Weird bug with Start pos causing crash to desktop at turn 10.

[MrCrisps]

Hi all, I just uploaded the working version of my mod for the new patch and DLC and as I was working on Start pos, I encountered a weird bug.

The bug was a crash to desktop systematically at the end of the AI 10th turn. I had a very hard time to isolate the reason of it but I finally found it. It was the Start pos which caused that.

In my modifications of the Start pos.esf I made the Bloody spearz army facing the Dwarves at the Pilars of Grungni bigger so that the Dwarf player will have a harder time to beat it. The apparent issue is with that modification in particular as I checked with an older Start pos version without those changes made to this Bloody Spearz army.

What have i done exactly in my mod :

1) Searching for the Faction array of the Bloody Spearz in the Campaign env - World section. They are at position number 40.
2) Going all the way to army_array_0 and unit_arrays (0 to 5 in that case).
3) Duplicating the last unit_array to have 10 total units in the army (so units are unit_array_0 to 10).
4) Changing the unit_record_key values to adjust to the units i wanted.
5) From unit_array_6 to unit_array_10 I changed a number of the UNIT line apparently unique to each start pos unit of each army_array. Those numbers were originally following each other from unit_array_2 to unit_array_5. However this number for unit_array_1 was the value of unit_array_5 plus one. For example if 272 is the value for unit_array_2, 273 is for unit_array_3 and so on to unit_array_5 which is logically 275. So the value for unit_array_1 is 276.
6) I've also noticed that, in that case, the value of this number for the unit_array_0 (which usually is the commander of this army) is the value of unit_array_1 plus one. If I take my example above, this value should then be 277.

What made me completely confused is that when I tried to made those kind of changes in the past and I've made some mistakes, the campaign would crash even at the start of a new one ! In the issue I had today, the campaign launched and all worked till that fated 10th turn, be it with Orcs, Dwarves or Empire. Same bug, same turn each time. I'm just completely confused and I just wonder what is exacly causing that bug.

A few things come to my mind in that particular case :

- Usually when something is done wrongly with the Start pos.esf, the game will crash when loading a new campaign. This happening after 10 turns is really weird and I would like to understand what exactly was made wrong to cause that kind of bug.

- Is there any Start pos expert out here or somewhere on the internet? As i've searched many sources talking about it, there are almost none. Sure, Magnar did a great intro of it, but it just scratches the top of the iceberg and the real mechanisms are way more complex than just editing usual lua db files.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[Arayel]

I've done all my startpos editing in DAVE then, exported changes and built a new startpos. At least with the tables you can see what you're doing. Adding and changing units for armies is very easy this way. I don't why it's crashing at turn 10 (is it every time from a new playthrough or from the autosave?) but I would probably guess at a conflict in a recruitment somewhere.

If it were me I would crank up DAVE, find the start_pos_land_units table, add a few entries to the table copying the name of the general and using pull down boxes to select what units you want him to have, export your changes, open BOB, build a new startpos and use that. At least that's what I did to alter a bunch of starting units and it's worked fine as part of my major startpos overhaul!

[Wobbleside]

I've been having issues where doing this exact same thing seems to strip out win conditions in the new startpos.esf that BoB generates, the whole table is just blank.

I've done all my startpos editing in DAVE then, exported changes and built a new startpos. At least with the tables you can see what you're doing. Adding and changing units for armies is very easy this way. I don't why it's crashing at turn 10 (is it every time from a new playthrough or from the autosave?) but I would probably guess at a conflict in a recruitment somewhere.

If it were me I would crank up DAVE, find the start_pos_land_units table, add a few entries to the table copying the name of the general and using pull down boxes to select what units you want him to have, export your changes, open BOB, build a new startpos and use that. At least that's what I did to alter a bunch of starting units and it's worked fine as part of my major startpos overhaul!