Desert Rats 1940-42 beta testing

[Erik2]

Beda Fomm:
Added supply to Benghazi airfield.
Assigned Italian unit to AI Team.

Sonnenblume:
Fixed primary objective.

Mdauuar:
Fixed primary objs.
Added map markers and silver flags to frontline forts.
Fixed sec objs.
German spawned units assigned to AI Team.

Brevity:
Assigned Bardia garrison to AI Team.
'Surrounded' deployment hexes are meant for recon units. For some reason, recon units now create a 'ownership' when deployed in the editor.
Changed Axis player to AI.
Added specialisations to factions.

Battleaxe:
Fixed Land Activation trigger that was broken after cropping map.

Crusader:
Assigned one Axis AA unit to AI Teams. (other units were already assigned, but still displayed the - mark).

Bir el Gubi:
Fixed Italian obj.
Spawned air units assigned locations.

Dash To The Wire:
Fixed Axis obj.
Fixed supply objs.
Added German Crusader graphic.

Link updated to v3.9

[bru888]

Second offensive v. 3.9

You have two human players in this scenario.

It would be helpful to point to the El Agheila objective since it's near the bottom corner of the map.

"After the relief of Tobruk our troops are hot on the heels of the Axis forces."

"Your orders are now to advance and capture El Agheila."

You don't have an AI objective in here which means the human player cannot lose. Perhaps an Axis objective and a scenario-end trigger evaluating whether the Allies have accomplished their objectives yet, else fail them, is in order.

This time I counted and the hyphens do mean something. You have AI Team 3/Center going all over the place in triggers but you don't have these units assigned to the team itself:

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You invoke these image files but they do not appear in the folder:

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You probably mean "Turn 4" for both of these:

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[bru888]

Second Bardia v. 3.9

Two orphaned AI units:

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[bru888]

Gazala to Tobruk v. 3.9

Again, I trust that there is enough action to sustain a "must play to the end" scenario of 46 turns. If so, then the "Hold Tobruk and airfield objective" should be an exciting one. Just to be on the safe side, I would add another effect here that fails the AI's "AF" objective as well:

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I gather you want the German army to go ape, hairy, in some sort of victory frenzy once they've taken several secondary victory points but I don't think it's going to happen in that, aren't there only five secondary victory points on the map? Or did I miss one or two? This is looking for six:

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Maybe it should be Value = 5?

[bru888]

First Alamein v. 3.9

If we are to "Hold El Alamein at all costs," surely you would condescend to point to its location on the map! ( )

You may want to check this one; it seems an out-of-the-way spot to require an Axis unit to be within one hex to fire this trigger and its AI team effects:

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[bru888]

Alam Halfa v. 3.9

On both of your Axis stuff / El Hammam -> triggers, none of them have a Target Hex for Move to Hex in Setup AI Team effects. I can tell by the missing Remove Hex buttons:

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Schweinhund! You will order a car for Herr General immediately or spend the rest of this campaign on latrine duty!

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[bru888]

Second El Alamein v. 3.9

Not that it matters, because I don't see the British ever getting that far west except on baby difficulty level, but the two Italian concrete bunkers in and near Fuka have no AI team. Well, maybe the British will make it but it sure looks tough. Oh, the bunker in El Daba is also orphaned.

[bru888]

Operation Torch v. 3.9

My laptop groans with the weight of this mighty scenario . . .

"Strong French naval forces from Toulon are reported along the western, northern and eastern map edges."

I'm being technical, but when I click on the secondary objective hexes, I count 11 and this trigger is looking only for 10. Did you miss the one that is inland in the east (Setif)?

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Oddly enough, in the triggers that follow, you award resource points for all 11 beaches and airfields individually, including Setif.

It's not like you to spawn all these units and then give no additional income:

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Here's a thought. Naval Toulon begins spawning when the first Vichy ship goes down. That's also when you activate the "Do not lose any capital ships" objective. I noticed, though, that the "Allied capitals" trigger which fails this objective is always on. Is there a chance that the player loses a battleship or a carrier before Vichy loses a ship, thereby failing the objective before it is activated? Far-fetched and I don't know if it's even possible, but perhaps leaving the trigger off until activated by Naval Toulon-1 may be something to think about. And in that case, "Check Last Kill" might be a better choice.

Now let's see. What's next? Oh yes, Race for Tunis. That's the one that had me glassy-eyed last time.

Suddenly, sleep descends like nightfall in the tropics. The only race that I am ready for now is the one to bed.

[Erik2]

Second Offensive:
Set up AI player.
Added map marker for El Agheila.
Added AI objectives.
Added Axis units to Center grp.
Added graphics to events.
Fixed British reinforcements.
Added specialisations.

Second Bardia:
Fixed static units.

Gazala:
Added bits to pri objs.
Fixed Axis sec obj (broken after map cropping).
Increased AI attacks aggression.
Removed Brit sec obj rewards.

First Alamein:
Added map marker for Alamein.
Axis Zone 7 trigger is correct (earlier triggers move AI Teams to the spot).
Added specialisations.

Alam Halfa:
Added target hex to AI Team.
Added wheels to Rommel.
Added specialisations.

Second El Alamein:
Added static orders to bunkers.
Removed AI Team from mines.

Torch:
Fixed sec objs.
Fixed Vichy air resource income.
Delayed Allied Capitals trigger and changed to 'Last Kill'.

Updated link to v4.0

[bru888]

Race for Tunis v. 4.0

"Your orders are to cooperate with the US troops and throw the Axis forces back into the sea."

"Note that your reinforcements will arrive by land, sea and air at various locations during the whole scenario."

"Reinfcorcements come in form of units and command points." (Remove the first "c" in "Reinforcements.")

I now know to check for missing AI teams in a scenario with 21+ teams by clicking on the hyphenated ones. These are teamless:

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That brings thought to a side note: Hangars are teamless, of course, but sometimes they contain landed planes at the start (listed in reserves, I believe). The only way to check for AI team assignments with those is to go to the unit list reserves and check each plane individually. I have thought of doing that occasionally but not consistently so you may want to double-check.

I gather that with the "Ax [location]" secondary objective triggers, you are giving a reward to the Axis for taking those locations away from the Free French. Here, however, you are actually penalizing the Italians:

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It probably makes little difference in a scenario of this size but for these three triggers, it's wrong/no nation for the resource points:

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I'm not sure what you are trying to do with the Italian/AI triggers. All of them appear to be evaluating whether any unit of a certain AI team is standing on a hex and, if not, activate the trigger and send the AI team to this place or that. None of the units in these AI teams are on the map to begin with; they are spawned later:

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Since there are no units on the map from these AI teams and since you have all of the triggers set for Any Event, theoretically they will all fire immediately and change AI team tasks accordingly for when they do arrive. I wonder, though, whether you want to look at them again. Take the set of triggers for San Marco:

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They all address AI team #30 San Marco. San Marco-1 says "If none of this team is in Tunis, send the team to Ferryville." San Marco-2 says "If none of this team is in Ferryville, have them defend Bizerte." San Marco-3 says "If none of this team is in Bizerte, let the team Seek & Destroy," right back to where the team started from. I think that these triggers are all going to fire in the beginning, in succession, and San Marco-3 will prevail because, even when you do spawn two members of AI team #30 San Marco, you land them in La Goulette!

No nation:

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[bru888]

Race for Tunis v. 4.0 (continued)

Same comments as above apply to the Wehrmacht/AI triggers. Only a handful of German land units are on the map to begin with, and they are in AI Team #11 Static Defense (minus one of the orphaned units that I mentioned at the beginning of the previous post), so all of these teams are empty:

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The problem is, as I theorized with the Italians/AI, they are all going to fire immediately upon Any Event and because none of the AI teams are on the map yet. In each sequence - Koch, Barenthin, Witzig, Lederer, Lüder, Weber, Mickley - the last trigger in the sequence will govern. If that is your intention, which I doubt, then fine but in these situations you could have saved yourself much work by just choosing the final effect and making it the task in the AI team list.

Here's another reason to re-examine these triggers: For all of the ones that have the Check Unit(s) near Hex condition, you have this conflict which most likely prevent these triggers from firing in the first place:

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Just checking on this one, in case it's one of those map cropping things:

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This is easily the most extensive scenario of yours that I have looked at to date. Not just the number of units, which is considerable, but the many intricate triggers. It must have taken you most of an evening to put this together from start to finish!

[bru888]

Kasserine (#24, the first of two Kasserines) v. 4.0

This fellow is orphaned:

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Now, I usually don't advise you on design, Erik, but I will do so here. The two primary objectives are to Capture Kasserine and Hold Sbeitla. Well, I did so on turns 1 and 2, why didn't I win?

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The reason why I did not win immediately after walking into Kasserine is because this trigger says, any time a VP is taken, such as I did with Kasserine, keep the objective open (for both sides):

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But that's not really the problem. Let's say you made that trigger achieve the objective instead of holding it open. That would mean I would have won on turn 1 by taking Kasserine unopposed, winning that objective and firing this trigger as well. Not what you have in mind, I wager.

I know your style by now and when you give a mission to hold an objective, you mean for the player to play out all the turns and be evaluated in the end. So if I had to guess, I would think you want the Americans to be holding Sbeitla at the end of the scenario with event Turn Start and condition Check Turn / Scenario turn limit. OR, depending on what you have in mind, set Hold Sbeitla as achieved at first and only fail it if the Axis takes it at some time. The Ax Sbeitla trigger would have to match the chosen All Sbeitla trigger.

That still leaves the problem of the All Kasserine trigger. That one is awarded merely by walking into town on the first turn! So this is why I thought to speak up about design instead of just bugs for a change.

Here is something else that is troubling me, not just for this scenario but previous ones that I have looked at. What I have been doing is taking a quick look at supply to see if it is adequate at the start of the scenario. If you examine closely the turn 2 screen shot above, you see that the Germans are already in supply trouble. That may be intended, I don't know. But, the technical cause is that supply is barely adequate to begin with and then, on turn 2 you spawn a few more units which apparently are beyond the supply limit. You were only +4 to begin with . . .

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. . . and you spawn even more German units in turns 3, 4, and 6. Now I am remembering all of those other scenarios in which you generated many new AI units and I don't recall seeing Change Supply effects to support them. You may want to go back and double-check your scenarios for this possibility of inadequate supply for spawned units.

Speaking of the German land units generated in turns 2, 3, 4, and 6 (and the Italian land units in turns 2 and 5), none of them have any AI teams assigned.

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Just like my sons: Taking up space and using up supply but inert and worthless! (Just kidding. They are fine boys.)

[bru888]

Kasserine Pass (#25, the second of two Kasserines) v. 4.0

So this is the alternative Kasserine that one chooses at this branching point in the campaign. The map is shifted northwest and the initial situation is markedly different. Here, the Germans have already taken Kasserine - and it's not even a primary objective! - and the point is to hold onto four other objectives in order to prevent any further German incursion.

[Hold on a bit. I want to take a look at something and it's going to take a while. This post is not finished.]

Okay, I'm back. What I did was to nuke through to Kasserine to see how it looks. While I was doing that, I noticed something else - see the next post about Ras el Mdauuar.

One of the reasons why I do what I do here is to learn about the game. Here is today's "I learn something new about OOB every day." At least a partial understanding.

When you branch GGC into one of four scenarios in Norway:

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The player can choose any one of the rings to select the scenario that he wants and, once he's played it and won, moves on to Eben-Emael:

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Now, it's different at this point in Desert Rats. What you are intending here, I believe, is that if the player fails at the first Kasserine, his "penalty" is to play second Kasserine. I'm using quotes around "penalty" because, in this case, it's a "benefit" to lose first Kasserine - how else to pay the second Kasserine?

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Here's how - by looking really closely at the screen and noticing that there is a second ring which, when clicked, would offer the second Kasserine scenario:

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Too subtle. It's worse here than in Norway but that's not a reflection on you but on game design. You could, however, call attention to the choice in your scenario descriptions.

Regardless, my concern is that while your setup provides a selection on the campaign map between the two scenarios, a defeat in the first Kasserine will lead to the "Pass" branch (not scenario) which is empty and therefore may stop the campaign (sorry for the doubled image - I can't fix it). That is, the choice between first Kasserine and second Kasserine scenario is in the Kasserine branch but the outcome for losing the first Kasserine is not the second Kasserine scenario but moving to the Pass branch which is empty:

[bru888]

Ras el Mdauuar v. 4.0 (revisited)

Erik, when I advised you on this (and I meant primary VPs) . . .

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. . . I inadvertently helped you to create another error. When you corrected this trigger (and the corresponding Axis trigger) to look at primary VPs, which is what they are, it now evaluates immediately and produces an instant Major Victory. I found this out when I nuked through the campaign.

The reason is, you only have the one primary objective and it is to hold five primary VPs:

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Unfortunately, the British are already holding five at the start of the scenario (the Germans hold the sixth) and therefore, the player's only primary objective is completed, instant victory:

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You will need to revise the objectives and/or victory points in Ras el Mdauuar for it to be playable.

[bru888]

Kasserine Pass (#25, the second of two Kasserines) v. 4.0 (continued)

Well, here's one immediate problem; nobody on the ground is assigned to any AI team:

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No goodies mentioned for any of these secondary "Destroy" objectives but that is matched by the triggers themselves; objectives awarded only:

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You enable the Capture Kasserine objective on turn 15 and that is the only criterion: turn. You say in the popup, "The Axis forces have been stalled. It is time to go on the offensive. Your orders are to capture Kasserine" without regard as to how the scenario is actually going for the human player. I would at least take out the "stalled" part and maybe say something else unless you want to add some other condition that actually shows the battle is going well for the U.S.

By the way, I notice that you have a counter-objective for the AI to match Capture Kasserine. I don't think this is necessary because only AI primary objectives are required for evaluating win/loss. Secondary objectives can be open, completed, or failed and this will affect major/minor victory/defeat but the AI does not need to win or lose secondary objectives.

There are a couple of things wrong with this one:

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First, it's the wrong alliance but I think you want to use U.S. nation instead of Allies alliance anyway. Second, this trigger is going to activate with the first combat in the scenario, find that less than three of whatever nation's or alliance's units have been destroyed, and mark the objective completed for the rest of the scenario. Instead, I would make this objective achieved to start the scenario and fail it only if the number of U.S. units after combat is Amount >2.

"German troops capture Valentine tanks . . ."

[bru888]

Medenine v. 4.0

All of these bunkers, plus the "Cannone," need to be added to AI teams:

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This trigger is going to need a Turn Start / Check Turn / Scenario turn limit because as it is, when the British capture their first VP it's going to activate, see the other VP still in Axis hands and defeat the British objective outright:

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I have a couple of concerns about this trigger:

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First, it's pointing to a hex that is really close to the edge of the map. Could that hex be one of those that appear in the editor but cannot be used for anything? Maybe move the target hex one hex to the south?

Second and more important, I think it's going to fire prematurely. As soon as the objective is turned on (if not before), it's going to look up there, see no German tanks, and reward the objective even though tanks may escape afterward.

Here's how I would do this:

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That said, there may be something logically wrong with this whole exit vignette, anyway. This is the trigger that starts everybody heading for the exits; the problem could be, those evaluation target hexes are also the third and fourth primary VPs that the player needs to win. As soon as he does take those hexes, the scenario is over and there is no exiting:

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Last and least, this spawned plane has no AI team assignment:

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[bru888]

Mareth Line v. 4.0

Two human players in this scenario.

This sporty Lancia, no doubt made by Ferrari, is in fact going nowhere without an AI team assignment! (Neither will the AA gun.)

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Was the briefing cut short by an air raid? He stops in mid-sentence and the next window is blank, like one of those empty message balloons that you see in comics sometimes:

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I don't know how this happens but it does once in a while; you have the correct alliance but the wrong objective to fail (it happened with the Ax Gabes trigger, too):

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[bru888]

Tunisia v. 4.0 (the finish line, in more ways than one)

Two human players in this scenario.

Two more Italian vehicles without drivers, so to speak:

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A blessedly simple scenario to wind things up, thank you! Merely mopping up Axis units. Supply is very limited but you spawn nothing new so that should not matter.

It may be silly to provide for a human player scenario defeat at this point in the campaign but I am looking at the number of turns (17?) and thinking that it might be very tight indeed to eliminate every Axis unit left on the map. Maybe that's why you don't provide for human defeat? Because if you were, you need to have an AI objective to win should the human player fall short on "Destroy all enemy units, land and air."

You mention "And we know now that they are armed with latest and best German armor: Tigers ahead!" but I see only one such unit in the scenario. I am familiar, though, with the usual convention of referring to one unit as plural in that it may represent, say, a platoon or company of tanks. Still a bit deflating but we don't want to prolong things with only 17 turns to get the job done.

Speaking of job done, this has been another enjoyable CSI sweep and I thank you for the opportunity.

[13obo]

Wow.

[GabeKnight]

Thanks for all the investigatin', Bruce, CSI. Informative and fun to read.