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

[ErikCumps]

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

[DRG]

Month and Year only. No day. No hour.

[ErikCumps]

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

[ErikCumps]

Originally Posted by DRG

Month and Year only. No day. No 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

[scorpio_rocks]

Originally Posted by ErikCumps

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?

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

[ErikCumps]

Originally Posted by scorpio_rocks

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

Oh, I see.

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

[zovs66]

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

[ErikCumps]

Originally Posted by zovs66

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

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

[scorpio_rocks]

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

[ErikCumps]

Originally Posted by scorpio_rocks

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

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