Recently I started playing an OCS game with PBEM.
I think the game does not really matter, in my question.
It seems that the default, or common approach, is to start a new log at each player round. That means, each log contains only the moves previously done, and not the whole past.
While this make sense for games like chess, go, or similar, where the current position is the only thing that really matter, in the wargames like OCS (but I think almost all of them) the previous events are very important, i.e. if a unit already moved/fired, the current turn, so forth and so on.
So, I have the impression that the “Load Log, Fast Forward, and Append” should be the preferred way to manage them: is there any reason to avoid that ? What could be the problem in the long-term ?
The only way you could build a continuous log file is when you load a log file start a new log file so it records the steps as you step through them and when at the end do the next thing.
However after a few combinations it would get really really long for some games!
If a user uses the Tools→Load Log, Fast Forward, and Append feature, then that user does not need to step through the log, so that isn’t really a problem.
What can become a problem is the sheer size of a log file. That can easily and quickly become very big, not least due to how Vassal stores pieces and changes to pieces and other elements of a game. For example, the tutorial of Napoleon at Waterloo (2nd & 3rd Ed) is 1.4 MB (out of 7.9 MB for the whole module), and only captures a single turn.
One can speculate what will be the utility of one big log file. It will allow you to step back in the history of a game, to see what happened earlier, but as soon as one makes a change, the log file will no longer be in sync and one can argue the game is being corrupted.
The log files should store if pieces have been moved and so on - if the module defines the proper traits and features, and when you load a log file, the proper state should be apparent.
I can see the merit in possibly combining a series of logs into a mother-of-all-logs in case one wants a history of a whole game.