JTCS - Viet Nam

[Crossroads]

A couple of examples, in case any of you guys is interested to look at things under the hood.

Infantry. For instance, WF Bootcamp 1, and the US Rifle Platoon 44 grunts there. Have a look at them with Arkady's Unit Viewer, you will notice their (Road) Speed is set at 10. (10 kmh to be precise).

Infantry (and any unit type) movement rate is defined in Movement.pdt, or in its encrypted format, pdx rather. If you open the pdt file, what you will find is four sets of intimidating looking tables. Those tables are the movement rates for the fourteen unit types covered within the JTCS game: Tracked, Halftrack, Armored Car, Truck, Wagon, Foot, Motorcycle, Train, Ski, Horse, Boat, Raft, Air, and Ship.

The four sets are for movement rates under Normal, Soft, Mud, and Snow. (As of CSME 2.0, we've added two more to accommodate for the coming East Front game: Frozen, and Deep Snow).

Then, each column represents a unique terrain type, first one being Clear, and then all the others. First all full hex terrain types, then all Hex Side types. I am pretty sure all new terrain types such as Airfield etc were added to the end, so the first ten columns for instance would be Clear, (Deep) Water, Forest, Marsh, Building, Village, City, Beach, Orchard, and Rough. Then Shallow (Water), Impassable (all 0s), Industrial, Field (as of CSME 2.0: Grain Field), Suburb, Swamp, and Vineyard. And on they go, CS has a ton of terrain types, which is very nice of course.

A value of "0" means the unit type / conditions / hex type does not allow said unit entering a hex of that type at all, otherwise there's the movement cost there. A unit can always enter a hex once, regardless of cost, so like with Forest having a cost of "8000", those units can enter it using all their Action points.

Foot movement on Normal under Road terrain is there, somewhere (my helper tool accomodates for the latest revision, I have the old helper somewhere ...), where the movement rate on Paved Road is "100". As for most other land moving units as well, meaning that on paved roads the units can move at the default Speed set at its platoon**.oob file.

Rifle Infantry 44 with its Speed of "10" and Paved Road parameter "100" then has its hex entry cost calculated, resulting in 25 in this case. Formula uses the 6 minutes turns ie. 10 turns to an hour conversion, meaning Rifle'44 can enter four Paved Road hexes each turn. Four * 250 meters is one kilometer per turn, with 10 turns to an hour they ten travel the set 10 kmh.

Each turn, turn after turn, right? Wrong. They can march at Double every other turn, meaning one turn they march 1000 meters, the next one 1250 meters, on average, within an hour, 11 250 meters to be precise.

That obviously would not make sense, but as we are not changing unit data, to keep the game performing as it was, hence the definition of 10 minute turns. With 10 minute turns, six turns to an hour, without Double Time, they could march six kilometers to an hour. More plausible, isn't it.

But it is not just the movement rates. For instance, WW2 era Artillery is supposed to spot, receive fire priority, range, and barrage two fire missions into each 6 minute turns, turn after turn. 3 minutes per Fire mission. Quite inplausible. To say they could to that for each 5 minute set, still a challenge, but at least plausible.

Hope this explains this better.