Operation Coup de Main - Help requested to understand an issue

[WimO]

My "Operation Coup de Main" campaign is now undergoing play-testing of the campaign script. I played through the first two scenarios a few times and in the most recent test I purposely lost the scenario "Tracked Vehicles Approaching".  The script ended the campaign as it was supposed to because the airlanding troops failed to hold the bridge, but then it awarded me a Tactical Victory for the campaign overall. That was NOT supposed to happen. It was supposed to be a campaign defeat. I checked that it gave me the [BLUE] player victory message and not the [BLUE] player defeat message. Very strange.

Does anyone have any idea how this happened?

[PEB14]

I think that the only lines that have some influence on your issue are the ones in red below. Is there something significantly different in you campaign file (I think the underscore in front of "minor defeat" DOES matter)?

 

[PLAYER FORCE] blue

[HUMAN OPPONENT ALLOWED] no

[BLUE VICTORY TEXT] Congratulations Commander.

[BLUE DEFEAT TEXT] Airlanding troops failed to hold the bridge.

[RED VICTORY TEXT] unknown

[RED DEFEAT TEXT] unknown

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

/* Battle #16 */

[BATTLE NAME] Tracked Vehicles Approaching

[WIN THRESHOLD] tactical victory

[NEXT BATTLE IF WIN] Next Battle

[NEXT BATTLE IF LOSE] _minor defeat // campaign end

[WimO]

You are showing me something in the line below that I have not seen befor. It is the segment "_minor defeat" after "[NEXT BATTLE IF LOSE]". I was using only "[NEXT BATTLE IF LOSE] // campaign end". Is the "_minor defeat" necessary on that line?

[NEXT BATTLE IF LOSE] _minor defeat // campaign end

[PEB14]

57 minutes ago, WimO said:

You are showing me something in the line below that I have not seen befor. It is the segment "_minor defeat" after "[NEXT BATTLE IF LOSE]". I was using only "[NEXT BATTLE IF LOSE] // campaign end". Is the "_minor defeat" necessary on that line?

[NEXT BATTLE IF LOSE] _minor defeat // campaign end

Good question. The quote is from @Ithikial_AU's campaign design guide…

As I understand it, it is the only way to chose wether the defeat is "minor", "tactical" or whatever. I sure don't know whether it has other consequences.

[Ithikial_AU]

@WimO it lets the designer control the degree of victory for the entire campaign. Only time it is used is for after last possible missions in a campaign tree.

If you just leave it blank, the game determines as best it can from VP scores to determine a campaign result. A bit hit and miss approach IMO.

Note that you can only have two end of campaign text with any approach you take here. One for victory, and another for defeat.

[WimO]

@Ithikial_AU Thank you for the explanation. Your clarification of the game computing final victory from accumulated scenario VPs makes me believe that I need to be careful about terrain vp values across scenarios. Specifically I mean that total values should be relatively similar across scenarios. For example, if the value of a total victory in scenario one is 300 pts then that in scenario two shouldalso be 300 pts.  Time to re-evaluated my scenarios.

[Ithikial_AU]

1 hour ago, WimO said:

@Ithikial_AU Thank you for the explanation. Your clarification of the game computing final victory from accumulated scenario VPs makes me believe that I need to be careful about terrain vp values across scenarios. Specifically I mean that total values should be relatively similar across scenarios. For example, if the value of a total victory in scenario one is 300 pts then that in scenario two shouldalso be 300 pts.  Time to re-evaluated my scenarios.

Honestly it's easier to do it manually in the campaign script so you have control to say how strong a campaign victory it was for the player. (Or defeat!). If you have a flow chart of how your scenarios stitch together it's really easy work out how you want the end result to be displayed to the player.

As per my CMRT Tukums campaign. Total Victory for winning Scenario 3A, through to Total Defeat for losing 3C. Everything in between you fill in however you feel is appropriate as a designer.

[WimO]

Understood. Thank you.

[WimO]

Operation Coup de Main - another humbug. At this point the nine scenarios completed to date have been debugged and are satisfactorily following the campaign script except for one silly issue. At the scenario level, sometimes an allied victory is declared as a British Army victory and sometimes as an U.S. Army victory. I check through all of my unit purchases to confirm that they are indeed all British. There are no U.S. units (except maybe a trench or foxhole or two).

Can't firgure this one out. I might try replacing all fortifications in case any were purchased as U.S.

 

[Ithikial_AU]

1 hour ago, WimO said:

Can't firgure this one out. I might try replacing all fortifications in case any were purchased as U.S.

 

It draws from the nation/branch of the first formation purchased for that side. So sounds like the scenario has "USA" fortifications purchased first and there they appear at the top of the Unit list for the Allies. Only way to fix this is to delete all the fortifications (or until a British formation appears at the top), and then repurchase the fortifications, which will appear at the bottom of the unit list. You'll then need to redeploy the newly purchased "British" fortifications in the 3D preview mode from scratch.

[WimO]

@Ithikial_AUDone. Yup, the problem was USA trenches, foxholes and wire mixed with British due to inattention during the selection process.

And thank you for the mention of the significance of the "FIRST" formation purchased. I'll remember that.