Potzblitz V24.2b JAN 1st 2024

[Zombo]

comments on the ongoing Robo vs Zombo game:

Ships still spend 3 ammo fighting subs. If that's fixable, it should be...

I picked foreign legion rather than french Army of Africa because it could be deployed to the front earlier. But the turn after it arrived in France, France had no railroad capacity ( and I had used none). Intended? Bug?

I noticed the "back door" romanian hex flipped to Russian control next to Galicia is no longer there. I actually thought it was a very good idea, in order to make the Galician front less easy to defend on a narrow section ( still impossible to replicate the historical AH rout). Intended?

Recon of the zep is crazy. By moving the zep into Königsberg I can spot the whole Russian deployement from Riga to Novo-Georgiesk. Insane. Make zeps zero upkeep and ultra cheap if necessary, but please tone down their recon range.

Otherwise. Superbly enjoyable!

[Robotron2084]

comments on the ongoing Robo vs Zombo game:

Ships still spend 3 ammo fighting subs. If that's fixable, it should be...

Did you only see the TOOLTIP telling you about ammo cost or did the ammo actually got deducted?

I picked foreign legion rather than french Army of Africa because it could be deployed to the front earlier. But the turn after it arrived in France, France had no railroad capacity ( and I had used none). Intended? Bug?

If France got "Caught Offguard" she lose her rail transport for 1-2 turns representing the chaos in French HQ. I don't remember whether I managed to surprise you though.

I noticed the "back door" romanian hex flipped to Russian control next to Galicia is no longer there. I actually thought it was a very good idea, in order to make the Galician front less easy to defend on a narrow section ( still impossible to replicate the historical AH rout). Intended?

That's funny, in my turn the hex got flipped alright.

Recon of the zep is crazy. By moving the zep into Königsberg I can spot the whole Russian deployement from Riga to Novo-Georgiesk. Insane. Make zeps zero upkeep and ultra cheap if necessary, but please tone down their recon range.

Well, you've had ample time to test the game in SP, now it's a little bit late. But okay, what will it be: LOS 5 or 4?

*edit* DAMN, what happened to my account? Did got logged out for no reason and logged back in and now I'm apparently logged in under a different account.

[Robotron]

@moderators: please delete that other account I seem to have made, don't recall why though, probably fucked something up while fumbling with that unified login system. Don't want to get banned because of double account resulting from an oversight.

comments on the ongoing Robo vs Zombo game:

Ships still spend 3 ammo fighting subs. If that's fixable, it should be...

Did you only see the TOOLTIP telling you about ammo cost or did the ammo actually got deducted?

I picked foreign legion rather than french Army of Africa because it could be deployed to the front earlier. But the turn after it arrived in France, France had no railroad capacity ( and I had used none). Intended? Bug?

If France got "Caught Offguard" she lose her rail transport for 1-2 turns representing the chaos in French HQ. I don't remember whether I managed to surprise you though.

I noticed the "back door" romanian hex flipped to Russian control next to Galicia is no longer there. I actually thought it was a very good idea, in order to make the Galician front less easy to defend on a narrow section ( still impossible to replicate the historical AH rout). Intended?

That's funny, in my turn the hex got flipped alright.

Recon of the zep is crazy. By moving the zep into Königsberg I can spot the whole Russian deployement from Riga to Novo-Georgiesk. Insane. Make zeps zero upkeep and ultra cheap if necessary, but please tone down their recon range.

Well, you've had ample time to test the game in SP, now it's a little bit late. But okay, what will it be: LOS 5 or 4?

[Zombo]

Did you only see the TOOLTIP telling you about ammo cost or did the ammo actually got deducted?

Oh, I saw the tooltip and thought it meant ammo was automatically reduced, so I didn't confirm

Well, you've had ample time to test the game in SP, now it's a little bit late. But okay, what will it be: LOS 5 or 4?

I've always been anti-crazy recon from day one (cf the memorable air recon dispute)

[KOB001]

Standard Entente run, CP surrender in March 1917.

No bugs, no crashes.

Once Cardona arrived the Italian front felt much "better" (as in brutal & bloody) & Italy became a constant drain of PP transfers & diplomatic points (to boost their flagging morale). Their losses were similar to the Brits too.

The only things I could recommend would be Cardona being deployable from that start (he arrived in 1916 in my game) & is there a way to make Germany's surrender "weigh" more in terms of the other CP nations morale?

Germany surrendering should end the war immediately... rather than grinding at Bulgaria & Turkey for six months before they finally bug out.

The AI is still dumb & i know you cant do much about that, but two of the ways the AI hurts itself so much is...

(i) By moving around & railing so much (esp in Winter) and ending up with yellow/red units (which it often ends up attacking with).

(ii) Constantly being on the offensive in the East & often without anywhere near enough artillery support (Russia had an amazing 818 kills in my game... to 630 losses) .

-Is there any way you could refresh or boost AI unit effectiveness (the opposite of the Cardona events) periodically & esp in winter?

-And/or, in 1916, spawn a few additional artillery units & ammo bonuses for the AI? Perhaps give them some manpower boosts as well.

Either way, from an Entente point of view, this mod seems pretty much finished. Excellent work.

[Robotron]

@KOB:

The crazy railroad abuse by the AI has been mentioned several times before and there's absolutely nothing that can be done about it since the unlimited railmoves for the AI are hardcoded into the game core and cannot be altered.

The Entente AI has already been given bucketloads of extra PP and the efficiency-recovery and autorepair proposals you made have long been included by me.

It really would not matter if I were to give the AI more artys, it would still use them to plug frontline gaps or rail them around until they are red from efficiency loss.

Only thing possible would be to severely cut down the player's PPs when playing Entente, especially that for France.

[Zombo]

Well, you've had ample time to test the game in SP, now it's a little bit late. But okay, what will it be: LOS 5 or 4?

I would actually go for 3, same as the planes

[KOB001]

@KOB:

The crazy railroad abuse by the AI has been mentioned several times before and there's absolutely nothing that can be done about it since the unlimited railmoves for the AI are hardcoded into the game core and cannot be altered.

The Entente AI has already been given bucketloads of extra PP and the efficiency-recovery and autorepair proposals you made have long been included by me.

It really would not matter if I were to give the AI more artys, it would still use them to plug frontline gaps or rail them around until they are red from efficiency loss.

Only thing possible would be to severely cut down the player's PPs when playing Entente, especially that for France.

Oh I know there's nothing or very little that can be done.

I know that you had to create a line of impenetrable hexes to stop France flooding Italy with units... though I didn't know there's an efficiency recovery mechanism (Geez, the AI has such a mechanism & they STILL often have loads of red/yellow units!).

Actually, I suppose now that I think about it those impenetrable hex lines could be used to "partition" Germany & AH into various "fronts". That might help stop it but is probably way too much effort considering this mod is meant to be wrapped up & the AI would just screw up some other way.

[Robotron]

@KOB: I just re-checked: at some point I already DID set the AI efficiency loss from using railmoves to 0 too. Well, I could also make the AI immune to efficiency loss for moving normally and combat...to a certain degree, maybe depending about presence of commander or unit experience.

[KOB001]

You know I was just thinking something similar. I was also wondering about the "beginner" AI.

I've never actually used it, but my understanding is the beginner AI has the AI move less... this, over the course of the war, might actually make it a more difficult game? I'll try it out.

I'm also having a look at the rail_travel.lua presumably you've already tried disabling AI rail movement entirely?

[Robotron]

You know I was just thinking something similar. I was also wondering about the "beginner" AI.

I've never actually used it, but my understanding is the beginner AI has the AI move less... this, over the course of the war, might actually make it a more difficult game? I'll try it out.

I'm also having a look at the rail_travel.lua presumably you've already tried disabling AI rail movement entirely?

The Beginner AI is only handicapped by not having extra PP and bonus units given at higher difficulty levels. There's no "less move" feature.

Setting all AI rail capacity to 0 did not keep it from moving. Furthermore all checks in various places scattered about the scripts concerning remaining allowed rail capacity are ignored by the AI.

But be my guest if you think you can find the culprit.

[Zombo]

I hate to say this but...

replay crash

[Robotron]

Please be more elaborate, what happened during replay until the crash?

[Zombo]

It was the move after your counterattack with an Russian Infantry that destroyed one of my reserve corps.

I'll replay it to see if I can be more specific

BTW, strange, KOOB has hosted a game for me and programme crashes as soon as I press the "play" button

maybe he did something wrong, I've re-hosted a game myself to his intention and we'll see

EDIT: got it. Game crashes after Russian reserve corps moves from Warsaw into the fortress of Novo-Georgiesk

[Robotron]

BTW, strange, KOOB has hosted a game for me and programme crashes as soon as I press the "play" button

Logfiles please from both players. No need for upload just copypaste the last few lines.

[Robotron]

Hold it, just try this, both of you.

V5.21:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0N7V ... FZhRURUcFU

[Robotron]

There sat the lonely modder, waiting for replies...

Guys, to be blunt, I feel like abandoning the whole MP aspect and call the whole thing off, the level of frustration getting this mess of a mod into shape is just not worth it. Sorry.

[Zombo]

I installed it, but I think KOBB went to bed...

[KOB001]

I installed it... are we meant to be hosting the 1914 scenario (your game) or the Potzblitz 1914-18 scenario (my game)?

I had a quick run through as the CP... "beginner" my ass, it was all over by Winter!

I chose to attack West with "Schieffens legacy"... game was on a knife edge & Paris was besieged but I got cut off by counter attacks whilst the Eastern front collapsed.

No bugs or crashes... only recommendation I could make would be to perhaps get rid of the race to the sea blocked hexes for the Heavy right-wing attack ("the last man brushing the Channel coast with his sleeve").

I made my first attempt to edit the rail AI, it seemed to work initially... but then I saw some artillery rail movement in the last turn before surrender.

Presumably the file must do something, as leaving it blank causes the game to crash.

It'd be a shame if the MP can't be fixed... but if it can't be, it can't be.

EDIT: @ Zombo, I began your 1914 game, no crash so far.

[Robotron]

I made my first attempt to edit the rail AI, it seemed to work initially... but then I saw some artillery rail movement in the last turn before surrender.

Presumably the file must do something, as leaving it blank causes the game to crash.

The rail_travel.lua is used for railroad-pathfinding. So, what were the changes you made, forbid rail movement for the AI entirely? That of course would severely weaken the AI.

Are you experienced with lua? Any help would be most useful as four eyes see more than two, especially when it comes down to fix the replay crash bug, which should have top priority.

I installed it... are we meant to be hosting the 1914 scenario (your game) or the Potzblitz 1914-18 scenario (my game)?

The hosting player is meant to start the Potzblitz t 1914-1918 scenario.
Any other scenario is guaranteed to crash or behave weirdly (even more than Potzblitz) due to the many changes made to the scripts as detailed in the opening post.