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EricLarsen -> Eric's Bug List & Observations (7/27/2002 3:07:53 AM)
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Joel & Gary,
I've downloaded the new 1.20 update and perused the new fixes and I see that some old bugs I've discovered but not yet reported aren't in the new patch. Sorry to post some new 1.11 bugs before really getting to play with 1.20 but I'd better do it now before I procrastinate further so that hopefully they'll get fixed for the next patch. All bugs have been seen while playing scenario #17.
1.) The Long-Range CAP Free Ride Bug - I've noticed that long-range CAP set to zero hexes gets a free ride as far as the unit suffers zero fatigue when not engaged in combat, when engaged in combat it suffers at least half the fatigue of fighters set to escort/CAP that only fly and fight as CAP, it suffers no operationally damaged planes, and best of all trains really well experienced air units far faster than training at 100%. This should work so that long-range CAP of 100% suffers about 10% more fatigue than the same unit being on escort/CAP 90% which only flies CAP and no escort. Otherwise this is a convenient game-system gimmick humans can use to "cheat" at CAP and training a fighter unit at the same time because there's no fatigue penalty! When they fly 1 or more hexes they do suffer fatigue properly and I'm wondering if the hex range is being used for fatigue calculation purposes as it seems like the fatigue is being multiplied by zero (a nonsensical math operation) when they CAP over their base hex.
2.) Friendly Fire AA Bug - Early in Scenario 17 when I captured Gili Gili as the Japs and then the AI dropped some uninvited dinner guests there as well in the form of 2 brigades of combat troops and an engineer battalion (nary an AA gun between them) a bombing blitz by both sides ensued. The AI was very good at building up Port Moresby and stocking it with aircraft and bombing my base quite frequently. I responded with my Betty's and Nell's from Rabaul bombing his troops, first at 1,000 feet and then after seeing some high losses I put them at 6,000 feet like the AI was using. I then decided to bring in another regiment with 2 AA units and what I discovered then was that my air losses increased while the AI's didn't! :-( I was really puzzled that the AI had no AA in the hex while I did and when I put more in I suffered the increased losses and not the AI. When I finally got my invasion forces on Port Moresby with several AA units and plenty of supply I discovered that my bomber losses once again increased even though I bombed the base and port to 100% damage and with only about 50 points of supply. I checked the AI AA units and some of them were actually out of supply. After flying about 50 daily turns of Irvings on recon set to fly the max number of recon flights at 10,000 feet without ever suffereing a loss I found that one got shot down while I was still the uninvited dinner guest with plenty of supplied AA. It sure seems like when both sides occupy a base hex that each side's AA fires at the it's own planes. This isn't just a one-time abberation but something I've witnessed on a far-too consistent basis. Please check to make sure friendly AA isn't firing at friendly planes as the rule, but possibly as the exception as friendly fire accidents did occur.
3.) Docked Ships Do Not Repair Bug - I have yet to see any ship docked at port conduct any repairs. I've had a carrier tf parked at Buna when it was a level 2 and 3 port for two months or more and never once did any of the ships repair. While I would use the tf to launch bombing attacks on P.M. about every 3 to 4 days I never saw the carriers or other ships repair any systems damage. I've seen them repair systems damage at sea and at anchor but never when docked. It makes me wonder what the sailors are doing when their ship is docked, seems like they're on R & R and neither of those R's are Repair. While I can see this as being a problem for the Allied side historically I had no idea the IJN sailors were as proficient and prolific at drinking and chasing skirts while docked in port. Please double-check to make sure that ships do repair while docked at port.
4.) Minor Non-Fatal Crash Problem - I'm running UV on a clunker 400 MHZ Pentium 2 with 128 MB of RAM and a good 4 of 6 GB of hard drive space still available. Last weekend I had my computer and game running all day long and after about 10 hours or so the program seemed to just slip out and shut itself down both days. Each time I went back into the game without rebooting and continued on without a hitch. I've had the computer on all day long playing other games (oops, forgive me fathers Joel and Gary for I have sinned ) and haven't had this problem. I'm not sure if after so long the RAM is getting stuffed and decides to puke it's guts out or what, but it's just a minor annoyance since I save early and often. Thankfully it's not the fatal game-ending crash bug that won't let you go past Go and collect the game-ending victory screen.
5.) Long-Range CAP Escorting Problem - This probably isn't a bug but more of a major annoyance of a design flaw. When I've been sending my recon flights over Port Moresby when not bombing it I've been really annoyed that the long-range CAP I send over P.M. to intercept C-47 Dakota transport flights is wasting fatigue escorting my recon flights when completely unnecessary and unwanted. What's most annoying is that I had pounded P.M. back to the stone age and it hadn't been sending up any CAP for several months of daily turns because there were no ready planes of any type at the base. If I had wanted those recon flights escorted I would have used the Escort/CAP setting for those fighter units that flew CAP over P.M. and not the long-range CAP setting. While the manual says that the program uses some intelligence in determining how much escort to provide I find it just sends out the max less some random amount that don't make the connection. I want to be able to use the long-range CAP for interecepting enemy offensive air missions only, if I want escorts I'll use the Escort/CAP setting and designate the destination. Please fix this so that long-range CAP no longer flies escort as that is just a redundant design feature already covered by the Escort/CAP setting. CAP is a defensive air mission and the game should reflect that properly for long-range CAP missions.
6.) The Hovering AI Transport TF Bug - When the Allied AI sets transport tf's to go to Port Moresby I've discovered that they will "hover" in the same hex for many turns. I have to confess to being the culprit at being able to trigger this unfortunate phenomenom. As the IJN I've discovered the joys of parking a big carrier tf at Buna (especially after Buna has a level-3 port and is immune to sub attacks) after seeing how much systems damage and fuel I wasted sending them out from Rabaul to a hex off Buna and then bombing for a few turns before heading back to Rabaul to refuel and resupply the AA ammo. Unfortunately for the AI when it sends a transport tf to P.M. as the destination and Brisbane as the home port with the Retirement Allowed setting on this seems to cause the AI's tf to hover about 4 hexes southwest of the bottom of the big "C" in Coral Sea. When I see these hovering tf's I know I can just take my time and mosey on down with a wolfpack of subs I station off P.M. to sink it. Even though it may take 5 or 6 daily turns and they sometimes get spotted along the way there as long as I keep that carrier tf docked that hovering transport tf stays put. I have caught one traveling a turn at night, and then right back to the hover hex during the day so I'm guessing the tf's do travel towards P.M. at night and then when my carrier tf gets sighted by coastwatchers and the occasional PBY flight from Australia during the day that it hustles back to it's starting point. Probably would be best if either the AI sets transport tf's to patrol without retiring when the destination and home port aren't set for the same port, or with the retirement allowed setting it always sets the home port as the destiantion hex if friendly controlled.
7.) The Air Transports Always Deliver Bug - I've noticed that air transports always deliver their goods no matter rain or shine or 100% damaged airfields or enemy CAP. Makes me wonder if USPS mailmen are flying those planes. I think that the way the manual states that they get to deliver first always is just too good to be true. There should be some allowance for enemy CAP intercepting some of the transports prior to delivering the goods some of the time. I also noticed that even when I got P.M. damaged 100% for both airfield service and runway damage they still delivered all the goods all the time and suffered no operationally damaged planes. I did manage to bomb P.M. to the max and had the engineer units out of supply so that they couldn't repair any damage and still those transport planes came through. Since it takes a minimum of a level-1 airfield to allow transport flights in, and a 100% damaged airfield should represent no airfield I'm wondering why are they allowed to get in in the first place since there is no valid level airfield left? Granted the Dakotas could land on dirt it still seems like the rule disallowing transport flights into level zero airfield hexes isn't being consistently followed through when an airfield of greater than level zero has been bombed so completely that it becomes a level zero airfield. I have noticed that when the port is at 100% damage the fortification level is reduced to zero as it should be for combat purposes. And to top it off the planes just don't seem to suffer any additional operational damage if they fly into a 100% damaged airfield or one that's 100% functional. Air transport missions that get intercepted by enemy CAP should suffer some reduction of their deliveries of troops and supplies some of the time and when they land at damaged airfields they should suffer the consequences accordingly as operationally damaged planes that get stuck at the destination and not always making it back home as damaged.
8.) Airfield Damage Shown Not Complete - I've noticed that when I look at enemy airfields during my turn I see only the airfield service damage and not the runway damage. I've double-checked to look at the other side during it's turn to see the correlation and only the service damage is being fed to the enemy for viewing purposes. The runway damage is being ignored and that shouldn't be so as the service damage can be 100% while the runway damage is almost zero percent and when looked at in my turn the report always shows the 100% damage less a small random amount. Either you need to add the 3rd component, runway damage to the damage report line or the airfield damage should be the average of the two components factored by some fog of war percentage as is the case currently for the two components that are being reported.
9.) Ground Unit Reinforcement Arrival Bug - Ground unit reinforcements are arriving a day too early in scenario #17. The last time any ground unit shows up on the reinforcement arrival schedule is 2 days prior to arrival, while ship and air units correctly show on their arrival schedules until 1 day before arrival. I haven't tried other scenarios yet so I'm not sure if it's a scenario bug or a program bug but I'm leaning towards it being a program bug.
10.) Poor Reinforcement Fog of War - The fog of war for ground and air units is very poor in that it allows a player to see all of his ground and air reinforcements for the whole game, up to 550 days for the long campaign games. Neither side had such prescience for knowing when and where they'd be getting ground and air reinforcements. I like the way the ship fog of war works as far as not knowing you're getting ships until Tokyo releases them. I do think it's weak in allowing players to see when ships arrive at Tokyo for a year and a half into the future. I think a preference button should be set up so that players who are anal-compulsively inclined (ironic I'm an a-c inclined beancounter) can leave the system the way it works so they can have perfect prescience about their upcoming reinforcement stream and for those of us who like a little more mystery and realism in this respect can set it so that we don't see these reinforcements until Tokyo releases them. I could see up to 90 days out as being reasonable for ground units being released until they actually arrive in theater, or say a whole command like an Army being released but having to take a while to get transported in theater, but to see them all is just too good to be true. Please don't forget that fog of war is historically accurate and makes these games a lot more fun to play.
11.) The Allied AI's Cookstown-Cairns Air Unit Flip-Flop - Another weakness of the AI is it flip-flops air units around and merely causes unnecessary fatigue and readiness disruption. I've seen this as a really big problem between Cookstown and Cairns where it will send a huge number of air units to one base and cause the base's supply-to-supply-required ratio to fall to less than 2 to 1. Then it sends a slew of those air units to Cairns because it is above the magic ratio. Next turn Cairns is now under the magic ratio and it then sends them back to Cookstown because it went above the magic ratio. On and on and on for turn after turn after turn this merely makes the AI air units more and more fatigued and less and less able to fly combat missions. While this doesn't seem to happen between Luganville and Noumea the AI merely sends a bunch of air units to Luganville where they are vastly undersupplied early in the campaign because of a lack of allied transports at Noumea to keep Luganville properly supplied. The net effect there is that the AI is putting a bunch of air units at Luganville where they end up as runway cannon-fodder for my air combat and bombardment tf's to come pay a visit and pick up some easy vp's since they don't have the supplies to fly and attack my attacking tf's. The AI needs to have some check before sending air units to a base a little at a time and not en masse so that the AI isn't just overloading a base's supply and then causing a bunch of air units to just transfer back and forth or just sit waiting to be bombed and bombarded with no ability to protect themselves.
That's all for now folks, and I'm sure you're glad of that. Hope this helps you to make the game better.
Thanks,
Eric (The Bug Hunter) Larsen:eek:
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