SowWL-KS Crashing

Map level Error being reported on the Nap_Spain_Burgos_KS_RM map

It didn't work because Ehey screwed up the ini file name Go to the KSNapMod134/Maps folder. Inside is a file named Nap_Spain_Burgos_RM_KS.ini. Rename it to Nap_Spain_Burgos_KS_RM.ini.
I suggest you put the Burgos files back into their original folders. Only the lsl file belongs in the SupplementalMaps124/Maps folder.

I went to host a multiplayer game just to test and it gave me the error telling me I had an extra instance of a mod file running: unitglobal.csv.

If you are only running the 3 mod files, then the likely culprit is from one of the DLC Logistics folders. Go through each DLC and make sure the Logistics folders are named something else. If you are running other mods, like Les Cent Jours, you have to rename that Logistics folder.

It's amazing how sensitive these computers are to things like that, isn't it?

Thanks. Problem solved.

1.34 is working fine and the MP resume is much simplified and superior. Very enjoyable piece of work!

I have come up with two tactical questions which have nothing to do with 1.34.


First. In the current game enemy infantry approaches the bridge they have to take and stops and forms square..... where they are promptly blasted with canister from two nearby batteries. The guns are much closer than the cavalry. There is a cavalry regiment supporting the defenders but it seems quite far away from the bridge AND I thought I had put it behind a ridge so they would not draw artillery fire themselves. Now, the question is: Does infantry need to be within a certain range of cavalry before they get scared AND have a line of sight to them, or, is it that need to be within a certain range OR have a line of sight to them?


The second question concerns artillery. I have noticed that in virtually every battery, even ones with a clear field of fire and sitting on a hill or ridge, some of the guns run out of ammunition and withdraw while others keep blasting away with plenty of ammo. There is no indication that they have even been fired upon: The battery shows no casualties so it seems unlikely that someone unleashed a smart bomb to take out a caisson. Does anyone know why this happens?

Does infantry need to be within a certain range of cavalry before they get scared AND have a line of sight to them, or, is it that need to be within a certain range OR have a line of sight to them?

I think it's both sight and range. The range is, if I were to hazard a guess, quite far at maybe 500-700 yards?

I have noticed that in virtually every battery, even ones with a clear field of fire and sitting on a hill or ridge, some of the guns run out of ammunition and withdraw while others keep blasting away with plenty of ammo. There is no indication that they have even been fired upon: The battery shows no casualties so it seems unlikely that someone unleashed a smart bomb to take out a caisson. Does anyone know why this happens?

It's very well possible they have literally run out of ammo. If you inspect each gun individually you can check their ammo. Usually you have enough ammo to fire constantly for about 3 hours. When out of ammo the guns will withdraw and face off to the side. It's also possible they don't have a line of sight to any targets and are adjusting their position. The terrain and line of sight is quite finicky in the game engine (something Kevin cannot fix due to game engine code he doesn't have access to). Even a small hill might hide more than it appears to. The sprites are larger than the game engine calculates for line of sight, so small gentle hills can actually hide things quite effectively in dead ground sometimes. For ease of visualization I tend to imagine the line of sight being measured to and from the knees and that usually gets me by pretty well.

Hope that helps until Kevin can come by and correct any errors I made or add anything I overlooked.

It's very well possible they have literally run out of ammo.

Some years ago when I first detected this problem I increased artillery ammunition to like 6000 rounds for an 8 or 12 lb battery to see if that would happen. So they begin with 3,600 rounds of solid shot and 2,400 rounds of canister. Because of cutting and pasting into the OOBs I never changed it back but it doesn't matter because after a while the gunners are exhausted and the battery has to be replaced/rested anyway. I always keep reserve batteries under TC for that purpose. But I still see things like:

Gun #4 3,400 shot 2300 canister

Gun #5 0 0

Gun #6 3,450 2275


There are no casualties to the battery. Indeed, what has been happening is that the first enemy artillery batteries try to drive across the bridge and are routed by the two battalions holding the bridge. The trailing batteries are at the back of the column and set up late, if at all.

I would expect, if the gun had no line of sight that it would either not shoot at all, or, if under AI control, try to find a target. Instead it packs it in and heads for the hills. Weird. And I cannot find a pattern for it.

Hm. I have no idea then, I think I best leave this to Kevin's abilities. I'd suspect it may be something with the OOB then, but I only say that because I've never witnessed this happening but I also have only ever used OOBs provided with the mod. But that'd just be a hunch. For the sake of troubleshooting, have you observed this happening with OOBs that come with the mod?

What you are seeing is the destruction of the ammo caissons by counter battery fire.  This is actually a stock game mechanic.  The only thing I did was change the probability of a hit to be based on the size and type of the ordinance being fired at the wagons.  It varies from  ~1-5.5%.  You can find the info in munitions.csv.  As I recall, when a hit is scored, there is also a probability that anywhere from 60-100% of the ammo will be blown up.

As to the infantry forming squares when cavalry is around question; the distance where this happens varies due to experience level of the btn, the stance of the brigade and the direction the cavalry is relative to the facing of the battalion.  As I recall it varies from 150-450 yd.

Hope that helps.

What you are seeing is the destruction of the ammo caissons by counter battery fire.

My problem is that there does not seem to be any counter battery fire. But you have given me an idea to test it. I'll reduce the chance to zero in munitions.csv and see if it still happens. That should answer the question.

I'll move the cavalry further back and not worry about line of sight.


I've got a few changes to make before running it through again. I also have to turn off that annoying fife music that the Prussians march to...or at least set it not to loop.

So here is what happened.

This is a screen shot of Jarry's Horse Artillery Battery.




You can see that he still has the 120 men he started with but there are only 3 guns on the line, the ones with the chevron, the other guns visible belong to a different battery.  The scenario started at 6 AM but the first Allied Division did not begin moving until 6:10 and did not engage until about 6:30. The time was 7:43 when the screen shot was taken so the guns had been in action for just over an hour with a break while the British Guards withdrew and the 2d Dutch Division came up. With the cavalry pulled back the attackers did not form square but they got blasted anyway. Also this time, the British artillery did not pull the kamikaze attack on the bridge. Instead they were marching around, out of range well to the rear. They did not fire a shot. The Dutch Batteries are still moving up the road. They haven't fired a shot, either. The other 8 Allied Divisions have not begun moving yet.

Before closing out I followed DumpTruck's suggestion and consulted the combat status for each individual gun in Jarry's Battery. As follows:
(Solid Shot - Shell - Canister)

#1 Ammo level: 0 - 0 - 0 Inflicted 253.7 casualties

#2 Ammo level 1369 - 0 - 493 Inflicted 321.8 casualties

#3 Ammo Level 1445- 0 -535 Inflicted 0 casualties (! WTH?)

#4 Ammo Level 1408 - 0 - 488 Inflicted 235 casualties

#5 Ammo Level 0 - 0 - 0 Inflicted 275 casualties

#6 Ammo Level 0 - 0 - 0 Inflicted 212 casualties


Guns 1, 5, and 6 had withdrawn well to the rear after allegedly expending all their ammo while their comrades in the other 3 gun crews still had plenty. As noted, I changed the ammo kill rate in munitions.csv to 0 but then watched carefully and no allied battery so much as attempted to fire a shot.

I don't get it.

If it's not counterbattery fire then I have no idea. It may be that the enormous amounts of ammo you give the guns is the problem. I've never encountered this so it must be something on your end.

Maybe..... although the reason I did that in the first place was because it was happening on the standard amounts and I just never got around to restoring it.

It happens on the Foot batteries, too. It is just less noticeable because they have 8 guns instead of 6.

I'm mystified.


I think I'll restart that scenario and just concentrate on that #1 gun as soon as the British come into range. I don't have anything else to do today.

I give up.

I did exactly that. Set everyone up let the game go without interference while I watched that one horse artillery battery as the British Guards division walked up into a maelstrom of fire. Those six guns inflicted over 1,200 casualties and not one of them ran out of ammo! I kept the #1 gun in the combat screen and every time it fired noted that the ammo level dropped by one.

Maybe I'll visit the Norbsoft forum and see if anyone over there has run into that issue?

Or maybe I'll just chalk it up to computer gremlins and forget about it.

I lied.  I couldn't forget about it.


But I have made an interesting discovery.

First of all, I followed Dump Truck's suggestion and checked the status of the batteries after the game.  I took a couple of screen shots.

What they show is one of the batteries after an MP game and one of the guns' ammo level.

The battery was in action for about an hour.  Of the 8 guns, one (#5) was completely out of ammo and withdrew to the rear and another #1 had one round of canister remaining and stayed on line.  However, on the details list from the OOB both guns have plenty of ammo left which means there is a disconnect between the various counters.

Now, to make matters worse ( or perhaps better ) this only happened when I ran the game through on MP using the script.  When I restored the lines and values needed for SP, none of the guns ran out of ammo.  They blasted away for 3 hours and not a single gun withdrew.

To be clear there were 10 foot batteries of 8 guns and two horse batteries of 6 guns.  In the SP run through all 92 guns functioned perfectly and there was no deviation between the ammo counts per individual gun on screen or in the OOB detail screen.

In the MP run through in just forty minutes of shooting two 12 pound guns were silenced and one 8 pounder in another battery also ran out of ammo.  Offhand, it looks like a problem between MP and SP versions.

As you can see from the photos below, the game ended at 07:15.  It took about 25 minutes for the first Prussian division to reach the combat zone  and the French guns on top of the hill to begin firing.  Thus there were about 45 minutes of actual combat in the MP version before the guns started to roll off the line.
As I said above, the SP version worked perfectly.

This was set up on the Kelheim map on the road between Siegenburg and Alling.  One French division of infantry with a cavalry brigade and the aforementioned 12 batteries of artillery.  Three Prussian divisions were set to come up the road in one hour intervals in the MP version.

As you can see from the Detail list, gun number 1 fired only five rounds and gun #5 fired only 9.  For some reason something in the game told them they were out of ammo at that point.  And I'll be damned if I can see why SP or MP would make a difference in that.

https://i.imgur.com/4omVgnr.png

https://i.imgur.com/0sWxVvH.png

What happens if you set the ammo level of each gun a reasonable number such as 10 -15? Given that we have played MP games 3 times a week for 6 years now and have never seen that issue, it has to be due to the number of rounds you assign. It may well be capped at 255 rounds by the game engine. Anything over that would lead to undefined behavior.

I'll give it a try but the reason for putting it high in the first place was that it was a reaction to guns wandering off on their own after they allegedly ran out.

It is also the sporadic nature of the event. It only happened to two guns in one battery and one in another.

Also, in SP, it did not happen at all even though that scenario ran for 3 hours and the guns banged away the whole time.


I have a full blown version of the test ready to go in SP with 10 Prussian Divisions attacking the position. We'll see what happens in that.

I was thinking about this last night and I can't recall it happening when I used to play MP games with Darkrob against the AI. Back then we used the link up through the Game Lobby and Rooms. I assume you guys are using the direct link for your games? It did cross my mind that this may be an issue of using the solitaire version of MP which is what I have been doing.

I'm off to run my SP test. I'll report in with the results.

We join by direct IP. The lobby feature is much too unstable.

As anticipated, 9 of the 10 Prussian divisions assaulted the french position on top of the hill. 92 guns began firing at about 6:30 AM and continued for the better part of 4 hours of actual game time. This was the SP version and the 9 Prussian divisions all concentrated on the main point of attack ( Objective 1 - just beyond the bridge on the French side ) and were massacred. That was anticipated. The whole point was to see what happened if the guns kept up a steady fire until the Prussians withdrew. For reasons unknown to me the Prussian cavalry division decided not to join in. They hung out in their original position for the whole battle.
Oddly, in the MP version, that division never obeyed scripted orders and started moving to the attack as soon as the game began. Oh well, cavalry always think they are hot shit.

After 4 hours, not a single gun had run out of ammo and moved off. I checked the details and there were some guns that never fired a shot ( line of sight problems most likely) and some that fired 300 rounds. A number of guns reported that their crews were "exhausted" but they remained in action. It does seem to me that the problem is one of SP v MP. For the hell of it I will reduce the amount of artillery ammo by about 80% for my next scripted MP version- I have to do the math for that - and they would still have enough to fire steadily for a 10 hour engagement.... unless they decide to go over the hill whenever they feel like it.