currently are I think a cavalry squadron in guard mode is probably still the best option to use with AI scripting.

I use units as "guards" quite a lot and the Aattach command might be useful in that context as of course the guard order automatically detaches the relevant unit. I can see that I might possibly use Aattach if I needed to recombine a brigade to act offensively as I sometimes lose track of which brigades units have been detached from as guards. I do not think I am very likely ever to use a fairly random Adetach command but if others want to have it I cannot see any objection.

I do find the split battalion command very useful particularly for cavalry that I want to take an objective and I am still thinking about other uses for it.

regards

Mike

[RebBugler]

Apologies, I screwed up that recent attachment. Fixed and replaced,
NA...included with the 5.81 update
Edit, you'll be replacing the Layout folder now, with the Tool Tip info changed as discussed.

[RebBugler]

Hi Reb
I had rather a complicated situation with several battalions to which I had given screening commands having run off to pick fights with some distant enemy unit. At some stage one of them started displaying an unsplit (or skirmisher recall) button I pressed it and was told that you cannot do that to an unsplit battalion. I am sorry I cannot be very precise about the circumstances when this occurred as I was trying to stop the screening battalions from running off and it could even be that this particular battalion with the unsplit button was one the AI might have created. I only mention it in case it rings a bell with you.

regards

Mike

I spent a lot of time hiding those unsplit buttons on the screening toolbar. They should never appear. If you can duplicate how this happened and determine the cause it sure would be helpful. Meanwhile, I'll look for it in my testing.

Thanks for the report

And to back up your screening message, yeah, those screening btns are like wild beasts...Uncontrollable. :woohoo:

[Hook]

You're right about the detach command being iffy. It affects player movement of troops but not AI movement. Detached AI controlled units will be called up when their officer needs them, usually when an engagement of his attached troops starts going south.

While it can be annoying when it happens, I believe it is appropriate. In any case that mechanism will work well if you detach some of your force specifically intending them to be a reserve. The leader will activate them as needed.

"Detach a reserve"?

Hook

[Jean Lafitte]

I've run the new Toolbar for a couple of sessions over the last couple of days and, as expected, it works just fine with no problems. Thanks, Reb.

[RebBugler]

I use units as "guards" quite a lot and the Aattach command might be useful in that context as of course the guard order automatically detaches the relevant unit. I can see that I might possibly use Aattach if I needed to recombine a brigade to act offensively as I sometimes lose track of which brigades units have been detached from as guards.

regards

Mike

Yeah, the Aattach command is a MUST command in order to find detached troops.

Last night I spent hours of testing trying to find a Brigade level path to cancelling Actions, as opposed to navigating around to each squadron and cancelling them individually. I was successful to a point by navigating via scripting, rankdown, follownone, ranknext, follownone, etc. However, the stumbling block was I couldn't find a way to go back to the original Brigade officer selected. Most of the time it defaulted back to ME (Division level), sometimes another Brigade CO, depending on which scripting I used, rankup, gotosel, or just ending the script with follownone...I think I tried every combination possible.

And this leads to the last snag, if we go with the return to ME version, the player has to navigate back to the original officer selected and click the Cancel Action button one more time. If we had Tool Tips that would accommodate LONG messages this command function could be considered, but without informative steps to take, most players would be lost and just assume the Grog Toolbar is buggy.

Thoughts or fixes?

Davide, if you're listening in, are there any commands available to return to a selected officer after a 'rank navigating' script has been run? Or, do you know of another scripting sequence to solve this issue?

[mcaryf]

Hi Reb
After further experiments I find that if I take command of a "screening" unit and order it to resupply then the normal formation command options appear and the unit will execute them except for split battalion. If I then switch TC off the unit reverts to its screening role. I do not know if you intended this to be the case but I do think it ought to be possible for the player who has used TC to be able to order the unit how they might want especially to make it form square if threatened by cavalry. If I then flip the attach button the unit also gets the option to lie down added to what it can do.

It is also possible to issue a Screen command to a single battalion that has been split from a brigade and has an officer of its own. I am still thinking about whether this would be a useful method for using Screen to set up a guard for my artillery units as I then have the opportunity to have a more active defending unit. I could place the officer some distance behind the artillery unit so that the screen unit is just in front of the artillery and so less likely to go running off after enemy units that are too far off to be a threat. I presume the battery could still fire as it would be in skirmish format although I have not tested that yet.

Normally it seems I cannot issue a Screening command to a battalion that has already hived off a skirmisher unit. However, I can do that if I have previously issued a Guard command, hived off a skirmisher, which actually inherits the Guard command, I then take the Guard command off the parent battalion and instead issue a Screen command which works. Thus i could use a single battalion to provide both a normal Guarding skirmisher squad and a hyper-active skirmisher screening unit. I quite like this and am still reviewing other possibilities and combinations so I would prefer you not to change anything that currently allows this to happen.

Regards

Mike

[RebBugler]

Version 5.8 update...Adjusts and provides further information about the features introduced with update version 5.75

Target Cavalry
- No reports of issues

Addition of Aattach and Adetach
- Aattach, no reports of issues
- Adetach, redefined
With additional scripting Adetach works as designed (detach all subordinates) on the brigade level only. For the upper echelons it detaches approximately half the forces selected.

'Screening action' option made available for infantry battalions
- Split battalions won't Screen
- Screening battalions can't be split
- Multiple battalions in Screen mode should be avoided as they mirror movements and tend to pile up on each other (serious overlapping concerns)
- For some more in depth findings read Mike's post immediately above

Very good feedback this past week concerning the 5.75 update. Thanks to all that participated in this upgrade to 5.8.

[RebBugler]

Update version 5.81 - fixes some issues with the recently introduced 'Artillery Target Cavalry' function

Guess no one that's recently updated to version 5.8 has used the 'Target Cavalry' command otherwise I'd heard about it, because, that function was totally corrupted. The command worked fine, however, once initiated it blocked any other targeting commands from being called, IOW, it was stuck in Target Cavalry for the duration of that game. It was totally my error, I had tested the command function but not the follow up displays which when applied correctly were imperative for changing or canceling targeting.

Also changed a few other things including redoing the target cavalry button displays and making the brigade level cavalry actions window bigger for clarity.

Additionally, I found a vulnerability issue with artillery that necessitated showing the retreat button during limbering and unlimbering, before it only showed the retreat option while engaged. Especially with enemy cavalry approaching, I found that the player needs that retreat button option available because AI controlled guns will limber on their own and become 'capture fodder' while in that limbering state. The player needs to jump in and hit Retreat quickly in such circumstances. This is an instance where my quest for eliminating unnecessary buttons, depending on the units action state, made a unit vulnerable leaving the player no option to help out. This fix should now provide that help.

Apologies for this screw up making this update a MUST, without it cavalry targeting is an ugly bust. At least I found some other stuff to fix and improve so it's not just a remedy.

[RebBugler]

Got a question through a PM just recently about how to make the toolbar half the screen size, move it to the far right, and make it disappear when not in use. So, for tutorial purposes, for anyone interested, I moved the discussion to this thread to explain how the Grog Toolbar already has two optional files included that with just a little editing can accomplish that setup. The two files are "toolbar - 66Wide.layout" and "toolbar - Scrollbar.layout". The 66Wide version reduces the toolbar width by one third and centers it. The Scrollbar version enables the disappearing act.

For the setup below I made a copy of the 'Scrollbar' version, and renamed it 'toolbar' (renamed the original toolbar file first). I then opened it along with '66Wide' and copied the position (red numbers 1 and 2) and size (red numbers 3 and 4) numbers to replace the corresponding numbers in the Scrollbar (now named toolbar) file. Once the new numbers were pasted in I changed number 1 (position across) from 0.165 to 0.333 to move the toolbar from centered to hug the right corner. Omit this last step to keep toolbar centered.

For this tutorial here's the download for the toolbar.layout file created as per the above instructions. This is the updated 5.81 version. Please don't count on this setup for the next Grog Toolbar upgrade, I've got enough toolbar variations to keep up with. Unzip and copy to the Layout folder, rename original first:

The attachment toolbar_2018-07-14.zip is no longer available

The attachment Toolbarresizedwithscrollhide.jpg is no longer available

Continuing with the downloaded toolbar file...
For the final part of this request, making the toolbar half the size of the window, we continue by adjusting that same line of numbers. First, change number 1 to 0.5, then change number 3 also to 0.5. Easy to see that these numbers are percentages of the window now, half way across and half the size. Now the next to last step, finding the right height number to fit the new width. The number to adjust for this is 4. I just kinda figure the percentage in my head and then tweak and test, takes me several times usually to get percentages right, and yes, tweaking and testing means starting the game with each tweak and checking it out. And finally, once the acceptable height percentage is found, adjust number 2 for vertical positioning. If anyone knows of a formula to speed up these last two steps, please share.

There you have it, looks like a lot of stuff but it's really an easy mod once you understand how the percentages work, and most of us should have learned percentages, basically fractions, in elementary school. And then...Algebra II comes along and crushes our math ego.