Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by SLudwig</i>
<br />Rick are you refering to playing your turn over again, as opposed to just saving it and returning to it?

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Herr Windbagenführer General der Infanterie Scott Prinz Ludwig von Saxe-Weimar
Aide-du-Kamp and Webmaster
Heer am Niederrhein

[url="http://www.prussianarmy.com/"]Königliche Preußische Armee[/url]

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Scott,

That is what I am talking about. Once my cat (believe it or not) jumped up onto my keyboard.) I had to exit the game and start my turn over from the beginning. The results I experienced were like night and day compared with the first time I was playing the turn, --even though I did everything in exactly the same order.

I am NOT talking about saving the game, stopping and then beginning once again.

As for making MP games unplayable, how would anyone know if they didn't have something to <font color="orange">compare it to?</font id="orange"> You'd get your part of the turn and believe that the results you were getting were normal --when they weren't ----All because the first person of the MP team played the turn and then restarted it before saving it.

I've had no success searching the archives from 2001 to prove it to you guys.

I agree that there should be no deviation from the earlier attempts, but there <u>is</u>. I've seen it. It has happened.

Try it with your next PBEM turn when the combat is hot.

In the most crucial area, play the important combat taking place there with say the first 10-15 units. I'm talking about melees, infantry fire, and especially artillery fire. Then exit the game without saving it and re-start the game and play the turn all over again in exactly the same order. You will see a difference in the results from that very first attempt. You could see your units losing melees that you won on the first attempt.

Then, to straighten everything out, you will have to delete the .xxx & .yyy files and turn your computer completely off. Wait a little while and then go back to your PBEM turn and do it for real.

It interesting that Bill is so silent on this one. He knows exactly what I am talking about. What say you, Bill?

Colonel Rick Motko
1er Bataillon, 33° Régiment d'Infanterie de Ligne
2eme Brigade, 11eme division
IIIe corps, Armée du Nord


Vive l'Empereur!

I like to use the pbem no save option.Im simply a suspicious bas...d by nature.So if i know that all precautions on my side have been taken against cheating,then i cant complain.Its in the human nature to cheat no matter what anyone says.We all do it some time in our lives.The bad thing about the no game save option is ....WIVES and CHILDREN....MOTHER INLAWS THAT SUDDENLY TURN UP.....get my point guys.
So occasionaly i have to turn the PC off in the middle of a turn
1.The kids are causing mayhem and the wife is shouting for me to sort them out.
2. The wife is peed of with me for sitting on the PC so long
3. The Dragon inlaw arrives for a coffee and is not amused if you dont converse with her!!!(i know guys i have too sometimes:-((()
So these are the real draw backs of no save.I prefer it though,it means that if someone trys to cheat he has to go through the whole turn again.
After a certain time in gaming you get to the stage where you think F..k it ..you win some ..you loose some.Thats life!!

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Le Tondu</i>
I agree that there should be no deviation from the earlier attempts ...
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On the contrary. There should be. It's random, so if you do it again, you get different results.

However, there is nothing that would indicate that they are regularly <u>worse</u> rather than better than the first try. Nor is there any way that the game would "know" that you already did it once. You open the same file. Nothing on the file that says "hey, I've already been played once, but not been saved." [;)]

<center>
D.S. "Green Horse" Walter, Maréchal d'Empire
Duc des Pyramides, Comte de Normandie
Commandant la [url="http://home.arcor.de/dierk_Walter/NWC/3_VI_AdR_Home.htm"]3e Division Bavaroise[/url], L'Armée du Rhin
Commandant [url="http://home.arcor.de/dierk_Walter/NWC/EdM_start.htm"]L'Ecole de Mars[/url], L'Armée du Rhin
Commandant la Brigade de Tirailleurs de la Jeune Garde
</center>

Seriously, it has happened to me to. Game crashes/computer reboots, etc., I try to replay the same things, of course the results are different. Yes, I lose melees that I won the first time, <u>but I also win melees that I lost the first time</u>. It's just different. Not worse.

How can ANYONE possibly think that SAVING a file can be an aid to cheating? Anyone can simply replay the turn from the beginning.

I guess there is a way. I could play to a certain point and save the game, as I liked all the results. Then I COPY the file to another folder, restart the game and continue playing to a point where I like everything and do the same. When I reach a point where I DO NOT like the results, I exit the game and move the saved file BACK into the main folder and restart the game until I get the results I want.

Strange way to do things. Just replay the turn for better results? I doubt if the results will consistently be better.

But I guess there are paranoid people that believe the SOFTWARE is aware of how many times a game is played and "remembers" the way it played before?

Perhaps ther is a randomness built in to the games? Maybe when you play it once, the software plays with this die roll and you play it again and it plays with THAT die roll? That makes a much more logical progression than the software KNOWS what you did the last time you replayed it.

Please remember that the software CANNOT use passwords in campaigns, because the program cannot read from one turn to the next what happened on the previous campaign game. IOW, the software cannot "read" through the encryption!

Anyone know where BIG BROTHER is? Is 1984 here already?

I am not going to play a turn that takes an hour or so to play, IF I cannot save the file and come back to it later. Many times I leave the game running on these long scenarios with many forces, but I save it JUST IN CASE the electricity goes off or something else happens.

<b><font color="gold">Ernie Sands
GdD,1e Brig,1eme Div,VI Corps,AdR
President, Colonial Campaign Club
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<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by D.S. Walter</i>
<br /><blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Le Tondu</i>
I agree that there should be no deviation from the earlier attempts ...
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

On the contrary. There should be. It's random, so if you do it again, you get different results.

However, there is nothing that would indicate that they are regularly <u>worse</u> rather than better than the first try. Nor is there any way that the game would "know" that you already did it once. You open the same file. Nothing on the file that says "hey, I've already been played once, but not been saved." [;)]

<center>
D.S. "Green Horse" Walter, Maréchal d'Empire
Duc des Pyramides, Comte de Normandie
Commandant la [url="http://home.arcor.de/dierk_Walter/NWC/3_VI_AdR_Home.htm"]3e Division Bavaroise[/url], L'Armée du Rhin
Commandant [url="http://home.arcor.de/dierk_Walter/NWC/EdM_start.htm"]L'Ecole de Mars[/url], L'Armée du Rhin
Commandant la Brigade de Tirailleurs de la Jeune Garde
</center>
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What about the pbemail.xxx and pbemail.yyy files? What about a file that exists only in RAM?

etrapanob,
I'm with you. I like the no PBEM save feature too.

Everyone,

This has nothing to do with SAVING your turn. Ernie, you are missing the point.

I'm talking about:

1. Playing your turn and having to end the turn while mid-turn for any number of <font color="orange">good</font id="orange"> reasons and not SAVING it. (Sometimes you can't.)

2. Without turning off the computer, coming back and playing your PBEM turn from the very beginning.

3. Experiencing drasticly different results the second time around.

4. This was talked about back in 2001 by <b>Bill Peters.</b> It was said by him that penalties were put into the game to punish those that tried to cheat. It was said that the "penalty" files were put into RAM (Random Access Memory) and not on the hard drive.

One way to cheat was for players to move all their units around the map just to find his opponents units and then re-start the game and re-play his turn with the knowledge of exactly where those (normally unseen) units were.

<font color="red"><b>All I originally ASKED was whether or not these penalties were still happening when someone had to restart their game due to repeating music. To me, the situations are essentially the same except that one is cheating and the other isn't. The game wouldn't know the difference.</b></font id="red">

Colonel Rick Motko
1er Bataillon, 33° Régiment d'Infanterie de Ligne
2eme Brigade, 11eme division
IIIe corps, Armée du Nord


Vive l'Empereur!

Oh Bill.

Where are you?

Colonel Rick Motko
1er Bataillon, 33° Régiment d'Infanterie de Ligne
2eme Brigade, 11eme division
IIIe corps, Armée du Nord


Vive l'Empereur!

Ah!

Then my previous statement holds:

"Perhaps ther is a randomness built in to the games? Maybe when you play it once, the software plays with this die roll and you play it again and it plays with THAT die roll? That makes a much more logical progression than the software KNOWS what you did the last time you replayed it."

The best way to get an informed answer would be to email HPS Support with your question. (Not that what Bill says isn't informed, but...Remember he lives in a POTATO field[8D])





<b><font color="gold">Ernie Sands
GdD,1e Brig,1eme Div,VI Corps,AdR
President, Colonial Campaign Club
</b></font id="gold">

I wonder if John got his original question answered????[:D]

<b><font color="gold">Ernie Sands
GdD,1e Brig,1eme Div,VI Corps,AdR
President, Colonial Campaign Club
</b></font id="gold">

Yes, Ernie I did.. Now to watch this topic go further off course [:p]

Monsieur le Marechal Baron John Corbin
Duc de Paive
Commanding the Division de Cavalerie de la Jeune Garde
NWC President

Well if anyone can find the thread where I was supposed to have said that it would sure help. I just looked for it and nothing earlier than 2004 exists in the archives for me.

Must have worn out the RAM for the Tavern!

Honestly, this is the first I remember hearing about this. Rich didnt say anything either and I think he would have known about it as well.

Deleting the PBEMAIL files wouldnt clear the RAM. Loading up a big Bitmap in Photoshop would!

What I would love to see is someone play a game using a .bte file (encrypted), mail the two files to me (and passwords for both sides) and I could look at it.

I am with Ernie on this one. I have never seen one side get totally negative results just because they have redone the game file.

I always redo my game files against Ernie as its the only way to beat the guy. I wait until I get the WORST results and then send him the game file! Otherwise, he gets mad, does 50 pushups, and then proceeds to whup my behind!

Honestly, if someone can produce the forum topic/thread it would help. 2001 is about 10,000 posts earlier for me!! [:I] Not denying I ever said anything to that effect but like Bush and Reagan, I just cant remember ever saying that! [8D]

NRA rules!

Bill Peters
Former NWC President, Club Founder, Prussian and Austrian Army Founder

[url="http://www.fireandmelee.net"]Fire and Melee Wargame site[/url]