The Vietnam War development thread

[Boco]

Originally posted by tanelorn
Took the day off, crappy German auto technology & service to blame, again.
Third gearbox incident in just two years!
Next time I am going Japanese.
Anyway, here's a dakota I made while waiting for the price-tag call .$#$#@!. Does it look "spooky" enough?

I had to replace the clutch on my Subaru after ~55,000 km. It has an unusual over-engineered design. Even my accident-waiting-to-happen Ford never needed a new one (nor did my Honda).

[McMonkey]

@Tanelorn

I'm liking what I'm seing Tane, I just need to find a decent minigun soundeffect to do it justice. One cheeky question. Is there any way of adding a couple of miniguns to the side, if they could be spitting fire that would give the unit a bit more menace. I would try myself but I would not want to butcher such a beautiful thing

BTW sorry to hear about continued car problems. I would recommend Japanese motors but I am no expert!
My Micra is very reliable (touch wood!!!)

@Von Bert

You are just too funny man! I like to see you are entering into the spirit of things, just for you I will try and add some agent orange so you can spray your nice jungle squares

Re: The screenshot. The South Vietnamese cities should not look like that! Also the small black factories deep in the jungle will be changed!

[McMonkey]

Heres another question.
What does @LEADERS2 in the rules file do?

Also what do the O's do in:
@LEADERS2
00000000 ;Romans, Roman, 0, 1, 1,


I think my pal at work said they were something to do with setting alliances but I find it hard getting sense out of him some days!

My initial playtests are still dogged with problems, the ARVN cancel their alliance on turn ! while the over powered NVA rip through the southern cities like s8$t through a goose I think they are all solvable though.

The parachuting VC will work well though, once I change Paradrop to Infiltrate in the text file! I like the sound of "Viet Cong guerillas have infiltrated your perimeter defences!"

[Boco]

Have you looked at Restricting Technologies: A Guide to Using @CIVILIZE2, @LEADERS2 and EnableTechnology or Using Civilize2 and Leaders2 by Cam Hills and William Keenan? If you need help resetting @LEADERS2 settings in a SAV file, just send it over.

Originally posted by Catfish on 22-09-2006
The easiest way to implement the ToT technology restrictions is to focus on creating the groups for @LEADERS2 first and forget about @CIVILIZE2 until later. The @LEADERS2 table is saved to the SAV file, the @CIVILIZE2 table isn't. It's very easy to make changes to the latter by simply editing rules.txt - just assign each technology to one of the groups you created previously.

Techumseh is a resident wizard on restricting negotiations.

[McMonkey]

Thanks Boco

I will have a good read through these documents tommorow. I should stop being so lazy and have a look through some of the available advice really

[Boco]

If I knew it better, I'd have explained directly in my post, rather than sounding pedantic with references. Don't stop asking. Most of the time, you're not the only one with the question. Besides they're often good kickoffs for useful discussions.

[McMonkey]

In that case I was wondering what the additional events were in ToT and how reliable they were. I have heard about one that modifies reputations and guess there are others.
Is there a link to a list somewhere? I suppose I could look through the events files of other scenarios but again I am too lazy

What would be handy is a page on the SL wiki site with a list of useful documents and utilities and links to them. I am willing to have a go at making such a page but may need a bit of technical help as I am not so good with these computer thingies!

The sort of links I have in mind are to Mercator's Utilities, Cradle of Civilization and Catfish's Cave. The good thing about it being on the wiki is it can be updated easily and comments/tips can be added!

The reason I say this is that I have lots of unanswered questions and an loosing track of where I need to go and what I need to read

I may start up a new thread to discuss this if people think it would be useful!

[McMonkey]

An good example of what I am talking about would be Techumseh's post on the AWI thread, part of which read:

"In Test of Time, you can specify the number of units created by a single event (up to 255). Just write it like this:

@IF
TURN
turn=18
@THEN
CREATEUNIT
owner=Americans
unit=Continental Line
Count=6
veteran=yes
homecity=None
Randomize
locations
27,57
endlocations
@ENDIF"

I had no idea about this new ToT event modification.
Is there a list somewhere?
The last week or so I have been very tired and short of time so I have not been able to research much, so I apologise if all this info is already available. If it is does someone have a link?

[techumseh]

There is a file in your ToT directory, called "Macro". It's the section from the manual dealing with events. I've attached a zip.

For the more advanced ToT events such as flags and masks, study William Keenan's tips, here: http://coc.apolyton.net/guides/index.shtml

If you want to see them in operation, look at the events for Red October and Operation Market-Garden, here: http://www.tecumseh.150m.com/

[McMonkey]

Thanks Techumseh.
I will print this off and have a good read through it over the weekend. There are a few other documents that I really need to study and make notes on.

At the moment I think flags and masks are a bit beyond my abilities but I will try and work them in later in the game or maybe I can work them out for my next project. Each time I make a game it is a learning curve and I cannot hope to get everything right first time.

I really like the "Count=?" part as the normal create unit event seems a bit of a waste of valuable space but you don't necessarily want a reoccurring event all through the scenario. This is perfect for creating invasions etc...

My latest playtest was a bit of a farce, the US could not send out any Advisors or Militia units into the field without casuing riots and the Reds captured Saigon by May 1964 before any US main force units had been deployed I am glad the AI is agressive but when I said I wanted the game to be challenging this was not exactly what I meant. Me thinks a bit of tweaking is required this weekend

[Patine]

I used flags (though not masks) under Tech's tutelage in my Korea scen. They're not that hard to understand, actually. You may want to consider them to cover the escalation of VC aggression.

[McMonkey]

Hopefully I will get some leisure time this weekend to have a read through all the docs available and make some notes. I will be asking questions on anything I am unsure of (which may be a lot), you have been warned

I did read somewhere that some of the flags cannot be changed (easily) once the game is under development (save file). This could be a major problem for me as I tend to change units around as I am working on the game. This is one of the things I will need to research. What I want is to compile all the available info into one reference doc for my own use that I can add notes to etc...

[McMonkey]

This weekend went completely wrong from the Nam perspective. First the damn PC crashed and I lost all my recent changes (luckily I had been tired all week and had not made much progress!) and then I got called in to work today. I did make some progress by typing all my notes from tons of paper onto a notepad document. This should help me stay a bit more organized.

The main problem I am having at the moment is ballancing the game and working out how it will pan out after a number of turns. There are so many variables that making it accutate seems hard. I guess I will keep some of the techs back to be given by events at certain dates (Kennedy Assasination, Gulf of Tonkin Incident etc...). So many things rely on other factors that knowing where to start is daunting!

One important thing I would like to resolve before I start testing is to be able to stop negotiations. At no point in the game do I want alliances to be broken or peace to be made so I guess it is best to bar all negotiations. What is the most effective way of achieving this?

[battosai]

@IF
NEGOTIATION
talker=ANYBODY
talkertype=HumanOrComputer
listener=ANYBODY
listenertype=HumanOrComputer
@THEN
@ENDIF

[McMonkey]

That simple?

This will solve a lot of the issues I have been trying to deal with. I guess it will be ok to give the Reds the Great Wall now and also the Democratic government will not force me to sign a peace treaty?

Thanks Battosai