Bug Reporting and Recommendations after 2 Campaigns.

[gagnradr]

Hi,
after playing through the campaigns of 6th and 4th army against AI, I just wanted to say thanks for so many hours of exciting and great gameplay! Few games have managed to present me with such interesting gameplay and I look forward for the Don and City campaigns.

To allow you for improvement I registered in this forum and would like to report a few bugs (or recommendations):

1) The transition of units between campaign missions is problematic when a unit was destroyed in a prior mission. It will then spawn as an empty counter with few manpower, but no combat values and no readyness. Such units can't be attacked but own units only move on their tile and both are stacked together. Most of those units don't have ZOC, but some do.

2) Sometimes these destroyed units make the tile occupied by own and enemy units accounted as "enemy tile". Then, the movement of own units on this tile then counts as an attack and the enemy unit can be destroyed - but counts as own loss in the statistics (personell wise, not victory point wise).

3) If an empty unit is stacked with actual units of the same side, they can be eliminated together. However, this makes the destruction of the unit count multiple times within a campaign, giving a high advantage to elimination versus spatial goals.

4) In "Gordov's Counterstrike", the spawning of empty (formerly destroyed) soviet units in the encirclement on the second (?) day led to a situation where German forces that actually squished the last remaining soviets were cut of because of such empty units having ZOC. So, suddenly crisis for no reason.

5) It seems like some missions had a pre-programmed counterstrike of the AI in case a trigger-line in the game was struck. In the replay of "Change of Direction", I think, I could see a counterstrike of the tank elements of 64th was triggered every day and the tanks then set back to their starting position. That counterstrike actually struck me on the 20th round or so and gave some sweet crisis, had to dug in my Panzers and wait for the Motorized - well done! But I scouted that very area dozens of times before and couldn't spot the Soviet reserves - maybe that was due to their repeated movement along the same path?

6) On AI: In "Action at Abganerovo" and/or "Damned Hills" (I think) my poor Romanians had to hold against a Soviet thrust against my rear. Nice crisis. However, the Soviets mostly focused on a single bridge (second from left) which they tried to breach with a whole corps of infantry (and lost due to the river crossing odds). The AI could have easily won if they would have penetrated to the weaker sides of the bridge. In my first attempt of that scenario, the Romanians were organized as Regiments and too rigid, which let the AI do that very penetration in more open spaces - but only to rush to the highest valued control points in the very south. This led to the Soviets being cut off, because they didn't attempt to widen their bridgehead and fight the Romanian garrison at the bridge. In the end I was trying to hunt down soviet HQs and infantry in my rear - and since the map is huge, this broke fun.

7) While movement is likely calculated along tracks and roads, the units often enough took the direct path through an open field. So movement costs of the parallel road, but direct movement through the steppe. I guess this goes against the intention of being able to set up ambushes and meeting battles.

8) The later scenarios in a campaign make less and less sense when enemy units on the flanks keep full power (since they haven't been attacked) and the enemy center is not reinforced. The Abganerovo-battles felt easy on the center and hard on the flanks (see above), while your scenario tells the opposite. I guess a soviet general would have used such spare forces in his center of gravity. I have no clue how that would be coded, but I think the center should be reinforced with whatever there is left on the flanks, so the losses more evenly distributed amongst the units (even though it's nice to have a chart of enemy division that were crushed in a mission and that chart matters when planning future actions).


Some ideas on game feeling:

1) While the markers can be changed to NATO, the symbols for "overrun" "bombard" etc. aren't changed. A NATO-sprite-set for such actions would be sweet.

2) The German translation is correct in a civil sense but military terms are often not correct (to my modern German military vocabulary and likely the same will be true for the vocabulary of the Wehrmacht/Luftwaffe since there is some lexical tradition).

3) A second track of game music would be nice.


Okay, enough with criticism! I really love your game. Keep up the good work.

[Saint Ruth]

Hi,
after playing through the campaigns of 6th and 4th army against AI, I just wanted to say thanks for so many hours of exciting and great gameplay! Few games have managed to present me with such interesting gameplay and I look forward for the Don and City campaigns.

To allow you for improvement I registered in this forum and would like to report a few bugs (or recommendations):

1) The transition of units between campaign missions is problematic when a unit was destroyed in a prior mission. It will then spawn as an empty counter with few manpower, but no combat values and no readyness. Such units can't be attacked but own units only move on their tile and both are stacked together. Most of those units don't have ZOC, but some do.

Great! Thanks for your feedback.
I presume this was with the old version? 1.0.1? I fixed a few campaign issues in 1.0.2.
Regardless, I'll have a look at and get rid of these zombie units.

4) In "Gordov's Counterstrike", the spawning of empty (formerly destroyed) soviet units in the encirclement on the second (?) day led to a situation where German forces that actually squished the last remaining soviets were cut of because of such empty units having ZOC. So, suddenly crisis for no reason.

Yes, that's not good!

5) It seems like some missions had a pre-programmed counterstrike of the AI in case a trigger-line in the game was struck. In the replay of "Change of Direction", I think, I could see a counterstrike of the tank elements of 64th was triggered every day and the tanks then set back to their starting position. That counterstrike actually struck me on the 20th round or so and gave some sweet crisis, had to dug in my Panzers and wait for the Motorized - well done! But I scouted that very area dozens of times before and couldn't spot the Soviet reserves - maybe that was due to their repeated movement along the same path?

Mmmm...the AI order seems to be being reset...will investigate.

6) On AI: In "Action at Abganerovo" and/or "Damned Hills" (I think) my poor Romanians had to hold against a Soviet thrust against my rear. Nice crisis. However, the Soviets mostly focused on a single bridge (second from left) which they tried to breach with a whole corps of infantry (and lost due to the river crossing odds)...

will investigate too, cheers.

7) While movement is likely calculated along tracks and roads, the units often enough took the direct path through an open field. So movement costs of the parallel road, but direct movement through the steppe. I guess this goes against the intention of being able to set up ambushes and meeting battles.

There's a congestion charge on the road too, so if a lot of units are moving along a road, other units will avoid the road.
But I'm not sure what the issue is here?

8) The later scenarios in a campaign make less and less sense when enemy units on the flanks keep full power (since they haven't been attacked) and the enemy center is not reinforced. The Abganerovo-battles felt easy on the center and hard on the flanks (see above), while your scenario tells the opposite. I guess a soviet general would have used such spare forces in his center of gravity. I have no clue how that would be coded, but I think the center should be reinforced with whatever there is left on the flanks, so the losses more evenly distributed amongst the units (even though it's nice to have a chart of enemy division that were crushed in a mission and that chart matters when planning future actions).

Mmm...yes, I see what you mean...though the setup is historical, so don't want to veer too far from that...required some thought...

Some ideas on game feeling:

1) While the markers can be changed to NATO, the symbols for "overrun" "bombard" etc. aren't changed. A NATO-sprite-set for such actions would be sweet.

Oh, that's an idea. Never occurred to me!

2) The German translation is correct in a civil sense but military terms are often not correct (to my modern German military vocabulary and likely the same will be true for the vocabulary of the Wehrmacht/Luftwaffe since there is some lexical tradition).

Oh, I don't speak German, but if you have any improvement suggestions, could you forward on the worst offenders?
The German files are in (I think, not on my normal computer so guessing)
C:\Program Files (x86)\Matrix Games\Stalingrad\languages - slogan_de.properties.

All language slogans are in the slogans.properties (i.e. the english ones).

3) A second track of game music would be nice.

I can look into that...

Okay, enough with criticism! I really love your game. Keep up the good work.

All feedback is welcome! Concrete improvement suggestions like these are more than welcome!
Thanks,
Brian

[gagnradr]

Thanks for the nice answer!

I presume this was with the old version? 1.0.1? I fixed a few campaign issues in 1.0.2.
Regardless, I'll have a look at and get rid of these zombie units.

Yes, indeed, it was all in 1.0.1 ... saw your release of 1.0.2 the next day, sorry. Will look out for remaining Zombie-pockets now, let's see.

There's a congestion charge on the road too, so if a lot of units are moving along a road, other units will avoid the road.
But I'm not sure what the issue is here?

After posting I reviewed the issue...somehow I can't order Road Movements, the arrow never changes to blue, with no unit type. Move+Defend works, changes to green, but not Road Movement. So I was always giving Move+Attack orders, in which case Open Steppe and Tracks simply had the same value. So maybe it's my misunderstanding of how to give Road-orders (hotkey M until arrow in upper right corner is blue), but this was the actual problem.

Mmm...yes, I see what you mean...though the setup is historical, so don't want to veer too far from that...required some thought...

I understand and like both, your historical accuracy and the campaign system... just the campaign mechanics was working against your accuracy/scenario-idea. After all it was fun and I had to worry about my Romanians.

On NATO-symbols for actions:

I guess you are already familiar with the respective APP-6c, but if you want to look it up, it's available on the internet, found one here: https://www.cimic-coe.org/resources/ext ... pp-6-c.pdf

On German translation:

Path was correct, found the language file. Will look up my NATO-dictionary the other day, so I have some foundation when proposing a change.

[gagnradr]

So, on German translation... I use the "Tactical Terms and Acronyms" by the German Bundesprachenamt (Federal Office of Languages), which represents the exact translations used by the Bundeswehr. So some examples:

lines of communication
currently: Kommunikationswege (KOMM)
actually: Verbindungslinien (no acronym)

move to attack
currently: Bewegung und Angriff
actually: Gewinnen
comment: used for the order "to take an area with possible enemy"

move to defend
currently: Angriff und Verteidigung
actually: Annähern
comment: "move to contact"

road movement
currently: Bewegung auf Straße
actually: Erreichen
comment: "occupy/reach an area with no enemy contact expected"

withdraw
currently: Abzug
actually: Ausweichen

These translations are used in many different sentences throughout the localization file. The book I used is available on the German market, but a user needs some military understanding. As I said, the current words are understandable, so sorry if this might seem nitpicking and overly serious, but I think you probably payed some good money to somebody translating this into German and you should get the best for your money.

[Saint Ruth]

Hi,
To use Road Movement, your units need to be in Move+ supply. They also must start the turn in Road Movement, so you can't switch from one move type to another in a single turn.

I guess you are already familiar with the respective APP-6c, but if you want to look it up, it's available on the internet, found one here: https://www.cimic-coe.org/resources/ext ... pp-6-c.pdf

Thanks, that's very detailed. Even has "DOG"!

Cheers,
Brian

[Saint Ruth]

So, on German translation... I use the "Tactical Terms and Acronyms" by the German Bundesprachenamt (Federal Office of Languages), which represents the exact translations used by the Bundeswehr. So some examples:

...

These translations are used in many different sentences throughout the localization file. The book I used is available on the German market, but a user needs some military understanding. As I said, the current words are understandable, so sorry if this might seem nitpicking and overly serious, but I think you probably payed some good money to somebody translating this into German and you should get the best for your money.

Great thanks, would a "regular" German-speaker understand those terms?

[gagnradr]

To use Road Movement, your units need to be in Move+ supply.

After all these harsh campaigns I finally get it. But hey, at least I was never ambushed!

Even has "DOG"!

It also has drive-by-shooting, graffiti, military space stations and planet landings!

...would a "regular" German-speaker understand those terms?

A regular German-speaker would rather not get the difference between one or the other version, that's true. I might actually do it as a small language-mod over the weekend.