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PostPosted: Tue Nov 20, 2018 5:27 pm 
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Joined: Fri Mar 27, 2009 1:15 am
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Location: Australia
You first have to know what the path actually is - and that is definitely something that can be done without an editor. I know this because I went through scenarios, when I was involved in playtesting and wrote up that the graphics didn't match up with the path.

Surprisingly I got told by that then's project designer, that it was intentional, to (paraphrase) confuse players to directing them to false fords.

I made the observation that since players could check the actual paths that this was not a particular effective technique.

What I am trying to say is that you would have some instances where a ford graphic on the map would maybe show a ford pointing hexsides where no trail crossed (and therefore was not a ford at all). I thought it was a graphic glitch, and got told it was intentional *but* I don't know that this applied to anything other than that specific project. I suspect that it might only have applied to the project I was on. I think it would be fair to characterise this as a situation the scenario designer and I tacitly agreed that we disagreed. As a scenario designer it was his prerogative to set things up how he wanted them.

A ford cannot cross a creek -as a creek is defined as a hexside. In order to do 'fords' in creeks, you would put a stream hexside as part of the creek path when designing a map. Leastwise that is how some designers have done it. It was done that way in the Renaissance title, and I am pretty sure I have seen that in some Civil War series titles. A ford (as defined in the engines) only cross full water hexsides. Essentially you draw a trail through it. I am not really sure how the graphic gets called -in the sense of I haven't tried or been able to replicate this while editing maps -otoh it isn't something that I am interested in doing, as I consider it to be an ineffective technique to accomplish some sort of end... can it be better? Sure- A Gleam of Bayonets (Berg's boardgame on Antietam) uses a random ford discovery technique -but that is a boardgame, and was a bit easier to apply. No idea if it is ever in the plans to try that -as I expect it to be a fairly full on programming problem (or rather I don't know that it's not). I also don't recall anyone requesting it -but that being said, I am not on any Civil War projects so I don't follow their development progress).

Plus, it would be WDS now, not JTS - and that being said, you have their programmer that pops in to this board here from time to time.

There is actually a way to tell, and it is a bigger PITA than placing the Supply Sources, but it is something that one would do as a tester (well should do ... actually I would say that it would be something that a scenario designer or programmer would want to actually do the testing ... it is a bit unfair to stick playtesters with something like that). You'd basically need to create a test scenario and then set up the sides so that you have units that are either able to move in to all of the situations that you think will cause this issue (identifying the common factors first ... like 'fords look like they are causing units across them to be isolated). It depends on if you want to see if moving in to the position is going to cause this, or want to show units as already having been moved. Then note down all of the effects.

I guess, in an indirect sense, this situation probably works the same way in every engine at this point (or rather -it might be more accurate to state things as I don't know that it doesn't). I can test this in Musket and Pike (which is probably the same as testing it for Napoleonic Battles). I guess, technically I could do the same thing for the Napoleonic series -but don't have any reason to suspect that those different series might behave differently.

More to the point, I guess what I am saying is that it has piqued my interest -how does it work in Musket and Pike? Now I need to find this out -as the point being -it probably should not be an isolating event - just having used a ford ... I appreciate it having been brought up.

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