Vietnam War Development thread

I've been reading some very interesting articles on the subject recently, in particular, this one about the ARVN, http://nguyentin.tripod.com/arvn-sorley-2.htm, and how given the circumstances South Vietnam performed much better than is generally perceived. I certainly agree with your point that by 1965 on coups were not really a dominant factor.

On the other hand, we cannot simply assert that there was no degree of political instability. Thieu admitted that he oft times appointed officers to key posts more because of their loyalty then their competence. In addition, he had to deal with significant levels of desertion amongst the troops and corruption amongst the officer corps. We may never know the exact percentage but I've read that there was also an important degree of NV/NLF infiltration into the organs of the SVN government and army.

The game Vietnam 1965 -1975, http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/5620/vietnam-1965-1975, certainly has a particularly interesting way of dealing with the loyalty issue of the divisional and corps level officers and its affect on the ability of the player to use the troops effectively. For its part the game Fire in the Lake, http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/144189/fire-lake, seems to place more importance on coups.

In any case, I felt this was a significantly enough important aspect of the conflict that it had to be reflected, in one aspect or another, in my scenario. Again as I may have mentioned many times in some of my other scenario threads, in the end this game will be my representation, as best as I could make sense of it, of the Vietnam war. But as always I will be happy to get feedback from the community.
 
Hi all,

I was finally able to start on my official scenario map this week, i.e. setting up cities (population sizes, improvements, etc.) and the road/railway networks, which I've mostly completed (there's always some tweaking that goes on during the testing process). The terrain and river systems had already been devised as part of the base map I created last year.

I did run into an unexpected issue with regards the city name creation (which I may have encountered in the past but aren't certain). During the set up process I used the 'Select Computer Opponents' feature and proceeded to select 'Russians', 'Vikings', 'Egyptians', 'Americans' and 'Indians' to represent my belligerent nations of North Vietnam, Thailand, China, South Vietnam and Cambodia respectively.

I then inputted each nations city names under the corresponding powers in the city.txt file, i.e. all North Vietnamese cities under the @Russians city section, etc. Having done the preliminary work, I was then ready to start creating my cities for each nation but when I started to create my NV cities by ordering the settler unit to 'Build' the 'What Shall We Name This City?' was empty instead of grabbing the name from the city list as it should do. Not to be stopped I simply entered the names manually.

Whereas when it came time to set up the South Vietnamese cities, the city names I had entered under @Americans worked just fine.

I'm curious, has anyone encountered this problem before?

EDIT: And all the powers are represented in the city.txt file, even the ones that aren't used, and all have at least one city name under their respective sections with the obligatory @STOP at the end of each power (see attached file).
 

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I'm pretty sure you need to match the civ names in the Rules.txt and the Cities.txt files (I can't remember if they also must match the civ names actually in the .scn file or not). But why the Americans/South Vietnamese city names work and the others is a mystery, but I recall encountering such a problem long ago. Try having the civ names in all three of the Rules.txt, the Cities.txt and the code in the .scn files all match and see if that works.
 
As Patine states, the city names must match the associated tribes.
Best not to change civ names, except in the actual scenario menus.

Sometimes the "blank city name" bug can be fixed by creating a new SCN file.
(Saving a SCN, and starting the scenario again, to reset the city.txt file reference)
 
Hi Curt and Patine,

It looks like you were both correct. I had to update the plural/adjective names in the leaders section of the rules.txt file so that the civilization names matched.

I resaved the .scn file and now the names appears correctly.

Thank you both.
 
Hi all,

I've been devising a system within the event.txt file for handling the US unit reinforcements and replacements. As such, each major American unit will arrive according to its historical timeframe, whereas any American unit that is destroyed will get replaced, depending on its category, within a specific monthly timeframe. For example if a US infantry unit is killed it will be regenerated 2 months after its destruction. It will take three months for a marine or airborne unit, 4 months for an armored unit and 5 months for air units, etc.

In this manner, I believe I can ensure that the American OOB never exceeds the actual number of forces that served in the conflict.

All the same, I'd like to better understand how the draft system in the US worked, but have failed to find any articles of substance on the subject, to determine exactly how the Americans managed to keep their various combat units up to strength. I know, for the most part that the US rotated individuals, not units, out of Vietnam and that each soldier only served for a year in country. Therefore how did this system work? Did each unit receive a monthly, bi-monthly, yearly, set of new recruits to replace the outgoing troops?

And how did this replacement system work for units that suffered heavy casualties during combat operations. If a battalion suffered 20-30% casualties plus have to replace the men whose rotation was up did they simply replenish that unit with a bunch of raw recruits? Did the US have to increase the draft quotas in the States to make up for these losses?

If anyone is able to shed any light or refer me to articles on the subject matter, I would be appreciative.

Thank you
 
Hi all,

I've been devising a system within the event.txt file for handling the US unit reinforcements and replacements. As such, each major American unit will arrive according to its historical timeframe, whereas any American unit that is destroyed will get replaced, depending on its category, within a specific monthly timeframe. For example if a US infantry unit is killed it will be regenerated 2 months after its destruction. It will take three months for a marine or airborne unit, 4 months for an armored unit and 5 months for air units, etc.

In this manner, I believe I can ensure that the American OOB never exceeds the actual number of forces that served in the conflict.

All the same, I'd like to better understand how the draft system in the US worked, but have failed to find any articles of substance on the subject, to determine exactly how the Americans managed to keep their various combat units up to strength. I know, for the most part that the US rotated individuals, not units, out of Vietnam and that each soldier only served for a year in country. Therefore how did this system work? Did each unit receive a monthly, bi-monthly, yearly, set of new recruits to replace the outgoing troops?

And how did this replacement system work for units that suffered heavy casualties during combat operations. If a battalion suffered 20-30% casualties plus have to replace the men whose rotation was up did they simply replenish that unit with a bunch of raw recruits? Did the US have to increase the draft quotas in the States to make up for these losses?

If anyone is able to shed any light or refer me to articles on the subject matter, I would be appreciative.

Thank you

Well, given the movie was an opinionated commentary to begin with may make it suspect from the start, but Oliver Stone's film "Platoon" seemed to imply fresh-faced recruits were being funneled in in very large numbers. That being said, I also have failed a hard fact source from military documentation on the issue, but all common contemporary American points of view, especially of the "dove" faction, seemed to see things like Mr. Stone did.
 
Out of curiosity, will VC units have the "invisible until attack" flag?
 
Hi Patine,

I do plan on using the invisible flag for the VC, and probably most of the PAVN, ground units. I also plan on removing the flag when the North Vietnamese switch from the counterinsurgency phase of the war to the modern mechanized conquest phase of the conflict. The change will be triggered when they receive the 'Nguyen Hue Offensive' tech (in historical terms when NV launched the 1972 Spring Offensive after most of the American ground troops had left the country).

I'm curious, does any know why units whose invisible flag has been turned on seem to become partially translucent. In the example below the top unit, NVA Regular, isn't flagged as invisible and it appears normally whereas the lower unit's, NVA Elite, flag is on and appears pale by comparison.

 

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The invisible flag VC is a great idea. Especially if you are playing as the US.
However, if you are playing as the Vietnamese, bear in mind that invisible units are perfectly visible to the AI (what a cheat!) my understanding is they will be targeted as usual. Search and destroy and such.
 
The invisible flag VC is a great idea. Especially if you are playing as the US. However, if you are playing as the Vietnamese, bear in mind that invisible units are perfectly visible to the AI (what a cheat!) my understanding is they will be targeted as usual. Search and destroy and such.

For the time being the scenario is only being designed to be played as the US/SVN player.

I agree that the invisible flag should make the game more challenging for the human player, i.e. it won't make finding the VC/NVA units impossible to do but more difficult as you will only be able to find them either by actually trying to enter their tiles or being stopped when entering their zones of control.

I'm eager to reach the point where I can start play testing. For the time being, I've successfully set up all my three maps and my inter map transport sites, the different city map sprites and landmark features (thanks TNO).

I've been reworking my tech tree for the past two weeks because there are logic gaps that need to be addressed. Unfortunately, they've been proving difficult to resolve and until they are I can only partially work on my event file, the final task before I can begin play testing in earnest.
 
I love this game but as a designer it can be a constant source of frustration.

Even though I've set the eliminate pollution flag to 1 in the special rules section of the scenario file the game is still creating pollution, so much so that I'm getting the adverse effect of Global Warming.

Has anyone encountered this problem before?

I'm using three maps which contain a 118 cities ( 84 on map 1, 30 on map 2, 4 on map 3).
 
The game ignoring a 'no pollution' parameter is a long-reported issue dating back to the days on Apolyton. I believe (though I could be mistaken) hex-editing can fix it, so best to ask Techumseh or Catfish, as I believe they know a bit about hex-editing and such.
 
I used the same 'eliminate pollution' flag in all my other scenarios without any problem. I don't understand why it chooses to ignore it in this one (is it because there are three maps)?
 
If I recall correctly, the complaints of a scenario ignoring were very hit-and-miss, downright random (at least as far as most people I knew could tell). It didn't always, or even usually happen, but when it did it was very annoying to scenario designers.
 
So I went to Catfish's site and downloaded the Hex Edit document and then downloaded the recommended Hex Workshop editor. Thanks to his tutorial on this post #17 I'm able to view the binary/hexadecimal structure of the scn file.

I've reviewed Catfish's structured html document and the Hex Edit document, but nevertheless I can't seem to find the offset/column of the binary that controls the 'Eliminate pollution' on/off flag. Is anyone able to specify the exact coordinates?
 
Bump!

Any progress on this, or has the RL monster got you whooped?

I'm looking forward to trying this one, but no hurry. Just wondering how it's coming along.
 
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