We've had a couple of situations now where Victory Conditions have a ship/sub subtype that is not even in the scenario. I need someone to take charge of the situation and tinker with a database to see what effect changing the subtypes has on scenarios already created with the database.

 

General suggested procedure:

• Make a scenario, use both type and subtype in various VCs, note the type/subtypes you used in which VCs.
   
  
• Modify the database by editing the lVictoryType table for VCs in your scenario.
   
  
• Modify the database by editing the lPlatformSubTypes table for VCs in your scenario.
   
  
• Check and see if your VCs are still applicable to the platforms in the scenario.
  

 

The idea is to see if database maintainers need to keep the Platform SubTypes and Victory Types static throughout the life of a database (i.e. saying NEVER change a subtype or victory type once it has been added to the database for fear of breaking existing scenarios).

archiving this since nobody responded.

Sorry, T, I can look at this.

Had a look at this issue while on IRC today with Tony.

 

To get a baseline to work from, I created a scenario with Victory Conditions as follows:

 

Blue Minimum Victory: Destroy 1x CG (ie. Broad Type 'CG')

Blue Total Victory: Destroy 4x ships (ie. Type 'Ship')

Red Minimum Victory: Destroy 4x Attack aircraft (ie. Broad Type 'Attack')

Red Total Victory: Destroy 8x aircraft (ie. Type 'Aircraft')

 

Ran the scenario in EC2003 GIUK Gap using HCDB-090128.

 

Results:

 

Blue sank a Kynda guided missile cruiser (Broad Type 'CG') and Min Vic was awarded. Blue then sank 3x more ships, and Total Vic was awarded.

 

Red downed 4x F/A-18E Block II (Broad Type 'Attack'). No Min Vic was awarded, suggesting that this part of the Victory Conditions code is not working as intended. Red downed 4x more aircraft, and Total Vic was awarded.

 

Now, working from here, moved to editing the lVictoryType table in the PE.

 

The Kynda CG appears as VictoryType 'Combat Med' in the HCDB. So I changed the wording of 'Combat Med' in the lVictoryType table, and exported the new DB.

 

Ran the scenario again. Blue sank the Kynda CG, and again Min Vic was achieved, despite the change in the lVictoryType table. So it looks like we're ok on that front.

 

It was deemed unnecessary to examine the effect of changes in the lPlatformSubTypes table on Vicconds.

 

Conclusions:

 

You can probably safely change the text of the entries in the lVictoryType table without breaking scenario victory conditions, as long as you do not change the numerical index (eg. the index is 0 for 'Combat Med').

 

To avoid breaking scenario victory conditions, however, the DB designer should not change a platform's Subtype or Victory type.