Increasing Convoy's per year (idea)

[Big Al]

My largest problem has been escalting the scale of convoys as the war progresses to keep the ratio correct for production. While drinking my morning coffee it hit me what I can do. I have not tested it out because I have not had time but I think this will work.

One thing I did for USSR convoys is setup a Murmansk then Archangel convoy in the convoy.txt. If Murmansk falls Archangel executes. The program seems to always take the 1st convoy that establishes and ignores the rest below it in the text.

Soooooooo I thought I could slowly increase the political alignment of a country by date within the activation3.txt and setup progressive convoys that activate by trigger on convoy.txt

Like...

Australian starts +50% allies. It gets +10% in 1940, 41, 42, 43, 44 in activation3.txt

In the convoy box I have 3-4 progressive convoys (EXAMPLES)

Australia #1 convoy: gives lets say 100% of resourse when trigger is 100% (42+ at war)

Australia #2 convoy: gives lets say 80% of resourse when trigger is 70% (41 act goes +10%)

Australia #3 convoy: gives lets say 60% of resourse when trigger is 60% (40 act goes +10%

Australia #4 convoy: gives lets say 40% of resourse when trigger is 50% (39 act is base 50%_

So in lets say 1940 (act 60%) it looks at the 1st one and does not establish convoy, not enough activation. It looks at 2nd one, same thing. It looks at 3rd one and establishes convoy @ 60% of resources for 60% trigger. It looks at 4th one and executes but since there is already a convoy in place it gets canceled.

I think this will work.

[Hubert Cater]

I think you solved it

[Big Al]

It worked !!!

I was able to manipulate the convoys to simulate production growth through out the war.

[Hubert Cater]

There is a lot of flexibility in the existing script structure, and as you've shown, sometimes you just need a little creativity in order to find it... well done

[pzgndr]

The program seems to always take the 1st convoy that establishes and ignores the rest below it in the text.

Excellent idea! And good point on the order of scripts.

I need to experiment with this in my A3R mod. One frustration has been how to reduce the Murmansk Convoy once USSR gets rolling and western Allies have a greater need for MPPs later in war. This should work.

[pzgndr]

I want to follow up on this because I have made some changes in A3R which seem to work OK.

First I added a decision event for the Allied AI to check if conditions were right for reducing Lend Lease and Murmansk Convoys. Basically I'm checking if Italy is surrendered and USSR has retaken either Smolensk or Kiev.

; Status of USSR starting in January 1943

; Used for reducing USA/UK Lend Lease/Murmansk Convoy scripts

{

#NAME= Status of USSR - Convoy Reduction

#POPUP=

#IMAGE=

#SOUND=

#FLAG= 1

#TYPE= 1

#AI= 2 **AI only since humans can change convoys anyway**

#LEVEL= 0

#GV= 1[1,100]

#LINK= 0[0]

#COUNTRY_ID= 3

#TRIGGER= 100

#DISPLAY_ORDER= 0

#DECISION= 7

; Set AI acceptance % (Allied AI will accept 100% of the time)

#AI_RESPONSE= 100

#AI_RESPONSE_POPUP=

#DATE= 1943/01/01

; Set variable conditions:

; 1st Line - USA politically aligned with Allies and not surrendered AND

; 2nd Line - USSR politically aligned with Allies and not surrendered AND

; 3rd Line - Italy politically aligned with Axis and surrendered

#VARIABLE_CONDITION= 3 [2] [100] [0]

#VARIABLE_CONDITION= 4 [2] [100] [0]

#VARIABLE_CONDITION= 6 [1] [100] [1]

; Condition position

; 1st Line - Allied unit in Smolensk

; 2nd Line - Allied unit in Kiev

#CONDITION_POSITION= 120,22 [0,0] [1,1] [2] [0]

#CONDITION_POSITION= 118,29 [0,0] [1,1] [2] [0]

}

Next I added new convoy scripts to reduce convoy #PERCENTAGE values. However I discovered I needed to do more. Unless specifically scripted, the AI will attempt to max out its convoys unless raided, and then it will temporarily reduce convoys and later max them out again. I want to allow human players to increase convoys to a max of 50% if desired but not the AI as the standard amount. So, I added new AI scripts for normal convoys with reduced#PERCENTAGE and #MAX_PERCENTAGE values. And script order is also important, with later scripts listed first etc. So for example, here are the UK -> USSR scripts (USA -> UK are similar):

; UK supply convoy to the USSR:

{

#NAME= UK Reduces Arctic Convoys To The USSR (Allied AI)

#POPUP=

#IMAGE=

#SOUND=

#FLAG= 1

#TYPE= 2

#AI= 2

#LEVEL= 0

#GV= 1[1,100]

#LINK= 7[1]

#COUNTRY_ID= 1

#TRANSFER_ID= 4

#COUNTRY_ID_TRIGGER= 100

#TRANSFER_ID_TRIGGER= 100

#PERCENTAGE= 25

#MAX_PERCENTAGE= 25

#SPRING_REDUCTION= 90

#SUMMER_REDUCTION= 100

#FALL_REDUCTION= 90

#WINTER_REDUCTION= 75

#SOURCE_PORT= 79,18

#DESTINATION_PORT= 123,6

#WAYPOINT= 79,10

#WAYPOINT= 95,0

#WAYPOINT= 123,5

}

; UK supply convoy to the USSR:

; Historical date September 1941

{

#NAME= UK Arctic Convoys To The USSR (Allied AI)

#POPUP= UK Starts Arctic Supply Convoys To The USSR

#IMAGE=

#SOUND=

#FLAG= 1

#TYPE= 2

#AI= 2

#LEVEL= 0

#GV= 1[1,100]

#LINK= 0[0] **Note AI only but NOT linked to decision event**

#COUNTRY_ID= 1

#TRANSFER_ID= 4

#COUNTRY_ID_TRIGGER= 100

#TRANSFER_ID_TRIGGER= 100

#PERCENTAGE= 30

#MAX_PERCENTAGE= 30 **max percentage for AI set here**

#SPRING_REDUCTION= 90

#SUMMER_REDUCTION= 100

#FALL_REDUCTION= 90

#WINTER_REDUCTION= 75

#SOURCE_PORT= 79,18

#DESTINATION_PORT= 123,6

#WAYPOINT= 79,10

#WAYPOINT= 95,0

#WAYPOINT= 123,5

}

; UK supply convoy to the USSR:

; Historical date September 1941

{

#NAME= UK Arctic Convoys To The USSR

#POPUP= UK Starts Arctic Supply Convoys To The USSR

#IMAGE=

#SOUND=

#FLAG= 1

#TYPE= 2

#AI= 0

#LEVEL= 0

#GV= 1[1,100]

#LINK= 0[0]

#COUNTRY_ID= 1

#TRANSFER_ID= 4

#COUNTRY_ID_TRIGGER= 100

#TRANSFER_ID_TRIGGER= 100

#PERCENTAGE= 30

#MAX_PERCENTAGE= 50

#SPRING_REDUCTION= 90

#SUMMER_REDUCTION= 100

#FALL_REDUCTION= 90

#WINTER_REDUCTION= 75

#SOURCE_PORT= 79,18

#DESTINATION_PORT= 123,6

#WAYPOINT= 79,10

#WAYPOINT= 95,0

#WAYPOINT= 123,5

}

As seen above, the normal convoys start at 30% and a human player could increase this to 50%. But the Allied AI convoys will remain at 30% (unless raided) and then reduce to 25% after decision event #7 triggers. I also discovered with Hubert's help that if I tried to set a default decision event (ie DE 07=0) and use that for my early AI scripts, then the later scripts with DE 07=1 would not work since the game eliminates all those failed decision scripts. He may be relooking this but for now that's how it works. I didn't realize that before, but I hadn't tried something like this before.

Anyway, as a practical playtest example, I ran an AI-AI game with the above scripts. Italy didn't surrender until Oct 44 and then Smolensk was retaken in Nov 44, but I got my DE 07=1 event trigger. Before the change, USA was sending 115 MPP to UK and UK sending 92 MPP to USSR. After the change, the amounts dropped to 104 and 75 respectively. Maybe not significant enough, but it works and I can now make some further adjustments.

Bottom line is that this scheme works and other developers can consider their own applications.

[Big Al]

interesting

[Nupremal]

I am working on convoys and as I had mentioned before, when a country surrenders it seems to count as 100% on the side it surrendered to. However, I have a couple that have not activated and I wondered why - should they be listed before or after the earlier convoy? Here are my examples:

Philippines - USA minor - convoy to USA at 100% allied

but when the surrender, I want my convoy to Japan to activate. It surrendered, convoy #1 disappeared, but this convoy did not activate. I noticed that the script was:

1) placed AFTER the USA script

2) set to 0% (not 100%) Axis aligned.

I think it will work if I set it to 100% (have to test)

Second - DEI has a convoy for 50% value when DEI is Axis at 0% or more. Later, and event script (oil embargo) will make this go away (by making DEI pro-allied).

When they surrender, I have a set when DEI is at 100% axis to send 100% but it, too, failed to work. However, in this case this script is BEFORE the earlier script.

I THINK it will work if I put it AFTER

Am I correct or is there some other issue(s) at work?

[Nupremal]

One more thing - convoys can go through enemy ports - I think that should be corrected.

[Nupremal]

I can confirm that the fixes above worked for the convoys.

[Nupremal]

Ok one last oops - I don't think I had a script issue. The ports were damaged when I took them, so the convoy did not start