John/Kennon/Gentlemen,
Allow me to add some fuel to the fire. There are bugs in fatigue handling, let's say, in Turn-based play. I have seen and documented it -- at least for myself. I can't speak for Phase-based since I was not testing anything in that realm.
Over the past year I have been testing various aspects of Opportunity Fire in an attempt to determine how it works and, more specifically, how to change PDT values to make artillery especially more effective. Back in June 2013, Joe Meyer opened a thread involving Fatigue. I submitted a response, part of which is as follows:
I ran nearly 200 test cases (movements of individual CSA against the USA line and subsequent fire against USA regiments). I drew two conclusions. First, either the documentation is wrong, or the game engine has bugs (imagine this) when it comes to Fatigue Accumulation from artillery fire. This I recorded as fact. Second, for a given fire result (5 hits, for example), a lower-rated unit (D, for example) is more likely to accumulate fatigue at the higher end of the spectrum (3x), than a B-rated unit. I can't really say that 200 test cases is valid for making this assertion, but I don't really care to conduct 2,000. At any rate, this is not documented.
Nearly 10% of my observed fatigue results suffered from artillery fire were beyond the 3X upper limit as defined in the documentation. One CSA regiment suffered 7 hits from artillery fire and nothing more, but incurred 52 fatigue points. Anyone have an explanation for this? While I am all for CSA regiments being tagged with massive fatigue points, the whole credibility of the game engine as opposed to its documentation is brought into question.
Now, is this part of the same problem, or are we talking two different issues here? I am describing the other side of the coin -- excess fatigue accumulation. This is not related to PDTs , and I don't see how the fatigue recovery issue is either.
That the Phased-based system does not exhibit the same problem, I guess doesn't surprise me. It has, obviously, discrete phases, whereas Turn-based play alternates between phases. From a programming standpoint there is a big difference, however. Once the Movement Phase in Phase-based play, for example, is complete all "memory", and I mean program memory can be released. It is no longer needed, because now we are in the Fire Phase. It establishes its new memory allocations. Turn-based play is a mileau . All knowledge must be retained throughout, since it allows for a mixture of all the phases. Memory management is crucial.
If what has been described in this thread is a manifestation of what I think it is -- the programming term is memory leak--, good luck in getting it resolved. In the corporate world your job might be on the line depending upon the inconvenience it is causing. Here I don't think so.
I have seen other strange things with the game engine. Up elevation is a parameter which can be changed, correct? Not so. Change them and observe the inexplicable movement increase for downhill .
_________________ MG Robert Frost
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