KS Napoleon Mod 1.34 & KS SOW Supplemental Maps 1.24 Uploaded

The latest version of the KS Napoleon Mod and Supplemental Maps has been uploaded.
Changes/additions include:
1. Shirkers have been added to the game.  After approximately 7 minutes of combat, infantry battalions will begin to lose 1-4 additional men when casualties are incurred.  This represents the historic situation of men leaving the line to help wounded comrades to an aid station and failing to find their way back to the battle.  These shirkers are never seen again in the battle.  See the Mod Manual for additional information.
2. Disorganized infantry troops will temporarily leave the field in order to reorganize.  Historically, when battalions became extremely disorganized, they became combat ineffective and generally were withdrawn form combat to rest and reorganize. Once accomplished, they were able to rejoin the fight. This has been modeled in the mod.  See the Mod Manual for additional information.
3. Added a red "Detached" to the left side of the toolbar when a battalion detaches itself to scout, skirmish, guard a battery or leaves the field to reorganize.
4. The infantry and cavalry division level toolbar no longer displays formations to choose from.  Instead, a single button with an 'F' on it is displayed.  Pushing this calls up a sub-menu which displays the available formations.  This change was implemented because players would often mistakenly press one of the formation button when they thought they were giving orders to a brigade or battalion/regiment.  This was a common problem in the heat of battle.  The result of this mistake was to order all the units under the player's command to begin moving to some undesirable location.
5. Primarily for MP, second save files for both the defsave.sav and KSMod.bin are now retained.  It was found on occasion that if a player crashed out of the game during the save process, the save file(s) could become corrupted and therefore unusable.  Now the save from 6 minutes prior is available if this problem arises.
6. Numerous AI changes.
7. A number of new maps have been added.  These are all existing maps that have European buildings added. They are named Burgos (Spain), Canth (Germany), Eggenfelden (Germany), HausenTeugn (Germany), Hostomitz (Austria), Klimovitchi (Russia), Richwol (Prussia) and Zisterdorf (Austria).
8. Two new OOBs; Austria/Russia - France 1805, (Austerlitz), Austria - France 1800, (Marengo).

The download links are in the first post of this thread: KS Mod Download Links

Fantastic work Uncle Billy. Your efforts over many years have hugely improved the SOW series games.

Martin J

Thanks for the kind words, Martin.

1. Shirkers have been added to the game.

What's next? A "pasta rule" or a "Jerry Can" rule? *



*Bonus Points if anyone gets the reference!

What's next? A "pasta rule" or a "Jerry Can" rule? *



*Bonus Points if anyone gets the reference

Oh stop. No one's gonna get that. You have to be crazy to play that game in the first place.

Haha. You guys must be almost as old as me.

I've a feeling it featured in an episode of Big Bang Theory.  Which kind of proves DarkRob's point I suppose.....

Martin J

Nope not even close!

Gosh! We're not talking Richard Berg then? CNA certainly had the pasta rule

m

We have a winner.


Darkrob grew up with CNA mounted on a metal sheets and hung on a wall. Counters were in magnetic holders. I think it scarred him for life.

The pasta rule was a water penalty for the Italians because they needed extra water to boil their pasta.

The jerry can rule punished the allies because their fuel cans were not as good as the German cans.

Berg may have been crazy.

I suppose folks had more time in the 70s.  But yes, still crazy

After giving up on v 1.33 I took a look at 1.34.

Nice maps....but I can't get it to work on MP.

Specifically, it refuses to read the battlescript.*

And the alphaomega/noai setting does nothing.

Was this last done deliberately or is something wrong there, too?

*

10:00:00 ----------------loading: GFX_Smoke_1
10:00:00 Drafting Chain of Command
10:00:00 Chain of Command: Top Commander Empereur NapolÃon Bonaparte
10:00:00 Chain of Command: Top Commander Tsar Alexsandr I
10:00:00 Loading Battle Events
10:00:00 ERROR - Could not find Event Type: KS SCRIPT
10:00:00 ERROR: Command not found - startscenario
10:00:00 Battlescript ERROR - unit MARéCHAL LOUIS-NICOLAS DAVOUT not found.
10:00:00 Battlescript ERROR - unit GéNéRAL DE DIV. CLAUDE SUCHET not found.
10:00:00 Battlescript ERROR - unit GéNéRAL DE DIV. MICHEL CLAPARèDE not found.
10:00:00 Battlescript ERROR - unit LIEUTENANT-GéNéRAL COMTE ALEXANDRE DROUOT not found.
10:00:00 Battlescript ERROR - unit GéNéRAL DE DIVISION ÉTIENNE DE NANSOUTY not found.
10:00:00 Battlescript ERROR - unit GENERAL'NYY LEUTENANT DIMITRI DOKHTUROV not found.
10:00:00 Battlescript ERROR - unit GENERAL'NYY LEUTENANT GRAF ALEKSANDR LANGERON not found.
10:00:00 Battlescript ERROR - unit GENERAL'NYY LEUTENANT MIKHAIL MILORADOVICH not found.
10:00:00 Battlescript ERROR - unit GENERAL'NYY LEUTENANT PETR BAGRATION not found.
10:00:00 Battlescript ERROR - unit FELDMARSCHALLEUTNANT MICHEAL VON KIENMAYER not found.
10:00:00 Battlescript ERROR - unit FELDMARSCHAL JOHANN GRAF VON KOLLOWRAT not found.
10:00:00 Battlescript ERROR - unit GENERAL'NYY LEUTENANT DIMITRI DOKHTUROV not found.

It seems to load everything fine up to that point and then it simply craps out on me. I've tried the time with both (hh/mm) and (hh/mm/ss) settings but it makes no difference. It won't read the script and the Allied units start moving immediately.

This was a scenario that I cobbled together using the new 1.65 editor but that worked fine and I got no errors doing that.

Did I miss something in the whole 1.33 thing?

Those are the errors you see when the NSD battlescript reader tries to read and interpret the KS battlescript. It can't because the formats differ. Below those "error" messages you should see your script being implemented at the appropriate times. For example:
15:01:12 BattleScript: Generalmajor August Hiller von Gaertringen ordered to: Amovespec:loc:89056-97715
15:01:12 BattleScript: Generalmajor August Hiller von Gaertringen ordered to: Awheeldest:east
15:01:12 BattleScript: Generalmajor August Hiller von Gaertringen ordered to: Aformtype:11
15:01:12 BattleScript: Generalmajor August Hiller von Gaertringen ordered to: Auseroad
15:01:14 BattleScript: Generallieutenant Friedrich von Bülow Graf von Dennewitz ordered to: Aorders:Hold

If not, there may be a problem with the script itself. Look at the top of the log file for something like these lines:
15:00:00 *** KS SowAiInf.dll Version: 1.34.04
15:00:00 KS ReadBattlescripts: Commanders imported
15:00:00 KS ReadBattlescripts: Importing KS battlescript orders.
15:00:00 KS ReadBattlescripts Finished: Number of Commands imported: 38 (this number will be different for your script)

Most battlescript errors that the KS Mod detects begin with the words: ERROR ReadBattlescripts:

This is the beginning of the log file. I do not see exactly what you are saying should be there. It doesn't appear to be trying to read the script at all.....except of course then it tells me that the names of the people that are in the script file can't be found! So clearly it got them from somewhere.

Game Launched
10:51:57 Version:SOWWL
1.0106
10:52:03 Mod: C:\PROGRAM FILES (X86)\MATRIX GAMES\SCOURGE OF WAR WATERLOO COLLECTORS EDITION\Mods\GB_lsl files
10:52:03 Mod: C:\PROGRAM FILES (X86)\MATRIX GAMES\SCOURGE OF WAR WATERLOO COLLECTORS EDITION\Mods\KSSpritesMod 107
10:52:03 Mod: C:\PROGRAM FILES (X86)\MATRIX GAMES\SCOURGE OF WAR WATERLOO COLLECTORS EDITION\Mods\KS Napoleon Mod II 134
10:52:03 Mod: C:\PROGRAM FILES (X86)\MATRIX GAMES\SCOURGE OF WAR WATERLOO COLLECTORS EDITION\Mods\KS SOW Supplemental Maps124
10:52:03 Ansi:16, TexH:16384, TexW:16384
10:52:03 SowWL Loaded
10:52:03 10:52:03
10:52:07 Networking initialized.
10:52:07 Server Started...
10:52:07 Attempting Connection to NAT Server...
10:52:07 *** KS SowAiInf.dll Version: 1.34.03
10:52:07 C:\Users\Rschi\Documents\SowWL\scenarios\Netserv
10:52:09 Connection to NAT Server Accepted.
10:52:11 *** KS SowAiInf.dll Version: 1.34.03
10:52:11 C:\Users\Rschi\Documents\SowWL\scenarios\Netserv
10:52:12 *** KS SowAiInf.dll Version: 1.34.03
10:52:12 C:\Users\Rschi\Documents\SowWL\scenarios\Netserv
10:52:12 Toggle Vegetation disabled.
10:52:13 Player List Sent.
10:52:21 Mod: C:\PROGRAM FILES (X86)\MATRIX GAMES\SCOURGE OF WAR WATERLOO COLLECTORS EDITION\Mods\GB_lsl files
10:52:21 Mod: C:\PROGRAM FILES (X86)\MATRIX GAMES\SCOURGE OF WAR WATERLOO COLLECTORS EDITION\Mods\KSSpritesMod 107
10:52:21 Mod: C:\PROGRAM FILES (X86)\MATRIX GAMES\SCOURGE OF WAR WATERLOO COLLECTORS EDITION\Mods\KS Napoleon Mod II 134
10:52:21 Mod: C:\PROGRAM FILES (X86)\MATRIX GAMES\SCOURGE OF WAR WATERLOO COLLECTORS EDITION\Mods\KS SOW Supplemental Maps124
10:52:21 Loading NetServ
10:52:21 Load your muskets...
10:52:21 10:52:21
10:52:21 Loading NetServ
10:52:21 Loading Map (Nap_Aus_Zisterdorf_KS)
10:52:25 PR: (WARNING) Texture not loaded - ROOF2.JPG
10:00:00 Loading Graphics
10:00:00 ----------------loading: GFX_Obj_Major
10:00:00 ----------------loading: GFX_Obj_UMajor
10:00:00 ----------------loading: GFX_Obj_CMajor
10:00:00 Loading Drills
10:00:00 Loading Experience Levels
10:00:00 *** KS SowAiInf.dll Version: 1.34.03
10:00:00 C:\Users\Rschi\Documents\SowWL\scenarios\Netserv
10:00:00 Loading Personalities
10:00:00 Loading Orders
10:00:00 Loading Battle Plans
10:00:00 ----------------loading: GFX_Smoke_1A

The mod is not reading your battlescript file. Is strategicai set to 0 in scenario.ini? It is the 2nd to last line in that file. That tells the AI code to read in your battlescript.

Okay, so I'm just going to tell you what happened - and then you can all tell me that it doesn't make any sense!

At some point I realized that even though I had used Scenario Gen 1.65 to create my little exercise in a number of cases I had borrowed files that were originally created using v 1.55 and imported them into the new scenario to save myself some typing.

For the hell of it I created a dummy scenario using 1.65 which mimicked the one I was working on.  I took the .ini file and the battlescript.csv file ( which only had two lines, of course) and imported those into my working scenario.  The .ini file was fine but I figured out how many lines I needed for commands and added that number between the 10:00:00 start and the 18:00:00 endscenario.

Then I cut and pasted the names and the commands ( but not the times) from the previous file into the v. 1.65 generated battlescript.  THEN I took the start time and copied it and pasted it into the time column for each event.

Then I ran it and it worked - to a degree which I'll get to in a moment. At least the Allied force began marching on the French position.  It wasn't all perfect.  For some reason, without a shot having been fired on either side, an entire French artillery battalion suddenly routed..... and ran towards the Allies.  I still don't know why that happens but when I hit the L key I was rewarded with a StartLocs file which I was able to edit, find the French Artillery units whose morale suddenly dropped ( to 4 or 2 ) and restore them to 9 which got them back where they belonged.  But I had never seen that before except when I made a mistake in an OOB file where I forgot to enter a morale value for a cavalry regiment which promptly routed at the beginning. That was not the case in this situation.

Now, I do have one observation and that is that while I use Excel for the .csv files it is not Microsoft Excel.  It is an open source product available online but I never had a problem with it before.  I do wonder if there is enough of a difference between 1.55 and 1.65 that somehow it screwed up the reading of the time column?  Or, if my ersatz Excel program had some sort of coding issue.

With luck tomorrow I will try to create a scenario which avoids importing entire files from the old version to the new and see how that goes.  In the past, whenever I had trouble with the game "reading" a battlescript file it was always something to do with the "Time" column.  My suspicion is that was the case here, as well.

If you are going to re-use battlescript commands from older scenarios, it is best to copy and paste them using a text editor such as MS Notepad. That way all the empty cell designators, strings of commas, and the European characters in the commander names are copied over properly.

It may be that there are not enough commas at the ends of your battlescript lines. They need to be there to denote empty cells. I've read that this sometimes happens when using non-MS Excel programs. That may be the cause of some of your problems.

I'll keep that caution in mind. It's as reasonable an explanation as anything I can think of.

It's always the military time that has caused me problems in reading the battlescript. To this day I cannot get it to read a leading zero. Meaning I can't start a scenario at 07:00 because it won't read the first "0". Change it to 10:00 and the same script works fine!

BTW, the Zisterdorf map is really nice. A nice big river to try and cross!

Just write the time as 7:00:00 and it should work fine.

Zisterdorf is a nice map to fight on. The hilly terrain makes for some surprise visits by the enemy. I remember one battle where a player was pushing part of his division over the top of the large hill south of Asparn when the Russian Guard cavalry suddenly came over the top followed by the Guard infantry and decimated the division in only a few minutes. A triumphant advance turned into an ignoble rout.

Eliminating the leading zero does seem to help.

I still can't figure out why all of a sudden entire artillery battalions rout before a shot is fired. Is there a limitation on how many batteries can be in a battalion?

With your artillery problem, are they all alone? There was semi-recently a change that impacted guns. I don't know the exact rules, but guns now require a friendly infantry unit somewhat near by or they will go away. I think, could be way off. The idea of the change was so that when you destroy an enemy division there won't be an enemy battery hanging around all alone and also that the officer won't end up behind your lines trying to send orders to his guns in a never ending stream of couriers.

This culminated in a silly moment where our cavalry divisions' batteries were fleeing right at the start of a battle. This no longer happens with cavalry so Kevin must have changed it one way or another so that cavalry counts as a nearby unit or something. This would be my guess as to what's happening. If your guns are near friendlies and are fleeing then I'm completely off.

My guess it's not about units being nearby or not... it's about commander's class - Kevin did initially implement system for Infantry Divisions but not for pure Cavalry divisions... so the fix was needed for Cavalry commander class.. now rschilla mentions Artillery Battalion - by which, I understand the Command that consists only of Artillery Batteries - meaning, this is another class of Division level commander - Artillery only... as we've been not playing any scenarios with such a formation for a while, and surely not since the system was implemented, that's I think is worth checking...

If the artillery battalion commander is an artillery commander, the batteries will not run away. If he is an infantry or cavalry commander they will. An artillery battalion can contain 16 batteries.

Eliminating the leading zero does seem to help.

I've done several scenarios this way and have had no problems. You do have to add the seconds designator to the time though.

To answer Dump Truck's question, the initial set up had an infantry division lined up behind the river at the top of the Zisterdorf map. Behind them was an Artillery Battalion consisting of six foot and 1 horse battery so no where near the limit. Behind the artillery was a heavy cavalry division. There is not a lot of room behind the river and the guns were within easy reach of both the infantry and cavalry. There was not an Austrian or Russian in sight, in fact they hadn't even started moving when the French gunners just decided they were going over the hill. Perhaps they smelled the strudel on the morning breeze?

But I will have to take a look at the Art. Battalion Commander. That sounds like a reasonable possibility especially if the change was implemented after 1.31 and SG 1.55.

I know what you mean about the artillery hanging around after the infantry has run off. The AI's tendency to set up at long rage and pop away ineffectively annoyed me so much that I shorten the effective range for whoever the opposing force is so that they move into realistic range. True, that makes them better targets but at least they participate in the battle. But the idea of having the artillery withdraw when the infantry runs off is better still. Brilliant idea.

So here is what happened.

The commander was General Drouot and he was listed as FR_ART_CDR_BN which seemed to be correct.

I started the game and went immediately to Drouot and watched. The batteries that were in view were moving around a bit but no one left the ranks.

Literally as soon as I TC'd Drouot to move the guns closer in support of the infantry, they began to rout. I didn't even get a chance to move him, they had all buggered off.

Presumably I could have left him there as a decoration but that doesn't solve the problem.

I decided to test my findings by creating a new scenario on SG 1.65 and playing it on both 1.31 and 1.34.

My first attempt again used the same Zisterdorf map however that gave me a map error (can't open heightfield tga) whatever the hell that means on v 1.31.

So I re-did it on the Wavre map and ran the scenario on both 1.31 and 1.34. It loaded and ran fine on 1.31. When I selected Drouot and TC'd him, nothing happened and the guns duly followed him to their new position behind Suchet's infantry divison.



At that point I stopped and reloaded the scenario on v 1.34. Again, it loaded and ran fine however as soon as I TC'd Drouot here, the gunners all ran off.
It seems as if there is some problem with 1.34.