Interesting Findings with TacEdit and Campaign Editing

[Greywolf]

OK, first off let me explain that I am relatively new to using TacEdit, maybe I'm doing something wrong. Myself and my squad mates love flying the Vietnam addon for Falcon and thats where we started getting introduced to TacEdit.
Now the original save0.cam file for Vietnam had a few bugs in it, such as certain bases were listed as Thai ownership, and not U.S. ownership so no flights were being generated from those bases ... ie..Korat, Sakon Nakon, Ubon etc..

So I took the original Save0.cam file and copied it into another directory so I could work on it. Went in and changed the ownership of those bases, and now flights can be generated out of those bases. Then I decided to add a few F111 Squadrons, done that just fine with TacEdit, saved all my work into the working directory and then placed the newly updated file back into my falcon folder where it was originally and had it overwrite the existing file.

Next myself and my squad mates started flying a campaign online. Day 1, Day 2 passed pretty quickly things going along just fine, Day 3, 4, 5 and we started to notice that it seemed like the missions were being generated a little bit slower. Originally we were getting missions about every hour or so, but by Day 5 missions were coming sometimes 2-3 hours apart. We figured no problems, its just the way things are. Day 6 comes and goes and we start to take notice that the American units are not moving.

I notice a message at the PMC site posted by Xanix about the same problem and he mentions that the reason the American units are NOT moving, is that there were no bridges for them to cross. So I check in the original Save0.cam file which I had saved and sure enough there are only two bridges placed in the game, and those two are up in North Vietnam near Hanoi. Now at this time I still have not gone into my current Save0.cam file.

Myself and the squad mates continue to fly the campaign online and things are progressing, still no american movement north, and the missions are slowly getting further and further apart. Its now Day 9 and it seems that missions are sometimes as far as 10-12 hours apart.

Now we decide after Day 9 to look into the current Save0.cam file and what we found took us by surprise.

When we opened the file in TacEdit and went into the map view. We found that all the air bases in Thailand were gone. All the Dark Red markers that originally indicated American positions were almost all gone. Replaced by blue markers for everything. We went in and checked and sure enough all these markers were for South Vietnam owned units. Found very few American units in the dark red color intersperced among all the blue markers.

Next we took a look for bridges, and sure enough there were a ton of them both under NVNAM, and SVNAM control. Now if the bridges are there why isnt anybody crossing them we wondered. We next started to bring in the units into view one at a time and we can clearly see a build up of forces along a DMZ area.

Also when looking at the map view in TacEdit, we can clearly see an area off to the right which has a lone U.S. Control marker in it. This we assume is a carrier group out in the Gulf of Tonkin.

But the far Southwest area which should be Thai and all our american bases are gone. Its totally empty, as if its water.

Next we start to look at the Blue SVNAM controlled airbases and we find one named Seoul AFB. What the heck, Seoul is in Korea, not Vietnam.

Heres our conclusion .... while we might be able to change map views, and edit airbases change them to Vietnam and such ..... evidently there is something in the mission generation part of Falcon that keeps wanting to go back to Korea. If that is indeed the case, then all the campaign editing appears to be for nothing.

Can someone else who is more knowledgeable than us verify this problem.

I apologize for the length of this post, but it was the only way I could try to describe the problem we have encountered.

[Snake Man]

Hey good post.

Could you send me the save0.cam file, I'd like to take a look at it.

email it to nospam

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[WOLF-257]

On a related topic,
I added an F-5 squadron to Korat Airbase with the intentions of using it as an F-105 Squadron.The new squadron is showing up in the game but is not being tasked with any missions.Any ideas about how to correct this?
Thanks

WOLF

[Greywolf]

Snake Man,

Thanks for the quick reply .... just sent the file to you so check your email.

[Snake Man]

Okay I received it and checked it out.

Well I'm not sure but it seems that the entire save0.cam you sent me is korean save0.cam

There was not a single entry for Vietnam, everything was all Korea. Can you re-check the .cam file situation and make sure it is definitely the Vietnam file we are talking about here.

BTW There is campaign update for Vietnam, has been for a long time now but its not officially on the web pages, just lying on the web server. Check it out here:
http://www.pmctactical.org/f4/VietnamCa ... 2-beta.zip

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[Greywolf]

Snake Man,

That file is the orignal from your first Vietnam, we made the changes just to fix the airbase probs in Thailand and Laos, and just added a few F111 squads. Then started playing it, and its now Day 9 and this is what it looks like. I think the Campaign Manager built into Falcon changes things back into it Korea mode somehow. Did you check the unit properties for those Blue colored units, they all say Ownership SVNAM.

Even though we started out with Vietnam, somehow that file has changed to Korea, and I didnt do it ... so that leaves only the possibility that the Games internal engine changed it back to Korea .... but for some reason both the Blue colored units say SVNAM, and the green colored unit properties say NVNAM.

Thanks for the info on the update I'll grab it asap.

[Snake Man]

That sounds interesting, but at least back in early days of campaign building I ran the Vietnam campaign up to day 15 without problems (not excatly the same campaign as you just downloaded). But who knows, maybe there is something weird going on.

I'll need to test that someday, leave 2d war running by itself. Let me know if you find out anything new with the updated campaign.

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[Greywolf]

Thanks Snake Man,

I'll keep you updated of any new probs or developments. We will start up again using the new updated file for Vietnam.

[Washout]

Hi

One thing you can check is that the "scenario" field on the Campaign page of TACedit is pointing at the savex.cam file you are using.

I missed this when I first started work on the Under Siege campaign for the Balkans and found it was pointing at another campaign file. This meant that no matter what I did to Under Siege didn't matter as it was looking at another file for it's info.

Just in case it helps.