A walkthrough of a terrain repair

[toonces]

Hi all.

To avoid the wrath of the mod-gods, I'm going to start a new thread on this topic. In this thread, ccc is going to walk me through repairing several bugs in the Nevada theater. After doing this, we will all have a working example from which we can repair other bugs we find in later campaign development.

***Remember, if you feed a man a fish, he eats for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime. Go through this pain with me one time and it should pay dividends later.****

ccc,
Here are 3 of the most critical broken roads I have identified on my main axes of advance so far.

There is a broken road/link immediately east of Yucca Valley enroute to Twenty nine Palms; the other one in Twentynine isn't critical, but it's there:



There is a major break between Baker and Ft Irwin Junction:



The bridges are broken- I added one myself (the other is stock) but I failed to fix the link myself.

*********************************

i checked the three bugs in TacEdit, not in TerrainView due to lack of feature.tdf files.

i found the [move cost value] between these obj are higher, so troops unable to pass them. so i delele the link between two obj, and re-link them... some [move cost value] are significanly lowered, in both direction of movement.

i set up a TE, run three armour units to move to-and-fro along the choking area.

- at Sandy-bridge-Jean site, ground unit can not move at all. i delete bridge and re-link Sandy and Jean, the move cost is slightly higher. imo this site need TerrainView work to delete river, or change texture.bin( erase river definition].

- Backer - Fort Iwin junction, N-S site. ground unit can move north and south after obj re-linking, seems ok.

- Yucca valley-29 palm, move is ok after re-linking. if i order the unit to move toward EAST, it refuses moving from 29 palm-29 palm chemical- 29 palm AFB- obj530. instead, it move 29 palm-29 palm chemical > south, 1686 birdge, north to obj 530.
test indicate a broken road between 29 palm chemical palnt and 29 palm AFB, need TerrainView fix.

PS - the tile defintion, texture.bin file need to be checked with Pathmaker. also the broken sites need "highlighted-road texture.zip" to help identify the sites.

***********************************************

What's wrong?
I think I'm going to have a drink tonight.

haha.. enjoy yourself.

say, i combined the pics you posted above and created a working map.. to show what your war shoud be, and what's going wrong.


The yellow routs is main highway/main combat route. the white is secondary. so.. road broken at Sandy-Jean-LV forces red units detouring to Searchlight-Boulder city-LV. the the clash happens there. Appearantly your original design is one main route, SW to NE along the highway..and ideally, most red units will choose to along it, then develop a hot engagment between Jean-LV.

Not aim at anyone, imho to fix the Nevada road network, the first job is [terrain tile check/creation]. Unlike Kurile using old korea tiles( which is almost bug-free), Nevada tiles and the tile definition/texture.bin have lots room to improve. IF we skip this step and just fix broken roads with current tiles, well it may work- but could leave further tile upgrade work a true pain.. other theaters NOT using deafult korea tiles will encounter the same problem.

BTW Toonces your work on campaign file is not a waste. Terrain/road fix is a parallel thing on theater.L2 file. tho re-linking objs and re-calculating unit-move-cost at some combat areas is inevitable, IF a fixed terrain/road network is available.

****************************************************

[toonces]

Let's start the conversation from this baseline.

1. You mentioned twice that the terrain/texture.bin needs work. Can you please elaborate on what you mean by this?

2. You said you re-linked objectives and this altered the move cost. You did this in TacEdit, right? Did you just highlight each obj, delete link on both sides, then open up obj1, link to obj2, open obj2, link to obj1? Because if you link to obj2, that doesn't mean that obj2 automatically links to obj1 right? If you add an obj link to one obj, that new link doesn't show in the links on the linked obj- you have to add the link on both sides in my experience.

3. The Sandy-bridge-Jean site needs terrainview work to delete river or change texture.bin to erase river definition. Can you elaborate on this?

I'll post the steps I take here, I need to be pointed in the right direction first. I have terrainview up, running and open, I see the rivers in the L2 file. Now what?

[Snake Man]

1. You mentioned twice that the terrain/texture.bin needs work. Can you please elaborate on what you mean by this?

texture.bin which contains the "path" information for ground units, as well as terrain type information (ocean, sand, forest, city etc) is broken in Nevada theater.

To fix that you need to use PathMaker utility.

How to use that? Well that's for another post

2. You said you re-linked objectives and this altered the move cost. You did this in TacEdit, right?

Correct.

Did you just highlight each obj, delete link on both sides, then open up obj1, link to obj2, open obj2, link to obj1?

Uhm, delete non working link, then link it again, cant put it any simpler.

Because if you link to obj2, that doesn't mean that obj2 automatically links to obj1 right?

Link is both ways, like a road. You build road from New York to DC and you can drive from NY to DC and from DC to NY

If you add an obj link to one obj, that new link doesn't show in the links on the linked obj- you have to add the link on both sides in my experience.

Hmm... I think that doesn't mean nothing, I mean don't bother with that, just use view links and see the black link lines, that counts.

3. The Sandy-bridge-Jean site needs terrainview work to delete river or change texture.bin to erase river definition. Can you elaborate on this?

I guess he wants to nuke all river data from the bridge tiles...

I'll post the steps I take here, I need to be pointed in the right direction first. I have terrainview up, running and open, I see the rivers in the L2 file. Now what?

Nothing really, its the texture.bin & PathMaker or Tacedit & link work which needs to be done.

But I'll let CCC talk for himself.

[toonces]

I found supporting docs for terrainview in your downloads section. It's making alot more sense now.

I just backed up my terrdata directory so if I blow things up, I have a restore.

I'll document here.

[ccc]

Seriously, my tweaking experience is limited. SM and Biker should have more than me...anyway, glad you want to give it a shot.

1. You mentioned twice that the terrain/texture.bin needs work. Can you please elaborate on what you mean by this?

in this case Nevada, it uses some new tiles. road/river/bridge postion is defined on tiles, in texture.bin, to help ground units moving in 3d world.

you can use Pathmaker to open default korea tiles/texture.bin. check how road/river/bridge definition is set. then open Nevada tile/bin file for comparsion. [note- pathmaker only reads tile in pcx foramt, so you should unzip texture.zip into a seperate texture folder, then use pcx tiles.]
at my first quick glance.. Nevada tiles do not have complete road defintion. i am not sure if current nevada tiles are complete.. or just half-done.. if somebody still want to add more tiles, then it's not the right time to fix texture.bin. once the tiles/texture.bin is settled, you may use the trick i did in Kurile thread- "hightlight road tiles" , to help checking road network in TerrainView.

2. You said you re-linked objectives and this altered the move cost. You did this in TacEdit, right? Did you just highlight each obj, delete link on both sides, then open up obj1, link to obj2, open obj2, link to obj1? Because if you link to obj2, that doesn't mean that obj2 automatically links to obj1 right? If you add an obj link to one obj, that new link doesn't show in the links on the linked obj- you have to add the link on both sides in my experience.

TacEdit can do this job..it's the basic function of TacEdit..

3. The Sandy-bridge-Jean site needs terrainview work to delete river or change texture.bin to erase river definition. Can you elaborate on this?

I'll post the steps I take here, I need to be pointed in the right direction first. I have terrainview up, running and open, I see the rivers in the L2 file. Now what?
Let's start the conversation from this baseline.

1. You mentioned twice that the terrain/texture.bin needs work. Can you please elaborate on what you mean by this?

2. You said you re-linked objectives and this altered the move cost. You did this in TacEdit, right? Did you just highlight each obj, delete link on both sides, then open up obj1, link to obj2, open obj2, link to obj1? Because if you link to obj2, that doesn't mean that obj2 automatically links to obj1 right? If you add an obj link to one obj, that new link doesn't show in the links on the linked obj- you have to add the link on both sides in my experience.

3. The Sandy-bridge-Jean site needs terrainview work to delete river or change texture.bin to erase river definition. Can you elaborate on this?
I'll post the steps I take here, I need to be pointed in the right direction first. I have terrainview up, running and open, I see the rivers in the L2 file. Now what?

-deleting river is easy job..just use Terrainview, grab desert tiles to replace those river tiles.
-chaning texture.bin.. means you don't replace river tile, just use pathmaker to delete river definition on river tiles, make it/river just eyecandy.

and, don't hurry to do it..please read me reply to Q1 again.. i don't know if the road definition on nevada tile is complete(texture.bin - pathmaker check). and i don't know if the main combat route has correct, working tiles(terrainview L2 check).

Again- seriously, i don't know to what quality we want to achieve..

1. the commerical, or hightest quality > you should have a complete, dedicated tile created first, then do texture.bin edits. then we can check road network and fix broken sites.
2. minimal requirement for your nevada campaign- just get those damn red units passing those broken sites..well, use current tiles, check and fix texture.bin/making sure every road tile has correct road definition on it- pathmaker, replace river-road tiles with road tiles- terrainview/remove bridge at choking sites and re-link obj- TacEdit. .. hope it helps.

[toonces]

Ok, I tried to build a theater from scratch (fail) last night and I understand alot more about what you are saying.

Let's tackle the easiest part first.

I can open up the Nevada theater in terrainview1.55. When I open it up, I get the underlying terrain in varying shades of browns and greens.
I go to load the features, but I cannot find the feature files. Where are these located in the theater directory?

It took me a while to understand what you were getting at re: the terrain.bin and tile problems. I agree now, that we need to decide if this is the final tile job, or else simply fix the broken tiles, before meddling with the definitions. That's up to you guys at PMC- I am not going to build new tiles. I don't know how to do it, and that's just one too many things I want to learn right now
I know SM was building new tiles from google earth (an excellent idea BTW), I don't know if he was planning on moving forward or not with that.

Lets work around the tile problem for now.

So, just let me know how to get the features loaded in terrainview, and I can go from there.

Edit- what I plan to do is erase the river and replace with desert tiles for now at the Sandy-Jean choke point.

Edit again- ok, I re-read your post. So the feature.tdf files aren't located in the install anywhere. That answers alot of questions. Seeing as how they're sort of vital for terrain building, I am guessing they're proprietary? I can understand that if that's the case, it must take forever to build them.
Ok, see, my efforts weren't wasted- I get it sort of now!

[ccc]

I can open up the Nevada theater in terrainview1.55. When I open it up, I get the underlying terrain in varying shades of browns and greens.
I go to load the features, but I cannot find the feature files. Where are these located in the theater directory?

the feature files is feature.tdf, not in your install. I just ask SM to share us those files.

after you loading those tdf files, it helps alot to locate the cities and route, then we can check broken sites.

meanwhile, have you checked Pathmaker tool? i hope you take a look at it, open and check default korea tiles, then you should understand the design of tile road/river definition.

i hightlighted some nevada road tiles.. just to help checking sandy-jean site.. in falcon recon view, i can not tell what's going there.

[Sherlock]

Edit again- ok, I re-read your post. So the feature.tdf files aren't located in the install anywhere. That answers alot of questions. Seeing as how they're sort of vital for terrain building, I am guessing they're proprietary? I can understand that if that's the case, it must take forever to build them.
Ok, see, my efforts weren't wasted- I get it sort of now!

The tdf files are not proprietary. They are created using the DEM2Terrain utility in the early steps of theater creation. Refer to the last step of using DEM2Terrain in the WIKI and you will see it is one of the check boxes you check. Snakeman probably has the TDF files for Nevada he can make available to you. Here is the linke to the WIKI section: http://pmc.editing.wiki/doku.php?id=fal ... r_tutorial

[toonces]

@ Sherlock,
I got that part. Last night I built a small theater, extracted the feature files from that NOAA site, and got the whole theater built up.

Here, look:



I got that part. But...well, for another post.

Anyway, WRT Nevada.

First, I opened up the cam file with tacedit and deleted the bridge between Sandy and Jean.

Next I opened up the Nevada .l2 file with terrainview. I found the river segment at 473,271. I dragged and dropped desert tiles over top of the river. Then I clicked ok. Closed and reopened the file and the changes are still there.

Then, I opened up the campaign, loaded up a mission. The terrain looks exactly the same from the cockpit of my Eagle. I ran the campaign at 64x and the units are still bypassing that point. So, I did something wrong.

If I make a change in terrainview, what do I have to do to have the change stick in the Falcon flying world?

[derStef]

ya, same here, i would also need the features.tdf for the theaters, esp for Taiwan..

in terrainview, when i open theater.l0-l3 i always get a red view of the tiles....(it does also not ask for loading fartiles.raw)
theater.l4 and l5 works correctly (here it askes me for fartiles.raw and i point it out then)




another question: if i edit/adjust/move the terrain tiles in one of those theater.l#, do i have it also to do the same task for the higher and lower theater.l#s or is it enough when i did it just in one, let's say theater.l4?

thanks guys, that you are so kind and guide Toonces and me into that stuff.

btw i've read the terrain tut..


cheers
Stef

[Snake Man]

I can open up the Nevada theater in terrainview1.55.

Yeah you need to use the 4-byte TerrainView (terrainviewLg.exe) to load the release L2 as its 4-byte. Naturally I'm working on the 2-byte as source file.

I go to load the features, but I cannot find the feature files. Where are these located in the theater directory?

No, I need to send you the TDF files.

I know SM was building new tiles from google earth (an excellent idea BTW), I don't know if he was planning on moving forward or not with that.

The current set is bit partial, but is it better than what we have now.. dunno really.

I need to rar them up and sent to you for evaluation, kindly remind me on the next few days or so.

If I make a change in terrainview, what do I have to do to have the change stick in the Falcon flying world?

Run Htti to rebuild the terrain, its located in your <falcon_root>\Utilities\ directory.

To run the Htti and normalfix, do this:

Code: Select all

D:\games\f4\Utilities\htti.exe -auto d:\games\f4\theaters\nevada\terrdata
D:\games\f4\Utilities\LxNormalFix.exe @Nevada @d:\games\f4\Theaters\Nevada\terrdata

Naturally changing the path names to suit your installation.

[toonces]

Alrighty. The instructions worked, I was able to place a road over the river and erase the river. I relinked and added a junction there...but none of my units want to use the new road. My Spetznaz unit will use it to capture Jean, so I know it works, but none of my armor is interested.

The move cost between Sandy-Sandy Junction-Jean is all 0's, so I don't know what the problem is. It might be a priority problem because I set the priorities of the Searchlight route such that there would be an incentive to use that route.

Anyway, back to the thread topic, I opened the segment in terrainview, dragged the road on top of the river, saved it, then ran SM's two commands. This rebuilt the terrain, and included the new road.

I then opened up in Tacedit and made sure the links were set.

Like I said, it didn't change my ground movement, but the terrain is "fixed".

[ccc]

how about tuning down the priority value of Searchlight and up the value for Jean? just for a test.

[Sherlock]

ya, same here, i would also need the features.tdf for the theaters, esp for Taiwan..

in terrainview, when i open theater.l0-l3 i always get a red view of the tiles....(it does also not ask for loading fartiles.raw)
theater.l4 and l5 works correctly (here it askes me for fartiles.raw and i point it out then)
another question: if i edit/adjust/move the terrain tiles in one of those theater.l#, do i have it also to do the same task for the higher and lower theater.l#s or is it enough when i did it just in one, let's say theater.l4?

Direct TV to your texture directory. Then direct TV to the location of your texture.zip folder so it can find the terrain tiles. Then direct it to the texture.bin file location. Then direct TV to the fartiles.raw file for your theater. Then open up your L2 terrain. You only need to operate on your L2 layer THEN REBUILT YOUR TERRAIN levels using the terrain builder tool. All of these settings are accomplished under the "FILE" menu entry in TV. When you do this you will no longer get the red detail screen.

[ccc]

@Toonces,
hope you don't mind.. i'd like share my thoughts here..

Fred said that the existence of a road is irrelevant to ground travel. The ground units need to have a link, and the movement costs and "available resource supplies" between the links are what govern movement.

Road is not a must-have for ground movement.
BUT - my observation shows ground units perfer to choose [longer, detouring]roads than moving straight across no-road tiles. i knew ground units will deaggregate/spread out their vhehicles for comabt on tiles in 3d world, but in 2d war they just move or fight along roads/road tiles, seldom go into pure no-road tiles! in PMC theaters, TCL-placed units always rush to nearest roads for movement once campaign starts, unless they are trapped in odd, difficulty terrain tiles-then standstill forever.

To be honest, the best test of " no-road needed" is a theater that has no one single road-tile. in this case campaign AI may seriously think about choosing a route with smoother/flat terrain tiles.

The presence of a river DOES impact ground movement though.

BUT if you erase the river definition on tiles, and use a no-river THR generated by Pheonix711's THR creator..it could be just an eyecany feature hehe.. sorry i knew MPS falcon coders want to make [river- and bridge] a real factor in campaign mechanism but..it just make modding work tough and frustrating..

[Sherlock]

Let me make some statements and ask a question then, perhaps, Dr. Fred "BaldEagle" Balding will view this post and be able to contribute to the discussion.

Background:

From the Pathmaker user manual we have 10 different types of terrain possible within Falcon. THese are called "Cover Types" or "Terrain Types":

A. Water* (Terrain type = #1)
B. Swamp* (Terrain type = #3)
C. Plains* (Terrain type = #4)
D. Brush* (Terrain type = #5)
E. Thin Forest* (Terrain type = #6)
F. Thick Forest* (Terrain type = #7)
G. Rocky* (Terrain type = #8)
H. Urban* (Terrain type = #9)
I. Runway (Terrain type = ?)
J. Station. (Terrain type = ?)

Note: The last two, RUNWAY and STATION, are NOT used in SP4.2 Korea or AF Korea theaters. I don't know why.

These are defined in the texture bin file and they are by tile set. Additionally, these cover types are applied to each tile as a whole. So each set of 16 tiles can only be one type of terrain, e.g., URBAN.

Additionally, using Pathmaker, you can define the following items location/path and length on the tile (and within the texture.bin file). THese are defined as "PATHS" within Pathmaker and the texture.bin file. Pathmaker calls them "Path Types":
A. River (Path type = #2)
B. Road (Path type = #10)
C. Bridge (Path type = #12)
D. Railway (Path type = ? )

Finally, if you aren't confused enough already, you can use pathmaker to define areas on the tile as certain types of terrain. These are the same as the 10 terrain types already discussed above but they specifically identified areas on a particular tile. For example, Within the texture.bin file an entry for one tile might look like this:


# Start Set 0 has 15 tiles, Terrain type 8 = ROCKY TERRAIN
SET 8
HCOST00F.pcx 5 3
1 2409.5 1691.23974609375 1537.49060058594 = TYPE WATER

4 1163 3299 1732 = TYPE PLAINS

6 511 2328 849 = TYPE THIN FOREST

7 282 1486.24096679688 2254.986328125 = TYPE THICK FOREST

8 840 713 2476 = TYPE ROCKY

2 150 1639.98999023438 2101.2373046875 896.869506835938 1870.61364746094 = TYPE RIVER

10 50 1716.86450195313 3228.73022460938 1563.11547851563 2767.48315429688 = TYPE ROAD

12 50 1768 1665 1742 1896 = TYPE BRIDGE


Note: Types 3, 5, 9 and 11 are not used in the Allied Force texture.bin file. I don't know why.
Note2: The example above is fictious and doesn't occur in the texture.bin with all those entries below it.

Note that to the right of the name of the tile (HCOST00F.pcx) there are two entries, i.e., a "5" and a "3". These signify the quantity of entries that follow to define the areas and the paths for that tile. You can see there are 5 areas (water, plains, thin forest, thick forest and rocky) and there are 3 paths (river, road and bridge) defined.

Discussion:

1. We are all agreed that units can move across terrain WITHOUT a road being on the tile but there has to be link between the objectives the unit is moving between, correct? The impact (I believe) is that the movement cost is calculated based on the type of terrain that is defined, e.g., if the terrain is ROCKY then the movement cost will be much higher than if the terrain is PLAINS. I believe this is based on the terrain type defined for the set of tiles.

2. Additionally, there are the different AREA types that can be defined on a tile. Do these really have an effect or not?

3. Finally, I have seen in the 3D world the units moving along a road that has been defined on a tile. Was this the effect of the link between two objectives OR was the effect of a road that was defined in the texture.bin file? If there is a link along a road showing on a tile, is the road definition in the texture.bin file even needed?

4. And, as a side note, what is the interaction between the road network laid out in the .thr file and the tiling road network? (if any)

I hope Dr. Fred drops by to add his considerable knowledge to this discussion.

Cheers!

[BaldEagle]

Let me make some statements and ask a question then, perhaps, Dr. Fred "BaldEagle" Balding will view this post and be able to contribute to the discussion.

Background:

From the Pathmaker user manual we have 10 different types of terrain possible within Falcon. THese are called "Cover Types" or "Terrain Types":

I. Runway (Terrain type = ?)
J. Station. (Terrain type = ?)

Note: The last two, RUNWAY and STATION, are NOT used in SP4.2 Korea or AF Korea theaters. I don't know why.

**********************************
PathMaker convert the Runway and Station type to Urban CoverType.
**********************************


These are defined in the texture bin file and they are by tile set. Additionally, these cover types are applied to each tile as a whole. So each set of 16 tiles can only be one type of terrain, e.g., URBAN.

Additionally, using Pathmaker, you can define the following items location/path and length on the tile (and within the texture.bin file). THese are defined as "PATHS" within Pathmaker and the texture.bin file. Pathmaker calls them "Path Types":
A. River (Path type = #2)
B. Road (Path type = #10)
C. Bridge (Path type = #12)
D. Railway (Path type = ? )

**********************************
Railways, trains and train stations were dreams of the MP team. Didn't make it into Falcon 4.
**********************************



Note that to the right of the name of the tile (HCOST00F.pcx) there are two entries, i.e., a "5" and a "3". These signify the quantity of entries that follow to define the areas and the paths for that tile. You can see there are 5 areas (water, plains, thin forest, thick forest and rocky) and there are 3 paths (river, road and bridge) defined.

**********************************
The naming convention has several uses. One is the "automated" placement of Objectives. The new "new" theaters that made their own tiles with non-Korea names lost this capability.
**********************************

**********************************
My statement I made concerning tile "road" paths, was directed at the movement of ground vehicle along the "graphics" road. I was incorrect to say that they had no affectv on their movement. The tile "road" and "river" paths are used to "tell" PathMaker's <theater>.thr generator which tiles have roads and rivers. For those theaters that have no put road and river paths on their new tile that have new names, need to add them (at least a couple of vectors and type to indicate that the tile has these attributes). The "old" tiles in Texture.bin should be checked for missing road or river paths. PathMaker's <theater>.thr generator also uses the tile's "area" Water type to indicate that the tile has water (has same effect as a river or ocean tile).
**********************************


Discussion:

1. We are all agreed that units can move across terrain WITHOUT a road being on the tile but there has to be link between the objectives the unit is moving between, correct? The impact (I believe) is that the movement cost is calculated based on the type of terrain that is defined, e.g., if the terrain is ROCKY then the movement cost will be much higher than if the terrain is PLAINS. I believe this is based on the terrain type defined for the set of tiles.

2. Additionally, there are the different AREA types that can be defined on a tile. Do these really have an effect or not?

*****************************
Just the Water Area type
*****************************


3. Finally, I have seen in the 3D world the units moving along a road that has been defined on a tile. Was this the effect of the link between two objectives OR was the effect of a road that was defined in the texture.bin file? If there is a link along a road showing on a tile, is the road definition in the texture.bin file even needed?

*****************************
The Units try to follow the links using the <theater>.thr information about the "cost" of using a link path, as ccc talked about.
*****************************


4. And, as a side note, what is the interaction between the road network laid out in the .thr file and the tiling road network? (if any)

*****************************
The code does not use the tile "path" data for movement, only for displaying them on the ground radar radar display.
*****************************

[Sherlock]

....

4. And, as a side note, what is the interaction between the road network laid out in the .thr file and the tiling road network? (if any)

*****************************
The code does not use the tile "path" data for movement, only for displaying them on the ground radar radar display.
*****************************

Thanks Fred! That helps a lot. Please check back when you can to add to the discussion. You expert knowledge really helps move things forward!

[Snake Man]

The code does not use the tile "path" data for movement, only for displaying them on the ground radar radar display.

I'd hate to argue with the guy who's seen and understands the code/engine... but if the path data is not used, what is it that make ground units like tanks travel along roads then.

Is it pure luck?

I would really think that the path line in the texture.bin is what defines where the ground units move. If its just for radar display... then well, I'm lost with words.

Also about links, I think the link is between A and B objectives same as "Your airline ticket costs $500 from NY to LA." it doesn't go in and explain through what states you will be actually flying. But again, this is just my assumption by looking at the movement cost data from Tacedit etc. I mean its just a digit, a number... tells the engine how expensive it is to travel from A to B, it doesn't explain at all if there is zero, five or twenty bridges or forest or plains on the way.

[ccc]

i'd like put in my .0002c agian..

summary -

1. TacEdit / obj linking - represent 2d world movement routes, and its cost. if you can win a campaign, it means your ground units can move to capture some obj. like SM said, it could be just a ticket from A to B.

2. TerrainView-Pathmaker/ road tiles and road system - represnt 3d world movement routes. when simmer in 3d world, you'll see ground units move along roads(the definitino on tiles) - unless they spreading out for combat manuvor.

Now comes the question..

- two obj linked(2d), road tile/road system broken, no bad tiles or river/water area between the two obj(3d), can ground units move between the two obj- both in 2d map and 3d view?

if yes, it means we don't have to fix road tiles/broken road systems anymore... just check if some misplaced river/water tiles between objectives.

if no, it means 3d road tiling result(THR file?) still affect 2d map obj-linking, to some extent. and means 3d tile bug-shooting work is important as well.

[toonces]

ccc,
There's a broken ROAD between Baker and Ft. Irwin in that Nevada mod you have. You could re-link them, but leave the road broken, and see if the units use the new link. That has been a pretty consistent stopping point for ground units in the mod.

I can't check now, but I can try tonight after work if you don't get to it.