JTS Gettysburg pdt bug

[logruspattern]

This is my last reply to the thread for the sake of being a proponent of drawing reasonable conclusions from evidence at hand. That effort thus far seems to have been a poor use of my time. Aside from that, JTS has the bug report and will decide to change it or not. I suppose they will be the official arbiter.

You're arguing that it is not a bug because:

• it has a low probability of occurring and a low impact if it does;
  
• if it's in the pdt file, then it's as the scenario designer intended.
  

Neither of those points is an argument against it being a bug. The first point is simply your agreement with me that the bug only occurs in edge cases.

You think the firepower of 4 against adjacent hexes is too powerful. Then you surely find it odd when you compare the entries for the 3 in rifle with the Whitworth from the Overland1.pdt:

T 1 8 2 6 3 4 5 3.5 10 3 12 2 14 1 18 .75 21 .5 -1
W 1 15 14 12 21 10 28 8 35 6 70 4 -1

The 3 in has a larger bore and can fire case shot; the Whitworth has a smaller bore and cannot. Yet the Whitworth has 15 firepower against adjacent hexes and out to 34 hexes has more firepower than the 3 in does at 1 hex.

No other weapon entry in 17 pdts I examined starts with an entry of other than '1' except for the Whitworth entries. That is 4 entries from 17 times about 40 to 50 entries per file, or about 850 entries overall. Even weapons with minimum ranges start with a range entry of '1'. I was previously incorrect that indirect fire weapons did not have minimum ranges; however I was operating on faulty knowledge due to a different bug in the program that affects how parameter data is displayed in game.

So the Whitworth is the only weapon of 52 weapons across two games and 17 parameter files with about 850 entries to start with an entry other than '1'. Further it is the only direct fire weapon with a minimum range, it has the same minimum range as the indirect fire weapons in the games I have, and you are asserting that those entries just happen to be formatted differently in order to arrive at the same result. Because that's how the scenario designer intended?

How about this: the thunderstorm entries for Overland1.pdt differ in their descriptions only by the temperature yet all of them, but for one glaring exception, have the same effects in game:

Thunderstorms, temp mid 60s (100% at 21:00 05/24/1864)

Visibility: 10

Move Cost: 125%

Attack Mod: 90%

Artillery Mod: 100%

Thunderstorms & heavy rain, 60 degrees (100% at 17:30 05/11/1864)

Visibility: 10

Move Cost: 125%

Attack Mod: 0%

Artillery Mod: 90%

Thunderstorms temps almost 80 (100% at 14:00 05/20/1864)

Visibility: 10

Move Cost: 125%

Attack Mod: 0%

Artillery Mod: 90%

Thunderstorms temps low 60s (100% at 05:00 05/20/1864)

Visibility: 10

Move Cost: 125%

Attack Mod: 0%

Artillery Mod: 90%

Thunderstorms temps low 70s (100% at 21:00 05/20/1864)

Visibility: 10

Move Cost: 125%

Attack Mod: 0%

Artillery Mod: 90%

Thunderstorms, temp mid 70s (100% at 20:00 05/09/1864)

Visibility: 10

Move Cost: 125%

Attack Mod: 0%
Artillery Mod: 90%

So by your reasoning the scenario designers here intend that artillery fire is unaffected by thunderstorms in the mid 60s temperature range, although it is for the low 60s and 70s and for every other type of thunderstorm? Furthermore, melee in this situation gets a whopping 90% bonus! Clearly this is as the scenario designers intended.

I'm not interested in arguing over firepower ratings and designer intent in this thread. Especially when the ratings are within the realm of plausibility. Hell I even think it is plausible that the Whitworth could have 0 firepower against targets close in; at least against infantry and cavalry.

However I am arguing that the evidence in the files points to the entry being a bug. Even if the scenario designers intended for the Whitworth to have no firepower against close targets, then they formatted the entry differently than every single other weapon in the two JTS CW games I have. And they only just happened to format it differently than the entries for the other weapons that actually do have minimum ranges in reality (ie the indirect fire weapons). Based on the evidence a reasonable conclusion to draw is that the Whitworth entry is a bug and likely does not reflect the intent of the scenario designer or of the weapon's actual capabilities, regardless of its historical employment on the battlefield.