ED Bombing missions not happening

[Jimbonsx]

My only issue with the theory is that the start time for a (non-flying) raid is, typically, 0730-ish: there hasn't been time to launch one of the participating Gruppes on a prior raid.

[Jimbonsx]

Update: I've set up a completely new set of raids where none of the participants are flying >1 in the day. Same result: my lunchtime raid on Middle Wallop didn't happen. Oh yes, and I/ZG2 went on a flying tour of Ireland instead of Close Escorting a raid (KGr806 did something similar in a previous version of this turn).
Going back to the clock cycle 'skip' mentioned a while back, I have also noticed that the occasional aircraft loss does not increment the 'Losses' display for either side. I'm wondering if the 'skip' is the real culprit here.
It's becoming unplayable under Windows 11/1.06.70 - I'm bitterly disappointed, as I've been playing BoB for decades now, and it finally appears to be broken.

[simovitch]

In theory if you are in a game when you have, in past turns, flown a group twice in one day, then the bug will reappear in your current game regardless of what you do now. And it is a legacy bug from whenever the developers started coding for groups flying more than one raid.

However, if the above is not the case, and it is something that has suddenly appeared in 1.06.70 then we have a problem and here is why: (a) I didn't (purposely) do anything in 1.06.70 that could cause this. (b) I have found the lines of code that prepares a raid for launching and I set a breakpoint for the debugger and other traps. There is no rhyme or reason for those couple of raids not to launch but there it is. To make it worse, I got all of them to launch beautifully on some runs of your saved game but most of the time not.

I've sent 1.06.75 to Matrix for sign off this morning. If you start a new game with 1.06.75 and the bug is still there then it may be beyond my ability to fix.

[Jimbonsx]

It's true that in prior turns in this game I've launched raids with groups making their second raid/escort of the day, so it looks like the bug is here to stay in this game. I don't remember if it's occurred in prior releases I'm afraid. All we can hope for is 1.06.75 fixes it.
Many thanks for your extremely hard work Richard - especially considering the code base you're working with.
Jim

[Jimbonsx]

Any news on the patch to fix this yet? It's severely hampering my game, not being able to assign multiple missions to a unit.
Also, as I think the bug is causing the losses tallying process to miss some of the kills (my Freijagd caught 11 Hurricanes and 4 Fulmars attempting to land and I was credited with just 6 Hurricanes) it's really beginning to bite.

[simovitch]

If all goes well we should have a patch ready the first week in October. This turned out to be a legacy bug that was tough to crack for all situations. How are you verifying your credit with the kills of different plane types?

[Jimbonsx]

I can only go by the messages displayed onscreen at the time of the kill vs the increment to the score when the clock ticks over to the next minute.

[kosigan86]

I'm also experiencing this issue. What's strange is that I don't think this always been present in my game! It seems to have started after loading a bunch of saves last week. I've even re-installed the game, same issue - is there a folder where any cfg data is saved (i.e. appdata) that I could clear to fix this?

[simovitch]

I'm also experiencing this issue. What's strange is that I don't think this always been present in my game! It seems to have started after loading a bunch of saves last week. I've even re-installed the game, same issue - is there a folder where any cfg data is saved (i.e. appdata) that I could clear to fix this?

There are no cfg files, nothing to clear or reset, sorry.

[bchis17]

Hi,

I got the same issue in a PBEM game in Eagle Day. Some of major raids didn't go to the target and it was a clear day, I had clouds turned on and nothing there. Some of my minor raids like Stukas did but yea I idk what's going on, because I didn't have this issue before...

[simovitch]

Hi,

I got the same issue in a PBEM game in Eagle Day. Some of major raids didn't go to the target and it was a clear day, I had clouds turned on and nothing there. Some of my minor raids like Stukas did but yea I idk what's going on, because I didn't have this issue before...

You won't see clouds during PBEM if you are attacking. The effect is there, you just don't see the sprites. It has always been this way for PBEM.

[kosigan86]

I did a fresh OS install, made sure to put the game on a barely utilized drive, gave admin permissions at every part of installation and for the .exe (DXWIND and EDBTR), and the consistency of this issue I started to experience has not appeared again. I do have a suspicion that it is more likely to start happening after reloading saves multiple times (5+) without relaunching the game at some point, and the issue becomes permanent and highly more likely to occur for the rest of the campaign played uner the new saves.

Again, this occurs on nearly cloudless days with high stats units regardless of the hour (once it starts, all raids after are toast too). It seems to happen as such: All raids launched at 6AM work fine, but the main force intending to launch (can even be from different regions / Luftflottes to entirely separate targets) at 7:30 and everything after, even night raids - nothing happens. I've also been more conservative with the speed settings - I've settled on the middle speed, as I've never encountered the issue occurring after remaining on lower speed settings.

If you are or happen to work with the devveloper of the game - just wanted to give some feedback to help out! I love the game, although it'd go from good to great if there was an expanded manual - hunting down all the nuanced aspects of the strategy tips and undocumented / poorly documented rules in the game is frustrating, and there are still some aspects that aren't clear whatsoever to anybody. But I'm a pain pig for niche wargames, so you still get my full appreciation and 5/5 stars .

Here's a question that keeps bugging me as I plan morning raids, - does the % of daylight affect bombing accuracy? Because between 6AM and 7AM it's not quite full daylight, so if I want maximum % accuracy on raid, should I hold off until daylight is 100%? A shot in the dark, but your post count and activity on this forum gave me hope simovich! Thank you!

[simovitch]

Thanks. The % cloud is just an indicator of the general weather conditions and loosely, the cloud coverage within a zone. The AI uses it to develop the go-nogo decisions for launching the raids. It is the cloud graphic and the base/ceiling of the clouds that will impact whether or not an aircraft can see it's target.

To be fair, we did produce manuals for the 3 primary ambiguities missing from the manual: PBEM, aircraft production, and night fighting/EW. The only undocumented hot tip I can think of is the ability to set escort delays by right-clicking near the inbound/outbound raid path. This tip helps greatly when planning escorts for a raid.

We have tried to emphasize in the "what's new" file the need to ALWAYS exit to desktop before loading or starting a new game. Otherwise strange things may happen that we will be unable to explain. Hopefully people actually read that file.

[kosigan86]

Thanks for the reply and pointing me in the right direction! I will definitely practice the full game restart rule now.

[bchis17]

Reinstalling my game seemed to fix it.