sudasana/armcom2

Armoured Commander II

armcom2's Issues

"Language" option

Just noticed the "Language" option in the menu. Are you planning on translating the game once it is finished ?
I'd be ready to help with a French translation, if you need it.

Also, congrats for both ArmCom 1 and 2 !

Problem with Battle of France (Germany)

I'm just starting on the April 13 patch today

I had a crash, I think the cause was either the new French Truck's unload action. I've done this with 3 different german tanks so far.

This new version of the game also seems to put you "1 turn ahead" when you use the Continue option from the main menu after a Crash or manual exit --- when I came back the infantry was already out of the truck, so I was not able to make a "right before crash" save file, but it's so fast to get to the point of it happening on a new file that it's not too hard to report.

The changes to Panzer 38t give both the Loader and Assitant Driver the (third) machinegun, but I think it only works when the assistant Driver uses it.

Also do all the new tanks options have 0 squad groups? although I kind of think the StuG and Panzerjager work better as enemy tanks than player tanks anyway due to needing to resupply ammo VERY frequently.

OSX No such file or directory: 'saved_campaigns/'

When running on osx I got the following error:

File "/armcom2-master/armcom2.py", line 18098, in UpdateMainTitleCon
    if len(os.listdir(SAVEPATH)) == 0:
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'saved_campaigns/'

creating the saved_campaigns dir fixed the problem

Line of sight blocked units still use normal spotting

Line of sight blocked units can spot and be spotted the same as normal units - however shooting them is correctly blocked. In the case of Troop Transport trucks their unload AI also seems to be active before spotting the player tank (although I suppose this is fine)

VP values after moving to a new map screen

When you move to a new map screen in (Battle, Advance, and Spearhead), only the bottom row of tiles will have VPs (except in spearhead) everything else will be worth 0, UNTIL you have moved one hex- then the game will update and award VPs again -

I've found that the "one move" can be EITHER a sidestep into a bottom row tile, or biting the bullet and taking a move into one of the 0 point hexes in the second row.

I don't usually lose out many VP because of this because of the sidestep work around, but it is easily repeatable and happens to multiple nations (although the mission type is rare for eg Poland)

Day not changing

So I was playing the Canadian campaign, and I figured it would be longer since it's 3 and a half years instead of just a few months... but I still figured it would end at most only with 3x to 4x the points that France and Poland ended with - So I slowed down a little and noticed that every new day was starting on October 22 1944 - I wish I had checked when this had started, but.... my guess would be that I played through October 22 a crazy number of times between 30 and 40 battles.

75mm wz. 97/25 Gun should not have AP capability

Fixing this will require adding a setting to all guns to specify whether they can use HE and/or AP, and ideally also to add a to-penetrate check for HE hits on armoured targets that can potentially penetrating very light armour. Might be a good time to add MG to-hit attacks on armour as well.

Clarify the rules around Close Combat.

Currently, the player is given a highly detailed chance breakdown whenever they fire either their tank's main gun or one of its MGs at the enemy, which is great.

However, nothing like this exists for close combat. This is in spite of the fact that failing in close combat has far more drastic consequences than failing at range; the latter will at most waste some ammo, while a failure in close combat can straight-up destroy your tank and end your campaign, either immediately, or in a few days, as the wounded commander gets discharged.

Thus, I am asking for a screen that will show percentage breakdown before initiating close combat, just like there is one when you are about to shoot at something. It is currently complete guesswork as to whether or not your tank is ever safe from being suddenly destroyed in such a manner (the manual currently does not even acknowledge that as a possible outcome.)

I first assumed that this could only happen when assaulting the artillery, but then the same thing occurred when I drove at Riflemen. I thought that was because of their AT Rifle, but then assaulting an HMG Team led to a destroyed tank again. My best guess is currently that the state of the tile where you are performing the assault is what makes the difference, but again, it's just a guess. Right now, the safest way to play is to completely avoid any and all assaults because of this uncertainty.

Python 3

Would you be willing to accept a pull request upgrading the code to use python 3?

General unit/mechanics suggestion megathread

So, I'll say that Armored Commander 2 is already a pretty good game as it currently stands. It is pretty unique both in the world of games in general and roguelikes in particular, and has an engaging set of mechanics already. Still, there is clearly a lot of room for improvement as well, and I would say that there are currently three main directions to achieve that.

Direction 1 is Historical Expansion. The process of adding on more WW2 campaigns + making the existing campaigns feel more historically authentic (both through unit composition changes and more specific scripted texts, events, etc.) While I think some campaigns are more important than others (i.e. implementing at least one North Africa and Soviet vs. Nazi campaign should be ahead of the Pacific front tank battles), this is basically self-explanatory on the whole.

Direction 2 is the Tactical Layer. The battles on that hexagonal map, and the associated mechanics. I think that currently the main issues are with the AI behavior. It's decent, but it still often raises questions, and the most important one is the way some units unpredictably flee, and the others stay on when it's pointless. This goes both for the random, unpredictable withdrawals of allied tanks that don't appear connected to the actual threat level (I had an ally withdraw while simply we were simply taking on an HMG team), and for the enemies, including the strange persistence of Trucks. Funniest example was probably when I encountered a Supplies-transporting Truck and a Pz. IV in the Canadian campaign recently: the Pz. IV fled immediately, but the truck stayed on for no reason.

I think that in general, the Withdrawal command should be removed outright; leaving combat (outside of Abandon Tank command) should only be achievable through moving to the respective edge of the screen, for both the player and the enemies. Allies that Withdraw will appear on the map as separate, uncontrollable units and start moving towards the screen's edge: enemies will be able to withdraw once they get to their edge of the screen. Trucks should be both more frequent, yet also stay on the battlefield much less often. Essentially, as soon as the player shows up, Trucks should begin moving towards their edge. Enemy vehicles that have little-to-no chance of actually damaging the player's tank (i.e. German motorcycle teams, or Polish MG-equipped armored cars) should do the same: perhaps not always, but more often than not.

To make this more interesting, terrain should play a greater role. Currently, each combat map appears to have all tiles of the same uniform green/white color until a unit actually gets there, and then it's determined whether that occupied tile is Open Ground or something more special. I think it's obvious that randomized generation of terrain across the entire combat map is more interesting. Most importantly, it would allow for the addition of roads (mostly dirt, with asphalt only present on the "road" tiles) running through the entire hexagon, with the Trucks in particular automatically generated only on top of these dirt road tiles, and being forced to flee from your tank based on whatever curve the road was generated with, as opposed to just taking the shortest straight line towards the edge of the screen every time.

The second area in need of improvement is the FP system. It's acceptable as it is right now, but it should become more gradual than the current calculation that's often all-or-nothing, bar the occasional Pinning. In particular, there's a frustrating asymmetry next to AP fire; whereas a critical hit with an AP shell basically guarantees penetration and instant destruction of the opponent, a critical MG/HE hit can still often leave "No effect," which is just frustrating. For Riflemen at least, I think a solution is to make the squads stronger by giving them more actions per turn by default: i.e. each Infantry squad will fire both Rifles (specifically in order to target anyone in open hatches, of course) and an AT rifle within their combat phase by default, and they'll lose that capability only after one or two good hits goes through. I suppose that for HMG/artillery, there should be a more explicit "stun" status that disables them from firing this turn or the next. As it is, it feels pretty random when they decide not to fire at you/your squad during some turns, and introducing such an effect will make it feel more tactical.

Lastly, certain tank models possess Radio Operators, and suffer from them being essentially useless. They can only Spot and give First Aid, and never have hatches to be effective at the former, so they only ever help if a spotting crewmember got unlucky enough to be wounded. I think it would be great if having a Radio Operator made coordination with the allied tanks possible; i.e. during the Crew Action phase, you would be able to know what they are planning to do next turn; you would find out if, say, their main gun broke down and they are going to withdraw, allowing the Commander to order them to stay, if needed. This would also address the moments when the allies just go quiet during some turns for what seem like random reasons.

Direction 3 is the Strategic Layer. Again, the current approach is often atmospheric (I really like the distinct feelings invoked by Spearhead and Counterattack missions in particular), but can be done better. During the "default" Advance missions in particular, it just doesn't really seem to matter how exactly you are advancing relative to your allies, so long as you just keep hitting the enemy tiles with every turn. The simplest addition is probably to provide a VP bonus for when you manage to cut off and encircle enemy tiles behind your advances, and to ensure that the "Target of Opportunity" tiles are never generated empty of opposition.

The most ambitious approach, though, is to have a much more dynamic frontline simulation. Basically, you will be shown the numerical strength of all the allied tiles on the frontline (and getting promoted may make that information more detailed), and based on that, you can (and should) plan as to whether that tile can deal with the enemies in front of them on their own, or whether they need you to clear away the opposition. Miscalculating this could mean that an enemy tile you behind as you chose to push forward, Spearhead-style, would suddenly send out troops to retake all the territory you had just captured, losing you those VP, (since by default, the captured tiles you just left would have strength of 1 at first, with more troops pulling in later in the day; similar calculations would apply to enemy advances in Counterattack missions.) Enemies retaking territory does automatically inform you of their strength on that tile (or at least, has a good chance to), and likewise, allied assaults failing to take over a tile can/will give you recon information.

I understand that implementing this is likely to be quite complex to say the least, but the pay-off will consist of much more engaging strategic gameplay turn-by-turn. Another way to do that could be to introduce limited fuel and MG ammo/smoke grenades to make resupplying more important (and to make it a distinct possibility that you have advanced too far, then and a sudden enemy counter-attack ends up striking either right where you are, or the tile directly behind you, cutting you off from Resupply until you manage to deal with them and get back to where the allied frontline is firmer.

Anyway, these are just my current thoughts on the game.

Sight Range after taking Light or Serious wounds

I'm not sure about this since It was my first playthrough but.

When I was playing France I thought that spotting sight range was only 1 tile unless you opened the hatch.

After my commander took Light wounds he could only see 1 tile with it both open and closed.
He took about 8 battles to heal (is 5 grit considered low?) but when he did he could still only see 1 tile .

I spent several days only spotting with the Driver (R35), who took serious wounds (and thus also had a 1 tile reduction) but, later he fully died and I abandonded the tank.

When I took a new tank(S35), the new Driver could not spot with the hatch open even though he was unwounded.

I hate to post an issue without providing a save file, but I think I can purposely get injured and see if it happens again.

Add "no ammo" warning with auto-fill at the start of the day.

There should be a warning, at least, if the player accidentally presses Enter at the start of the day, and ends up beginning it with incomplete ammo (or even no ammo whatsoever if it's the first day of the campaign) equipped. The message should be something like "Lack of ammo detected! Choose default loadout?", where "Yes" will do just that, and "No" will take the player back to that screen.

In addition, if the player's tank can only use AP ammo (i.e. Matilda during the British campaign in France), that entire screen should be skipped, since the player has no meaningful choices to make there anyway.

Crashing when accessing options menu in 0.9.0 16-11-19

1. Open armcom2.exe
2. Press O to access options menu
   Happens on fresh install
   Windows 10 1903/Python 3.8.0 64-bit (also occurs under 3.7.3 64-bit)

LoS / FoV Bug - Enemies can see player when player can't see them

There's a persistent issue with enemy units that are out of the player's Field of View having a Line of Sight to the player. It might work the other way too, but in any case it seems to be related to how the LoS function handles different elevations.

Attempting to Access Crewman Menu When No Crewman in Hospital Causes Game Crash

I have a "fail silently" fix that I can PR if desired. It just adds a try-catch block around the offending code, in case of an IndexError.

The text of the error is here:

/Users/<username>/code/armcom2/armcom2.py:2445: DeprecationWarning: Call the `con.print_` method instead.
  libtcod.console_print(calendar_main_panel, 2, y, 'No crewmen currently in hospital')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/<username>/code/armcom2/armcom2.py", line 18246, in <module>
    campaign.DoCampaignCalendarLoop()
  File "/Users/<username>/code/armcom2/armcom2.py", line 2857, in DoCampaignCalendarLoop
    crewman = campaign.hospital[selected_hospital_crewman]
IndexError: list index out of range

crash on new day

Hello, thanks for that excellent game

I'm running armcom2 0.9 (19-11-19) on window 10
On the Patton campaign i'm several days in, in the britanny part of the campaign and crashed apparently when being close the end of the day during a battle , after firing on an infantry, nothing seemed different from the many battle i had so far so no idea why it crashed.

I relaunch armcom2
I press C to continue my campaign , i notice oddly i'm on the between days debriefing screen instead on the battle map.
So after assigning skill points, i move to assign the ammo then when i continue the game just crash/close, whatever happens in the dos prompt unfortunately goes too fast and close before i can read what it's about.

As this crash now always happens from that point , i thought maybe i should report this with the saved game files :
02crasharmcom2.zip

September Campaign gets stuck on Semptember 25

Very similar to the old problem with the Canadaian campaign, it just loops the date over and over.

Bug crash in setting crewman action on MoveForward

the function MoveForward calls an undeclared function GetStat('reverse_driver') on line 5952 of armcom2.py

This would result in a crash.

this should probably be something like self.GetStat('reverse_driver')

Linux compatability

There are two issues that make the git package not run on Linux (at least on my system).

• I can't (for the life of me) get the GLSL libtcod renderer working - so I switched to RENDERER_SDL (which worked fine) - would it be possible to have RENDERER as a global variable?
• the libtcodpy library folder conflicts with my locally installed libtcodpy - which does not have libtcod.so library, causing an exception. If I change the foldername libtcodpy to libtcodpy_local and add the following code, it loads fine:

if os.name != 'posix':
    import libtcodpy_local as libtcod
else:
    import libtcodpy as libtcod

If deemed an acceptable change, I can make the above changes to allow Linux support to work "out of the box" and build an AUR package.

Ammo Loading Screen Broken

Version 1.0.6 from main download link

On starting a new campaign:
Game will not progress if during the ammo loading screen you move any amount of ammo into the tank. Moving ammo works, but pressing enter to proceed will not work if you adjust the ammo load.

It works fine if you have a tank with one ammo type and it skips the screen. You can also move past the screen without loading any ammo at all and acknowledging the warning.

Have tested it with multiple tanks on multiple campaigns, same result each time.

Not sure it's it's related, but if you try to move ammo on the ammo load screen too fast this error pops up:

ERROR: could not play sound: shell_move_10
b'That operation is not supported'

anti-tank gun 105 K/13 protected from Close Combat ;)

CloseCombat.105K13.Crash.zip

1. Press W

2. "Defending units engage in defensive fire"

3. crash to desktop

This is for the Alpha 13 downloaded Feb 9 2020.

T-28 main gun incapable of Maintaining Fire?

In both of the currently available Soviet campaigns, T-28 has not been able to maintain fire with its 76mm weapon even once, and even after the Loader was given the Fast Hands trait and had multiple points added into Knowledge.

In contrast, the main gun of the Matilda tank is able to fire 3-4 times a turn even without any upgrades; the main weapon of the Sherman Firefly can also pull off multiple shots a turn from the first days of the campaign, even though it has the same caliber as the T-28's weapon, and its extra length should, if anything, make loading more difficult.

Date issues in the Liberation campaign.

Liberation Campaign of the Red Army never transitions from September to October. Instead, it keeps adding days to September, eventually ending on September 36.

Crash on close combat

ArmCom2 1.0.4, Windows 10
Riflemen and Opel immediately in front of tank. Upon starting assault, defending riflemen is destroyed, then game crashes. Crash is consistent and repeatable. Save file(s) attached.
savegame.zip

Need a check to prevent using Advancing Fire and Call arty support when using the Wait command

Normally, these won't appear on the strategic map until you have picked the direction of an enemy hex, but if you pick the direction of the enemy hex first, and then choose to wait anyway, they seem to still apply.

Ambush at start of battle seems to happen more frequently

I am not sure how this works exactly even on the old patches. Does it only check the Commander's Perception skill or does it check some kind of average of everyone's Perception? I am not sure how strong the Eagle Eye skill is either, but if the commander is under 5 perception it doesn't seem to help much.

Crash on air support

I was playing a US campaign with the M4A3 (76)
The mission was to advance.

I went into a combat tile and was about to fire on a truck when the game told me that my side was launching air support.

I crashed immediately.
ArmCom2 save.zip

missing libtcod.so

I seem to be missing this. I see that there's the .dlls. But, libtcod clearly wants libtcod.so. How can I get this?