RS Spearhead Cave Bug

[reddo]

This is an issue that's been in the game basically since it came out, but I wanted to see if anyone had maybe figured it out or found a fix in recent years.

In the campaign Spearhead, the game will randomly freeze at certain points when off map artillery is shelling hexes that contain caves. For example, in the very first scenario, calling in artillery on hex 23,24 just caused me the issue only a few turns into the game. The game played the audio of the indirect fire, and then nothing happens after that. I know in the past I've encountered also the same issue in the second scenario of the campaign with indirect fire against hex 23,26. This error also occurs if the AI calls in indirect fire on a hex with caves, or if it lands off target on a hex with caves by mistake.

In the past, I've noticed that this doesn't always occur on the first instance of indirect fire against a hex with caves, but occurs inevitably in this campaign particularly, since at some point indirect fire is going to hit a hex with caves. I don't believe the hex needs to be occupied for the error to occur, but I think it does increase the chances of the freeze happening if there are Japanese troops in the same hex.

I'll also note this is not a new bug. It was present back in the original game when I first got it way back in the 90s, I made a post about it in the Campaign Problems thread way back in 2011 (Post #64 in that thread) when I got the game again on a then-new computer, someone else made a thread in 2015 (Can't post the link, but the thread was created by Slaevek) describing essentially the same issue, and I'm encountering it again with a new purchase/download on a new laptop. The game is updated to the current version 2.02.

I'm curious if anyone has ever actually been able to play that campaign to it's end, or ever devised a way to work around this issue. I've always loved this game (Which is why I've bought it at least three times over the last 20+ years![:D]), but this one glitch has seemingly never been fixed...