HITS Game Weekend of Jan 24-25

We narrowed the problem down to a particularly bad internet connection of one of the players.

The long message line has been around for a while. That won't be the problem as the message is held solely in the player's computer until the send button is pressed. It is simply the number of key strokes that determine how many pieces the message is chopped into and sent as separate packets. The number of times the enter key is pressed does not factor into it.

I don't think I'll be able to make the game this afternoon.

If I'm not there, Pepe of Villaflor has my full confidence as commander.

I have re installed the MODS and reset my connection and will reset again before game time and got the gerbil's some extra food to boost the signal.

Hope to test before the game so I won't cause any troubles today.


Cable lines are being strung to us as we speak.

So I take it that 19:30 is the witching hour?

1930 GMT 1330 EST

You mean 1530 est

No, he means 14:30 eastern.

Or. . . now

Actually 14:30EST

In four minutes time.

really didn't make much difference what time it was, as it turns out

After a few bad starts we did get a game in on the new Manassas map. Talk about idiots in the jungle without maps! It was really fun (for some such as me) and apparently really frustrating for others (such as Ej and Mark!)

Great map though - its such fun for a biggish game to be played on a map everyone is new to. I hope we play more games on it as it has so many good tactical features scattered across it.

having tried for two days to enter battle with your guys..... can you share ...what the HELL was wrong.... ?
The fact that I abandoned the effort, and it was successful might point a finger at me for some bizarre reason... what was the underlying problem?

We gave up on the scenario and Kevin made one on the new Manassas map.

There may have been issues with the scenario Kevin made for the 10mile map. We had two good big games on that map a couple of months ago that ran the full 3 hours.

I personally think the 10m map loads the heaviest strain onto the PCs and internet connections of all players until it reaches straw on the camel's back time and the weakest link in the system gives up (whatever and wherever that may be). The camel is well-loaded by any couriers game to begin with and the 10m map requires every PC to load 100sq mi of data instead of 25sq mi to begin with. Its not a graphics memory issue I am fairly sure since the graphics drawn at any one place on the 10m map and in view of any one player at any one time can't reasonably be more than any other map and is probably less due to its flattish nature and high horizons from a HITS perspective. Hilly maps like the Pipe Creek ones and some areas of Antietam must give your video card more work to do due to the sweeping vistas available. I suspect its a good deal more CPU intensive in that the basic terrain frame, height map, building and other object locations like fences, and the positional grid all have to be loaded into CPU memory before the game starts. This might leave some PCs and internet connections at a real strain before the additional load of courier messages gets added on. Each crash we had was just a few minutes into the scenario and this is usually the time when the most players are sending the most couriers simultaneously.

Even so, on the Manassas map we had a couple of bad starts with people dropping, including Kevin who usually never drops a game.

On the other hand it could just have been a crappy weekend for the internet. Those things happen too.

If you GCM guys play on the 10mi map without HITS/Couriers I'd like to hear how stable your games are and whether or not you think they are any flakier than on the 5m maps.

If we want huge maps maybe we need a 7.5m one. Just an idle thought.

I agree it is a nice map worthy of further fighting.

I didn’t want to, but my polish from the Vistula were eager to close bayonets with those eastern hordes so my battle experience was that of close combat in a wooded area.
The woods were not very wide but my front took their length so for me it looked like a jungle. I didn’t see many friendly troops, just sometimes Russians far to the west slowly pulling back.

I made some mistakes clicking orders, wanted to send troops 100 yards somewhere and with the very short line of sight and the broken terrain they went two or three times farther away.
Sometimes I realized my troops were fighting because my score was changing and I ran to look for them.
The worst of all, I sent the four battalions of Brigade Lonchan out of the woods parading in front of the enemy guns and towards their cavalry with music bands playing out.

The dream of a cavalry’s officer thought Count Butcherkevinv commander of the Russian squadrons and it was such his merciless brutality and the way he vent his rage on the hopeless French infantry, using the sabre with reckless cruelty and no quarter given that the power went off in all Western Colorado.

Pepe wrote:The dream of a cavalry’s officer thought Count Butcherkevinv commander of the Russian squadrons and it was such his merciless brutality and the way he vent his rage on the hopeless French infantry, using the sabre with reckless cruelty and no quarter given that the power went off in all Western Colorado.

I am afraid I must agree fully with this observation. I was initially dumbstruck that the French taunted my guns and dragoons in such a manner. I assumed that this was another case of French arrogance that they so commonly display on the battlefield. It was only with the greatest effort that I was able to restrain my cavalry as long as I did. But in the end they could be held back no longer. It was indeed a very brief but viscous affair. Try as I might, I could summon up no tears for the French that carpeted the ground. Their air of invincibility was more than any Russian could stand.