Unpossessed support weapons

DougRim

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Possible, yes.

The quick and dirty way to do it would be to loop through every "stack" (even a single counter on its own is a stack) and check the bottom counter. If it is a SW then it is unpossessed. I am not sure this would work in all situations.
 

DVexile

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Possible, yes.

The quick and dirty way to do it would be to loop through every "stack" (even a single counter on its own is a stack) and check the bottom counter. If it is a SW then it is unpossessed. I am not sure this would work in all situations.
Yeah, the logic seems to get complicated fast to cover all cases. Unpossessed on an upper level, outside a foxhole, various info counters folks might move to the bottom (SMOKE, acquisition, etc). Not insurmountable, but a fair bit of thought to improve upon a quick and dirty first pass! The existing broken and malfunctioned selection is much easier.
 

von Marwitz

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Some years ago, there was an extension similar to the Sniper Finder that gave you a list of all broken units in a separate window. If you clicked on any of those units, the cursor jumped to its location. I found this extremely useful, but at one time it went defunct probably to some changes in VASSAL/VASL.

If such an extension could be revived, it might also be enhanced by malfed guns/SW (I seem to recall the original did this, too), and unpossessed SW/Guns.

von Marwitz
 

DougRim

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The broken/malfed tool is now part of VASL. Click the malfed fun on the toolbar. Works same as Sniper Finder.
 

von Marwitz

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The broken/malfed tool is now part of VASL. Click the malfed fun on the toolbar. Works same as Sniper Finder.
Yes, in a way. The old extension was useful in large CGs.
You could click down along the list and deal with the rallies/repairs
In the current mode as part of VASL, you have to visually examine the playing area and scroll around to get to the game pieces in question.

von Marwitz
 

apbills

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The broken/malfed tool is now part of VASL. Click the malfed fun on the toolbar. Works same as Sniper Finder.
Typo's suck. That would be "malfed Gun" on the toolbar. Just before the Sniper Finder button. I use it every RPh.
25649
 

DougRim

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There is no logical association in VASL between a unit counter and any SW counter it possess. With the new and improved counter traits in VASSAL there may now be a way to do that. Worth checking. Checking for the absence of such an association might be a way to handle this.
 

apbills

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Yes, in a way. The old extension was useful in large CGs.
You could click down along the list and deal with the rallies/repairs
In the current mode as part of VASL, you have to visually examine the playing area and scroll around to get to the game pieces in question.

von Marwitz
I don't disagree that the old list had its uses, however, in large CGs I want to see the board anyway so I can determine which broken dudes I deem more important to self-rally. And, given I want to communicate where I am performing an action to my opponent, I am already clicking on the hex to let them know where I am doing the action.

I find it very easy to zoom out to see the entire board and all the red circles, then zoom in to deal with the potential RPh action.
 

FlatPackFred

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There is no logical association in VASL between a unit counter and any SW counter it possess. With the new and improved counter traits in VASSAL there may now be a way to do that. Worth checking. Checking for the absence of such an association might be a way to handle this.
When I posted the original question I was just thinking of checking whether the bottom counter was a SW - quick and dirty. A slightly better approach would be if a SW was beneath the first infantry counter in the stack. Still wouldn't work for all cases - 1st floor etc - but better.

I do like the idea of linking SW with infantry units - so long as it doesn't make the UX too fiddly. That would provide the dataset needed to manage unpossessed SW and quite a lot of other pretty cool features.

Let me know if I can help
 

DougRim

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I do like the idea of linking SW with infantry units - so long as it doesn't make the UX too fiddly. That would provide the dataset needed to manage unpossessed SW and quite a lot of other pretty cool features.

Let me know if I can help
I agree. If we are going to do this, best to do it properly and in a way that will also enable other features.

I will add this to our issues list.

As for help; all forms of it are always welcome. Probably the first step would be to think about what kind of link we create and how best to do that. The counter linking code (which literally draws a line between two counters) might give us a methodology to build on.
 

FlatPackFred

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To be honest if it was me I would just write the code so that SW are associated with an infantry unit in the same way as in the rules. In other words the user wouldn't have to do anything. It would mean that the code would have to understand which counters are used to indicate separate locations within a hex (e.g. Cellar/Ist Floor/Trench)- but there can't be too many of them. Then it would be straight forward to find any unpossessed SW.

Just wondering what else SW possession would help with? The additional GUI controls needed to be able to track infantry MF make that quite unattractive. Maybe an indication of the number of PP that a unit is in possession of?

On the other hand I don't think that the above coding would be too difficult- and a button highlighting unpossessed equipment would be really helpful. I know that's what everyone says ...
 

DVexile

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To be honest if it was me I would just write the code so that SW are associated with an infantry unit in the same way as in the rules. In other words the user wouldn't have to do anything. It would mean that the code would have to understand which counters are used to indicate separate locations within a hex (e.g. Cellar/Ist Floor/Trench)- but there can't be too many of them. Then it would be straight forward to find any unpossessed SW.

Just wondering what else SW possession would help with? The additional GUI controls needed to be able to track infantry MF make that quite unattractive. Maybe an indication of the number of PP that a unit is in possession of?

On the other hand I don't think that the above coding would be too difficult- and a button highlighting unpossessed equipment would be really helpful. I know that's what everyone says ...
I agree. Even if it isn't perfect I think something that just parses the stack is going to help more people than the burden of associating (i.e. linking) SW with various units.

I think potentially just counting any 5/8 counter as a "level" would be a decent way to handle levels and PRC issues. Sure, if someone really decided to put a ordnance SMOKE counter or area acquisition counter in between a unit and its SW that might "false alarm" as unpossessed, but that's unusual. It would be better to have "false unpossessed warnings" in unusual cases anyway rather than miss flagging something in an edge case.

I've been slowly trying to learn how all the VASL coding works so I might poke at this at some point if someone else doesn't get to it first. Just finding a SW that doesn't have a unit below it before reaching a 5/8 counter or the bottom of the stack seems like relatively straightforward logic.
 

FlatPackFred

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Your approach makes sense to me as I can't think of any situation when a 5/8" counter would come between an infantry unit and the SW it possesses. So it would be a case of parsing the 1/2" counters between any 5/8" counters and highlighting any hexes where there is a SW below the 1st infantry unit
 

apbills

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In my experience the order of units in a stack is constantly getting reordered as units move around, especially in high density counter situations. A few reasons:

  1. Reorder to get concealed units on the bottom when they move into a Location
  2. Reorder to get units marked with a cx on the bottom to prevent confusion with others in the hex that are not cx. Sometimes it is a pain to mark each one.
  3. accidental reorder when trying to move to a location that the computer reads as you trying to restack
  4. Re-order to move to the bottom when you move into a hex with a vehicle so it doesn't look like you are PRC. Certain transport can have unpossessed SW in it as well.
  5. Potential crew w/Gun recovers a SW in its hex. Easily ends up with a 5/8" counter between the crew and the SW.
Perhaps the simplest solution is to just look at a stack and if there is a SW on the bottom of a stack or just above a level counter (which I think is coded with a marker, potentially fortifications and other terrain markers would need to get a marker added), deem it unpossessed. I suppose every SW/Gun would need a marker trait indicating it is needs to be possessed.

Edit: After further thoughts, I think personnel counters would also need to get a marker in order to actually determine the situation in a stack. there are a lot of 'administrative' counters potentially mixed into a stack and without a marker trait of some sort I suspect the logic will become difficult to implement and debug.
 
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von Marwitz

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Your approach makes sense to me as I can't think of any situation when a 5/8" counter would come between an infantry unit and the SW it possesses. So it would be a case of parsing the 1/2" counters between any 5/8" counters and highlighting any hexes where there is a SW below the 1st infantry unit
Here is a situation, in which this can happen.
Before game start, if you want to deal with the problem of inadverted stack-inspection by mouseover, which expands the stack, albeit stack-inspection is only legit after game-start, you use a workaround.

This workaround is to place a Concealment-Counter beneath the SW and the possessing unit and then to HIP that Concealment-Counter. On mouse-over, the stack would still display the correct height, but only the top unit, in this case the SW would be visible, while everything beneath appears as "?", less the HIP "?", which does not show at all.

Now let us say, infantry pushing motorcycles set up. Before game-start, you would need to place a HIP "?" between the 5/8" motorcycle counter and the possessing infantry unit to make inadverted premature stack-inspection impossible.

von Marwitz
 

zgrose

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What would be handy and probably facilitate a button to find unpossessed counters, would be to have a trait/marker/etc that you could set on a counter to say it is unpossessed. 9 times out of 10, I would love to say that Support Weapon X is unpossessed without having to move it around a stack over and under Level/concealment/etc counters. Once, as a human, I have the option to quickly mark something that isn't possessed, a button to highlight all unpossessed SW is trivial.

Or to rephrase, I'd prefer that I can assign trait Foo (e.g. Unpossessed) to a counter and then have a button that shows me all the instances of Foo on the map over hoping that the algorithm to find unpossessed SW works in all cases in a game built on EXCs. :)
 

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Set counter to have a trait similar to Residual FP...offsets itself in hex....
But, maybe too much work...just remember where you left the LMG....

Part of the chaos of war
 

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I leave stacks with things I need to remember expanded. Double click on the stack and leave it that way!
 
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