Working and winnable campaign

Campaign editing

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Working and winnable campaign

Post by Snake Man » 2009-01-12 18:40:08

Working and winnable campaign.

I decided to open a one single topic for this discussion as personally I see it to be the biggest cause of bitching for the user community, if someone has something bad to say about (our) theaters, its that campaigns aren't working and winnable. Let this topic be the source of information how we solve this problem.

To begin, I'd say that any campaign has to have proper victory conditions done with trigger (TRI) files. Usually these are done in PMC campaigns that when BLUFOR troops reach city XYZ the campaign ends, that's one of the simplest victory condition triggers. (Btw did you know that most of the updated PMC campaigns do have these trigger files set, its another matter if the ground units actually move to these objectives, but the triggers are there). The city capturing trigger must be set for both sides of the war, BLUFOR and OPFOR.

Second is ground unit movement. Its been said that the supply levels aren't working so no matter how many enemy factories you destroy, enemy will not be beaten from the air alone, you must have ground troops boots on the ground into enemy cities and other objectives to seize them for a victory.

Then there are the initiatives, tempos and alliances etc. These all are quite unknown to me at this point, one of the reasons for this post is to discover how they work...

This first post will be updated as more information is gathered. Please post everything you know about campaign triggers, ground unit movement and ideas for victory conditions etc. Thank you.

Sources:
PMC Editing Wiki: Campaign Triggers.
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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by derStef » 2009-01-13 01:10:50

great idea Snake Man.

i'll look what i can grab out of my Taiwan ground battle experience so far. also CCC knows about that, he did many testings on that.

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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by ccc » 2009-01-13 01:29:41

I've pointed out the same thing for many times..bear with me > remove bridges, re-link obj, remove river/bridge definition on tiles. alright it's just an asummption.. my last try made no success.. maybe try it again next time.

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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by Snake Man » 2009-01-13 11:57:30

But ground units do move across bridges in default Korean campaign, right?
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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by ccc » 2009-01-13 13:38:56

Snake Man wrote:But ground units do move across bridges in default Korean campaign, right?
yes. As the bridges placed at right coordinates in 2d map and use right tiles in 3d world, ground units move across them.

BUT - in new theater mods, there're too many bridge bugs to fix, and the bridge choking points make ground unit movement stall. my assumption is, removing "most" bridges along major combat routes could help ground unit moving, thus help the campaign progressing to an end. i do plan to test the idea(again) later.

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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by derStef » 2009-01-13 17:10:14

Snake Man wrote:But ground units do move across bridges in default Korean campaign, right?
yes,Korea is fine on that.
i think ccc is talking about Taiwan gound movement so far.

I'm talking about my experience during goundwar/movement testing with ccc in Taiwan theater.

also the "vehicle movement cost" of a 3D object when it moves by, doesn't help always. i figured that in Taiwan isle out. i have set red ground units on the beaches on 4 places in Taiwan. example East Taiwan, i set the "vehicle movement cost" very high in the crentral mountains, but blue forces are still fleeing into the mountains and stay there. often also on the other red beachheads, blue doesn't really want to engage. they will stay at their position or they flee away. could it be that the reason of fleeing away is, that blue are forces are too less on the frontline so they decide to flee before everybody will get killed?


it seems also problematic if you set red forces on a blue ISLAND like Taiwan, the problem is that ATO will create pretty less CAS/BAI/INTERDICTION/SAD/FAC packages.
to solve this, we have several methods:
1. increase mission priority for campaign via Tacedit
2. increase mission/package priority for dedicated Aircraft.
3. try out that stuff what Biker told about the mission.dat file. (sounds promising)

remember, i'm talking about an island situation, or if some BLOFOR territory is surrounded by OPFOR and contrawise.
anyways in the case of Taiwan, ccc told that mostly attack helos like AH-1 will take over the ground battle in combination with groundforces.
but i want to get it run, i want to figure it out.

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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by Snake Man » 2009-01-13 18:27:38

Tip to verify your objective linking ingame:

Link your objectives in the save0.cam normally, export/import the objectives into a te_new.tac, set teams properly. Then try ingame, place a ground unit in a TE, start it up and order the ground unit to move. You should see very easily all the trouble spots (if any) with this method as the full campaign is always pretty hectic to test something small and individual stuff.
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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by toonces » 2009-01-14 17:50:21

I've been giving this topic alot of thought since I started tweaking.

I think a totally different path to take would be to find 'alternate' victory conditions besides simply capturing x,y,z city. I've mentioned this in enough threads, and I'll just leave it hanging out there that there are other paths we can explore.

But, if we are going to go the city capture route, then, let me propose this: instead of looking at this question strictly from the "why don't (our) campaigns work?", why don't we examine why does the stock, default Korea campaign work?

Do we have any insight whatsoever as to how Atari/Microprose/whomever developed the campaign for Falcon 4 way back in the beginning? How did they tile the theater? How did they place the air and ground units, how did they develop their tasking on campaign start? How does this tasking change over time?

Do we have any insight into how the "default" Balkans campaign was developed for Allied Force? This is actually a huge question, because the existence of the AF Balkans theater implies that other campaigns can be developed for the Falcon engine.

I've examined a few things in my goofing off, and here's what I have noticed thus far:

1. The .tri file is fundamental to campaign function. The engine seems to look to that file to determine what to do, from how aggressive to prosecute offense or defense, to where to prioritize RED/OPFOR forces. It's easy for the player to alter PAK priorities, however the .tri file gives the computer opponent direction into how to prosecute the AI war.

2. The ground forces in the stock Korea campaigns have a great deal of additional tasking items in their files than what the ground forces have in the PMC campaigns I've examined.
If you open a smattering of the ground forces in the stock Korea campaign in tacedit, you'll notice that their various folders are packed with tasking info, from attack to defense to reserve. I couldn't figure out how/why some units were tasked as they were. It seemed that the brigade units had reserve with the battalions given attack/defense/capture (or vice versa). I think that the campaign engine looks to reserve units for tasking, based upon their overall brigade attack/defense/capture posture.
I haven't figured this all out. But my point is that if you drop a bunch of ground units into the campaign via tacedit or a tcl script and expect them to start motoring around, you're not going to see results. The working Korea campaigns start with the thousands of units all tasked and tweaked so that the war starts with objectives for each unit.

3. Building on 2, I created a few battalions in the Nevada campaign, and gave them all capture orders and objectives. At campaign start, they all moved actively to their objective (Las Vegas). This implies to me that there is a key here that we need to examine.

In summary, I think that alot of work will need to be done to create a working campaign. The creator will need to examine each unit, piece by piece, and construct a tasking situation that makes sense- for both sides! If I had to guess, some guys probably got paid by Microprose to sit down for a year and create the Korea OOB piece by piece such that the units would fight a war. I keep meaning to test this in Nevada by creating a very small war, 50 units on each side, each lovingly tasked by me, and then see how they react during a campaign (with a working .tri file...). I just need about a month with no job, no kids, and no distractions...

My final caveat: I could be totally out to lunch, these are just my observations given my limited experience. Also, everything I said presumes, first and foremost, that all the roads, rivers, links, etc work.

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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by Snake Man » 2009-01-15 14:58:40

CCC posted in this topic:
- use TE for test, place few armour units , order them to move along all road network, to make sure all road are open for ground maneuvoring.

the routes between Blue and Red main obj( capture to win), should be checked.

- build a basic, simple TRI file. don't set blue and red main obj too far apart. ideally, make armour units can move from one end to the other end in 2-3d.

- don't place too many ground units in basic campaign. you can have one side overwhelming power, and the other side much less power, see if the powerful side can easily reach their obj and end the war. once it done, fine-tuning the balance of power as you wish.

- don't add many air power in test campaign. don't add many A-G ac sq in the begining of test. air strike power can easily change the balance of power.. make a gound offensive stall and never come to an end.
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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by ccc » 2009-01-15 15:10:44

a-ha, thanx SM.

i try not to stir the pod again..i saw many posts about ODS dev lately.. i remember i collected similar info and posted here almost 7 or 8 years ago.. and guys are doing it again.

now the part you quoted, is the ultimate conclusion of my new theater campaign testing experience since early PMC days..plus the idea of removing bridges/tile definition edits. that's all i can think of to help campaign rolling.

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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by derStef » 2009-01-15 15:22:25

ccc, then STAY HERE AND TELL US ALL THE STUFF! :)

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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by toonces » 2009-01-18 22:34:17

I spent about 8 hours yesterday playing with a Nevada mod, trying to build something that created offensive ground movement.

I did not accomplish it.

I deleted most of the bluefor ground forces and air forces.
I created about 6 opfor armored brigades. All brigades had either 4 or 5 armored T-80 battalions.
I experimented with a variety of different combinations of tasking:
1. brigade tasked with 'parent' 'capture 1189 (Las Vegas), batt. tasked with 'reserve'
2. brigade tasked with parent, secure 1189, batt tasked with reserve
3. brigade tasked with parent secure/capture, batt's tasked with secure/capture 1189
4. batts tasked with 'inactive'
5. brigades tasked with 'assigned'

and so on.

I consistently get a handful of armor to capture Palm Springs. But afterwards, everyone goes to reserve to a variety of places.

I opened up the objects in tacedit and made Las Vegas priority 95, almost everything else 20-50 ( I tried to change everything to 30, but it was taking forever).

I created a tri file with end conditions of capturing Las Vegas.

Nothing gets consistent offensive movement out of the ground units. The posture goes to major offensive against Las Vegas, but the units don't want to move there.

Previously, a few months ago, adding battalions without a brigade tasked with capture, the battalions would move on Las Vegas.

Is the brigade or division structure the problem (rhetorical question...)?

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

The force ratio isn't working as a end game trigger either. I tried as many variations on it as I could think of, nothing triggered an end of the game.

Code: Select all

//
// Base event file
//
// :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::;
//
// #TOTAL_EVENTS is a required entry, and
// should be # of events we have triggers for
// and code fore 
// KCK WARNING: KEEP THIS UPDATED!
//
#TOTAL_EVENTS 22
//
// :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::;
// 
// #SET_EVENT will set the activated flag for any
// events we want to be initially activate
// ie: Seoul already should be marked as
// captured in the Pusan parameter scenario
//
//
// This marks the ROK as initially on the offensive
#SET_EVENT 9
// This sets the initial tempo
#SET_TEMPO 150
#ENDINIT
//
//OPFOR owns Las Vegas 
#IF_EVENT_PLAYED 10
#IF_CONTROLLED 6 O 1189 
#DO_EVENT 10 
#END_GAME 10 
#ENDIF 
// 
//FORCE RATIO CHECK
#IF_EVENT_PLAYED 11
#ELSE
#IF_FORCE_RATIO A 2 6 G 2
#DO_EVENT 11
#END_GAME 11
#ENDIF
#ENDIF
//
// Event #16
// Timeout
// 
#IF_CAMPAIGN_DAY G 100
#PLAY_MOVIE 115
#DO_EVENT 16
#END_GAME 16
#ENDIF

// End
#ENDSCRIPT

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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by derStef » 2009-01-18 22:51:51

toonces wrote: Is the brigade or division structure the problem (rhetorical question...)?
i also thought about that due my Taiwan experiences.

i think ccc knows something about that.

CCC, WHERE ARE YOU ALL THE TIME????

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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by toonces » 2009-01-19 02:53:34

All I can say so far is that the key to getting ground movement going isn't obvious.

Honestly, I looked at everything that I can think of yesterday. I checked initiatives, priorities, and actual tasking for the individual units. I used alot of various options for the ground vehicles to see if some worked and some didn't.

I played with various air levels, ground levels, sam levels, etc. Over and over and over all day long.

Maybe there's a simpler way. A few months ago I put in about 6 or 8 battalions of armor with no brigade structure. I tasked each to capture Las Vegas and they all moved to LV. I wonder if it would be feasible to create battalions first, and then, once they work, create brigades and then change the parent numbers for the Battalions to assign them to the brigades? Like, right now I create the brigade first and then add battalions; instead I'll create battalions and then create brigades...It'll be horriby time-consuming though.

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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by ccc » 2009-01-19 07:07:43

In short, imho a working campaign must be based on a sound road network.

i remember OF-EMF theater guys have made some progress.. maybe their experience can help you.

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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by toonces » 2009-01-19 16:59:05

Yes, I think that has something to do with it as well.

Last night I opened up Vietnam and started goofing around. In the final version, I removed most of the US/SV armor and infantry. I took SM's 2 southern inf brigades (3rd and 4th) and tasked all brigades and battalions to capture Quang Tri. I also removed all US/SV air- basically gave NV overwhelming superiority.

Some Battalions wouldn't move at all; others went reserve to the north.

Then removed Brigades but left Battalions intact.

Same thing.

Finally added two battalions of armor about 2 miles from Quang Tri with capture Quang Tri as objective. They both had capture Quang Tri as their objective in the campaign, but neither would move anywhere. I can only presume that something about the terrain made them unable to move...maybe this road network thing?

And really finally, I wonder why the battalions put next to Quang Tri would accept capture tasking, but those about 10-20 miles back wouldn't go to capture?

There's something going on under the hood. It has to do with something I can't see. I tried changing priorities in the .tri file; I don't think that's the issue. I think it's the way the sim is reading and interpreting the terrain.

Question: Has anyone ever tried deleting all the ground units from a stock Korea terrain, and then rebuilding the ground units from scratch? If we can do that, then we can narrow down the problem to terrain somewhat, rather than some flaw in the way we're inserting ground units.

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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by Snake Man » 2009-01-19 18:20:54

toonces wrote:Question: Has anyone ever tried deleting all the ground units from a stock Korea terrain, and then rebuilding the ground units from scratch?
Excellent point, we need to eliminate possible variables from the equation :)

Who's willing to try the deletion of korean ground units and replacing them again?

Actually... toonces, could you try the PMC Korean Campaigns, do the ground units move there?
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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by derStef » 2009-01-19 18:39:01

toonces wrote:Question: Has anyone ever tried deleting all the ground units from a stock Korea terrain, and then rebuilding the ground units from scratch?
[/quote]


i did that in my Taiwan campaign.

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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by toonces » 2009-01-19 20:27:44

@ Derstef: What I'm trying to test is ccc's hypothesis that the road network is the key to ground movement. We know the Korea terrain in stock Falcon works- obviously since there's a working ground war. If we delete every ground object and then build our own ground war, will the units move? If not, then it's not the roads or links that are the problem; it's the way the ground units are being installed in the theater by us. Taiwan does us no good because we can't be sure the links all work...

@ SM: I'll try and get Korea installed this week and report back.

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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by toonces » 2009-01-19 20:37:00

I tried another experiment this morning.

I booted up the Nevada campaign. I added 8 battalions of armored (opfor), all tasked with capture Las Vegas. I didn't get movement to LV. I got the usual guy on the se corner of the map that goes to capture Twentynine Palms (which he does in the stock Nevada install by PMC). Everytime, the units go to capture Twentynine Palms. The units I added went to 'secure Ft. Irwin' and some reserve places...

The units all moved along their respective paths just fine.

The Twentynine palms thing has been bothering me though. So I opened up the objectives in tacedit. Turns out that Twentynine Palms has a OPFOR city as a parent even though it is BLUEFOR controlled at campaign start- I want to say it had Los Angeles or something like that as a parent.

Now that was interesting!

I changed Las Vegas to have the same parent as Twentynine Palms...no effect on ground movement...

Changed Las Vegas back.

Turns out that when I added all my armor, I forgot to make one of the opfor- it was bluefor by accident. When I started the campaign, the opfor all went to secure ft. irwin or reserve, except the bluefor unit. The bluefor unit went 'capture las vegas' as directed.

Why will the bluefor unit go capture, but not the other opfor units?

Opened up the file and changed ALL the battalions I added to bluefor, capture las vegas.

Restarted. The bluefor units all went to 'capture las vegas', but NONE of them moved AT ALL.

So, when on opfor the units could move fine. On bluefor the units could not move at all, even to retreat.
On opfor the units wouldn't comply with capture tasking.
On bluefor the units would remain capture, but wouldn't move.

That's not a road issue. The roads work, even saw a unit cross a bridge.

It has to do with something else. The parent linkages or paks or something.

There's a key in the Twentynine Palms thing. I can't figure out what it is, but there's a key there because even in the stock PMC campaign, the units with reserve all tasked will start moving on Twentynine Palms.

I'll keep looking at it.

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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by toonces » 2009-01-19 22:14:09

Yet more experiments.

Consider the Nevada map below:
Image

What you see is a group of infantry around Palm Springs. Twentynine Palms (TP) is to the northeast. But, they will never move to TP.

This is the same region. Nearly in the center are the two armor battalions I added. They will follow the link straight into TP.
Image

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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by toonces » 2009-01-19 22:19:52

Image

This is the group of infantry on the northwest side of the map near desert rock. They won't move anywhere.

Image
this group of T-80s will move straight down to capture Ft. Irwin Junction, and then go to secure Ft. Irwin.

Image
The large group of armor, infantry and mech on the west side of the map will not move anywhere, just go into reserve.

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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by toonces » 2009-01-19 22:26:50

Finally, consider this map of Korea.

This is a really zoomed out picture. Notice how the city on the west side has links like spokes covering much of N. Korea. The links seem to go to arbitrary points, just objectives with numbers, but they somehow create a...patch of land...that encompasses the N. Korean countryside. Furthermore, the links don't just carpet all of N. Korea. They seem to cover the Pyongyang area- almost as if to focus the fighting in that area by NOT including the other areas...
Image


Now, notice the following image:

img]http://i263.photobucket.com/albums/ii12 ... _007-5.jpg[/img]

The groups of armor and infantry face off along a parallel set of links. Two sets of roads of links bisect Korea along the DMZ.

So, then I got curious about the properties of the cities, roads, and junctions along the DMZ. I can't exactly figure out the pattern, but it seems that certain key cities have a 'border' attribute along the parallel link road along the DMZ.

img]http://i263.photobucket.com/albums/ii12 ... _008-2.jpg[/img]

img]http://i263.photobucket.com/albums/ii12 ... _009-2.jpg[/img]

img]http://i263.photobucket.com/albums/ii12 ... _010-4.jpg[/img]

img]http://i263.photobucket.com/albums/ii12 ... _011-2.jpg[/img]

This includes DPRK cities as well as ROK cities.

Most of the units seem to have some sort of tasking- secure, defend, support...they aren't just sitting in reserve waiting to be tasked. Each unit is there for a reason, each unit has a job to do when the war kicks off.
Last edited by Snake Man on 2009-01-20 02:06:19, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by Sherlock » 2009-01-20 00:13:44

Good analysis toonces. Way to "dig into it". It will take this type of analysis to determine why the PMC campaigns don't allow movement of the units and fix it.
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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by ccc » 2009-01-20 01:41:12

YES - good start for this thread :mrgreen:

there're too many flags/features to be checked and documented!

for Vnam, if you read my post in Vnam forum, i'll find i've done my best to push the campaign, the frustrating choking point is area around Quan TrI.. in short, i think it's broken road network and numerous bridges cause the stall, seemingly.

for removing all units-then adding them back manually, yes Biker did it for ITO2-six day war campaign, and it seems work.. i've not tried the campaign yet, yet i think the reason it works partially lies on desert terrain( much less bridges and more sound road network).

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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by toonces » 2009-01-20 05:20:05

I ran some more tests tonight. This is the Nevada campaign. I made too many edits to remember anymore what exactly I did...I tried tasking all the armor battalions to either secure or capture, some with an aobj and some without.

Everytime I run this campaign, the troops deploy as follows:

Image

Image

Image

This isn't random. The campaign engine is tasking these guys to take up defensive positions around China Lake Bridge, Ft. Irwin, and Ft. Irwin Junction. The northern most infantry (one of five battalions) always attempts to capture Bishop airbase.

One time, a few edits ago, I had one armor battalion go psycho. He started moving south, capturing Amboy, a bridge, and then started moving all the way down the map to capture Twentynine Palms way way south. I can't figure out what I did to replicate it though.

Part of me is starting to wonder if maybe inserting a bunch of units on defense at these choke points the engine seems to want to task my armor to defend, if maybe that will free up the armor to go offensive. I dunno...it almost seems like the engine wants to create a defensive perimeter around Victorsville maybe? or China Lake or something.

The reason isn't obvious. I don't think it's supply, and I don't think it's a priority issue. What I mean, is that I checked China Lake Bridge and it has a priority of 20 I think.

I feel like the answer is on here somewhere.

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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by derStef » 2009-01-20 06:49:50

ccc wrote: in short, i think it's broken road network and numerous bridges cause the stall, seemingly.
I think that is also the problem in TAIWAN.
ccc wrote:for removing all units-then adding them back manually, yes Biker did it for ITO2-six day war campaign, and it seems work.. i've not tried the campaign yet, yet i think the reason it works partially lies on desert terrain( much less bridges and more sound road network).

Yes, toonces try to place the units manually, as ccc said, some guys figured out some strange things when using TCL scripts..

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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by Snake Man » 2009-01-20 12:06:14

derStef wrote:Yes, toonces try to place the units manually, as ccc said, some guys figured out some strange things when using TCL scripts..
Like what?
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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by ccc » 2009-01-20 12:44:05

Snake Man wrote:
derStef wrote:Yes, toonces try to place the units manually, as ccc said, some guys figured out some strange things when using TCL scripts..
Like what?
sorry derStef.. i did not say "figure out" . we still have no idea about the bug in campaign machanism yet. we've some hypothesis, waiting to be tested further.

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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by derStef » 2009-01-20 13:16:49

Snake Man wrote:
derStef wrote:Yes, toonces try to place the units manually, as ccc said, some guys figured out some strange things when using TCL scripts..
Like what?
the thing is that you can place ground troops more precise with tacedit. they'll never thrown in in lines like a TCL script does.
wih TCL it sometimes happens that groundunits were palced very bad like in the sea or on steep hillsides or others, there they'll never move.

just my experience.

the Great sides of the TCL stuff is that you can throw a lot of thing very fast in. and they'll be flagged all the same.

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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by Snake Man » 2009-01-20 14:24:24

I don't even know how to answer for your latest post, I'm baffled. Just... uh, just keep the TCL comments out of ground unit movement related discussions.
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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by toonces » 2009-01-20 17:42:32

Oh man. I just typed for 20 minutes and lost my reply when I hit submit!

Bummer.

Here's the summary: I did alot of work looking at the various campaigns. I'm trying to approach this as the original designers' created the stock Korea campaigns. When they made the original sim, they didn't anticipate us modding new campaigns, so the design doesn't have to make sense.

I think there are 3 things at work here: links/roads, objective tasking, and unit quantity/tasking.

Looking at the stock Korea campaigns, the dmz objectives have several things in common (can't make those images smaller without losing res SM). They have beach and border as attributes. Why? Maybe the sim approaches the campaign tasking like this:

It looks at the terrain and looks for border objectives and links to determine where the dmz is. It looks for routes and choke points for key cities (maybe supply and priority has something to do with this). Then it looks at the vehicles to determine tasking. It wants to task enough units to provide for defense of key areas first. It looks for those border objectives, and then sets reserves tehre.

But in a PMC campaign, the borders are missing. The units have to be set to reserve to make a defensive perimeter, but it doesn't have borders to use. So, it picks likely points based upon its own algorithms to figure out where to put reserves to block an enemy advance on key cities. The units in these campaigns don't move randomly; the sim is trying to come up with a plan. But it's missing information. It's looking for what is in Korea, can't find it, and then does the best it can.

Second, the vehicles in Korea have all sorts of tasking associated with them: secure, capture, defend, support, reserve. The units are put there, some of which perhaps defend important nodes. Once the defense is established, the engine looks for enough units untasked to go on offense. But the units have to be in the right place, along a frontline or second line obj, or along some link/road.

Third, how do roads and links affect everything? We've all seen the Korean units traveling over the fields in stock Korea. But, then again I've seen beautiful columns of vehicles along roads in Desert Storm. How does the sim determine a route? It's not random. There's some combination of parameters that help it pick a route to an objective. Units deliberately route around things, and pick certain paths? Why?

See, the key to all this, I think, is to trick the sim into thinking it's looking at a stock Korea terrain with stock Korea units. It looks for the borders. It determines how to set up a defense by looking at what units it has available for what tasking near important objectives with certain attributes (border, frontline, secondline etc). Then it figures out quanitities. It's looking at the .tri for guidance all the time. It collects all the info, then sets tasking.

In a PMC campaign, it's looking for all this info. It has something that says "set up reserves along border objectives. Check that you have X amount of armor and infantry with Y amount of suport within Z distance. Make sure that the path from unit A to supply point B is secured by C vehicles. Check tempo. Check ratios. Now task this many vehicles with offensive along this linkage to this priority city..."

What it sees is dispersed units with unusual tasking, no borders, the links don't make sense (to the sim), and so it sort of barfs internally, and then comes up with the best thing it can.

Why do units always go to defensive reserve positions in PMC campaigns? It has to be something with objective linking. Among other things, but the sim is being cautious for a reason. It's not random.

My first post was much more eloquent. Sorry guys.

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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by toonces » 2009-01-20 17:57:15

I missed alot of points from my original post...

I think ccc is right in a sense when he saids roads are important. But I don't think that's the whole story. I really, really strongly believe that the attributes in the obj dump are very important, if not vital.

I have to wiki to figure out what all the links mean though. This is an area I haven't looked at before. But I think the engine is looking at that 'map view' you see in tacedit and making fundamental decisions about what the terrain looks like based upon that. And don't think that it has to be automatically transferrable to other theaters. The designers build that terrain for Korea, not Vietnam.

The designers (from what I've read) made the sim so F-16centric that it is virtually impossible to build another plane totally into the sim (avionics and such). Why does the campaign have to be so different? It might be horribly difficult to break the terrain code. But I have hope that we can do it.

The Korea campaign has very valuable clues in it. I wish I has more time to play with it in tacedit.

It's not enough to just throw a bunch of stuff on a map. It has to "look" like Korea to the campaign engine. And, then all the units have to fulfill all the campaigns decision matrices. If the terrain makes sense, if the engine can figure out where to send units, have enough units to send with the right tasking while maintaining enough to defend some priorities, and then has the support in place, the ratios are right, the .tri file gives enough priority to the right places...these criteria are met and then the engine sensibly tasks units.

It's not just a path problem. Units defend just find. Units go into reserve status just fine. The paths exist. They don't go forward. This tells me that it's an aggression problem. Why? Because it has certain decisions that have to be met before it will task aggression.

How many times have we seen "major offensive" on ground tasking, but no forward ground movement? It's not that the units can't get there...it's that the engine can't figure out how to get there, where to go, or can't find enough units of the right type in the right place with the right support to create a meaningful offensive. Where is my front line? Where am I defending? What is my next objective to capture?
Last edited by toonces on 2009-01-20 17:58:19, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by Sherlock » 2009-01-20 17:57:57

I still believe the paths have to defined across the tiles as well in the texture.bin file. If not, then why do the Korea tiles for roads (and bridges across rivers) have defined paths in the texture.bin file?
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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by toonces » 2009-01-20 17:59:23

That's the problem (for me): I have no idea how objectives and links work. I just haven't made it to that part of the wiki yet.

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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by Snake Man » 2009-01-20 20:01:33

toonces wrote:Oh man. I just typed for 20 minutes and lost my reply when I hit submit!
On long posts always, always... use text editor where you type the post, you never can know when your internet connection or the forum servers will fail or whatever and your text is lost. In fact, I'm typing this right now in editpadpro.
(can't make those images smaller without losing res SM).
You don't have to, just don't "hotlink" them, don't put them into the IMG tags, but use instead URL tag. No problem giving a link to a huge image, if user clicks it they expect it to load as long as it takes. The idea of not hot linking large images is to cut down forum topic/page load time for slow connection users and the fact that there is absolutely no reason to have the images as large as the usual suspects post them. People just don't care or know how to put the size down.
It looks at the terrain and looks for border objectives and links to determine where the dmz is.
I think it looks where the BLUFOR and OPFOR ground units are the closest to each other, which actually... is quite the same thing as "border" objectives.

However I'm not sure the FLOT line will be drawn ingame if there is no ground units present, can someone confirm this?
Third, how do roads and links affect everything?
Well, its the essence of ground unit movement...
the links don't make sense (to the sim)
Why the links wouldn't make sense? :?
It's not enough to just throw a bunch of stuff on a map. It has to "look" like Korea to the campaign engine.
That's not true. Codec assured me several times that there is no hardcoded "korea stuff" in the campaign engine, if we cant make your campaign work its not the fault of the engine/code.
Sherlock wrote:I still believe the paths have to defined across the tiles as well in the texture.bin file. If not, then why do the Korea tiles for roads (and bridges across rivers) have defined paths in the texture.bin file?
Dunno what you mean by this as all PMC texture.bin's have this road data in place. If some are missing, then its a bug, not intentional.
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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by toonces » 2009-01-20 20:26:54

@ Snakeman,
"That's not true. Codec assured me several times that there is no hardcoded "korea stuff" in the campaign engine, ..."

I'm not suggesting their is hardcoded Korea stuff. What I'm saying is that the campaign engine was built (or rather the Korea terrain was built knowing the procedures used in the Korea campaign creation) such that it looks for items present in the Korea campaign that are left off the PMC campaigns.

How does the campaign know the border between N. Korea and S. Korea? We know how to build a PAK map. But what creates country territory?

Why are those links going out like spokes in that screenshot above?

If a unit is tasked to go on offensive, how does it know when it is in friendly or enemy territory?

If you click on a unit in tacedit, the unit will display a series of red lines. These lines look like a path, but the unit doesn't necessarily drive along that path. Are thy links between the unit and its objective? Will a unit "not move" because it can't trace this path?

I'll bet, and I don't know this but I'll bet I'm on the right path, that the guy(s) that designed this campaign engine stuff were wargamers. These guys grew up on board wargames and there are elements of them in the engine. Units have to trace supply lines, exert zones of control, and so on.

The key is Korea. I have to figure out what's in there, what the pattern is. I was so into this yesterday, and I couldn't sleep last night thinking about it. My eyes were bleeding from staring at tacedit for about 16 hours. I feel like I can get it, I just need more time and I need to know more about how things work.

One last thing, kinda off topic but sorta relevant. At the end I figured out how to export and import units. I'm going to try to start saving bunches of units as .uni files so that I can make edits and import new units quickly. This will cut down on editing time alot.

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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by toonces » 2009-01-20 20:38:17

Here's as small as I can make a picture of the objective I'm talking about. Look at all the stuff attributed to this border town.

Image

Some of the other objectives:
http://i263.photobucket.com/albums/ii12 ... _010-4.jpg

http://i263.photobucket.com/albums/ii12 ... _009-2.jpg

http://i263.photobucket.com/albums/ii12 ... _011-2.jpg

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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by Sherlock » 2009-01-20 20:48:16

toonces wrote:
Why are those links going out like spokes in that screenshot above?
When I load up the basic SP4.2 korea campaign in TacEdit 2.48 (on top of Falcon 4.0 with 1.08 patch) I don't get those "spoke" black lines like your picture shows above. I DO get the green parent connection (smaller) spoke lines going to the subordinate objectives around that Parent objective. I have never seen those Black "spoke" lines show up like you have in your TacEdit above. Anybody else out there ever seen that?
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Re: Working and winnable campaign

Post by toonces » 2009-01-20 20:56:56

Ok, well it's important to note that I'm looking at either a FF4 or FF5 Korea campaign (I think FF5 now that you mention it).

I'm glad you brought that up- that's a huge point that I forgot to mention, and it could totally take me (us) down the wrong path.

I'll check FF4 when I get home tonight.

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