Agony of Embarking

[Diggy]

I am in the process of transporting a Union army overseas to New Orleans-Mobile area, and am confounded by the clumsiness of my attempts at embarking and dsiembarking. Here is my problem:

My transport fleet takes several turns to arrive at its destination. I see that it will arrive there on the second day of the next turn. This should give my army 13 days to disembark, correct ? (these are days remaing in the turn.)

But how do I give my army the command to disembark for the upcoming turn ?

I can't believe that I have to wait until the turn after my transport fleet arrives before my army can be given disembrarking instruction. This is how I have been operating so far, but it seems such a waste.

[arsan]

Hi

Yes, its like this unless you debark on a friendly port where you can drag and drop the fleet directly to the region and the units will autodebark.
An improvement for this was implemented on Wars in America game: the distant debark special order button
Some new things of WIA (like the replay system) had been added for free to AACW already. Surely Pocus woudl like to add this too but he lacks time with the VGN game development so i'm not sure if this will be possible in the near future.
Let keep our fingers crossed

Regards

[Banks6060]

Yes, I'm afraid this is just the way it is right now. Like arsan said, there was a new debarking feature added to BoA2-WIA...but it has yet to be retrofitted to AACW.

Frankly...adding such a feature to AACW MIGHT....(emphasis on might) tip the balance of power significantly in the Union player's favor...seeing as how it's just a hop skip and a jump from Ft. Monroe to just about anywhere on the east coast.

[Diggy]

OK, thanks.

I'm not going to sulk since this is the best game I've played for ages and I'm winning right now.


(my daughter, who is looking over my shoulder, put this smiley in)

[Hobbes]

Yes, I'm afraid this is just the way it is right now. Like arsan said, there was a new debarking feature added to BoA2-WIA...but it has yet to be retrofitted to AACW.

Frankly...adding such a feature to AACW MIGHT....(emphasis on might) tip the balance of power significantly in the Union player's favor...seeing as how it's just a hop skip and a jump from Ft. Monroe to just about anywhere on the east coast.

Good point.

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[Eoghammer]

re: this thread: Another reason for wanting 4 weeks per month (48 turns per year) support for the AACW campaign games.

Yeah I need 4 turns a month...it will allow some better reactions and for the naval transport it will limit this awfull delay because if your boat arrive at destination the second day of the "double-week" turn the troops will take 13 days plus the number of days required to enter the targeted aera...
But it will be a huge task as many parameter are time dependant (supply production, supply use, supply move... )

[Banks6060]

re: this thread: Another reason for wanting 4 weeks per month (48 turns per year) support for the AACW campaign games.

Well...of course I've been fighting for 7 day turns for quite some time now...but I surely won't take credit for it.

and FULLY understand how 7 day turns might actually detract from the game.

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[Major Tom]

Sorry, I personally am not interested in a job done half way, but then again, thats the purpose of MODs... to placate those who want to experiment.

Hopefully, we'll get some official support to make these issues go away and then the 4 turns per month campaign scenario can be made into a workable reality.

I completely agree. While 7-day turns would be great, if those issues you mentioned can't be resolved, then the idea is a non-starter.

Also, I assume units would entrench twice as fast and recover cohesion twice as fast, and take twice as much attrition from weather. Unless those things are computed in one-day increments rather than full turns.

[Gray_Lensman]

I completely agree. While 7-day turns would be great, if those issues you mentioned can't be resolved, then the idea is a non-starter.

Also, I assume units would entrench twice as fast and recover cohesion twice as fast, and take twice as much attrition from weather. Unless those things are computed in one-day increments rather than full turns.

Correct. These are additional small details to be hammered out before 4 turns per month could be done correctly.

[Banks6060]

Are you referring to a modified full campaign scenario or some of the shorter scenarios modified by bigus?

It's entirely possible to set the full campaigns to 4 weeks per turn mode, but there are background issues that have to be resolved to gain the full benefit...

1. Supply will still be forwarded 3 complete "phases" making it artificially fast.

2. Some cyclic events will not fire correctly because they are set to specific turns in a 24 turn cycle meaning they'll fire only in the first 6 months whatever their sequence.

3. Unless the entire Cities tab is redone in the setup databases, the production of resources for both sides will be doubled.

Sorry, I personally am not interested in a job done half way, but then again, thats the purpose of MODs... to placate those who want to experiment.

Hopefully, we'll get some official support to make these issues go away and then the 4 turns per month campaign scenario can be made into a workable reality.

Completely agree. I have no trouble with 2 turn months at all. I think perhaps 4 turn months would be slightly BETTER if all of the above issues could be resolved. But as someone who has little to no knowledge of c++ or any programming code of any kind...I will defer any actual modding effort to others who are more qualified .

I was also thinking that it would just make the grand campaign THAT much longer too...I mean it's already pretty heft at 114 turns...228 turns?? Now that's a load....especially for all the PBEM guys like myself. I guess it would just be cool...

EDIT: another problem would be going on the attack...without showing your cards. Usually in AACW...when you are attacking...you usually want it to be as much a surprise as possible so the defenders don't have time to react (and thereby slap that horrific def. fire vs. off. fire stat on you)...just another thought. Unless movement rates could somehow be sped up...that might be a problem as well..

Jeez...more I think about it....15 day turns are just fine

[Gray_Lensman]

Completely agree. I have no trouble with 2 turn months at all. I think perhaps 4 turn months would be slightly BETTER if all of the above issues could be resolved. But as someone who has little to no knowledge of c++ or any programming code of any kind...I will defer any actual modding effort to others who are more qualified .

I was also thinking that it would just make the grand campaign THAT much longer too...I mean it's already pretty heft at 114 turns...228 turns?? Now that's a load....especially for all the PBEM guys like myself. I guess it would just be cool...

EDIT: another problem would be going on the attack...without showing your cards. Usually in AACW...when you are attacking...you usually want it to be as much a surprise as possible so the defenders don't have time to react (and thereby slap that horrific def. fire vs. off. fire stat on you)...just another thought. Unless movement rates could somehow be sped up...that might be a problem as well..

Jeez...more I think about it....15 day turns are just fine

FYI, The game is source coded with Delphi, not C++, but that is only limited to the AACW.exe file itself. The great majority of the remaining files are what I refer to as "output" files, which are generally in text format with different file extensions to distinguish them by type. This incidentally makes the game data quite easily modded (between versions), a technique which Clovis uses extensively.

Quite a few of the limitations I'm referring to are associated with the game engine (AACW.exe) file itself, something a modder or or even a coordinator can't readily change.

Movement rates luckily are by single day increments and are even implemented in that way during game turn processing. In a way that particular feature is self-adjusting no matter the length of the turn.

Your point about overall game length is also quite valid. This is why I want AGEod support changes in the game engine (AACW.exe) to be made flexible enough to be told how to behave/handle data differently depending on the individual scenario requirements. i.e. Different scenarios with different turns per months settings depending on the scenario design criteria. This would allow all the player/gamers to choose from a variety of scenarios depending on their preference and time they wish to devote to game play.