Red Sun Over China - Possible Bugs (RESOLVED)

mattbarnes

@cernel Yeah, I think the Red Star book that Pulicat was leaning on was quite communist-favouring and gave the impression of them dominating a wider region. Reading around the history, the muslim Ma clique in the NW remained Nationalist and most Soviet aid to China went to the Nationalists, who reoccupied Xian after the Incident. However, it's undeniable that the communists were very influencial in that period so maybe Pulicat had to find a way within the triplea engine to ensure they get enough game resources. Since the game has the Chinese allied with each other, maybe the "communists" can just be seen as "the northern chinese forces", incorporating Ma troops, communists and other armies in that area?

It remains a fascinating and highly playable game, all the better for the dynamic of having to manage the northern forces separately and play the guerrilla war. I don't think we should let some historical liberties and poor labelling detract from that fun.

wirkey

@mattbarnes I've played this map several times years ago. The reason for the factories not working might be that they were damaged at the beginning of the game. With one of the engine updates this might cause the problem. Back at the time of this map lots of features where not available.
The main reason I stopped playing was the huge inbalancy towards Japan and as pulicat had vanished for some time nobody to was willing to fix that together with me.

redrum

Well, I'll try to take a look at the map to see if I think it has potential and is worth fixing up. Let's try to use the first post of this thread to collect all the current known problems in detail and how to reproduce them so if I or someone else decides to fix it up then they can jump right in.

wirkey

@redrum I don't remember all the errors, but I do remember some user enforced rules which could be coded with todays engine:

Cities working as transporting hubs: can move from one adjacent territory of the city to (any) other adjacent one (through the city) for only one movement point if your side controls the city
All the building restrictions

erik542

If this map is getting touched up, it'd be nice if the railroads got implemented in a more reasonable fashion. As it stands, the trains are boats that move through two off map territories to get to their destination.

Hepps

@erik542 Yeah I remember moving trains in this being very undesirable.

mattbarnes

As requested by @redrum, here's a short list of what I think are bugs:

nationalists cant build in their factories (except the capital)
nationalist factories are supposed to start damaged and require a premium to repair but this isn't functioning; neither the nationalists nor japan (after capture) can repair/use them
nationalists can build in the countryside but japan can "damage" the countryside with strat bombing, which is probably not intended
2 hit battleships fail to repair
communists seem to get "no allies in my territory" bonus regardless of where allies are
the trains don't seem to be captured when the city is captured; they otherwise seem to operate as described
nationalists are supposed to only be able to make infantry and cavalry in the countryside but the engine allows anything to be built
the PUV bonuses for Objectives are not per the Notes (I'm not sure if the Notes or the Game are the intention)
there are a few rules listed in the Notes which players are supposed to self-impose; it would be neater if these can be built into the game

mattbarnes

And

odd turn order wrt Thailand's turn being interwoven with Japan's (unless that is deliberate?)

erik542

@mattbarnes

Thailand's turn order is deliberate but I think unnecessary.

redrum

@mattbarnes So decided to take a shot at some of these. Here is the PR that is merged and if you redownload the map then you can test them out: https://github.com/triplea-maps/red_sun_over_china/pull/5

Here are the ones that should be fixed:

nationalists cant build in their factories (except the capital)
nationalist factories are supposed to start damaged and require a premium to repair but this isn't functioning; neither the nationalists nor japan (after capture) can repair/use them
nationalists can build in the countryside but japan can "damage" the countryside with strat bombing, which is probably not intended
2 hit battleships fail to repair
communists seem to get "no allies in my territory" bonus regardless of where allies are

redrum

@mattbarnes @wirkey @erik542 So I started reviewing the objectives in the XML vs the notes and here are the discrepancies:

British: Phase II is ON. - 40 in the notes and 30 in the XML
Thailand: Territorial Intergrity - 10 in the notes and 5 in the XML
Thailand: Indochinese resources - 10 in the notes and 5 in the XML
Japanese: Operation Ichi-Go - 30 in the notes and 20 in the XML

Any thoughts on which is correct?

Also there are 2 weird objectives that I'm not sure what they are for or if they were just for testing?

    <!-- Functional NOs -->
    <!-- UK Cap -->
    <attachment name="objectiveAttachment101" attachTo="British" javaClass="games.strategy.triplea.attachments.RulesAttachment" type="player">
      <option name="objectiveValue" value="-27"/>
      <option name="alliedExclusionTerritories" value="Phase II" count="1"/>
    </attachment>
    <attachment name="objectiveAttachment101" attachTo="British" javaClass="games.strategy.triplea.attachments.RulesAttachment" type="player">
      <option name="objectiveValue" value="-1"/>
      <option name="alliedOwnershipTerritories" value="Myitkyina" count="1"/>
    </attachment>

PR for a few more fixes: https://github.com/triplea-maps/red_sun_over_china/pull/6

nationalists are supposed to only be able to make infantry and cavalry in the countryside but the engine allows anything to be built
TripleA now enforces "Manchukwo, Japanese, and British may build ONLY in FACTORIES."

PR for another round of improvements: https://github.com/triplea-maps/red_sun_over_china/pull/7

TripleA now enforces "Movement from one side of an enemy city to another is technically possible, but is considered ILLEGAL."
Fixed missing images in the notes unit table

PR for another round of improvements: https://github.com/triplea-maps/red_sun_over_china/pull/8

TripleA now enforces "British are not allowed to fight Axis for the first 3 rounds (Phase I), unless any Axis country attacks it first."

redrum

@mattbarnes @wirkey @erik542 @Hepps So the next thing I'd like to address now that bugs and player enforced rules have been fixed are trains. The trains in this map are pretty funky as Pulicat had to work around lots of TripleA limitations that no longer exist now.

The idea is merging the train concepts from Civil War (cleaner version of the existing ones in RSOC) and Total World War. This leaves a system where the following can be done:

Trains move on 'rails' which are static units defined in certain territories instead of only station to station
There are no separate station territories just station units in the city territories and trains are now land transports
Trains can only load units if they start where there is a 'station'
Trains can unload units in any territory they move to along the 'rails'
Trains are either captured or destroyed when an enemy moves into the territory they are in

The main pros of this system are:

More flexible train movement
No more weird dummy territories in top left
No longer need trains to be sea units or have separate station territories
Trains still should strive to end their turn in territories with stations so they can load the next turn
Trains can unload units in places besides stations
Avoids weirdness of trains still being alive in stations when enemy captures the city

Thoughts?

wirkey

@redrum sounds good, although I'd like to keep some sort of rail lines, like in CW and not the way it is in TWW

redrum

@wirkey Yeah, my idea is to have a much lower percentage of territories with rails (essentially those that it runs through now) vs TWW has rails in just about every territory (mostly due to its scale).

Thoughts on my previous post around the NOs?

Really looking for some more insight from those that originally helped test this map when Pulicat was around as I don't have any experience on it yet.

wirkey

@redrum i really can't remember what we had, but as the Axis were overpowered anyway, I'd go with the lower values for them

redrum

@wirkey Alright. I'll at least make the XML and notes in sync to start and lean towards helping China. After I rework the trains, want to start up a game?

Cernel

@redrum If there is the intention to redraw the rail connections based primarily on historicity, I may provide a draft (tho there would still be the other main issue of no Muslims and Lanchow and Sian Communist, if it is an issue, as I'm almost sure it is).

However a fully correct representation would likely require the use of canals, because with the allow-movement units' way you cannot represent the case of two adjacent territories both having rail lines, yet not connecting to each other (almost sure there would be a few cases, maybe also important ones).

wirkey

@redrum sure. Does the current engine allow the "land canals"? Moving from one side of a city your side controls to the other with only one movement point? Territory A (adjacent to City C) has a connection to Territory B (also adjacent to C) but only usable if you own C

Cernel

@wirkey It fully supports it since more than 5 years, but it would need some playtesting to proof, since it's a fair bit of coding, so easy to maybe getting a couple connections wrong.

And, as I was saying, you can use canals for railways too (just make a canal that excludes everything but trains and with the condition of owning both territories). Since redrum allowed for parallel canals, you can also have them requiring only one of the two territories, if you think you should be able to push your trains in attack, where the enemy has railway lines.

redrum

@wirkey @Cernel I already added all the land canals to enforce the special city movement rules: https://github.com/triplea-maps/red_sun_over_china/pull/7. Tested a few to ensure it worked but odds are I didn't get every single one right the first time so testing is appreciated.

@Cernel Probably going to keep with generally the existing rail lines and yes a few may end up adjacent so allow movement kind of across lines. I might consider trying to add land canals to prevent train movement between certain territories if I want to have more "pure" rail lines (haven't tried that but assume it would work).