Hubert Cater

Great stuff Al

In case you haven't spotted the new announcement thread posted above, we are very happy to announce the addition of 3 new campaigns for the upcoming Pacific Theater release. For more details please click the link below: http://www.battlefront.com/community/announcement.php?f=80&a=65

Hey SeaMonkey, There are quite a few naval improvements like the new modeling for Carriers as well as for Subs but the nuts and bolts should still feel very familiar to the average SC player. There are of course things we can do like edit the strike ranges of naval units and for scenarios such as Guadalcanal and Midway these increased strike ranges will give the game an entirely new feel. For a few examples, in Guadalcanal, Carriers have a strike range of 24 tiles giving them considerable lethality at long range relative to the next long range naval unit which are Battleships and Cruisers at 4 tiles. Additionally, strike range is now taken into account for return fire calculations. What does this mean? Well like in real life if you can hit your opponent from a distance further than he can hit you back it now means that optimal positioning of your naval fleets is now that much more important. For example, if I can use my Battleships to lob a few shots at a Destroyer or Sub outside of their range of return fire, only the Destroyers and Subs will suffer potential damage from the exchange. This is of course not something we saw in many of the previous SC campaigns/scenarios as strike range was mostly 1 for all of these unit types, but now with the addition of these alternately scaled scenarios we can try and make things as realistic as possible under the current SC system of game play. I should also mention that I recently implemented a new linear algorithm to handle increased strike range for AI units that makes campaigns such as these much more playable with AI turns playing out 3X faster than they would have in previous builds. Long story short, lots of good stuff coming your way Hubert

Correct - my answer was a bit too short and possibly confusing but your detail clearly defines what happens during an attack and defence sequence.

Attack values represent what type of damage the unit will inflict towards others of that type. For example, Corps will inflict a TA=1 on a Tank , or a BA=4 on a Bomber. Defense values represent how the unit will fare against attacks of another type, i.e. a Corps with an AD=1 will apply this value in the formulas against an Air attack. For reference, this is covered more in the User Manual.

Big Al, by Industrial Modifier do you mean how much you wish to transfer or that the Industrial Modifier does not apply to the transfer calculations. If it is the latter I believe this is incorrect as the MPPs are calculated for the owner of the convoy first which includes the IM and then the amount transferred is set by the PERCENTAGE value. For your other question, if there was a date field then you could set up variable CONVOYS that would trigger depending on date. Scripts are read in top down order so you would set the later dates as the top entries but since there is no date field this will not work.

Good catch and I have corrected this for the next patch.

GARRISON scripts are only for land units while FLEET scripts would be what you are after if you want to direct naval units towards a port. But this does not necessarily guarantee that ships will remain at port as the generic AI may move them out of the area if the port is threatened by land or by sea with superior enemy forces in the area. Generally the AI will retreat to another non-threatened port in this case.

I'll reiterate what has been written here and especially pzgndr's advice as he has written a few articles on the SC2 AI based on his own mod of 3rd Reich. Original SC had the AI handling much of what is now scripted and the only reason why purchases and research was shifted to scripts was that it not only gives you more control but it also allows you to customize AI actions very specifically. This is needed for custom campaigns more than for default campaigns as I could have hardcoded all of these actions as I did in SC1 but in the end by putting these into scripts, it also made the development of the default campaigns that much easier, i.e. now I only have to deal with scripts without having to change game code. Makes development time that much faster once the framework was put into place.

Nupremal, it might be a little while as we are primarily focusing on wrapping up the Pacific Theater but I might have something for you to look at to confirm that the fix is indeed working. Can you send me an email at support@furysoftware.com?

Interesting

Honestly, I think you guys will really like this one. Bill has really outdone himself with his campaign designs and I'm also happy to report that Robert Carver has contributed 3 fantastic campaigns including 2 on the Philippines, i.e. 1941-42 Japanese invasion as well as the Allied liberation in 1944. His latest covers the battles of Ichigo in China so it this includes some game play in that Theater as well in the smaller scenarios which is excellent. Additionally Moonslayer has designed a masterpiece with his Guadalcanal scenario so for anyone that enjoys epic naval battles this one is definitely for you There are a few other improvements such as speedier TCP/IP transfers as well as a serious reduction in saved game file sizes, i.e. we were up to 3-4MB and this is now down to about 700K, and of course the other game and AI improvements will make this release one not to miss. Hubert

No problem and glad you finally got it working

Cantona66, I think I understand I was just trying to cover all the possibilities. I think the problem then is that your 'Campaigns' folder probably contains some campaigns that are incompatible, i.e. perhaps you placed a campaign from Weapons and Warfare in your PDE 'Campaigns' folder? A custom campaign that is for the wrong edition of SC2 etc.? Your options would be to either remove any campaigns that are not compatible with PDE or to do a clean install, i.e. a full install and then deletion of any remaining PDE files in your PDE installation folder and then re-install. This should do the trick. Hubert

Custom campaigns may play slower due to how some of the main campaigns are optimized, i.e. I know all the tricks where some of the custom work may not necessarily employ them and map size can make a difference too, i.e. most of the recent custom work has seen the map size increase and that can have an effect as well.

No set date just yet but expect it some time this fall. Hubert

Something I have been thinking about but still a little while away due to my current schedule and resources.

Yes, Multiplayer using TCP/IP will be fully supported just as it is in all the other Strategic Command games. Hubert

SeaMonkey, Download works now and campaign looks great! Haven't had a chance to play it thoroughly but I liked what I saw so far Hubert

Cantona66, Those files should be missing as I believe this is a WaW campaign and not for PDE. Probably why you are receiving those errors for PDE as well, so I would suggest removing this campaign from your campaigns folder and it should work as expected.

Cantona66, There still seems to be a problem with incompatible campaigns and saved games that cause a memory error at game launch. To fix this all you have to do is remove any invalid or incompatible campaign files from the 'Campaigns' folder and any invalid saved game files from your 'Save' or 'Multiplayer' save game folders and it should work fine.

Looks like the error was in the zipping up of your campaign. I downloaded it and the zip file contains 2 sub zip files and each of these the campaign file only. What you need to do is zip up the *.cgn file as well as the campaign subdirectory, i.e. the following two files and folders. PanzerArmee Afrika 1.00.cgn (file) _PanzerArmee Afrika 1.00 (folder) The easiest way to do this is to create a new folder somewhere on your computer and call it PZAA or something like that. Then copy both the file and the subfolder to this new folder and then just compress the PZAA folder. Once you do that and upload PZAA.zip to CMMODS it should work fine. Hubert

As far as I remember, it should work for any set of edges.

Not sure, I don't run

Ok I found it, it occurs when you DoW on the US... I will fix this for the next patch as this is a bug. Hubert