Many Questions

[3./JG51_Stecher]

I think that fixed it.  When I try to spawn a second aircraft without the flag/OK step, it doesn't leave anything behind.  Nice job, thank you.

[Grainovich]

You are welcome

[3./JG51_Stecher]

We may have more issues here, and/or some confusion.

Occasionally, people who bail out over enemy territory are getting both captured and escaping messages.  I'm assuming this is not intentional.  It enforces the capture penalty, even though it credited an escape as well.  We had at least 15 bail outs, and 4 of them received both messages.  The rest got one or the other, and it was roughly an even split.  Then we had everyone do a couple of ditches in enemy territory, and there wasn't a single instance of getting both escaping and capturing messages.  Everyone got either one, and again, it was a roughly even split.  For all of these, we were about 20km behind enemy lines, and about 25km from the closest friendly ground units.  Maybe it was just not a large enough sample, but with similar tests, we had 4 double messages while bailing and none while ditching.  Could it perhaps be running the escape/capture process for both the pilot and the plane individually?  When you ditch, you and the plane are together, one entity.  When you bail out, you become two entities, and I'm thinking that might be what's happening.  One of them escapes and the other one gets captured, causing the problem with getting both messages.  That's all I could think of, what do you think?

The other issue is with the scoring.  Hopefully just a lack of understanding.  Can you please confirm that there are no points awarded for destroying enemy planes, tanks, guns, etc.  You get points for destroying enemy structural assests, or for capturing them.  However, there is a huge difference between the sum of the squad scores and the team score.  It is said in the manual that when a pilot dies, the other team gets points.  I assume this is responsible for all the extra points that the team winds up with, which are not being credited to any squad.  Is this right?  Can you please specify how many points a dead pilot is worth to the opposing team?  Are there also similar points awarded for a pilot being captured?  If not, could there be?  Are these configurable?   Many questions, and probably more to come.   Thanks for your time.

[Grainovich]

wow! , don´t worry, just let me time to translate and understand your questions!   

Ok Stecher, it's easy , now... i need time to translate my answers 

[Grainovich]

Ok, let's go!

First, let me explain about process triggered when a player leaves a ditched aircraft or bailout.

The aircraft is close to a friendly base (if is ditched)? ("close" is below of metros_rango_base meters http://www.halconesrojos.com/hrcodwar/en/conf-ini-reference)

Yes: The plane will be re inventory in that base and the pilot return to that base, he can fly immediately.

No: The aircraft is abandoned and is unrecoverable, now we need focus in the pilot destiny, so, next question.

Where is the pilot (ditched or bailout)?, is over friendly territory?

Yes: Ok, no problem, friendly troops will rescue the pilot and return to home safely, the pilot can fly immediately.

No: Oh oh!! The pilot can be in troubles!!, now we need to focus in the coordinates and how is so far into enemy lines, so... next "stage".

The probabilities and the luck

Now, the system have a lot of work to do, in first place, calculate the kilómeters behind enemy lines and convert it in sectors.
If the pilot is inside of one sector to the frontier, has 80% probabilities of escape and avoid the capture and interrogation, If the pilot is over two sectors of the frontier has a 60%, If is over three sectors has 40% , and next until 5 sectors and followings, where the pilot has a great trouble because has near to 0% possibilities of escape avoiding capture/interrogation
The system makes the calculate, a random number between 0 to 100 and if the number is below the probabilities calculated (have you ever played to RPGs?) the pilot is lucky and escapes avoiding his capture, in this scenario, the pilot can fly immediately.
But... if the pilot is not lucky... has a last chance!. The system calculates the number of units friendly and enemy troops around his position ("around" is metros_rango_unidades_captura_piloto meters http://www.halconesrojos.com/hrcodwar/en/conf-ini-reference), and If the numbers of friendly troops is upper than enemy troops, the pilot is rescued, and again, the pilot can fly immediately.

If all fails, the pilot is captured and tortured, and he will confess information about his side, the information is aleatory and can be the position of one ship or one factory for example or the kilos of fuel in his base... in this scenario, the pilot is punished and ban a few seconds ("a few" is segundos_penalizado_medio seconds http://www.halconesrojos.com/hrcodwar/en/conf-ini-reference) out the game.

In the last scenario, the event is: "Having suffered severe injuries on his dental structure, he manages to escape and swears that he doesn't remember a thing.". This is important, the pilot ALWAYS escapes, because after the seconds of ban, he can enter again to the campaign and fly again.

Always scapes, but in the worst case, is captured and tortured , normally, when a pilot is ditched or bail out, the system generates a few events to describe this scenario, his aircraft is abandoned or crash, the pilot jump, is capturing, etc, etc... but all is referred to the same situation.

You have to assume, that two similar situation can end with different solutions, two pilots can ditched on the same sector but one has more luck than the other and escape without problems.

All is a little more clear for you, Stecher?

Next post, the score!

[Grainovich]

Score system... ok.

HRCODWAR is a system that penalizes how bad is the other side, how does it?, easy.

For example, If I'm taking off and I have an accident and the aircraft explode (notice this is important.. explode! destroyed at all!) and I dead , the system adds the score of my life and my aircraft to another side (in general because none enemies squads is the guilty of my uselessness ). Another example, If I'm drunk and confused, and bomb a friendly factory, the value of the factory is added to the enemy side score, you know?

Now, If i'm on a dogfight with an enemy, and I kill the enemy pilot, the value of the pilot is added to my squad score, and obviously to my side score, if a tank (of my squad) attacks and destroys "something", the value of that "something" is added to the score of my squad, because, "something" of one squad attacks and destroy anything, and the system knows who is the guilty (the squad origin) of the attack. If are more than one squadron involved in the attack, the value is divided by the number of participants and added to each squad.

This is the reason that your score calculated don't is exactly the sum of your squads scores, because the system has added the "fails" of the another band.

So, where is this values?, how much cost the life of a pilot?, and conquer a shipyard? for example...

It's easy , http://www.halconesrojos.com/hrcodwar/en/current-configuration , in the General Score tab, thats values is the file puntos.json inside hrcodwar/datos_sistema in your HRCODWAR steam server

Typically, many of them match with their cost of creation, others that referred to events like conquers is arbitrary, like a life pilot value or capture, piloto and piloto_capturado.

Any doubts?

[3./JG51_Stecher]

Okay, that clears up a lot, thank you.  Great information on the actual chances for escape based on distance to front, and the scoring breakdown.  After a couple more nights with our testing group, I still have a few questions though.  And a definite bug to report.

I now understand the process of either escaping or getting captured, but I'm still not sure we are understanding each other on the issue of getting both messages, at the same time.  You said that every pilot who is captured is considered to escape eventually, and can fly after their capture ban is over.  In this situation, we would still only have the capture message, correct?  Even if they are captured, and eventually are considered to escape, we should only be actually seeing the capture message for that pilot, yes or no?  Because what we are seeing is both the capture and escape messages, given simultaneously.  Same event, same pilot, same exact moment, both capture and escape messages together, not one or the other.  So far it only happens on some of the bail outs, over enemy territory of course.  We have never seen it for a ditch in enemy territory.  Ditching always results in either one of them, capture or escape, but never both, as sometimes is happening with bailing out.

If a captured pilot, who is considered captured, but eventually gets to escape, usually gets only the capture message by itself, I don't see why there is an instance of getting both capture and escape messages together from the server.  That's why I worry it is a mistake, where it is running the process twice, and comes up with different results for the same pilot at the same moment.  If I am wrong, and you are aware that it is supposed to be doing this, can you explain why sometimes it gives only the capture message, and sometimes on bailing, it gives both the capture and escape message together?  How are they different, if it is on purpose?




Regarding the scoring, there is a bug with the Beaverette.  It is being used as an individual chief unit, and also as part of the Allied supply columns.  The single chief unit is Beaverette_III, and the piece of the supply column is Tank.Beaverette_III.  The problem seems to be when you kill the individual chief unit, it goes looking for Beaverette_III for scoring, and it finds both of them, since the term "Beaverette_III" is contained within "Tank.Beaverette_III".  You can see in the Report tab in the mission results, that it lists the player as having killed both of them at the same time.  Also, in the Pilots tab of the results, it gives the pilot credit for double of what he actually did.  For example it will list "Destroy: Beaverette_III (2)", and "Confirmed: TANK_37_ALLIED_Chief (2)".  Which is impossible, because there cannot be more than 1 of any single chief unit.  They are all individually numbered.  Adding up the points for the squad and team, also confirms that it counts the single Beaverette twice.  So for every one you kill, you are actually getting double the points that you should be getting.

This does not happen in the reverse situation.  If you are destroying Tank.Beaverette_III from a supply column, it does not give you credit for the other one, as "Tank.Beaverette_III" has the extra Tank prefix, and therefore when looking to score it, the system does not accidentally catch the individual "Beaverette_III".

I guess you could either change one of them for something entirely different, or maybe there is a way of having the scoring system search for an exact term, no more, no less.  Whatever is easier.

And one last question (for now ).  Is it intentional or a mistake that planes counted as "Lost" do not score points for the opposing team.  Only when they are counted as "Destroyed" do they give points to the other team.  Even though they are lost permanently either way, I kind of like it this way.  If you ditch (far from an airfield), the plane is gone, but the enemy doesn't get points for it.  If you bail, it crashes and is destroyed, and the enemy gets points.  It gives players an incentive to ditch their plane when they can, instead of just bailing out.  Which I think is a good thing.  Just wondering if that was on purpose.

[Grainovich]

Okay, that clears up a lot, thank you.  Great information on the actual chances for escape based on distance to front, and the scoring breakdown.  After a couple more nights with our testing group, I still have a few questions though.  And a definite bug to report.

I now understand the process of either escaping or getting captured, but I'm still not sure we are understanding each other on the issue of getting both messages, at the same time.  You said that every pilot who is captured is considered to escape eventually, and can fly after their capture ban is over.  In this situation, we would still only have the capture message, correct?  Even if they are captured, and eventually are considered to escape, we should only be actually seeing the capture message for that pilot, yes or no?  Because what we are seeing is both the capture and escape messages, given simultaneously.  Same event, same pilot, same exact moment, both capture and escape messages together, not one or the other.  So far it only happens on some of the bail outs, over enemy territory of course.  We have never seen it for a ditch in enemy territory.  Ditching always results in either one of them, capture or escape, but never both, as sometimes is happening with bailing out.

If a captured pilot, who is considered captured, but eventually gets to escape, usually gets only the capture message by itself, I don't see why there is an instance of getting both capture and escape messages together from the server.  That's why I worry it is a mistake, where it is running the process twice, and comes up with different results for the same pilot at the same moment.  If I am wrong, and you are aware that it is supposed to be doing this, can you explain why sometimes it gives only the capture message, and sometimes on bailing, it gives both the capture and escape message together?  How are they different, if it is on purpose?

can you post the messages in every case?, I guess you referred from briefing page, it's true? , for my it's a bit difficult understand the problem, I need to read this messages for be able to make a "trace" in the system, you know?

Regarding the scoring, there is a bug with the Beaverette.  It is being used as an individual chief unit, and also as part of the Allied supply columns.  The single chief unit is Beaverette_III, and the piece of the supply column is Tank.Beaverette_III.  The problem seems to be when you kill the individual chief unit, it goes looking for Beaverette_III for scoring, and it finds both of them, since the term "Beaverette_III" is contained within "Tank.Beaverette_III".  You can see in the Report tab in the mission results, that it lists the player as having killed both of them at the same time.  Also, in the Pilots tab of the results, it gives the pilot credit for double of what he actually did.  For example it will list "Destroy: Beaverette_III (2)", and "Confirmed: TANK_37_ALLIED_Chief (2)".  Which is impossible, because there cannot be more than 1 of any single chief unit.  They are all individually numbered.  Adding up the points for the squad and team, also confirms that it counts the single Beaverette twice.  So for every one you kill, you are actually getting double the points that you should be getting.

This does not happen in the reverse situation.  If you are destroying Tank.Beaverette_III from a supply column, it does not give you credit for the other one, as "Tank.Beaverette_III" has the extra Tank prefix, and therefore when looking to score it, the system does not accidentally catch the individual "Beaverette_III".

I guess you could either change one of them for something entirely different, or maybe there is a way of having the scoring system search for an exact term, no more, no less.  Whatever is easier.

oh! yes, this seems a bug.. ok, I will check out

And one last question (for now ).  Is it intentional or a mistake that planes counted as "Lost" do not score points for the opposing team.  Only when they are counted as "Destroyed" do they give points to the other team.  Even though they are lost permanently either way, I kind of like it this way.  If you ditch (far from an airfield), the plane is gone, but the enemy doesn't get points for it.  If you bail, it crashes and is destroyed, and the enemy gets points.  It gives players an incentive to ditch their plane when they can, instead of just bailing out.  Which I think is a good thing.  Just wondering if that was on purpose.

Yes yes , you are right

It's "our solution" for that common situation. We thought that one pilot must to take care of his aeroplane, If your aircraft is damaged and you need must to return to a base, try to save the aircraft ditching close to a friendly base is more immersive experience than simply bailout, If you fail and ditched far from the base... oh! bad luck .. but the enemy not gain point with your actions, because you tried at least!! , now, if you are a lazy pilot and dont care your aircraft.. the enemy gain point by your lazy actions because your aircraft will be destroying.

[Grainovich]

Stecher, the messages we are talking about, are they in-game chat messages visible on the game screen while flying the mission or are you talking about the events writen on the web page report right after the mission end?, in the last case, can you post the report?, thanks!

[3./JG51_Stecher]

The simultaneous capture and escape messages appear in the in-game chat, and on the post-mission flight report.

Normally, it just gives one or the other.  But occasionally, on bailing out, it gives both at the same time.

Server console, showing it giving me both.  Appears in chat as well.


Flight Report, showing it with Escape only, Capture only, and both.

[Grainovich]

I cant believe what is happening to you! now, I see why you have so many doubts.

This behaviour is quite weird, this feature was tested very well, you can believe me, we fought two campaign along one year and never saw this.

Please Stecher, I need to trace this process reproducing the bug, I need your files, your configuration, all.

Can you compress your /hrcodwar directory of you CLOD server and send to me to grainovich@gmail.com please?

ps: The next time, is more easy for you if you copy&paste your "C:\Users\<profile_name>\Documents\1C SoftClub\il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover - MOD\logs.txt", this file contains the chat window content, you can erase before every mission and not confuse to you with data of another session.

[3./JG51_Stecher]

Okay, I've sent emailed our server folder over.  FYI, I have made minor modifications to the hrcodwar.cs file making the airfield resource buildings into groups of 12 instead of 4.  And Gunther has redone some of the English version messages in the en.json (and he's doing more).  The issue with getting simultaneous capture/escape messages when bailing sometimes happened before we had made any changes, so I'm sure they're not related.  The conf.ini of course has a few changes to meet our test template files.

We've seen it when bailing out 20-30km behind lines, and maybe on only 1 of 5 tries, rough average.  So you may need a large sample of bail out events to see it.  Procedurally, we bail at low altitude, let the pilot drift down to the ground, then hit escape and click flag/OK.

[Grainovich]

Thanks Stecher!! received it 

[3./JG51_Stecher]

Thanks for taking a look.  Sorry if it seem like I'm piling on, but there are a couple other things we keep having trouble with.  I am hoping they are just something simple that I've messed up or don't understand.  That way it's an easy fix.

The orders haven't been processing for a while.  We had them working a few weeks ago, made supply columns, moved units around, etc, but after a campaign reset, they stopped working.  I had reset the files in the same manner a few times before, so I'm not sure of anything I could have done, since they had been working previously before and after other resets.  If you are running tests with our folder, could you please tell me if the commander orders are working for you or not?  That way we know if it's our server forlder, or our website install.  The orders appear to be saving properly from the map interface to the order files.  The game server tries to contact the website to process the orders files, but then it gives a lengthy error, and they do not take effect.  I tried reinstalling parts, but no luck, and I'm out of ideas to try.   Here's the server error when it tries to contact the website for the orders:







The other issue is unfortunately still some confusion with the scoring.  Sometimes it adds up perfectly, makes sense with everything that happened in the mission report, and matches the numbers in the puntos.json file.  Other times, it doesn't, and I can't figure out why.  We know of the Beaverette problem counting as double, but even when we avoid the Beaverette, we're getting team scores that end in 3 or 4.  Am I misunderstanding some part of the system?  Everything in the puntos.json ends in a 0 or a 5.  How could we be getting scores that end in 3 or 4?

[Grainovich]

wow!! nothing is working!! what mess!!

I could not check the above problems still, I need more time.

But I check this last quickly emulating the call to server and response to me ok: {"r":true,"m":2,"datos":{"allied":"","axis":""}}

Remember, all formats files must be in UTF-8 NOBOM , if you edit the hrcodwar.cs or \hrcodwarweb\ajax\services.php, remember save in this format.

About the scores... I guess it is some object not listed in puntos.json , because when an object is destroyed and is not listed in puntos.json , the system add ONE point ... mmm. I need more time Stecher