Base Air Patrols Loosing their Base

[TonyE]

On 8/4/2024 at 10:09 PM, donaldseadog said:

start with saved game Patrol-good.hpq, where airfield AAa has a group formation patrol of two Hawk, select the base and split off one of the patroling Hawk, enter a new course for the split off AC (eg RTB). Look at the patrol editor for AAa, the patrol notation is now wrong for the remaining Hawk (this is one of the indicators of this problem).

T

Quite the challenge on this one, even with the reproduceable case.  2ish hours into debugging and finally see that when processing the SplitGroup event Effect1.c MovePlanesToNewGroup is called.  One of the early lines of that procedure deletes all of the air patrol events for the donating aircraft unit.  That's a wrong action to take in this case since we are only moving half of the planes in the unit to a new group.  Since I'm sure it will bite us later, the procedure also removes all formation events for the unit.

My first suspicion is that we can leave the air patrol and formation events in place unless we are moving all planes in the unit to the new group.

[donaldseadog]

I can confirm the fix in 2024.004 only in respect of the reproducible version of the problem that I'd found, only time will tell I guess regarding a broader fix.

I'll run some of my saved games that seemed to have a high propensity to error ...

[donaldseadog]

The OP situation seems to remain. I've attached two saved games played in westpac BS, HCDB2 170909 DB, originally saved in 2024.003 (80% certain) and now saved in 20224.004.

RunDryB.0006 was opened and group ABS had incorrect patrolling choppers, they were removed from the group by F8 split command and sent F6 Land back to ABS.

Once refueled one was set to patrol and it was patrolling correctly. The game was saved and reopened and the patrol was incorrect, it was saved as RunDryB.0006A.

 

RunDryB.zip

[donaldseadog]

I'm still keeping an eye on this one but can't find the allusive point where it (probably) all starts to go pear shape.

It does seem to be rather more frequent than occasional in my current testing of Enriques remake of Now there are Two.

My work around is to go back in time (via iterative saves) and split and join the low in fuel aircraft (and any dodgies in the f4 formation editor) - they seem to miraculously get back to the pumps even when they have insufficient fuel?

[eeustice]

After Tonye's last update the issue seems to have been fixed. I am still doing some testing landing of large air groups in my current game.

[eeustice]

Fix verified! Thanks TonyE

[donaldseadog]

Oh dear I think still with us ..

Prowler was in group patrol. Going in there were other units about to run dry

I'll do some saves and looks.

[donaldseadog]

another clue perhaps, the attached zip file includes a save from scenario 4 of GIUK 2003. The game has gone thru two save/loads. Group ACC has a few air formation units that are not properly operating, in the F4 formation editor it can be seen that they are incorrectly designated not by their patrol type but by their class.

In AIWindow looking at AirFormationPatrols-Evnets they are not listed for ACC but I found by chance one of them listed for a Submarine groups ARU. Submarine group ARU has a single unit that at the start of the game was a unit of group ACC. Apparently during the save /load game they have been allocated to the wrong group (my guess).

airPatrolError.zip

[donaldseadog]

I went back to a previous comment https://harpgamer.com/harpforum/topic/33554-base-air-patrols-loosing-their-base/page/2/#findComment-63871 and looked at the zipped up test save and the same situation, the airformationevent is attributed to the wroing group. Below is the screen shot, the group that the event is asssigned to has no aircraft

(edit) I've looked at the original scenario from the save game (rundryB.0006a) and the group AFS (to which the airformation event now attaches, was originally an enemy ship that has been captured. I'll try to dig up more of the test saves that had this problem and look with this wrong event link.

[donaldseadog]

Yah, error is reproducable.

I started with westpac bs, scenario #2 , set up airformationpatrols in group AAC, split off (F8) a ship, saved game, started the saved game and the airformationpatrols of AAC were incorrect and the airformationevents were linked to the split off ship group.

I've not included any game save at the moment, I'll produce a very small test so it can be done.

Also I don't know if it relates to the age of the SE that writes the original scenario, as I haven't seen this happen for some time.

[donaldseadog]

I'll start a new report.