Game Creates imposssible random missions

[darktone]

So this is a screenshot of a coastal bombardment mission the game just generated for me; I'm playing as Spain, allied with Britain in a war against Germany, At the top is the spawn for my fleet in the north sea, and at the bottom is the bombardment target.... In German East Africa. (I think the timer for this is about 800).

[williammiller]

That is what is called a "0,0" bug (a unit or objective appears at Long 0/0/0, Lat 0/0/0) - do you happen have a save game with this mission still active, or recall the parameters of it?...it would help us to correct that particular mission data.

Thanks.

[darktone]

I do have the save, I just have no idea where to find it

[williammiller]

In the RTW2 game folder you will find a folder named "Save" ; inside that folder are the folders for your saved games (named Game1, Game2, etc).

You can zip up the folder that has the save number for your game, and then post it to something like google drive or any file hosting service and post the link here, if it is too big to post here.

Thanks!

[darktone]

alright, with any luck this is it

Game5.zip (193.68 KB)

[rimbecano]

Jun 22, 2020 18:42:33 GMT -6 williammiller said:

That is what is called a "0,0" bug (a unit or objective appears at Long 0/0/0, Lat 0/0/0) - do you happen have a save game with this mission still active, or recall the parameters of it?...it would help us to correct that particular mission data.

Thanks.

I thought that as well, but the red mark in the thumbnail is actually the distance scale when you look at the full size screenshot. The objective appears to be somewhere around Taganyika, so it's not at 0,0.

[williammiller]

Jun 24, 2020 11:08:37 GMT -6 rimbecano said:

Jun 22, 2020 18:42:33 GMT -6 williammiller said:

That is what is called a "0,0" bug (a unit or objective appears at Long 0/0/0, Lat 0/0/0) - do you happen have a save game with this mission still active, or recall the parameters of it?...it would help us to correct that particular mission data.

Thanks.

I thought that as well, but the red mark in the thumbnail is actually the distance scale when you look at the full size screenshot. The objective appears to be somewhere around Taganyika, so it's not at 0,0.

You are correct, I should have looked at it more carefully.

At any rate will look at the save game and try to determine what sort of data error that mission may have...

[alant]

This is a large mission in support of land battle, which starts 1 hour before dawn. Near Guam, which the Japanese have invaded. The scenario spawned with enemy ships within visual range of my carriers. Unidentified ships turned out to be BBs and BC, accompanied by CLs. They were headed north and my CVs got away unscathed, as did the Japanese. I shudder to think what dawn will bring, CVs within gunnery range of Japanese BBs? Certainly no space to maneuver 6 CVs for carrier strikes.



A few turns into the game more Japanese groups turned up to the south and southeast. One near my flagship battle group, which promptly torpedoed the flagship. Another near the unprotected American convoy.

Called up the Task Manager and sent this scenario to hell. But you have to ask, really? The game will really put you in this kind of unwinnable situation?

[rimbecano]

Jan 22, 2021 16:04:07 GMT -6 alant said:

This is a large mission in support of land battle, which starts 1 hour before dawn. Near Guam, which the Japanese have invaded. The scenario spawned with enemy ships within visual range of my carriers. Unidentified ships turned out to be BBs and BC, accompanied by CLs. They were headed north and my CVs got away unscathed, as did the Japanese. I shudder to think what dawn will bring, CVs within gunnery range of Japanese BBs? Certainly no space to maneuver 6 CVs for carrier strikes.

View Attachment

A few turns into the game more Japanese groups turned up to the south and southeast. One near my flagship battle group, which promptly torpedoed the flagship. Another near the unprotected American convoy.

Called up the Task Manager and sent this scenario to hell. But you have to ask, really? The game will really put you in this kind of unwinnable situation?

I've blundered into the enemy in the dark after the start of a battle, and gotten the worst of it, often enough that I don't entirely mind starting out in that scenario (or I do, but I get mad at the RNG and not at the devs). If it's a mistake I could make myself, I don't mind starting the battle with the mistake having been made. What really gets me mad is when a couple cruisers on a bombardment mission spawn well within the range of enemy land-based air cover at noon (and not in a region like the Med where you can't avoid air cover), which is a situation that I would never be dumb enough yo put a ship in.

[director]

rimbecano - The mission generator is the second-largest problem with the game. Inability to sort your own ships into groups (and select ships for missions) is the largest. I can't tell you how sick I am of starting a scenario with ships scattered here, there and yon, the slow ones guarding carriers and the fast ones carefully placed to fall under the guns of the enemy fleet, while I can't re-organize them or do anything to save them until the enemy is sighted.

I understand that Fredrick is a one-man band. And RtW does some amazing things - the AI is if anything too perfect. And I've more-or-less accepted that what I think of as issues he may not see as problems. And RtW works well as a design-and-management tool, with some combat generated so that you can check your designs. But... my blood-pressure will only take so much rage-quitting, my keyboard has hollows on the CTRL-ALT-DEL keys and my neighbors don't like it when I scream curses in the wee hours. Losing by my own stupidity I can take... being forced to deal with dispersed forces that cannot be set to join one another, being forced to accept a mix of fast and slow ships, being forced to accept missions with France in the Baltic or Germany in the Bay of Biscay... this stuff I do not like, and part of the reason I do not like it is because it is unhistorical.

I took a long break from RtW just exactly for these problems. I've just now purchased RtW2, had one game as Germany and a partial game under my Byzantium mod... and already I'm thinking of taking another vacation. RtW2 has all of the issues of its predecessor plus a few more of its own (we all know the escort carriers off Samar steamed upwind into the Japanese battleline while their officers and men were helpless to change course, right?) and to be frank none of the issues on my critical list got fixed.

RtW2 does some nice things, but it feels like I'm coaching a baseball team where I drafted the players but, when I coach the game, I have no say over which player is at which position. Do I have to accept some random player as my lead pitcher, with no chance of changing that except to forfeit the game? Wouldn't it be better if I could set up my own pitching roster and batting lineup? Is it fun to have my worst player hitting against the other team's best pitcher, over and over and over? Should I not have some power here? And yet... I don't.

So: the condensed version is, the mission generator works as designed but the design confines the player in a straitjacket rather than permit him to make his own decisions. alant - I feel for you but I don't have any advice to offer except to CTRL-ALT-DEL as often as you like.

[sittingduck]

I've given some thought to designing a hammer made of foam/sponge to whack away at my laptop when playing this game. It seems there may be a market for some of these amongst the players of this game...

[rodentnavy]

Jan 23, 2021 4:17:40 GMT -6 rimbecano said:

Jan 22, 2021 16:04:07 GMT -6 alant said:

This is a large mission in support of land battle, which starts 1 hour before dawn. Near Guam, which the Japanese have invaded. The scenario spawned with enemy ships within visual range of my carriers. Unidentified ships turned out to be BBs and BC, accompanied by CLs. They were headed north and my CVs got away unscathed, as did the Japanese. I shudder to think what dawn will bring, CVs within gunnery range of Japanese BBs? Certainly no space to maneuver 6 CVs for carrier strikes.

View Attachment

A few turns into the game more Japanese groups turned up to the south and southeast. One near my flagship battle group, which promptly torpedoed the flagship. Another near the unprotected American convoy.

Called up the Task Manager and sent this scenario to hell. But you have to ask, really? The game will really put you in this kind of unwinnable situation?

I've blundered into the enemy in the dark after the start of a battle, and gotten the worst of it, often enough that I don't entirely mind starting out in that scenario (or I do, but I get mad at the RNG and not at the devs). If it's a mistake I could make myself, I don't mind starting the battle with the mistake having been made. What really gets me mad is when a couple cruisers on a bombardment mission spawn well within the range of enemy land-based air cover at noon (and not in a region like the Med where you can't avoid air cover), which is a situation that I would never be dumb enough yo put a ship in.

The problem there is entirely the devs. Land based air struggled against shipping for a long time, in 1941 the Royal Navy was able to operate hundreds of miles away from its bases off Crete within range of roughly 300 medium bombers and 150 dive bombers and turned back all sea borne attempts to reinforce the invasion...in 1941, something according to this game that is impossible from 1921 unless you are the AI. 

There is more...when players clocked on to the light cruisers abuse the dev team penalised not building light cruisers.  When CAPs worked as historically accurate cf the American CAP in the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Japanese CAP in the battle of Midway and numerous instances of effective British CAPs in the Med...the devs nerfed CAPs. 

Use of torpedoes.  We know how good the AI is at using torpedoes because we see it firing ours and it is hilariously bad at it.  It holds fire against obvious targets, it aims astern of enemy ships and that is when it is not firing wildly off the correct bearing.  I do allow I have seen none of the 180º off target shots I sometimes observed in RTW1 but still the AI sucks when it comes to torpedoes and somehow hits players all the time...that has to be highly questionable. 

The game currently feels not a strategy game as a player's choices should mean something in a strategy game but they do not in the current patch.  There was an improvement in patch 24 that I liked but it annoys me that I cannot recall it.  Sadly though so much has gone backwards (gun calibre growth for example)  and there is a long list of things that should at least have seen attempted fixes. 

I cannot recommend this game to anyone new at this time.  Which is a shame because I love the game and want it to work and want NWS to succeed but right I am feeling badly let down.  

[dashwood]

Have to jump on this bandwagon. Some really vexatious situations. I keep getting missions in a war with france but my new, extremely fast and medium range BC (relative to the time 1909) for some reason never shows up, leaving 3 light cruisers and 12 destroyers to be slaughtered by the French heavy cruisers and light cruisers the BC was built to deal with. Seriously, over 6 Cruiser engagements where the BC has been absent while the french force is often stacked.

I agree that more control over OOBs and mission assignments is urgent. I had patrol destroyers/escort destroyers sent on Convoy attack missions they were entirely unsuited for. Had I the option I would not agree to those missions but would agree to the ones with my raider focus Cruisers.

[dashwood]

As if to highlight this I just got a mission where almost every vessel in the theatre was assembled, INCLUDING ALLIED SHIPS, but the Battlecruiser is absent despite the mission (convoy defense) being an ideal situation for it.

[director]

OK... I'm going to go off the deep end here.

The game needs some new resources, specifically fuel, command points and wear.

Fuel is expended on a turn-by-turn basis for each ship active in that turn. A new status - Inactive - would designate ships that cannot be used that turn. They would use 1/2 fuel and recover from wear. Fuel can be stored (the max amount stored can be increased but it is expensive and takes time) and the rate of increase moves in-line with budget.

Some activities like TP would give a slow but steady increase in wear; missions would generate more.

Active ships consume fuel and accumulate wear. Ships above a certain wear-point either can't be activated or are highly likely to have serious mechanical issues if activated. This prevents the player from using the same two battlecruisers month after month (as an example).

Command level is increased for building (improving) a naval academy and a naval staff (both of which take command points to build and require a lot of time). Command level determines the 'ceiling' of maximum command points that can be banked; how many you get per turn depends on your nation. A temporary bump in command points can be purchased by selling off prestige. This keeps you from ordering major fleet operations turn after turn. Command level might decrease in peacetime.

Prestige determines how likely it is that the national government will take your opinion into account and/or affects budget (making it hard to spend prestige for command points).

Each turn the human player can pick from one of a group of missions (or select 'none'). He can then spend command points and fuel to select ships for that mission. If successfully completed, victory points and/or prestige can be won. And as a final twist... the higher your naval staff rating, the more likely you can be told which mission the AI is selecting (but not which ships it is using). You will be allowed to decline your own mission and select a force to stop the AI - by expending command points, fuel and accumulating wear.

Periodically there would be missions of overriding importance that you can decline only with extreme penalties, like a convoy run.

I'd entertain the idea that there could thus be two combats per turn, one for your mission and one if you decide to contest the enemy's mission. And I'd entertain the notion that, in contesting the enemy, you have to use ships you didn't assign to your mission - but I wouldn't insist on it.

Implementing all this for the AI would be done, frankly, by fudging it - it isn't necessary for an AI to 'understand' the rules only to give the appearance that it is playing by them. I know that RtW prides itself on having the AI and human play by the same rules, and I think that could be done at the operational level under these terms - but if not, cut the AI some slack and give the human player the limitations and opportunities of meaningful actions.