Offboard Artillery in WF PBEM

[berto]

In the .bte file, there is this:

6 64 9 1120 -1 1 1 4 100 6 0 256 3 3 3
6 64 9 1120 -1 1 1 4 100 6 0 256 3 3 3
6 64 9 1120 -1 1 1 4 100 6 0 256 3 3 3

The highlighted -1s are the tracking #s.  If -1s are there, when those off-board artys were written to the .bte file, for some reason the code didn't know the organization number at that point.

In the subsequent read of the saved .bte file, seeing the -1s, the code is unable to determine those units' organization.  They are then rendered effectively non-functional.

I have diff'ed the before and after .scn files, and there is no significant difference there suggesting why anything should ultimately lead to -1 tracking #s being written to the .bte file.

This is a really tough situation to debug, because it all depends on the context.  Even if I were to have all the relevant files -- all of them! including backup saves -- I'm not certain I could recreate the context where those -1s were written to the save file.  It could be some odd chance occurrence, maybe replicable, maybe not.

It doesn't help that, if I understand the narrative correctly, the scenario was being modded.

I can't give a full explanation how this all came about, nor do I have a firm basis here on which to identify a bug, much less fix it.

If I understand the narrative correctly, the affected players have since discovered a work-around, and are able to play on.  That will have to suffice for now.

(In future, I ask that technical support questions be raised at the Matrix Forum.  Better to have all of the technical lore be in once place.  The support forum at Matrix

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tt.asp?forumid=449

is the place for it.)