TacOps Gazette 12-95 (long)
MajorH1
[TacOps is a computer game for the MacIntosh computer. A PC version
should be released this summer.]
Bug alert for version 0.1.1: I just found a rarely occurring bug that I
have been chasing off and on for a couple of months. I had reports of the
game not properly accessing victory in exit scenarios but I could never
replicate the condition. A user just sent me a sequence of three saved
games that enabled me to rapidly find the variable that was being
incorrectly used. It only took minutes then to fix the bug but It took
several more hours to figure out what the sequence of user actions was
that triggered the bug. Turned out that it was restarting a game from the
startup turn AutoSave file <g>. This was the only way I could get the bug
to appear.
The entry from my update/change log is shown below.
24 Mar - Fixed bug as result of saved game files provided by
ben...@slip.net (Benson Toy). The program told him that he had lost the
game even though it seemed that he had exited an adequate number of units.
I discovered the following. If a user restarted a game by loading the
xAutoSave file for the setup turn, the force lethality values would be
doubled for both the US and the OPFOR. Thus if the game victory
conditions involved the exiting or survival of a certain percentage of a
side's starting force, that force would have greatly increased difficulty
winning because its surviving/exiting units would be calculated against a
starting force value that was twice what it should be. Note that this
condition could only be caused by loading the AutoSave file for the very
first turn. Loading a normal saved game for any turn or loading any
AutoSave file for turns after the first turn did not cause a problem.
The bug has been found and fixed, however I do not yet have a feel for
when I will release the next official update. Should be less than a
month. In the meantime, don't restart a game using the setup turn
AutoSave file.
==========
<<When you have an arty unit register an impact point as a TRP at, say,
accuracy level 1, and you get the accuracy up to a higher level (say, 4),
and then cease or shift fire, does the TRP stay at the last saved accuracy
level, or does it automatically remember the highest level?>>
A TRP stays at the accuracy at which it was saved. Think of it as a bit
of data that is saved one time and later reread whenever you shift to it.
If you later get a fire mission going in that same place that has a higher
accuracy level, you should delete the old TRP and save a new one at the
higher level.
<<am now the proud owner of a PowerMac ... the first thing I called up
on it when my office crew left for the day was TacOps, BUT the durn thing
wouldn't run!! ... When I start a scenario, the game shuts down with an
error message "not enough memory." ... has 28K Ram ... Is 7.5 my problem
and can you offer any suggestions on trouble shooting this problem?>>
I assume when you said 28K RAM that you meant 28 meg of RAM so memory
should not be a problem.
I suspect there is an INIT conflict with something in your installation of
7.5 - which really tightens my jaws because there is no reason why TacOps
should conflict with any Apple Inc. product if Apple would follow its own
coding guidelines. I am running TacOps OK on my PowerMac using System 7.5
but I keep things like Quickdraw GX, PowerTalk, and the like disabled.
I'll go back and reinstall all the useless, memory scrambling, goodies and
see if I can get the problem to happen on my end.
Anytime you have problems with a game program, try holding down the shift
key when you turn on or restart your Mac for a gaming session - this will
prevent the loading of most INITs and EXTENSIONS.
<<I have attached 3 saved game files. The LAV units at 030015 refuse to
fire on the T80U at 024007.>>
The LAVs in questions are LAV25s. Their strongest weapon is a 25mm chain
gun. The chain gun is a kinetic energy weapon and has a maximum armor
penetration capability of 70mm. The T80U tank has the following armor
protection against kinetic energy weapons: front 500mm, side 185mm, rear
100mm. The chain gun can not penetrate/hurt the T80U so the LAVs do not
fire.
<< ... ideas I had about improving it. The first is a simple addition, a
force lethality value now. >>
I thought I had already put that in, but on checking found I had not. The
numbers are already in the game status report, I just failed to put the
calculation in. I'll get to it.
<< Is there any numerical value given to the strength of a minefield? If
there is, could it be shown to the player so that he could see how many
more units may be damaged by that mine. For example, each arty mine has 5
damage points, and each hand placed has 7 points. When a T80 goes over a
mine, the value drops, say 3 points, and when a Inf Team goes over it, it
drops 1 point. This may be impossible to do, but it may make the
minefields a bit easier to understand.>>
Minefields are not based on point values in TacOps - they are pixel based.
A pixel equals 10 meters in TacOps. Each time there is a mine detonation
in a minefield the pixel in the minefield at the center of the effected
unit is zeroed i.e. becomes cleared. Units that enter that pixel in the
future will not be attacked by mines. A similar effect happens for each
pixel (and a couple more on each side) as a unit crosses a pixel without
triggering an attack - in this case a lane is cleared. Whether a lane is
created by explosion or safe passage, the safe lane can be viewed using
the "Plot Minefield Lanes" menu item.
<<Lastly, even when a shoulder-fired [SAM] hits, it is often not
catastrophic. I've now heard rumors of more than one aircraft landing
during the Gulf War having been hit and not even realized it. Don't get me
wrong however, anytime there's smoke in the air it gets your
attention...make that your FULL attention, which is just how the Major has
gamed it...>>
Good point. It reminds me that TacOps was held up several weeks just
before release because I was struggling with the ground to air and air to
ground routines. Throughout most of the testing there were only two
results - fixed wing destroyed or mission aborted - most of the time the
result was aircraft destroyed. I don't remember this bothering the play
testers but it bothered me greatly because there just was no historical
justification for the high aircraft mortality that was in the game at that
time.
I revisited all the technical references that I could find and even broke
a personal rule and went out and bought every game I could find that had
air rules. The games proved to be a washout because for the most part
they had the same flaws that I felt the prerelease TacOps had, i.e. fixed
wing aircraft were dropping like flies.
What I finally theorized was that modern aircraft in even high threat
areas seldom get shot down - in relation to the total number of sorties
flown - but they frequently get discouraged and or handicapped. By
discouraged I mean they miss the target. By handicapped, I mean that they
are directed by higher authority or good pilot judgment to attack at
altitudes/attitudes different from what would provide the best accuracy.
I decided to implement the following for fixed wing attacks. If a fixed
wing sortie attacks a ground target and if there is ground to air
defensive fire then the most likely thing to happen will be that the
aircraft will unload and probably miss the target, the next most likely
thing to happen is that the aircraft will abort the bomb run, actually
hitting and or destroying the aircraft is the least likely thing to
happen. To this I added a predictive quantification (a weight) of all the
weapons that will be fired at the attacking aircraft. The more weapons
that are fired and the more lethal the weapons, the more likely the
various results will occur, but still in the relative order given. This
is what I finally implemented in TacOps. I am not totally satisfied with
it.
<<THEN MAY I HAVE A SUGGESTION: IF I COULD GET UNIT ID BY MUCH EASIER
FASHION OTHER THAN BY OPENING UNIT INFORMATION WINDOW. ... IF UNIT ID WERE
SHOWN IN STATUS LINE AND UNIT ORDERS WINDOW, IT WOULD BE VERY
CONVENIENT.>>
If possible, I will put the unit id number in the status line in the next
update.
<<IT WOULD BE COOL, IF I COULD HAVE ALIAS FOR EACH ID>>
I have something like this in the command post exercise version of TacOps
(a private hobby and research activity). In that version a player can
optionally assign a text name of up to 15 characters to each unit marker -
for example "1st Plt B Co". This may eventually get into the public game
engine but I can not say for sure at present because it makes the unit
records so much larger and thus greatly increases the amount of memory
needed to play the larger scenarios.
<<What are the chances of more than one man in an infantry unit being
killed by arty? It seems that either they are just suppressed or only one
man dies.>>
How many men are killed depends on how many men were in the unit at the
instant of impact and how effective the arty mission was. Arty attacks
against infantry targets are calculated base on percentages rounded up to
the nearest whole man. If a certain arty attack against a marker got a
random combat effectiveness result of say 20 percent casualties then 20
percent of the target unit would be eliminated. If the unit had 100 men
in it then 20 would be eliminated - if the unit had 50 men in it then 10
would be eliminated -if the unit only had two men in it then only one man
would be eliminated due to rounding.
<<In missions where US conducts mobile or stationary defense, I notice
that even though I am entrenched or in defilade, presumably in overwatch,
the OPFOR's tanks can zap me more often and with greater accuracy than I
can zap them. Is this a bug or a simulation of a real life thing I don't
know about?>>
Neither <g>. Almost all of the US equipment is more accurate than
equivalent OPFOR systems. It may appear that OPFOR is doing better in
such firefights because (1) he is shelling the heck out of you with arty
which degrades the performance of your units and (2) OPFOR often has so
many more weapons firing than you do. You can not just stand and slug it
out when you are outnumbered three or four to one. The solution is to
have your units take only a few shots and then immediately backup to a new
hidden ambush position. Another tactic is to position your defending
units so that they only have to engage a few of the enemy at a time - thus
they can wipe everybody in sight out in one or two volleys without being
exposed to overwhelming return fire from all the following OPFOR units.
<<Also, there are times when my units will just sit there and get ruined
without firing back...Any special reasons...>>
Maybe a unit has no weapons capable of killing the targets it can see at
the instant. Maybe the targets are out of range. Maybe a unit is
suppressed. Spotting and firing are not guaranteed to always happen even
when units seem to be in plain sight of one another. Maybe those of your
guys with a technical line of sight to targets momentarily stopped looking
for some reason - like being hosed by enemy weapons or from the effects of
a recent arty impact. Conceptually, the targets may have momentarily
rolled through some irregularity in the terrain that caused them to
disappear. Real terrain is not as regular as what a computer game map
must be limited to - TacOps simulates the transient effects of minor,
localized, irregular terrain by introducing random "holes" into the
spotting probabilities. In TacOps there is always some chance that units
will fail to spot or will fail to be spotted. It is entirely possible
that a unit that was spotted and even fired on fifteen seconds ago, might
not be spotted for firing purposes in the very next fifteen seconds, and
even if it were respotted for firing purposes it is possible that no one
would choose to shoot at it. Spotting that leads to a direct fire
resolution by your units is not guaranteed in TacOps, regardless of what
you as the player can see on the screen. What you see on the screen at
any given instant is generally the sum of all the views of all your units
- a kind of slow frame rate movie. It does not indicate that all your
units can see what you see. As a general rule, the more of your units
that are present in a given isolated area, the less likely you are to see
units blinking in and out of what seems to be plain sight. If you only
have one or two squads in an area, you are likely to see a lot of enemy
unit markers winking in and out of sight.
<<I have yet to play every last scenario, but I have noticed a
significant lack of OPFOR attack or troop helicopters. Any reason for
that?>>
I have not gotten around to coding the AI to be able to handle troop
carrying helicopters - maybe in a future new scenario disk. However,
OPFOR attack helicopters are often available as optional units - check the
options menu items for each scenario. I am not really big on having a lot
of attack helos in the scenarios because having more than a handful of
them present on the battlefield usually means the automatic defeat of the
side that does not have them.
Best regards, Major H.