Official SEOW

Hi guys we are still trying to get Stalingrad working on a huge scale and are reducing our chiefs, but the MP seems to conspire against us

In the settings we have a combined total of 136 platoons therefore when we build a full mission we expect to see 136 chiefs, but it does not work like that because tonights test mission built 188 chiefs!

This was puzzling so we made a new mission with each side moving just one ground task force which was a total of 15 moves (8 allies and 7 axis)

Soviets moved a Heavy tank taskforce which was
3x3 SPG Su76
3x4 KV-1 heavy tank
2x1 ZIS-5 truck 25mm AA gun
(8 chiefs)

Axis moved a medium tank taskforce which was
3x4 Skoda R2 light tank
2x3 Sturmgeschütz III Ausf. G
2x1 Opel Blitz Maultier 20mm flak
(7 chiefs)

But when we build this simple mission we got 20 chiefs as below

0_Chief Armor.1-LT_35Ro 2
1_Chief Armor.1-LT_35Ro 2
2_Chief Armor.1-LT_35Ro 2
3_Chief Armor.1-LT_35Ro 2
4_Chief Vehicles.OpelBlitzMaultierAA 2
5_Chief Vehicles.OpelBlitzMaultierAA 2
6_Chief Armor.3-StuGIIIG 2
7_Chief Armor.4-LT_35Ro 2
8_Chief Armor.4-LT_35Ro 2
9_Chief Armor.3-StuGIIIG 2
10_Chief Armor.1-SU-76M 1
11_Chief Armor.1-SU-76M 1
12_Chief Armor.1-SU-76M 1
13_Chief Vehicles.ZIS5_AA 1
14_Chief Vehicles.ZIS5_AA 1
15_Chief Armor.3-SU-76M 1
16_Chief Armor.3-SU-76M 1
17_Chief Armor.4-KV1 1
18_Chief Armor.4-KV1 1
19_Chief Armor.4-KV1 1

The vehicles highlighted in red above are causing us problems as for some reason they are built in the .mis file as singe unit chiefs, this is creating more chiefs for the PC to process and is making the .mis file size bigger than it should be. Using the Stalingrad winter map with 5x4 T34 we have a 2kb file, with 20x1 T34 its a 3kb file. I know this is not much but when we are pushing the limits as we are every last little detail can help. In tonights big test build we have 52 more chiefs than we expected.

Do we know why the MP is building like this and splintering groups of tanks into smaller chiefs?

Hi Classic,

First a little terminology. THe mission file is built by the DCS, not the MP.

Ultimately, the way moving platoons are expanded into chiefs should be controlled by the Mobile field in the Object_Specifications. For armour units, e.g. SU-76M, this field looks like:

Armor.3-SU-76M

The "3" tells SEOW how many tanks can be combined into a single chief. You can see in your listing that it is working fine for the Skoda tanks because there is an instance of

7_Chief Armor.4-LT_35Ro 2

which indicates a single mobile platoon of 4 Skodas being represented by a single multi-tank chief. Now this "multitank" feature operates on an individual platoon basis. It does not seek to combine similar platoons in a task force.

Returning to your example, I do see instances of single Skodas and single SU-76Ms, which I suspect is not what you want.

Here are some things to check:

Were all tank platoons placed in the template in the same way, i.e. as multitank chiefs, or were some placed as single stationaries and some as multitank chiefs?

Was the "Load all Ground/Sea Units with Maximum Strength" option used at initialization time? This expands all platoons to Normal_Group_Strength value in Object_Specifications.

Do all Skoda and SU-76 platoons in your test display strength 4 and 3 (respectively) in the MP?

Cheers,
4Shades

Thank you Shades and oops for the terminology on my part, for years I have only existed on the MP side of SEOW this campaign is my first venture deeper into the system.

You are quite correct it is those single Skodas and Su76M's which we do not want nor did we expect.

Going through your list of things to check here are the answers

Were all tank platoons placed in the template in the same way, i.e. as multitank chiefs, or were some placed as single stationaries and some as multitank chiefs?

This I do not know but have asked Devill and the campaign designer to come by this thread, I am sure they can answer this question.

Was the "Load all Ground/Sea Units with Maximum Strength" option used at initialization time?

Looking in the MP as allied commander right now I can see that this box is not ticked so I presume it was not ticked at initialisation time. But I think Devill can answer this.

Do all Skoda and SU-76 platoons in your test display strength 4 and 3 (respectively) in the MP?

I cannot answer for the Skodas as I cannot see them but I can see my three platoons of SU-76M and in the MP they are all displayed as strength = 3, in fact every platoon of SU-76M displays a strength of 3.

I presume that of these questions the last one is most relevant? as I can see 3x3 in the MP I presume we should expect to see 3x3 in the built mission? If my presumption is correct is there anything in the DCS that for some reason would try to break a 3 tank platoon into single tank chiefs?

Hi Classic,

Good answers. There could well be a bug in the DCS causing this, so I am trying to isolate the possible cause.

If all the SU-76M platoons are indeed strength 3, then we likely either have the Mobile field indicating Armor.1-SU76M, or we have a DCS bug.

Cheers,
4S

Ok Shades, thank you.

I expect Devill will be along soon and will be able to answer the other questions

Hi guys,

Shades you probably saw my email in the meantime. I didn't have the time to check the template and whether it is built only with correct platoons, but right now the DB is in the state after the last test was built (the one with only 15 platoons moving) so you can cross check it with the mission file I sent.

As I said in the email, I see the same thing happening in Crete. There were no single tanks placed in Crete template, and the distances between offending tanks there indicate that they should have been in a platoon (less than 90m apart).

Campaign Stalingrad was initialized without the "full unit strength" option.

Cheers!

I reproduced this error. Will debug asap.

This really is only causing an elevated number of Chiefs - no other ill-effects.

Cheers,
4S

Thank you Shades.

Yes we thought it was only causing an increased number of chiefs but our understanding is that chiefs have a big effect on server or PC performance ie. 100 T34s in single tank chiefs will demand much more processor time than the same 100 T34's in multi-tank chiefs. I may be wrong with this but its how I know it What I do know for sure though is that the .mis file with 100 individual tanks will be a larger file than the .mis with 25x4 tanks and I believe the size of the .mis can have an affect on server performance.

Thanks for the speedy fix Shades, much appreciated

Hi.

We have started a campaign in SEOW (Ghotic Line) but we have the same (or similar) problem as Classic. I have read the post and I installed the fix, but unfortunately it does not work (or I'm doing something wrong).

In the MP: 1 Task Force (1x Panzer IVJ, 1x Panzer IVJ, 1x Panzer IVJ, 1x Panzer IVJ)

When the mission has been built:

17_Chief Armor.1-PzIVJ 2
18_Chief Armor.4-PzIVJ 2
19_Chief Armor.4-PzIVJ 2
20_Chief Armor.4-PzIVJ 2

What I can do? Thanks for your help.

Steiner.

Steiner I am not familiar with the names of the various databases but try the 'objects specifications' table where you can find the 'normal strength' details of each platoon then rebuild the mission.

Thank you Classic.

I made some changes in the "object_specification" table.

Test 1 --> Before: Normal_Group_Strength = 4. After: Normal_Group_Strength = 1. Result: No change

Test 2 --> Before: Mobile = Armor.4-PzIVJ. After: Mobile = Armor.1-PzIVJ. Result: OK

17_Chief Armor.1-PzIVJ 2
18_Chief Armor.1-PzIVJ 2
19_Chief Armor.1-PzIVJ 2
20_Chief Armor.1-PzIVJ 2

Thanks for your help.
Steiner.

I did a test mission, using only PzIVJ (1,2,3,4,5,12) in Task Forces

Here are the results, perhaps it could help you Mike:

http://www.derrierloisirs.fr/seow/SEDB60/TF.jpg


Note1: Mobile = Armor.1-PzIVJ is not correct. It gives the right number of tanks but each TF is located at the same location: PzIVJ are above each others.
e.g: TF= 4 x 3 PzIVJ ---> appear in mission as 4 x (3 tanks at the same cordinates) so we only see 4 PzIVJ

Note2: I saw this: When the asked groups number or total quantity are not reached, others groups are generated...
See my second image:
http://www.derrierloisirs.fr/seow/SEDB60/TF3.jpg

OK guys, thanks, will try to get to this soon.

PA-Dore wrote:Note1: Mobile = Armor.1-PzIVJ is not correct. It gives the right number of tanks but each TF is located at the same location: PzIVJ are above each others.
e.g: TF= 4 x 3 PzIVJ ---> appear in mission as 4 x (3 tanks at the same cordinates) so we only see 4 PzIVJ

I know Dore. But we have a campaign currently in progress and it is a contingency solution for me.