WanderingHead
Posts: 2134
Joined: 9/22/2004
From: GMT-8
Status: offline
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For a long time there has been what I consider to be a bug in damaged unit tracing.
In order to get into the repair queue and reuse the remainder of its pop points, a damaged unit must trace to a friendly factory (friendly meaning a player controlled factory of non-hostile nationality, i.e. not captured). The way it works is this (abridged): after establishing that the unit can trace to a friendly factory, the unit teleports to the player factory with the most unused production capacity for repair, and the population teleports to the region of the same nationality as the unit which has the largest population pool.
When I say teleports, I mean pretty much that. This is what I consider to be the bug. As long as ONE factory can be traced, the unit can now end up at ANY OTHER factory.
In some cases this is not only unreasonable and contrary to the general mechanics of the game, but grossly unfair. For example (the salient example of my current game), say that the Germans have enveloped the Russians in West Poland. West Poland has a factory. For every combat in West Poland that inflicts casualties on the Russians WITHOUT CAPTURING West Poland, the damaged Russian units trace to the West Poland factory then teleport to useful Russian factories behind the lines.
The same basic scenario can be reconstructed many places around the globe.
My question to everyone is: how best to fix it?
A) where should the damaged unit end up for repair?
I think that it is straightforward enough to say that the uinit can only end up in a region it can trace to. In the West Poland example above, it means that the units would enter the production queue of West Poland. The fact that they will take a very long time to repair is the penalty of envelopment (better than the "unit destroyed" alternative).
B) where should the population end up?
This is less straightforward. If it can trace to its own nation that is fine. But if the pop cannot trace to its own nation, but only to a friendly nation, then options are
(i) pop ends up where it can be traced, and changes nationality to that region's nationality,
(ii) the pop is destroyed (can't trace back to its own nation),
(iii) the pop continues to teleport to its home nation if it can trace to any friendly factory,
(iv) combine i and ii, let 50% of the pop survive with new nationality and 50% be destroyed.
Personally, I lean towards (i). Anything else has a big impact on the USA nationality forces, which might very well be damaged in Britain or mainland Europe WITHOUT any linkage tracing all the way back to the USA. If (i) is adopted, then many USA nationality pop points may become British by the end of the game.
a long shot:
(v) add some tracing capability for damaged units that can trace to a friendly port/factory, in combination with i,ii or iv above. Damaged units that trace to a friendly port/factory via normal tracing rules could then trace over the water via any open sea lanes without requiring transports to a port of the same nationality of the unit. What this does is allow a "partial" teleportation, but only port-to-port over open sea lanes. In this way, the USA problem is mitigated but envelopments still generally inflict the appropriate penalty.
Let me know what the thoughts are. IMO this should be improved, and I have already done enough work on it that any of the above solutions except (v) are very easy to do. The long shot (v) would require more research.
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a bug in damaged unit tracing, feedback requested - 
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