Newbie Skirmish? - Human choice for 100% of troops???

[AssKickinProf]

Hi all,

I apologize in advance for this newbie question but I can not seem to get the game to do what I want it to do...

Is there a way to get the Skirmish scenario designer to let the human players choose 100% of their troops? I want to create a PvP (human vs. human) scenario where each player gets to select 100% of there troops. I see in the Skirmish generator you can select Split, None, or All for Force Selection choices but even selecting ALL (as in, I want to select ALL of my troops) does not really do that...you still end up with some units pre-selected by the computer before you (the human) get to choose troops. I want to be able to set a total point limit for each player and have those players select all troops up to that point total. So, if you select X points for one side and Y points for the other each opposing force only has X and Y points total respectively and the humans get to choose all of the units up to these point totals.

Thanks in advance for any help or advice.

Paul


p.s. I know you can choose all units in the Editor but I am guessing that the person who creates the scenario in the editor would be aware of the troops that both sides would have. I don't want this...

[Paul59]

Hi all,

I apologize in advance for this newbie question but I can not seem to get the game to do what I want it to do...

Is there a way to get the Skirmish scenario designer to let the human players choose 100% of their troops? I want to create a PvP (human vs. human) scenario where each player gets to select 100% of there troops. I see in the Skirmish generator you can select Split, None, or All for Force Selection choices but even selecting ALL (as in, I want to select ALL of my troops) does not really do that...you still end up with some units pre-selected by the computer before you (the human) get to choose troops. I want to be able to set a total point limit for each player and have those players select all troops up to that point total. So, if you select X points for one side and Y points for the other each opposing force only has X and Y points total respectively and the humans get to choose all of the units up to these point totals.

Thanks in advance for any help or advice.

Paul


p.s. I know you can choose all units in the Editor but I am guessing that the person who creates the scenario in the editor would be aware of the troops that both sides would have. I don't want this...

Not currently. The Force Selection "ALL" seems to allow you to select 100% of your units, but only from a limited random selection. It doesn't give you the complete range of units, which I assume is what you want. It might be possible to mod the battle generator scripts to achieve that, but unfortunately I don't know how to do that.

[AssKickinProf]

Thanks so much for the reply. What I am seeing when I select ALL for the Force Selection choice is that even then there are units selected for me that are already placed on the map before I buy my first unit. If I select ALL shouldn't the map be devoid of units before I purchase my first unit? So, if I create a skirmish with 2500 points to use to select troops I want to be able to spend the entire 2500 point total and I do NOT want any other units other than the ones I purchase with my 2500 points to appear on the map. As it is now, I can indeed spend the entire 2500 point total but there are other units on the map that I did not purchase. I don't want this. Is what I want possible?

Thanks again to all.

Paul

[Paul59]

Thanks so much for the reply. What I am seeing when I select ALL for the Force Selection choice is that even then there are units selected for me that are already placed on the map before I buy my first unit. If I select ALL shouldn't the map be devoid of units before I purchase my first unit? So, if I create a skirmish with 2500 points to use to select troops I want to be able to spend the entire 2500 point total and I do NOT want any other units other than the ones I purchase with my 2500 points to appear on the map. As it is now, I can indeed spend the entire 2500 point total but there are other units on the map that I did not purchase. I don't want this. Is what I want possible?

Thanks again to all.

Paul

I've just tested the Force Selection ALL, and it seems very inconsistent. Sometimes you do get to choose 100% of the force (but still from a random selection chosen by the game), at other times some units are chosen for you, and sometimes the whole force is pre chosen!

The Random Skirmish Generator is not a perfect tool. Several years ago I made a mod to improve it (The Enhanced Random Skirmish Mod), but unfortunately I was not aware of this issue at the time, so obviously I made no effort to correct it. I was more focused on improving the more obvious failings, such as unhistorical unit selections, and unbalanced forces. In fact the Force Selection ALL does not seem to work at all in my mod, all the units are prechosen! Unfortunately, it is a long time since I worked on those mods, and I now have no idea of how this issue could be fixed.

[AssKickinProf]

Thanks again for the reply. A couple of quick followup questions...

1. If I were to install you mod (to play around with it a bit), can it be uninstalled?

2. Is there any documentation about the skirmish generator and how to mod it? If so, I can give a shot at mod-ing it. Back in the day, I ported Steel Panthers to the Amiga platform for personal use.

Thanks again for your reply.

[Paul59]

Thanks again for the reply. A couple of quick followup questions...

1. If I were to install you mod (to play around with it a bit), can it be uninstalled?

2. Is there any documentation about the skirmish generator and how to mod it? If so, I can give a shot at mod-ing it. Back in the day, I ported Steel Panthers to the Amiga platform for personal use.

Thanks again for your reply.

1) Yes, you can just delete it. But the way it works is different to what you maybe used to; it is a seperate set of data that only works if you choose to use it in the Skirmish Generator (ie; click on the Use Default Data button and select the mod). If you don't select it, it has no effect what so ever on the game, so there is no need to delete it if you don't want to use it.

Here is the link to the discussion thread where you will see a description of everything the mod does:

https://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=95484

You can either download from the link provided, or much easier would be to download using the game's "Download Community Scenarios button", that will install the mod into the correct folder for you.

The forum post explains how to use the mod.

You will see that the mod also adds a lot of new units to the game. If you are interested I also made a lot of other Skirmish Generator mods that covered other campaigns outside of BA2's German/Soviet East Front focus.

2) There are some general modding info on the Battle Academy Modders corner forum:

https://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=104

Some of it might not be available anymore. Sadly there is nothing specifically about the Random Skirmish Generator, I had to work it out for myself by examining the relevant script files. You can see what files those are by opening up the Enhanced Skirmish Generator mod folders.

[AssKickinProf]

Thanks so much. I will check it all out.

I did notice that a lot of the mod documentation is no longer available. Is this documentation not maintained and provided by the game developer?

All the best.

Paul

[AssKickinProf]

I believe that I have figured out what is causing this bug in the Skirmish Generator - or at least what the direct symptom is (though I do not know how to fix it) but there is a work around (see below). To recap the bug... If the force selection type is set to ALL in the Advanced settings in the Skirmish Generator, it often fails to allow you to choose ALL of your troops. Indeed, more often than the not the computer chooses 100% of your troops rather than you being able to choose ANY of them. This is the bug.

It seems that this bug is related to some internal maximum limit on the number of troops in your selected army. If the program determines that the skirmish point total you have chosen for the Army List type you have selected will result in your army having more units than allowed, the program will proceed to choose 100% of your troops to ensure that your army will, in fact, not exceed the internal maximum limit on the number of troops in an army. Thus, if your Army List is from later years (1944 say) then you can choose a higher number of points for your army without encountering this bug as many of the unit types available in 1944 cost more per unit, resulting in an army with a smaller number of units for a given point total. I have (by trial and error) determined the maximum number of points for each Army List type that selecting below this point value will allow you to avoid this bug. The maximum number of points that you can have for each Army List type without encountering this bug are (this goes for both the Default Data and Enhanced Random Skirmish Mod 1.9),

German Mech Corps 1941: 3100 pts maximum
German Panzer Corps 1943: 4500 pts maximum
SS Panzer Corps 1943: 6000 pts maximum
German Mech Corps 1944: 5600 pts maximum

Soviet Mech Corps 1941: 3200 pts maximum
Soviet Tank Div 1941: 3100 pts maximum
Soviet Ramshackle Def 1941 3300 pts maximum
Soviet Mech Corps 1944 4200 pts maximum

So, if you set your force point total to LESS than these maximums for each force type then the Skirmish Generator works as it should. This table also illustrates why this bug appeared to happen randomly at times. For example, suppose you set the Army List type for each side to RANDOM and chose 3300 points for each side. Since the Army List type is random, if the skirmish generator happened to choose German Panzer Corp 1943 vs. Soviet Mech Corps 1944 then both human sides will be able to choose ALL of their troops as 3300 points is less than the maximum point value for each of those two Army List types that would trigger the bug. If, on the other hand, the Skirmish Generator randomly chose German Mech Corps 1941 vs. Soviet Mech Corps 1944 then the German side human would not be able to choose any of their troops as 3300 pts > 3100 maximum pts for German Mech Corps 1941. In this case, the soviet side human could choose their troops but the Skirmish Generator would choose all of the German troops (no human choice of troops for the German side in this instance). Alternately, if you again set the point limit to 3300 pts. and the Skirmish Generator randomly picks German Mech Corps 1941 vs. Soviet Mech Corps 1941 then neither human side would be able to choose any of their troops and the computer would choose 100% of the troops for both sides of this battle scenario. This seems to be what is happening.

As far as the work around goes, just keep your point total less than these maximums and the Skirmish Generator should work as intended. So, if you keep your point totals to 3000 pts or less, the Skirmish Generator should work as intended for all randomly generated Army List battles. If you manually choose the Army List type then just keep your point totals under the maximum values indicated in the table above for each Army List type and the bug should not manifest itself.

I hope this helps folks who may also have encountered this problem.