AA-fire/casualty selection issues in Revised (and other versions)
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@Cernel Okay, if there is something that needs to be fixed, we need a bug report. A bug report has four elements (it's actually kinda formal):
- status: is it open or closed
- reproduction steps: minimized list of actions to create the problem
- problem description: typically a "notice" line that says, notice this behavior, that is the bug
- expected behavior: a description of instead of the 'notice', what should have happened.
Of course, the more terse and to the point the bug report the better, short and sweet. Forums perhaps dovetails here as identifying the actual problem and discussing what the right fix can be difficult. Typically I've seen that best handled by simply re-creating bug reports to be concise summaries of longer threads, so one closes an old bug and opens a new short one (in this way the 10 pages of text is then converted to a proper bug report that then has a better chance to be picked up and fixed). The open/close status is just for efficiency, you need to be able to answer "what are the open bugs? What should I look at?". The repro steps and problem description is so the dev can create the problem and know they are looking at the same issue. The expect fix is explicit so we know how to fix, it can be not obvious what the right fix is. Software is stupid exact, exact steps of what should be done are required. This then combines with the repro steps so that a dev can then repro with a fix to ensure the problem was actually fixed.
Those 4 items define a bug report. As a software project, that is what is needed for us to be able to effectively fix bugs.
I continue to be disturbed we have a 'bug' section in forums as none of those items are properly tracked in a conversation thread, they all need to be simulated by manipulating titles and the 'prompt' of this is the information we need can only come from a 'read this first' post. It can be made to work, but it's for sure simulating proper bug tracking software in forum (aka conversation) software.
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@LaFayette If this whole matter would be summarized in a way to be complete and understandable (that would really require a number of examples) (which we cannot do until v1 is clarified too), it will be a really long wall of text, and still require the best part of a hour to be fully understood by someone having no idea about it.
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@Cernel Understood, that wall of text is probably better as a wiki document to summarize how V1 should function. From there, for actual bugs, I'd recommend divide and conquer and break down each independent item to its own bug report.
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@LaFayette No, actually, what I meant is that v1 is the one we haven't fully sorted out, mostly due to the lack of good documentation, and it might not be bugged, though I doubt it. For the remaining part, this is about a number of different things working differently in v2 OOB, v2 LHTR, v3, v4 and v5/Global. Some of those things are more important than others, and a few are substantially irrelevant, even if theorically wrong.
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@Cernel Ah, thanks. I'm thinking a wiki document with a summarized set of "this is how it should work" (per ruleset) would be really valuable. We could then compare actual behavior to that document to know where the bugs are. A discussion thread like this is essential for creating that document, it'd be great to see this take the next step so we can incorporate this knowledge back into the game.
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@LaFayette said in [Open] AA revised minor bug:
@Cernel Ah, thanks. I'm thinking a wiki document with a summarized set of "this is how it should work" (per ruleset) would be really valuable.
Yeah, that would be really cool to have, for each basic maps from v1 to v6, plus a general list for the things that apply to all of them, but it would be really a huge effort that only a very few people can do (practically, you need someone having a virtually perfect knowlenge of the intended rules and a virtually perfect knowledge of the program and maps behaviour, to see where they differ). On top of that, if such a thing would be telling the players what they are supposed to look after (or edit), then it should comprise both issues at an engine and at a map level. In a way, @Deltium has starting doing it for Revised, due to the need of regulating the ToC where TripleA doesn't fully support correctly.
I might see if I can put something together for v3 at least, I guess, but not promising. It would not be a short list...
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@Cernel said in [Open] AA revised minor bug:
you need someone having a virtually perfect knowlenge of the intended rules
Indeed, though that's a good place to start! The process of comparing what actually happens vs what should can happen over time.
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@LaFayette said in [Open] AA revised minor bug:
@Panther or other, is there another bug report for the major issues uncovered? Could those issues be summarized for a bug report?
Some time ago I created a list of currently unresolved rules issues here:
https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/32958/triplea-engine-known-rules-related-bugs-issuesI am happy to maintain that list on this forum, too, so I have just copied it. Find it here:
https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/1549/triplea-engine-known-rules-related-bugs-issuesCurrently I am not aware of any other wwII-game rule issue that we do not already have a Github issue for, at least v3-v6 (including wwII_1940_any) should be investigated and covered well.
Some of those issues mentioned there contain further implications for v1 and v2 - but those never have been investigated any deeper. -
@LaFayette The issues of this specific topic are summarized here:
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/4133v2 is elaborated on in detail, the other games in brief.
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@Panther Looks like that really needs to be closed to ice box.:smirking_face:
Anyways, I think that list is very brief, and more like a items' listing for people already fully knowing what the matter is. For example, when you see something like "incorrect timing of AA fire (different rules for OOB and LHTR apply, but both versions are affected)", there's no way you can know what that means, unless you do (or learn it, for example by reading through this thread).
EDIT: I see that this specific matter has been subsequently detailed and also discussed, in that issue. Sort of duplicating what we already did here.
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@Cernel said in [Open] AA revised minor bug:
EDIT: I see that this specific matter has been subsequently detailed and also discussed, in that issue. Sort of duplicating what we already did here.
Indeed, at Github I tried to summarize what is spreaded within this thread.
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@Cernel said in [Open] AA revised minor bug:
@Panther Looks like that really needs to be closed to ice box.:smirking_face:
Maybe it is just time to remove the misleading word "minor" from the title of this thread.
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@Panther It's actually funny to see that as the title of how many posts thread. I suppose you can feel free to paste the title of your GitHub issue as the title of this thread.
EDIT: Not that really matters about ice boxing it, mind you.
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@Cernel said in [Open] AA revised minor bug:
@Panther Looks like that really needs to be closed to ice box.
In some ways, if an issue is that old.
In this case, it is still quite current and the topic has come up again; In this case seeing if the task can be sub-divided, re-summarized and created as fresh, but smaller and easier to solve tasks is a valid approach. In theory it would have already been ice-boxed, and without an open issue we would have opened one again. Regardless, perhaps take a look at the old queue @Cernel and see if you really want the few devs to work on those issues or should instead focus on instead something like this? There are lots of issues that became old/stale, maybe one day we'll be able to re-open them. Meanwhile, I'd encourage you to be a bit less butt-hurt about it.. The goal is to shrink the bug queue and have it be sustainably getting smaller. The long tail of less important items detracts from the more important ones; a long queue is a cost in of itself.
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My e-mail is blowing up with all the activity in this thread! I dare not follow the discussion though. If anyone needs "expert" information on the book rules for AA revised, let me know. Otherwise I'm not of any use.
There was some debate and disagreement following my original post and I'm not even certain how it concluded but I fully stand by my original comment in terms of what needs changing. Basically, the moves made in Combat Movement should be tracked and at the end of Combat Movement the aa should roll. Looks like you have been discussing individualized aa rolling for aircraft - that sounds good to me. Generically, aa casualties shouldn't be electable by attacker or defender, but there are options for that in game set up.
GLHF.
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@LouisXIVXIV said in [Open] AA revised minor bug:
There was some debate and disagreement following my original post and I'm not even certain how it concluded but I fully stand by my original comment in terms of what needs changing. Basically, the moves made in Combat Movement should be tracked and at the end of Combat Movement the aa should roll.
This has been officially clarified you (and me) were right (tho I was not sure, because I think the rules were not that clear). Of course, that is true the exact same way both for Combat and Non Combat Movement. The only other thing here is the fact that in v2 OOB air units that participated in combat return immediately after combat, so you roll those before the ones that are just non combat moving.
Looks like you have been discussing individualized aa rolling for aircraft - that sounds good to me. Generically, aa casualties shouldn't be electable by attacker or defender, but there are options for that in game set up.
Yes, this has been clarified too (at least I'm taking @Panther word here). Casualty selection is exactly the same for v2 OOB, v2 LHTR, v3 and v4.
On this matter @Panther did we fully officially clarify casualties selection for v5/Global too (where you have AA factories and AA guns for battle only, with limited shots (and escorts/interceptors in case of Global))?
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@Cernel said in [Open] AA revised bug (AA-fire/casualty selection issues):
On this matter @Panther did we fully officially clarify casualties selection for v5/Global too (where you have AA factories and AA guns for battle only, with limited shots (and escorts/interceptors in case of Global))?
We have analyzed that during this thread and identfied "only" the randomness of casualty selection as issue.
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@LaFayette @Cernel
Regarding that "Ice Box" discussion:Starting with Veqryn and continuing until today the developers have always assured me that "rules compliance" belongs to the most important targets of the TripleA-project.
My main concern has always been rules compliance. That is why I dedicate a lot of my time to rules clarifications and to rules-bug-hunting and disregard playing by forum or playing the real board games. That is totally fine, I am happy with that - as I decided to adjust my personal priorities this way.Speaking about priorities - looking at those issues discussed in this topic and in the above mentioned list - I see sort of a discrepancy between the target (rules compliance) and the efforts to reach this target code-wise.
This is no complaint. Just a description of the status quo. I totally accept that everybody supports this project according to his priorities. I do nothing else.On the other hand it would be frustrating to see issues like those discussed in this thread being ice-boxed. What about the target "rules compliance"? How important is that? What is the point of discussing rules? What is the point of rules-bug hunting?
In case rules-issues really get ice-boxed, we should really discuss the targets of the project and if rules compliance still is an issue.
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@Panther If there is something ice-boxed, and it is an active issue and worth the attention, simply create a new bug. Ideally the new bug would be a very well written, short, concise, bug report with a link to the previous bug that was ice-boxed for more background and any other conversation threads.
If you really don't want to go to that trouble, just copy/paste the closed bug report. That level of non-effort might not be that well received, but at the end of the day active issues should be tracked as open issues.
AFAIK all items that are for bad game rules are still open and the issue expiry is being ignored for them. Those issues being on page 3, page 4 of the queue is not a good thing. It might feel good to have a ticket not be closed, but if it's still open and months old, it's not getting looked at. The time having passed is evidence that something has gone wrong, there is no reason to think that waiting N+1 months is going to lead to more success than waiting N months. Breaking up tasks into smaller tasks, making them more concise with easier to follow steps and a clear call-to-action of how to fix can be the difference sometimes.
In general, I would agree that rules compliance is very important. Beyond problems that cause game crashes, correctness of the game rules is about more important than anything else I can think of.
I think my ideal situation would be for the game to define 'rule sets'. In this you could select which rule set to play as an option. So for example you could switch to LHTR V3 rules as simply as you do when adding a bid or going to low luck. I'd like to see each rule under each rule set be selectable as a checkbox option. In this way every rule variant would find its way as a line item in a set of game options. On the code side, it would map to a pretty specific way the rules would be applied to the engine. Personally it's something I'd like to work on, but it's behind a few other initiatives. The barrier is that the current way the code is structured, it's pretty tangled and adding such options would not be clean, the rules are pretty hacked in and there is a lot missing. Due to the importance given to rules, that is why I'm ignoring any kind of ice-box policy for those issues even if them hanging out at the back of the queue is effectively the same thing.
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Re: ice-box, one item I did not mention is just prioritization. Time elapsed is a proxy for importance and priority. I don't ever want to call a problem low priority, but some impacts are more significant than others. I'll also note that nobody had more issues get ice-boxed then me. I think I had 30 or 40 some problem reports get closed due to age.
Again though, if something is an active issue and there is no open bug, just file the bug report. Part of the goal is we drew a line and then said "anything we get we'll fix within 6 months, or we'll be honest and admit we'll never fix it". Then you try really hard to make sure things get fixed within those 6 months. If an item is worth re-adding, it's important, and it'll then (ideally) get fixed.
One problem of course is our capacity is very low, overhead is really high. So as much as I'd like to say I'll fix all these problems, the reality is I'm going to get 5% done of what I want towards this project over lifetime. It's one reason I keep bitching about maintainer efficiency, in some scenarios I see us spending a lot of effort to not even get 5%, but instead just 1%. I'll be really happy if a third of what I want to get done, gets done in the next half year or year.
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