1.05b various bugs

[gornik]

First of all, thanks for this great game! Despite some bugs and errors, it is the best naval game I've ever played!

Bugs, from this list are 100% repeatable at least for me. I didn't make saves, but if they are needed, I will do them. 
- "Total war" stance of Nazi Germany disappeared after reload of game, and then "normal" peace may be accepted. I played Russia and Japan, saw this in three games in a row.
- Shallow water near Norway prevents ships from entering Bergen and Stavanger.
- Bombardment target at Tanganyika was out of range of my ships due to minefield (BTW, I doubt, should "suspected minefields" be so extensive in colonies?) 
- "MTB possibly on the wrong side" messages during every trade attack or bombardment mission in SE Asia (war against France, they controlled Annam and Cochin China at that moment. I had no MTB there)
- AI Japan couldn't make surprise attack at the beginning of any war against Russia (and maybe others), error message appeared instead (this happen in two Russian games, three times. When controlled by player, everything went normally. Russian possessions didn't change from start)
- As others here I never saw separate scout force, though I had 8 BB+3 B and 9 BC+4 CA active at one war

Maybe not bug: problematic CV behavior: 
CV are always in "line abreast" formation, so they are prone to loose contact in night\rain even with best tech. This is odd, as then for whole night the ship stay completely alone and may be sunk by anybody, especially with radar (I killed 3-4 "lost" CV in present game without any search of them - the just approached my fleet in dawn). What is worse, seem that they don't react to radar contacts and move straight to clearly visible enemy formation (CV, attached to BB formation have this problem too). Strangely, though player is not allowed to command anything to "lost" ship, he may manage her airgroup without any problems. Also, AI airgroups are prone to bomb ground targets even if it is fleet/invasion battle and they should expect enemy fleet nearby. 
 

[Fredrik W]

Thanks for the report! Will check on those.

[sloanjh]

Jul 5, 2019 10:21:21 GMT -6 gornik said:

[SNIP]

Maybe not bug: problematic CV behavior: 
CV are always in "line abreast" formation, so they are prone to loose contact in night\rain even with best tech. This is odd, as then for whole night the ship stay completely alone and may be sunk by anybody, especially with radar (I killed 3-4 "lost" CV in present game without any search of them - the just approached my fleet in dawn). What is worse, seem that they don't react to radar contacts and move straight to clearly visible enemy formation (CV, attached to BB formation have this problem too). Strangely, though player is not allowed to command anything to "lost" ship, he may manage her airgroup without any problems. Also, AI airgroups are prone to bomb ground targets even if it is fleet/invasion battle and they should expect enemy fleet nearby. 
 

One aspect of this that (I think) I've noticed:  I often end up with detached CVs even in daylight, and when the division has a "support" order they have difficulty reattaching.  I think this is because when a ship loses contact with its division, the orders of the division get copied to it.  Since the order is "support BB division" it the detached ship doesn't have an incentive to rejoin the other carriers in the division and so wanders around independently.  If I got to the detached CV and change its order to "core" with its division as a target, it will sail to the division and rejoin.  OTOH, this probably screws up the mechanic of it supplying CAP to the BB force.  I think this is happening in daylight when a single CV turns into the wind to conduct air ops - I suspect it gets too far away from the division flag and is auto-detached.  Note that the difficulty with getting detached to joins also seems to occur with DD divisions with a "screen" order.

This (the comment about screwing up the CAP assignment if you give the detached CV a "core" order) in turn brings up a behavior others have commented on: it appears that once Carrier Force is researched, that it's impossible to set up a carrier in the CV force to provide CAP to the main body of the fleet (since the CAP is connected to the "support" order).  I realize that fixing this by adding a CAP target is probably difficult given that it would probably require big changes to the way the AI is set up, but maybe a work-around would be to give a division the ability (maybe if a checkbox is checked on the division "status" screen) to target divisions in other forces with their "support" (or even "screen" or "core" or ....) orders.  Or maybe the other divisions would only appear as choices for force flagships - that would avoid the need for a checkbox and since you rarely give those orders to flag divisions the added choices wouldn't clutter things up.

Finally, I want to agree with what the OP said - I think the level of abstraction that RTW goes for (both 1 and 2) is great and I love both games!

John

[gornik]

Jul 5, 2019 10:21:21 GMT -6 gornik said:

 AI airgroups are prone to bomb ground targets even if it is fleet/invasion battle and they should expect enemy fleet nearby. 
 

Oh, I think I understood, why this happen! I've seen several times, that LT was reported as ship of certain class (BB, AMC, etc) during air attack. I think, that reckon planes may report false info about it as well. Though these spottings don't appear on map, they may influence AI behavior. This may explain, why enemy carriers sometimes send sortie to the nearest airbase instead of continue searching my fleet, and why sometimes my land planes, sent to "attack enemy ships in general", decide to bomb nearest enemy airbase (Libau-Pillau send sorties to each other in every long battle).