[StratCon 49] Grab bag of minor StratCon glitches

[Tecmes]

49.0
(btw the new missions and variations are great)

• In Scenario description, when a special is added, the description text includes the .xml file name. So it would display: "LocalGarrisonTurrets.xml: Fixed defences have been..." instead of just the text.
• Almost none of the new scenario specify terrain control,
• MM 0.49 now feature both BV display and unit count display, which is neat. But it's not clear which is used for scenario victory conditions.
• What is the consequence of losing an attached House Officer? Edit: in some scenarios it is specified that it causes a SP loss, but not all.
• In the StratCon interface, when Managing Scenario to e.g. add a Lance, you can select a Lance, but not unselect it. Edit: ctrl-click does it.

[Tecmes]

Edit: removing a Lance when managing scenario works with Ctrl-click. Not very obvious, but works!

[Tecmes]

Defend Grounded DS scenario

• The DS sometime starts at altitude 5 (from the lobby), which makes the scenario kind of unplayable as the DS simply flies away round 2....
• Shouldn't there be a token allied defense force deploying near the DS? In my fist case the OpFor started right beside (under, actually!?) the DS in the middle of the (50x70!) map while we were deployed at the edge (with weather conditions slowing us down...).
• Rerolling map sized shrunk it from 50x70 to 20x20. Is this intentional if that can happen?
• Allied artillery was gleefully bombarding hexes which were part of the DS
• As feared, the DS DID try to lift off for some reason. Maybe because the ground beneath was not level? Or it does something else I don't quite get, but anyway it crashed down twice (destroying units underneath units in the process.. maybe it's a tactic?)
• Fortunately the game hung, so I was excused to restart it and remove the artillery from the roster...
• What happens if there is not the level space available for the grounded DS to be deployed?

[Tecmes]

• When salvaging units, the unit appears in the repair bay straight away, before the force is back from the StratCon deployement return
• When sending reinforcement and spending VP/SP, the cost text is not clear IMHO ("(Support point, will convert VP from SP)")
• It seems injured pilots appears in the infirmary before their unit is back from the StratCon field deployement

SCENARIO ISSUES

• Orbital Defense , the main OppFor seems to deploy from the same edge as the player and allies, which seems odd (but not impossible).
• Space - Blockade Run, the enemy DS doesn't appear to be fleeing. It juste moves around defensively (I had a similar issue with another sceneraio involving an allied DS to protect)
• Space - Blockade Run, the main objective is to destroy or cripple the DS; but making the DS crippled is not enough for the end-game report, it needs to be "destroyed or withdrawn". So maybe change the objective text OR the victory condition..
• Diversion - Using tactical reroll, it's possible to get lucky and change the field size to something much smaller, making the exit part of the mission very easy (I got a 10 hex wide traverse...). Is that intentional?
• Maybe there should be a warning for Capture Mechwarrior scenario that you should NOT enable the unofficial MM option "MM flee upon ejection" which makes the scenario nigh unwinnable.

[Tecmes]

Harass scenario:

• The unit group to be prevented was not specified. It says "Prevent 50% of the following force...", but there was no specified force
• It says to prevent 50% of the force to reach the opposite edge, but adds "Crippled units do not count...". That is either unclear or counter-intuitive? If they are crippled, they should count. It seems like this comment (and rule?) is a leftover from an escape situation.
• Also, it seems that you start deployement in the same turn (unlike the similar Chase scenario), which is odd because you also start on the same edge (but maybe it's because I had fast units, or because the unit group to be stopped was not specified, so it wasn't set properly).
  

Scout scenario (the new one where you have to spot/TAG/atk targets): maybe add a small comment to the effect that you have to manually check which units have been scouted, as it doesn't seem to be automatically detected.

[Tecmes]

• Air Support scenario (and other air-to-ground scenarios I guess): if the scenario happens with the EnemyAmbush variant, you're in trouble... because

1. Air units can't "wake up" enemy hidden units
2. Allied units tend to not search for hidden units (if they survive long enough anyway)
3. Allied Hidden units never pop out of hiding.

[NickAragua]

Summarizing as checklist for easier tracking. Responses inline:

• In Scenario description, when a special is added, the description text includes the .xml file name. So it would display: "LocalGarrisonTurrets.xml: Fixed defences have been..." instead of just the text.
• Almost none of the new scenario specify terrain control
  By default, it's "force withdrawal of 50% of hostiles". Will review scenarios where it's not the default.
• MM 0.49 now feature both BV display and unit count display, which is neat. But it's not clear which is used for scenario victory conditions.
  Up to the player.
• What is the consequence of losing an attached House Officer? Edit: in some scenarios it is specified that it causes a SP loss, but not all.
  Should be -1 scenario VP by default (so it may turn a scenario victory into a draw, etc).
• In the StratCon interface, when Managing Scenario to e.g. add a Lance, you can select a Lance, but not unselect it. Edit: ctrl-click does it.
• The DS sometime starts at altitude 5 (from the lobby), which makes the scenario kind of unplayable as the DS simply flies away round 2....
• Shouldn't there be a token allied defense force deploying near the DS? In my fist case the OpFor started right beside (under, actually!?) the DS in the middle of the (50x70!) map while we were deployed at the edge (with weather conditions slowing us down...).
  Not necessarily, but fixed the issue where opfor would deploy under the DS.
• Rerolling map sized shrunk it from 50x70 to 20x20. Is this intentional if that can happen?
• Allied artillery was gleefully bombarding hexes which were part of the DS
  Danger close, baby. A side effect of the way potential damage is evaluated - a pile of enemy units in the theoretical AOE negates the penalty for having one or two friendlies in the mix. Unrelated MegaMek bot issue.
• As feared, the DS DID try to lift off for some reason. Maybe because the ground beneath was not level? Or it does something else I don't quite get, but anyway it crashed down twice (destroying units underneath units in the process.. maybe it's a tactic?)
• Fortunately the game hung, so I was excused to restart it and remove the artillery from the roster...
• What happens if there is not the level space available for the grounded DS to be deployed?
  The bot will then remove the DS and the scenario will proceed as if it hadn't been deployed at all. Will need to think about how to handle that situation.
• When salvaging units, the unit appears in the repair bay straight away, before the force is back from the StratCon deployment return
• When sending reinforcement and spending VP/SP, the cost text is not clear IMHO ("(Support point, will convert VP from SP)")
  Updated.
• It seems injured pilots appears in the infirmary before their unit is back from the StratCon field deployment

SCENARIO ISSUES

• Orbital Defense , the main OppFor seems to deploy from the same edge as the player and allies, which seems odd (but not impossible).
  Not sure which orbital defense you're talking about, the facility?
• Space - Blockade Run, the enemy DS doesn't appear to be fleeing. It just moves around defensively (I had a similar issue with another scenario involving an allied DS to protect)
• Space - Blockade Run, the main objective is to destroy or cripple the DS; but making the DS crippled is not enough for the end-game report, it needs to be "destroyed or withdrawn". So maybe change the objective text OR the victory condition..
• Diversion - Using tactical reroll, it's possible to get lucky and change the field size to something much smaller, making the exit part of the mission very easy (I got a 10 hex wide traverse...). Is that intentional?
• Maybe there should be a warning for Capture Mechwarrior scenario that you should NOT enable the unofficial MM option "MM flee upon ejection" which makes the scenario nigh unwinnable.
  As an abstraction, I would say that, if that setting is on, the mechwarrior will automatically get captured if they eject (unless killed during the ejection procedure)

Harass:

• The unit group to be prevented was not specified. It says "Prevent 50% of the following force...", but there was no specified force
• It says to prevent 50% of the force to reach the opposite edge, but adds "Crippled units do not count...". That is either unclear or counter-intuitive? If they are crippled, they should count. It seems like this comment (and rule?) is a leftover from an escape situation.
  This is intended - if a unit is crippled during this scenario, it cannot (currently in theory, later in practice) meaningfully participate in any further action without substantial repairs
• Also, it seems that you start deployment in the same turn (unlike the similar Chase scenario), which is odd because you also start on the same edge (but maybe it's because I had fast units, or because the unit group to be stopped was not specified, so it wasn't set properly).
  This is likely if you have a) fast units and b) your primary force commander has a high strategy skill (e.g. if you have a bunch of 6/9/6s and the force commander has 3 strategy, your deployment round is 30 / 6 = 5, -1 for all units are jumpers, commander stragey 3, bringing it to 1). If you have a specific situation where that's not the case, please provide a save.
• Scout scenario (the new one where you have to spot/TAG/atk targets): maybe add a small comment to the effect that you have to manually check which units have been scouted, as it doesn't seem to be automatically detected.
• Air Support scenario (and other air-to-ground scenarios I guess): if the scenario happens with the EnemyAmbush variant, you're in trouble... because
• Air units can't "wake up" enemy hidden units
  Actually, this is incorrect, they can and will if they fly over or within one hex. Not sure if that's correct with regards to the actual rules, but it is what it is.
• Allied units tend to not search for hidden units (if they survive long enough anyway)
• Allied Hidden units never pop out of hiding.
  These two are an unrelated bot issue.

[Tecmes]

• Blockade Run (and all others with fleeing Droships): The DS bot is not set to flee, which makes the scn not really workable.
  I went over all the dropship scenarios and the only one where this was the case was the Low Atmo - Escort, which will be fixed.
• "Enemy Dropship" variation: typo (it's/its)
• All scn with an enemy DS: the DS inflates the salvage value tremendously, allowing you to salvage/ransom pretty much ALL units witout ever going over the Max %, as the DS will add 200K+ to the total value.
  Try 200M. :D Dropships are pretty expensive, and capturing one intact is no mean feat. I think this is working as intended.
• All Base objective scn: The Allied bot attacks Turret buildings with reckless abandon, ignoring the fact that you ought to keep them intact to capture (though I have no idea how to do that!).
  Capturing was discussed on the forum. The bot attacking turrets is an on-going megamek bot issue and can't be resolved without non-trivial changes.
• When reinforcing with a Fight lance, the helper text is missing. It just displays "(lanceinfightRole.text)"
• Prevent Evac scn: Allied bot seems to ignore the main objective (fleeing units)
  This is a problem when the units in question are designated as civilian, and will need non-trivial megamek-side changes to fix.
• Prevent Evac scn: end-of-game Objective Status report counts withdrawn/fled Fleeing Units as destroyed (which seems quite wrong).
• Base - Hostile - Recon scn: The rule for scouting out Turrets doesn't specifiy you must have LOS to "scan" (for ex if there's a taller building in front). Is that intentional?
  I was also toying around with the idea of making those turrets hidden and having the objective be to simply locate them all.
• Base scns: Turrets deploy during later turns (eventhough they were listed as start of game in the lobby). This seems quite weird. The pattern is quite predicable: the three first, then one 6 turns after, then three more, and the last (a big 3xsniper) didn't show up.
  Gotta say I can't reproduce this. Let's make a separate github issue from this one with an example save.

[NickAragua]

Just wanted to call out that I appreciate the thorough thrashing you're giving my code. Replies and details in-line. Haven't gotten to all the items yet, and some are stuff that will require non-trivial changes to the bot so we'll have to live with them for the time being.

[Tecmes]

I realize that several scenario issues I've encountered are actually due to MM lobby loading issues (XML parsing from MHQ?).
I've tried increasing the load delay, but still often units are flat-out missing; that's OK, I can spot that, but other issues may be much more sneaky. I've noticed starting altitudes being sometimes not proper (e.g. 5 one time, zero the other), and even the wrong Team assignation once. Worriyingly, it's possible that bot parameters or deploy delay might not be loaded properly every time, which makes bug reproduction/hunting problematic. It might be the cause of seeral issues above.

I have no idea how to troubleshoot this issue, though, as it is by essence fickle and impossible to reproduce for you. Clearly, it worsens as my session goes on, and restarting helps.

[Tecmes]

Something is wrong there! I'm not sure whether I was credited VP or not.

That was a Recon scn.
I should note that the unit list in MHQ and MM lobby included three Hueys artillery, but they weren't deployed (maybe they were off-board in which case it's a bugger to scout them....).

[Tecmes]

• Irregular forces scn: Just one more great idea! However it doesn't specify the % of enemy units to destroy.
• LocalGarrisonTurrets: appeared in a game without buildings (I guess it's hard to tell whether a map will have buildings)
  Not addressable at this time. Consider it a freebie for now.
• SearchAndRescue: ditto. Also indications really not clear about what to do? Destroy the turrets?
  Either as per the 'capture facility' scenario or as per the 'facility-extract' scenario type.

[Tecmes]

• Convoy scn bot doesn't seem to be set for Escape.
  Only the convoy units are set for escape, the escorts will fight you.
• When deploying minefields, it doesn't seem like you can NOT deploy them.
  You should be able to simply click 'Done'.

[Tecmes]

• When removing a unit from TO&E, even if it's supposed to be deployed, it teleports back to the base and is available e.g. for repairs.
  I'm considering retaining that behavior as a sort of GM mode escape hatch.
• I got a scn with twice the Rookies variant. Is that normal?
  It's theoretically possible, yes. It means instead of veterans you get greens, etc.

[mnahkola]

Something is wrong there! I'm not sure whether I was credited VP or not.

That was a Recon scn.
I should note that the unit list in MHQ and MM lobby included three Hueys artillery, but they weren't deployed (maybe they were off-board in which case it's a bugger to scout them....).

Oh hey, so this was reported earlier? Just added a "me too" to #2834 ...

[kernhe]

Ok, issue is old but still open:

0.49.9 Snapshot
since a few weeks, StratCom generates Engage missions with the mission goal: Engage the following enemy unit(s) and force(s): for at least null turns