COTA (mini-guide): Tutorial, AAR, and tips!

[MarkShot]

Okay, it is time for me to hit the Z key. Which is the COTA for key for ordering your forces to rest. However, that is for me; not for them.

I'll pick this up on day 2 with the Sun comming up.

Any comments?

Useful to decide whether COTA is the right investment for you?

Useful to help you to learn to play the game?

Take care.

[Jim D Burns]

I am very surprised how easily you repulsed the defenders. A bridge assault usually required extensive close in fighting to carry the day, but by your screen shots it appears the allies retreated before the Germans were within 1 kilometer in most cases and many were 2 km away from any Germans yet retreating.

Direct fire and artillery should cause disruption, disorder and fatigue, but given the mission the allies had, I would think only a total route would cause their commanders to pull back. Any first year cadet knows that to abandon a strong defensive position like a river only opens their forces up to total destruction once the enemy crossed over.

I’d say support weapons and artillery are too powerful by far given these results, some hard close in infantry fighting should have been necessary to carry the day here. Even if the defenders were raw recruits, some close in fighting should have occurred before the retreat.

Jim

[MarkShot]

But you will observe that if not for the armor of the Pz 3 Regt appeared on the Allies' right flank, the 143rd Regt wasn't getting across the bridge despite all its effort.

Well, I will discuss the battle from the other side (but only broad strokes) after I am done with the AAR.

I've played the Allies and the key is getting dug-in. Getting caught as they are mainly on the move is murder.

However, Dave and Bil would do better to comment on realism aspect of the game. I am neither a veteran or a historian.

Thanks for the feedback.

[Jim D Burns]

The more I think about it the more I think the problem is available responses to incoming fire. It appears a unit either holds or retreats in the face of fire. I’d add one more response, go to ground. A unit under direct ranged or artillery fire should automatically receive an order of go to ground. They would then find the best cover within say 100 yards and go to ground. Effectively becoming pinned with a corresponding offensive fire reduction based on their experience, fatigue, disruption level, etc.

Units should only be forced to retreat if routed or if facing assault type units (Infantry, Armor, etc.). Support weapons and artillery should not be the deciding factor in capturing ground unless the damage caused is enough to cause a route. At most it should displace a unit to better cover within a short distance of its starting location.

Jim

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: MarkShot

But you will observe that if not for the armor of the Pz 3 Regt appeared on the Allies' right flank, the 143rd Regt wasn't getting across the bridge despite all its effort.

Well, I will discuss the battle from the other side (but only broad strokes) after I am done with the AAR.

I've played the Allies and the key is getting dug-in. Getting caught as they are mainly on the move is murder.

However, Dave and Bil would do better to comment on realism aspect of the game. I am neither a veteran or a historian.

Thanks for the feedback.

The armor did get close enough to 1 maybe 2 units to be considered in close assault, but most allied units were 2 or more kilometers away from the armor when they retreated from direct fire or artillery. I'm not saying your assault shouldn't have carried the day (it should have) only that it should have required close contact with the enemy to force their retreats.

Heck most of your infantry were in excess of 2 km when engaged. At best their heavy MG’s and mortars were being used. Riflemen engage in combat at about 500 meters or closer, I’d say it’s safe to say not a single rifleman fired a bullet here.

Jim

[MarkShot]

Actually, dug-in units will go into retreat recovery mode in place and not forfeit their prepared positions. (effectively suppression goes up, return fire is reduced, and they cannot process new orders) However, if you hit them hard enough they will break and attempt to save their skin.

There is also a local affect. Broken units around a unit make it more likely to break. Unbroken units around a unit make it less likely to break.

I can tell you that engineering unit was all alone and taking fire from multiple directions.

And now that you mention it, I do believe the Allied forces in this scenario are not seasoned veterans, but in experienced.

[elmo3]

Question for you Mark:

Do units need to completely run out of ammo before the resupply process starts? Or do they automatically call for ammo when they are getting low? Even the former is better than waiting to 0300 as in HTTR. Thanks.

[MarkShot]

That's a question for Dave.

[MarkShot]

However, I have seen units get resupplied before being out. But what the thresholds and processing cycles are, I don't know.

[jungelsj_slith]

ORIGINAL: MarkShot

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Start:1 12:00 End: 3 12:00
Last: 1 16:24 Now: 1 17:17
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Pz 3 Regt motorized infantry (I have highlighted them) have now received their new orders and are on the move to Tempe. The gray paths and task markers are implicit orders issued by the AI on our behalf.

It doesn't look like the AI followed your orders in this instance at all. In fact, they've chosen to move outside of the box that you created. Why is this?

[jungelsj_slith]

ORIGINAL: MarkShot

That's a question for Dave.

What was your observation from the scenario that you played? Did it wait until your artillery was completely out of ammo before it sent a resupply?

[MarkShot]

Actually, that's the traveling orders the AI gave them. You'll see later on that the AI put them into a defensive line formation.

The AI is not robotic. It goes through a series of steps in implementing the players orders. This is what frees the player from extreme micro-management and increases the command realism of the game.

[MarkShot]

The arty ran out as my usage was extreme; many rapid and normal ROF fire missions - which was my intention.

Later on, when left on-call under AI control, there was an ample supply and resupply of shells.

[Arjuna]

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

I am very surprised how easily you repulsed the defenders. A bridge assault usually required extensive close in fighting to carry the day, but by your screen shots it appears the allies retreated before the Germans were within 1 kilometer in most cases and many were 2 km away from any Germans yet retreating.

Direct fire and artillery should cause disruption, disorder and fatigue, but given the mission the allies had, I would think only a total route would cause their commanders to pull back. Any first year cadet knows that to abandon a strong defensive position like a river only opens their forces up to total destruction once the enemy crossed over.

I’d say support weapons and artillery are too powerful by far given these results, some hard close in infantry fighting should have been necessary to carry the day here. Even if the defenders were raw recruits, some close in fighting should have occurred before the retreat.

Jim

Thanks for your feedback Jim. I'll respond as best I can here, without having a recording of Mark's game to analyse and report back conclusively. So I'll be going on the screenshots ( just like you ) and what I know of the history and the game engine.

First off, most actions to secure a defended bridge are decided well before the troops actually close. The reason primarily being that most bridges and certainly the ones in Greece were very exposed with virtually no good nearby covered defensive terrain. In most cases the defending troops were easily identified at long range and systematically targeted by arty, air strikes and long range weapons. Tanks do not close unnecessarily. They utilise their best assets - ie long range firepower and armour protection. This was not like the bridges in Holland where average visibility was only 500m due to terrain.

I agree that direct and indirect fire should cause disruption, disorder and fatigue. But that is not all they do. The most telling effect of fire is to cause casualties and casualties adversely affect a units morale. Once the casualties start mounting there reaches a point for the commander and for the troops where they question the feasibility of continuing with their mission. In other words once a certain casualty threshold is reached they will retreat and in some cases rout.

In COTA we differentiate between the two such that retreats are an ordered pull back while a rout is a disorganised fleeing of the field. Units and commanders have varying capacities and attributes that affect this. For units's it's their stubborness, experience, training and morale. For commanders it's their aggro and determination. Other factors also affect the result - specifically the task parameters of Aggro and Acceptable Losses. If these are low then the casualty threshold will be low and hence they will more readily conced ground.

Another factor is the task type and doctrine being employed. For instance if the force was ordered to Delay ( and of course without the recording I cannot confirm this but this was the overall Allied posture ) then the defenders would establish a couple of blocking positions and once the forward position was threatened or the delay route cut or threatened, then they will pull back, leapfrogging past the rear blocking position and establishing a new one. The aim of the delay force is to trade space for time and hopefully minimise friendly casualties while maximising enemy casualties. Not an easy feat for experienced troops let along inexperienced ones.

The more I think about it the more I think the problem is available responses to incoming fire. It appears a unit either holds or retreats in the face of fire. I’d add one more response, go to ground. A unit under direct ranged or artillery fire should automatically receive an order of go to ground. They would then find the best cover within say 100 yards and go to ground. Effectively becoming pinned with a corresponding offensive fire reduction based on their experience, fatigue, disruption level, etc.

In fact there is a whole range of responses or reactions to enemy contact, fire, bombardment, air strike and assault. Units pretty much automatically go to ground when under fire. There are several deployment states - undeployed, taking cover, deployed, dug-in, entrenched and fortified. Units on the move are undeployed. As soon as they receive fire, the first thing they will do is take cover and hopefully deploy ( ie occupy good firing positions ) and then return fire.

The specific reaction depends on a lot of factors, including their mission, their training, experience, fitness, fatigue, morale, proximity to leaders and other reacting units, proximity to enemy, enemy actions etc just to name a few.

Units under fire have their suppression level increased. The amount of suppression varies due to a number of factors, including the terrain, the weight and effectiveness of the enemy fire, whether it is direct or indirect, training and experience and so on.

Units should only be forced to retreat if routed or if facing assault type units (Infantry, Armor, etc.). Support weapons and artillery should not be the deciding factor in capturing ground unless the damage caused is enough to cause a route. At most it should displace a unit to better cover within a short distance of its starting location.

I disagree here. Military history, especially WW2 military history is replete with cases after case of a unit retreating in good order away from an enemy threat before that enemy assaults it. In fact most doctrine and certainly that of the Western European forces of WW2 emphasised the need when delaying to stay long enough to force the enemy to deploy for an attack but to pull out before the main enemy assault. In general the usual trigger was the second or third registration round of supporting artillery fire.

As to whether fire spt or arty should or should not be the deciding factor I think that this very much depends on the state of the defenders defensive positions. At Tempe the Allies had had little time to dig in, let alone entrench. They were not in good shape to withstand a heavy bombardment. In such circumstances hvy weapons and arty can have a field day as they did.

One of the principles of war is Momentum. Once having an enemy on the hop you want to keep him there. You do so by employing the two fundamentals of fire and movement. At the operational level you want to harrass an enemy delaying force with as much long range firepower as you can muster in order to secure the forward movement of your spearhead forces. This principle was well understood by the Germans in WW2 and was standard practice.

Having said all that I have witnessed many battles in COTA where well dug-in defenders have stood their ground against an enemy assault, where the day was only decided at the point of a bayonet or from behind an anti-tank gun firing at point blank range. Jim, rest assured that we have put a lot of work into getting the most realistic operational simulation we can. That is not to say there isn't room for improvements and fine tuning ( hey there is always room for that [;)] ).

We do appreciate your feedback. Please don't jump to conclusions on the sole basis of your initial take on this AAR. COTA deserves more than that and you would be denying yourself a great wargaming experience.

[Arjuna]

ORIGINAL: elmo3

Question for you Mark:

Do units need to completely run out of ammo before the resupply process starts? Or do they automatically call for ammo when they are getting low? Even the former is better than waiting to 0300 as in HTTR. Thanks.

Short answer - NO.

Longer answer - The new Resupply system works on the push-pull principle, in that supply is pushed onto the battlefield Depots according to a supply shcedule specified by the scenario designer in the ScenMaker ( SM ) and pulled from the Depots to specific units by those units requesting it. There are two regular resupply determination events that occur at 0600 and 1800 each day. These kick off a series of routine resupply requests which are processed one per minute per Depot. At this time a unit will assess its restocking requirements and submit a request. The Depot logs the request, prioritises them and then each minute thereafter processes the top priority request until they are all met or it runs out of supplies.

At any time however, if a unit runs below 20-25% of any category of supply, ammo, fuel or basics it can put in an emergency request, which goes to the top of the queue for processing.

[elmo3]

Thanks for the long and the short of it Dave.

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: Arjuna

Tanks do not close unnecessarily. They utilise their best assets - ie long range firepower and armour protection.

Well what we see here is Tanks vs. Infantry, so just identifying a target would necessitate they close with the enemy. Take a look at an average flat expanse of a grassy field (the engineers were in a town). I could easily hide 100 men from the eyes of tank commanders 1 or 2 kilometers away just by having them lie down. Close to within 400-600 meters and you have a very different story of course, but there are still lots of places to hide in a 1k by 1k field.

This was not like the bridges in Holland where average visibility was only 500m due to terrain.

I have read a lot of military history and have never read an account where defenders across a river retreated before any infantry actually assaulted them. Granted the armor assaulted the engineers here, but look at those engagement ranges for the rest of the German troops.

They were never within 1k and almost all exceeded 2k range. So at best their mortars may have been somewhat effective (assuming the units have mortars intrinsic to them) and Heavy MG’s were probably at the most extreme ranges possible with very little effect if any given the sheer difficulty in actually seeing your target let alone telling if your bullets were landing anywhere near them. Other than the engineers I don’t see any justification for all those allies to retreat at those kinds of engagement ranges. So either direct fire weapons and artillery is too effective, or units retreat far too easily in my opinion.

The most telling effect of fire is to cause casualties and casualties adversely affect a units morale. Once the casualties start mounting there reaches a point for the commander and for the troops where they question the feasibility of continuing with their mission. In other words once a certain casualty threshold is reached they will retreat and in some cases rout.

I totally agree, but given the results here I suspect they are causing far too many casualties far to fast. When a unit is caught in the open by the first few salvos of fire casualties should be high. But after that the unit has gone to ground and every single man is looking for the best little piece of cover he can find, so casualties should dramatically drop off once a unit has gone to ground. I suspect casualty rates do not drop off and that’s why we see support weapons and artillery clearing the entire riverbank before a single German rifleman was close enough to fire a shot.

Another factor is the task type and doctrine being employed. For instance if the force was ordered to Delay ( and of course without the recording I cannot confirm this but this was the overall Allied posture ) then the defenders would establish a couple of blocking positions and once the forward position was threatened or the delay route cut or threatened, then they will pull back, leapfrogging past the rear blocking position and establishing a new one. The aim of the delay force is to trade space for time and hopefully minimise friendly casualties while maximising enemy casualties. Not an easy feat for experienced troops let along inexperienced ones.

It appears all units retreated as the entire area is free of allied units rather quickly in the screen shots. It also appears that they then tried to counter-attack but were again repulsed (again without getting very close to the enemy at all). It just feels too easy to repulse an enemy by reading this replay. Other than the armor vs. the engineer unit in Tempe, I see no other engagement that got to within 1k of each other. So the Germans are basically chasing away the entire allied force with their direct fire support weapons and artillery. Traditionally these weapons types SUPPORTED assaults, they never lead the assault and cleared ground.

In fact there is a whole range of responses or reactions to enemy contact, fire, bombardment, air strike and assault. Units pretty much automatically go to ground when under fire. There are several deployment states - undeployed, taking cover, deployed, dug-in, entrenched and fortified. Units on the move are undeployed. As soon as they receive fire, the first thing they will do is take cover and hopefully deploy ( ie occupy good firing positions ) and then return fire.

I no longer think its limited responses to fire, I now suspect as I stated above casualties are too high for too long of a period for direct fire and artillery type units. Units under fire need to be able to withstand prolonged periods of fire after the initial shock and surprise of the opening salvo or two. Infantry and armor should be necessary to carry the day, it should be a rare occurrence when support weapons or artillery causes a withdraw without an assault unit present. Meeting engagements were fought all the time during the war and it still required assault units to win the day. Here we see support units carrying the entire battle with exceptional ease.

Military history, especially WW2 military history is replete with cases after case of a unit retreating in good order away from an enemy threat before that enemy assaults it.

I agree completely, but it was almost always a command decision to do so. Since the player is in that position it should be his decision and not forced upon him by the game. In fact you can call it what you want, but if the game forces it it’s a retreat in my book not an orderly withdraw. Now if the opponent here ordered his units to delay (makes no sense at a bridge to not try and hold at all costs long enough to blow it) then perhaps my fears are a mute point. I would like to see some test scenarios of meeting engagements run though to see if I’m right if that is the case though.

Having said all that I have witnessed many battles in COTA where well dug-in defenders have stood their ground against an enemy assault, where the day was only decided at the point of a bayonet or from behind an anti-tank gun firing at point blank range. Jim, rest assured that we have put a lot of work into getting the most realistic operational simulation we can. That is not to say there isn't room for improvements and fine tuning ( hey there is always room for that [;)] ).

Again I stress it appears not a single German rifleman got within 1k of the enemy here all day. This to me is EXTREME even if the case had been a severly outnumbered untrained conscripted allied force some infantry fighting should have occurred even if only for 20 minutes or so. But not a rifle shot was fired and the entire allied force is whupped. I think casualty rates need to be toned down so units don’t flee so quickly. Perhaps more suppression and less casualties?

We do appreciate your feedback. Please don't jump to conclusions on the sole basis of your initial take on this AAR. COTA deserves more than that and you would be denying yourself a great wargaming experience.

Don’t worry about the sale, I own HTTR and will buy this game when it’s ready. I just think there is a problem that needs to be addressed here. It seems obvious to me, doesn’t anyone else agree?

Jim

[Arjuna]

Jim,

We'll have another look. One thing we and our beta testers have learnt though is that you should not make changes from a single instance but rather from a comprehensive sample base. As in real warfare, there can be abberations or rare outcomes. These do happen. The thing is not to jump too readily. So we'll monitor things here. Certainly this is not somethinh that out beta testers have commented on in the many hundreds if not thousands of hour of testing. But then again we're only human. Thanks once again for your feedback.

[elmo3]

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns


... I just think there is a problem that needs to be addressed here. It seems obvious to me, doesn’t anyone else agree?

Jim

No way for me to offer an opinion based on only seeing one side of one AAR.

Allied orders are an unknown. If they had Delay orders then they aren't going to stand and fight. They will withdraw to the next waypoint once the Germans deploy and start putting fire on them.

The attributes of the local Allied commanders come into play and we don't know how they are rated.

LOS could play a big part too. Did they see the German armor already across the river? If so they may have decided a fight to the last man was pointless since the bridge couldn't be held or blown in time anyway.

In any case if there is a problem it will get sorted out and I'm sure Dave will take whatever action he decides is appropriate.

[MarkShot]

A little side note here. You will notice no informational messages (they usually appear scrolling from the top of the screen in red, green, yellow, and blue) in my screenshots. This is because of the way I do these AARs.

The battle has already been completed. But rather than simply take screenshots at selected moments, I make save games along with personal notes. This allows me a much greater deal of control when later getting screenshots to display the situation. (It also helps with testing, since when problems are found there is a very detailed record from which to retrace events.)

The message log which the game displays is not stored in the save game. Thus, despite quite a few informational messages (objectives changing hands, supplies being delivered, units routing or surrendering, ...) having displayed while I played, you will not see any in this AAR.

A new COTA feature allows you to filter these messages or turn them off entirely. There is also a tab where you can display and filter all messages for the current gaming session.

Note: The individual unit log messages are stored in the save game and available on reload. What I am refering to above are global messages.