Ye King of Spaine Inn - NPC OOC Discussion

I do not need turn 1 orders just yet, Wednesday is the (still flexible) deadline, but can players please drop me a PM or an e-mail with their supply depot location.

As always, if there's any doubt about the rule I can advise.

Many thanks.

I know the flexible deadline is tomorrow, but could you give us an idea of how many orders are still under consideration?

Cheers.

All Spanish orders are in except the Army of Aragon (Steve/Sspoom).

I have only had French orders from Suchet & Mitra in Barcelona and Ike in the far north. Nothing yet for the two main groupings (Murat/Bessieres).

The complex thing is I can't reply to a number of orders because what happens depends on whether any enemy contacts that force and I'm waiting for those orders to come in.

Mr. Digby wrote:All Spanish orders are in except the Army of Aragon (Steve/Sspoom).

I have only had French orders from Suchet & Mitra in Barcelona and Ike in the far north. Nothing yet for the two main groupings (Murat/Bessieres).

The complex thing is I can't reply to a number of orders because what happens depends on whether any enemy contacts that force and I'm waiting for those orders to come in.

Cheers

I thought your reply seemed a little... 'initial' given the lack of French response - that explains that then.

Or are the garlic-eating slug-a-beds still curled up with their mistresses?

Is that a bit of jealousy I hear in your voice, M. General de Llamas?? Missing a bit of warmth in the evening, are we? Dreadfully sorry. I'm sure there will be someone in our military prison who will be able to assist you.

I shall see to it personally.

A polite heads up that I still lack any turn 2 orders or communications from:

Bessieres
Verdier
Joseph

Palafox
Castro
Villava
von Reding/San Juan
Blake
Acevedo

Without these I am having to hold up almost all map moves because these roles impinge on what others can do.

Don't forget that this isn't a single set of orders you can't later modify - I give feedback to everyone based on what nearby opponents and friends are doing (that you know about) and give players the option to amend their orders or at least send out couriers to try and amend them. Usually you can unless a big chunk of time has passed in the turn.

It would also help me to know the exact location of where a player's character is. If I'm not given a specific location I will place him at the rear of your leading division if on the march or in the camp of your army's/corp's 1st division if stationary.

Thanks all.

EDIT: Great progress made today, thanks to all who sent in their orders.

EDIT 2: More progress, thanks to those who've sent orders in. Much appreciated.

EDIT 3: Most orders now in. Timning isn't critical now as we have some battles to fight, but Steve/Sspoom, if you can tell me what is happening at Zaragosa I still need to know - thank you!

The brave Army of Valencia are a noble and intrepid band, the first into the taverna and the last to be dragged out in the morning!

Its looking very much like the second half of June 1808 will produce three battles. I still have to get the orders in from one player whose troops are being attacked so he may choose to pull back but we will certainly have a medium sized fight at Atalayuclas south-east of Madrid where the Army of Valencia has struck against part of Dupont's corps on the river Jucar and a second smaller fight which will be a limited 'action' style set-up where elements of Moncey's corps are contesting a piece of critical high ground south of Valladolid between the rivers Adajo and Duero with some of Cuesta's Army of Castille as a prelude to a possible bigger action.

The third battle we may have is a much bigger affair and consists of Marshal Bessieres corps hurling itself against the Army of Aragon which is encamped behind the river Jalon where it meets the Ebro west of Zaragosa.

Interestingly all 3 actions focus around uncrossable rivers with only a very few bridges or fords as crossing points.

It is going to take me a little while to get the OOBs organised however.

Excellent news. About time we squash a few snail eater.

I have added impassable rivers to both the PPT and Culps Hill maps. That gives us 7 in all. The command maps have also been nappified.

I realize a lot of this will depend on the final oob, but do you have any rough guesstimates on how many players you're hoping for for the three battles?

Would let us start trying to schedule it and getting faces onboard

What do you see, Mr. Digby, as the optimum number of players? I mean, one player per infantry/cavalry division, for instance? Maybe one per infantry division and one for any separate cavalry brigades or divisions? Just asking.

I'm going to call for players in the two teams private areas because knowing how many players the other side needs gives away a fair bit of what strength they could have. However in all MP games it is the more the merrier because I just want everyone to enjoy themselves and its the online battles that are why we do this - as long as the minimum command is a brigade. I can't offer player positions lower than that, obviously.

However the other consideration is game stability and we have been frustrated in a number of recent games with player drops and host crashes and I think probably around 10 players is the most we can reliably have, more than that is really increasing the risk of a game crash. Last night with Ike hosting we had a crash with only 5 players.

I am not suggesting Ike's host-connection is weak, just that the game always relies on the weakest link in any chain and adding more links greatly increases the chances of a flawed one. I think our 'strongest' hosts are Ron and Kevin, at least that's my vague feeling.

Given a recent "bad frame in packet" crash which we know from Norb is caused by people running the game in windowed mode, more than 10 players will need everyone to run the game full screen which brings with it all the hassle of teamspeak whisper keys again, something I find really not very satisfactory because of the work involved.

In the 3 upcoming battles I would like to use the following maps:

Atalayuclas = full 5 mile Gettysburg map, with Atalayuclas itself being the village of 'Novi' on the Italianised minimap version by Kevin.

http://www.atomic-album.com/showPic.php/22426/Atalayuclas-v2.jpg

S of Valladolid = Culps Hill map but rotated 90 clockwise so that 'west' becomes 'north'. I'd like to set this at 25% trees to depict a more open terrain as well.

http://www.atomic-album.com/showPic.php/22426/Valladolid.jpg

Alagon and the Ebro = the Antietam map rotated 180 degrees (which we'll set at 50% trees).

http://www.atomic-album.com/showPic.php/22426/Alagon-BW.jpg

If any of these have not had the impassable rivers change it won't matter, we can play the battle with an agreed rule.

I just re-checked my settings and, to my chagrin, I found that I was the culprit then in the crash. I had set the options to window the game and forgot to re-check it after the new installation of the game. It is now set correctly on full screen. My apologies.

We didn't have the bad frame in packet crash last night as far as I saw. I was running in a window as well. I think we all do now. That particular packet-size related crash was fixed months ago by Norb. We had one instance of it in Kevin's big game of 2 weeks ago. I am wondering if it might be related to something in the GCM since I know that Garnier's mod has done something to the player-typed message length allowed by couriers while the stock game insists you use a carriage return at the end of each typed line of message text - and it was the long courier messages that were causing that particular crash.

I'm not accusing anyone of anything here, just curious about causes.

I'll try to get the Antietam map done today. I am going to remove most of the fatigue penalty from the cornfields. NSD is composed of urbanites who may well have never even seen a cornfield up close let alone walked in one.

However in all MP games it is the more the merrier because I just want everyone to enjoy themselves and its the online battles that are why we do this - as long as the minimum command is a brigade. I can't offer player positions lower than that, obviously.

However the other consideration is game stability and we have been frustrated in a number of recent games with player drops and host crashes and I think probably around 10 players is the most we can reliably have, more than that is really increasing the risk of a game crash. Last night with Ike hosting we had a crash with only 5 players.

Just my opinion, but I'd recommend going with the "more the merrier" approach rather than artificially capping the number of players. In my experience, if someone's going to "crash" (as opposed to disconnect), they'll crash regardless of the player numbers involved, and it usually happens at, or almost immediately after, launch. An extreme number of players may impact game speed, but we've played lots and lots of games with upwards of 20 players where things worked out just fine. Having large numbers of players, aside from being loads of fun, also reduces the likelihood that some unfortunate will end up saddled with unmanageable troop numbers when the inevitable subordinate is unhorsed. We should accept the real-world situation that some have slow machines and/or unreliable connections and that drops will happen. From our experience with HITS/GCM and recent Nappy games, my suggestion would be to anticipate and build this risk into scenario planning (as much as possible) with smaller commands. Player drops are unforeseen, but not ahistorical, bad-luck events.

Having hosted literally hundreds of games using both GCM and non-GCM formats, in windowed-mode and not, I'd venture the opinion that the vast majority of actual hard crashes (as opposed to disconnects) are a result of incompatible mods, map discrepancies, anti-virus programs, automated system maintenance routines kicking in, and the like. Very, very seldom does a host with proper settings, and a decent machine auger it in after the game is 5 minutes in. I can't say definitively that GCM courier changes are not a factor in recent problems, but would point out that we've played a number of Nappy games recently where they've worked without incident (including dozens & dozens of long-string text message novelettes I've personally sent).

Anyway, looking forward to bashing some slug-eaters.

¡Viva España y la Monarquía!

Don Francisco Javier Castaños Aragorri Urioste y Olavide, Conde de Castaños y Aragones, primer Duque de Bailén

Ron, I take your point but couriers do load up the software and the internet connections much more than non-courier play. When I was a regular GCM player I recall being in several 20 and 22 player games which was intense and great fun but I've never seen a couriers game handle more than about 12 to 14 people. Crashes I find in couriers games come not when the game first loads but when the network load reaches a critical point and that is most often when the armies meet and every player and his dog is dashing off hand-written courier messages. Despite the advances Norb has made in stability the game with couriers is still highly vulnerable at this point and its almost always the most frustrating point because 45 minutes or an hour has gone past, too late to restart, the scenario isn't playable again because people know where opponents are and its still too early for a result to be decided.

I believe i was in a 19 player couriers game where it didn't crash. Of course the amount of couriers fluctuates from game to game so there may not have been any large spikes in courier traffic at one given time. However we usually only get 10-14 on average for courier games so we shouldn't worry too much about it. Plus there is finite spots for these particular battles because there is only so many brigades and batteries and the OOB can not be inflated for more players since it's part of the campaign.

Mr. Digby wrote:We didn't have the bad frame in packet crash last night as far as I saw. I was running in a window as well. I think we all do now. That particular packet-size related crash was fixed months ago by Norb. We had one instance of it in Kevin's big game of 2 weeks ago. I am wondering if it might be related to something in the GCM since I know that Garnier's mod has done something to the player-typed message length allowed by couriers while the stock game insists you use a carriage return at the end of each typed line of message text - and it was the long courier messages that were causing that particular crash.

I'm not accusing anyone of anything here, just curious about causes.

The only thing GCM used in Nap games are the Random Map 6 Mod and the GCM Terrain Mod, right?

I don't think either of those have anything to do with couriers.

I do recall playing once where there was no need to hit "enter" to get a carriage return in the typed courier message window. This is different to the vanilla game... unless I dreamed it, which would be very strange! I even recall discussing it afterwards with Kevin.

I have a distinct enough memory of it to wonder how Garnier managed to do that. Maybe I am imagining it and I am getting senile...

Mr. Digby wrote:I do recall playing once where there was no need to hit "enter" to get a carriage return in the typed courier message window. This is different to the vanilla game... unless I dreamed it, which would be very strange! I even recall discussing it afterwards with Kevin.

I have a distinct enough memory of it to wonder how Garnier managed to do that. Maybe I am imagining it and I am getting senile...

Well. . . in Ron's Hits/GCM games, played using Garnier's random divisions and full GCM mods, you must hit the enter button to add lines in the courier message.

So perhaps it's not that you're getting senile, but possibly becoming MORE senile!

I've just had word that the Aragonese under Palafox are going to make a stand on the Jalon so we have 3 battles to fight this turn.

Magnifico!

How are the OOBs handling you, Digby?

I want to add in some new sprites, Zeke's revolutionary era ones so the Spanish can be made more variable (the 1800 French look a fair bit like 1808 Spanish, almost the right hats, the rebellion troops often had a cockade on their hats too, longer tailed old style coats and blue was a colour the Spanish used a lot... so its not far off). I'd like to give players an idea of unit quality from its appearance so the better regular Spanish units look the most uniform and the provincial and volunteer units look progressively more... well... crap, basically. So I'm working to add these sprites and unit classes to the mod which is all new territory for me.

Kevin advises that Zeke's sprites may use the old compression packing method and so be less efficient which means we will be limited to smaller battles unless we are prepared to put up with lots of lag like we used to

I will only be adding new sprites to some infantry units however so I hope the impact isn't too great.

I'm adding some new mixed up sprites and classes to the French infantry too for the same reason - so the reserve legions, garde natoinale, etc have a visual impact.

This is all taking time. I hope, if it all goes smoothly, we could have the battle next weekend but I want to get this work done and stable first so some testing will be needed too. If the game turns into a hoplessly slow slideshow I'll have to abandon the idea.