Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Sid,

I am curious. On what basis do you assert that there are no trails in those places?

What you were told, by two developers IIRC, is that "trails" are built into the unit and supply movement rates (or 'cost' for supply) in the game, and that is the reason they are not in the pwhex data.

How have you determined that to be false?

From Kokoda to Templeton's Crossing the trail climbs 6,000 feet in less than twenty miles as it crosses a series of knife-edged ridges. The peaks in the area rise as high as 9,000 feet, and the valleys, whose sides slope as much as 60 percent from the horizontal, descend as low as 1,000 feet. Ridges rising from creeks and river beds are 1,500 to 2,000 feet high, and the soil in the valleys has up to thirty feet of humus and leaf mold. The area is perpetually wet, the rainfall at 3,000 feet being 200 and 300 inches a year. The situation is only slightly better between Myola and Uberi. There are still knife-edges and razorbacks, but now they are not as precipitous as before. The gorges, though deeper and with denser undergrowth, are less frequent, but they are still extremely hard to cross. Not till the trail reaches Koitaki does the going moderate. It was a moot point whether a large, fully equipped force could complete the difficult march from Kokoda to Koitaki, in the faceof determined opposition, and still be in condition to launch an effective attack on Port Moresby when it got there. Yet it was by an advance over this trail that the Japanese proposed to take Port Moresby.

quote:

ORIGINAL: treespider

Jeff you're wasting your time...

quote:

ORIGINAL: che200

Let him create his own mod afterwards when it is released we will see if it works.

quote:

ORIGINAL: witpqs

quote:

ORIGINAL: che200

Let him create his own mod afterwards when it is released we will see if it works.

No one is in any way trying to stop him. Making a mod is a lot of work. He says he is aiming to get it more and more historical, and there are folks both working with him and who are also looking forward to playing it when it's completed. So when it is really, really obvious that he is making a big mistake, pointing that out and trying to get the message across is an attempt to help him and the people who want to play his mod.

I know it is most likely futile but when I saw his post I decided to try anyway.

quote:

ORIGINAL: el cid again

merely by looking at the data in the pwhexe file
which defines them

quote:

ORIGINAL: JeffK

I also dont know what Sid is basing his assumption there are trails across the Owen Stanleys.

.

quote:

ORIGINAL: el cid again

quote:

ORIGINAL: JeffK

I also dont know what Sid is basing his assumption there are trails across the Owen Stanleys.

.

It is not an assumption, in game terms, that the hexes are not coded with trails in all directions, as we were told.
It is what the pwhexe file data says.

But do not assume there are trails as we were told.
Take a look with the pwhexe editor - which reads the code with respect to communications and several other perameters -
for whatever hex you like.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

quote:

ORIGINAL: el cid again

merely by looking at the data in the pwhexe file
which defines them

I know I've explained it a few times already, but I will do so again: trails are not defined in the map data in AE. They are assumed to exist in every hex and their implicit existence is built into the supply costs of the terrain (and, to a certain extent, movement rates).

The old value for trails is instead used for railway lines (where no co-existent roads exist) for the use of non-rail movement along rail beds.

Andrew

quote:

ORIGINAL: el cid again

quote:

ORIGINAL: JeffK

I also dont know what Sid is basing his assumption there are trails across the Owen Stanleys.

.

It is not an assumption, in game terms, that the hexes are not coded with trails in all directions, as we were told.
It is what the pwhexe file data says.

It is also not an assumption that the 144th Regimental Combat Team came across the Owen Stanley Range using
the existing trail system. Or that it was driven back by the Aussies, down the same trail system. The point of
my comments is that, sans trails in the game, there is no reason to use one route over another - so the games will
not tend to follow historical lines of advance. In this case, players might not even attempt to do historical things.
Maybe not re PM, but what about Hollendia? The two pronged invasion makes no sense sans a trail to make the
Western approach feasible.

Anyway - everyone is free to do whatever they like with the information. But do not assume there are trails as we were told.
Take a look with the pwhexe editor - which reads the code with respect to communications and several other perameters -
for whatever hex you like.

quote:

ORIGINAL: dwbradley
So my questions are:
What portions of my description are not correct?
Does the table in 8.3.1 and accompanying text still reflect the most current release(s) of AE?

Thanks for your patience in wading through the above.

Dave Bradley

quote:

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

quote:

ORIGINAL: dwbradley
So my questions are:
What portions of my description are not correct?
Does the table in 8.3.1 and accompanying text still reflect the most current release(s) of AE?

Thanks for your patience in wading through the above.

Dave Bradley

Dave, you have pretty much got it. The "trail" code (value of 1 for road type) still exists in AE, but it is used, exclusively, for allowing non-entrained movement along railway lines, which would be slower than true road movement, but faster than following a foot trail.

Although the road value of 1 is used exclusively to represent railways (for non-entrained movement), there is indeed nothing stopping modders from using this value to represent trails or minor roads if they want to, and use it anywhere on the map, regardless of whether a railway is also in the hex.

To reiterate, yet again, how foot trails are represented in AE - they are NOT represented in the pwhexe data. They are assumed to exist in every hex because, pretty much, they DID exist in every hex. The movement rates on foot trails are not fast when the terrain is bad, because I believe that is accurate. But the big difference between the old WitP and AE is that the supply costs of bad terrain are greatly reduced to account for the ubiquitous existence of foot trails in most places.

For example, in the old WitP, you could not move more than 1 off-road hex away from a supply source before your supply path was exceeded and your units could not be resupplied. In AE, you can move 5 hexes through jungle terrain, away from a supply source, before you exceed the supply range. You have a lot more ability to move "off road" in AE, due to the impled existence of trail networks.

Why was it done like this? Because there are foot trails all over the place. If you draw ALL of them on a map you will have a spider web of foot trails all over the place, even in places such as PNG.

Just to repeat - the map was left moddable on purpose - there is nothing stopping people from modding it as they wish. I am just explaining the design philosophy behind the absence of trails from the map data (and map art) in AE.

One other correction - movement rates between two adjacent hexes are NOT based on the average of the two movement rates for the two terrain types (if there are no roads present). Consider the following example, of two adjacent hexes, one with jungle and the other clear:

1) If it was an average of the two movement rates, an armoured unit would have a movement rate of (3 + 30)/2 miles per day. That is equal to 15.5 miles per day. To move between the two hexes, a distance of 46 miles, would tale 3 days. Too fast.

2) How it is meant to be calculated is as a combination of two half-hex moves. So for 23 miles (a half-hex) of jungle, the rate is 3 miles per day, meaning that it should take 8 days to travel the half-hex of jungle. For the 23 miles of clear (a half-hex) the rate is 30 miles per day so it should tale 1 day. So the total travel time to move to the next hex would be 8 + 1 = 9 days. This is the correct value.

You can see that the second way of calculating movement rates (9 days to move 1 hex of half jungle half clear) is more accurate than simply taking an average of the two movement rates (resulting in 3 days to move the same hex).

Andrew

PS: I HOPE that is how movement is done in AE. I specified that method in the design documentation at least (but I am not a coder)...