Battle dates: year, month, day, hour?
 

Hi,

As you may know, I am working on adding support for winSPWW2 to my War Cabinet tool. Good progress is being made, but unfortunately I have hit a bump in the road. :(

Warcab makes the (logical) assumption that two different battles in a campaign can not happen both at the same point in time. Based on this assumption, warcab uses the battle date as a unique identifier for each battle, and also to place each battle in the correct spot on the campaign timeline so that a correct unit history and progression can be calculated.

Now, about the bump and my question:

It seems that winSPWW2 only records the year and month of a battle, but not the day or the hour? At least, I was not able to find out where it is stored in the savegame.

Warcab can provide a synthetic day (1st of the month) and hour (9 AM), but it cannot avoid problems when dealing with multiple battles in the same month, because these different battles will all end up on the exact same battle date.

Even if I would relax the rules and also take the battle location into account to differentiate between these different battles, warcab would still be unable to determine the correct order of these battles with the risk that the resulting unit history will not be correct.

Having already seen two battles in a campaign that both happen in the same month, I believe these problems are likely to occur.

So, I am really looking for some confirmation about the winSPWW2 battle dates and their storage in the savegames:

• Does winSPWW2 record the battle day in the savegame, and if so: where?

• Does winSPWW2 record the battle start hour in the savegame, and if so: where?

It is my sincere hope that at least the battle day is indeed recorded in the savegame, because that would substantially reduce the risk of different battles with the same battle date.

It would also avoid the need for warcab to enlist the help of the user, for example by requiring the user to specify the battle day and hour whenever a new battle is added to the campaign dossier.

Thanks in advance,
Erik

Re: Battle dates: year, month, day, hour?
 

Month and Year only. No day. No hour.

Re: Battle dates: year, month, day, hour?
 

Thanks, DRG.

It's not what I was hoping to read, but it is a clear and final answer.

I'll consider in what way to adjust warcab so that it can better cope with this.

One option mentioned already is asking the user to provide the day/hour details, with some kind of dialog box that pops up whenever adding a savegame implies adding a new battle.

In the mean time I'm of course open to any other suggestions, so if any of you has another idea how to approach this, please share!

Erik

Re: Battle dates: year, month, day, hour?
 

Why not just add a pop up when a conflict arises allowing the user to pick the order of the saves added?

Re: Battle dates: year, month, day, hour?
 

use the date(day) and time stamp of the save file?

Re: Battle dates: year, month, day, hour?
 

Thanks Don, that's certainly a possibility.

But, it would make the user interaction less predictable, and I am not so fond of that.

However, if:

• we are willing to accept warcab substituting synthetic values for the battle day and hour
• we are willing to assume that users will always add savegames in the correct order
• or, alternatively, if we provide the user with the means to add battles in the correct spot on the campaign timeline (i.e. after or before an existing battle

Then we could maybe avoid the user interaction entirely.

Erik

Re: Battle dates: year, month, day, hour?
 

Thanks for the suggestion, Scorpio.

Unfortunately, file dates are notoriously unreliable for this type of point-in-time detection,
because this assumes that winSPWW2 is the exclusive creator of savegames.

It works perfectly with savegames created by winSPWW3 only, but it breaks down with
savegames that are created by other means (for example when savegames are copied
back from a backup location).

Erik

Re: Battle dates: year, month, day, hour?
 

DRG, could you (or anybody else) help me with the following questions:

What are the odds of more than 28 (or more than the number of days in the month) different battles in a month during a generated campaign?

What about designed campaigns, is there any limitation there?

Could a campaign designer create campaigns with more battles in a month than days in a month?

In that last case, would it be acceptable to consider this quite special and to not require solid support for it in warcab?

Erik

Re: Battle dates: year, month, day, hour?
 

It is possible to generate a campaign lasting 1 month with 200 battles in it...:mean:

Re: Battle dates: year, month, day, hour?
 

I tried something similar once, July 43 - Aug 43, I selected SS with 100 battles. I did get burned out after 25 battles though...

Re: Battle dates: year, month, day, hour?
 

It is possible to have more battles than days in a month in a campaign but I would also say it would be very VERY rare that anyone would actually do that.

The simplest solution would be to tell people it won't work if they build a campaign with more than 30 battles a month.... I doubt anyone will complain and for campaigns that do have multiple battles in a month then the first one would be 1..etc etc for "dating" purposes.

SOMEONE will always find a way to push the game beyond the limits then say it's broken. Most though have more reasonable expectations

Re: Battle dates: year, month, day, hour?
 

Oh, I see. :confused:

Well, if 200 battles a month makes sense to you, who am I to argue with that.

But, to be honest, this is not what warcab was designed to support. With 200 battles in one month,
battle dates lose their meaning both for battle disambiguation and for unit chronology.

Some significant additional development would be needed to move warcab away from battle dates
(for winSPWW2 only) in a maintainable and robust way.

Erik

Re: Battle dates: year, month, day, hour?
 

DRG, thanks, I find your suggestion quite sensible! :)

This is indeed what I was considering: an automatic battle date day 'assignment',
based on the day of the previous battle in the same month. As long as there are
no more battles in a month than days in that month, warcab does not risk running
out of days to assign...

I suppose it shouldn't be too hard to introduce this in warcab...

The other thing that needs looking into is the battle disambiguation.

This is what is known about each battle:

• a battle start year and month
• a battle location string
• the battle mission strings of the player and the opponent
• the OOB ID of the opponent

I am hoping that the combination of these elements would be enough to uniquely
identify any of less than 30 battles in a month. Of course, there is no 100% guarantee,
but if the odds are good warcab could indeed only require additional input from the user
when it detects a (then unlikely) battle ambiguity...

So, the question is, is the above a reasonable assumption to make?

Erik

BTW: sorry for all the naive (or stupid/silly/...) questions. I do not have any background
with winSPWW2, so I am not at all aware of what it can do and how it is usually done... :o

Erik

Re: Battle dates: year, month, day, hour?
 

When a campaign game is saved in mid turn the turn is recorded along with both nations and the month and year as well as the battle location and the mission type

Does the program know when it starts recording a campaign this campaign is set up to run X number of Battles between Month Y and month Z ?

Re: Battle dates: year, month, day, hour?
 

DRG, I have to thank you again!

Your question has put me on a different line of thinking about the problem and I may have found an elegant solution. :D

Let me explain.

:pointright: Note: all of this is based on the assumption that the data extracted from the savegame is correct.
But everything that warcab 'knows' about a savegame has been discovered by trial and error and
experimentation and not all of the data is currently understood. None of this has ever been officialy
declared to be correct.


This is some of the campaign-related information known by warcab from section 37 of the savegame:

So, when a savegame is to be added to a campaign: if it can be more-or-less verified first that,
indeed, the savegame belongs to the campaign, than I believe the 'Campaign battles fought' can
be used as an indication of the relative position of the battle in the campaign, neatly avoiding
the problem of figuring out where the battle belongs on the timeline based on the incomplete
battle date, or on the behavior of the user.

:pointright: Note: again, based on the assumption that this data is correctly interpreted from the savegame.

To be reasonably certain that a savegame belongs to a campaign, I think it will suffice to verify that:

• the player's OOB ID matches
• the count of core formations matches
• the count of core units matches
• the campaign start year/month matches
• the campaign end year/month matches
• the campaign max battles matches

Of course, this verification will not prevent mixing savegames from two different but otherwise identical
campaigns, but would it be unreasonable to require of the user to keep track of which savegames belong
to which campaigns and to avoid mixing them in warcab?

I will consider this idea a bit more, but it certainly looks promising and in terms of work quite feasible.

Erik

Re: Battle dates: year, month, day, hour?
 

I feel stupid for asking...but what is the "War Cabinet tool" you are talking about and what does it do?

Re: Battle dates: year, month, day, hour?
 

Look here

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=52169

Re: Battle dates: year, month, day, hour?
 

No problem. :)

Warcab is a tool to record and track battles in an SPWaW campaign, or to
record and track turns in standalone battles from scenarios. It is inspired by
Campaign Watcher.

And I am currently working on adding support for winSPWW2 to warcab.

For more information, I'd like to refer you to this thread, starting from post #6.

Erik