Scenario Design--Victory Points?

[76mm]

Hi, I tried doing a search on this topic but couldn't find anything...

When you are designing a scenario and create an objective, you have to assign it a "Nationality"--say "Russian" or "Russian Guards".  What difference does it make whether you assign it to Russians or Russian Guards, and is there a way that you only count objectives taken by Russians, and not Russian Guards?  Or can you create objectives as "Neutral" and not owned by either side?

[Ricky B]

As far as I know, the objective owner, whether set at the beginning, or when it gets captured, is a piece of intel and meaningless otherwise in game terms. So I normally set the owner to be whatever units are nearest the objective, or the main nationality for that side if nobody is really close to it.

As to Neutral, never tried that. If you try the setting, let us know how it works. I am sure it is meaningless once a side moves into the hex and takes control, not sure what it would mean prior to that point.

Rick

[76mm]

Thanks. I've tried to create a neutral objective, by setting the nationality to "None", but that simply removes the objective altogether rather than create a neutral objective. The nationalities which appear as a selection seem to be based on the directories created in the game folder (eg, I could get "Russian" and "Hungarian" to appear in a Tunisia scenario by adding a relevant directory), but when I tried adding folders for "Neutra,l" "Switzerland", or "Sweden" nothing happened. I don't see any other way to do so.

It just seems odd that when creating an objective we choose between several nationalities but that ultimately all that matters is Axis or Allied--why give us all the choices if they don't matter? For multiplayer, for instance, it might be interesting to allow different players on the same side to earn their own VPs, even if they are ultimately aggregated into an Axis or Allied total.

[Ricky B]

My guess is that the nationalities are there so the game can find the graphics to use. So 2hen the game engine was first built a decision was made to put the objective art in different folders by side and there were only 2 sides. Then when extra nationalities were added with their own graphics this logic was maintained rather than creating side folders plus the nation folders.

Just guessing though.

[76mm]

OK, I've figured out how to create Neutral objectives, but it is a bit tricky, so I thought I'd post it here:
1) Place the objective in the scenario editor with whatever nationality you want.
2) copy one of the other nationality folders in the game directory--I chose American.
3) paste the entire folder into the game folder and rename it--I chose Neutral, but I don't think it matters that much.
4) open the scenario file in a text editor--scroll down to the line with the objective and replace whatever nationality is shown with "Neutral" or whatever nationality you chose in Step 3. Save the scenario file.
5) Open the scenario in the game to play it--the objective is there; while there is no nationality flag, the victory points show up in small black font, although they don't seem to count for either side.
6) Once you move a unit onto the objective, the relevant nationality's flag appears and the points assigned to that side.

Although now that I look at it, since the scoring only takes into account the first side's VPs, I guess you get the same result from a VP perspective by just assigning all of the "neutral" objectives to side 2, although optically and for immersion purposes I prefer to show objectives which are "up for grabs" as blank rather than belonging to one side or another, and the solution described above achieves this.

[76mm]

Thought I'd add something here--after replacing the objective owner as described in step 4, above, I opened the game, and no objectives appeared...I went to look at the scenario file again, and the "Neutral" entries describe above had been replaced by "X". I changed the name of the folder to "X" and it started working again. Weird...