..toaw3 goes berserker ?

[a white rabbit]

..scen is Dneiper 2, pbem, me as German

.. first round attacks, T4, so only non moved units, on limited attacks, artillery on tac sup, some on ignore, and the thing goes wild on some attacks, 6-8 attacks and i lose the turn, early bath night..ok maybe a few mistakes but even on ignore i shouldn't lose the turn

..so T5, far more careful planning, with checks before pushing the button so none on ignore, and same again, 8 combat rounds, sounds like artillery, and total early bath-night baby..

.. i hadn't saved before the attack, but will on next turn, as i also need to advise Okimaw that my next may well have beeps all over it, it may be the scen ? i'll post the report for T5 as soon as i've read it

[a white rabbit]

[font=arial]..nope sitlog's no use, can i persuade it to give the toaw log in a scen already starte[/font]d ?

[a white rabbit]

..it still happens, one attack has a 9 attack rounds total and this in the first phase

..attacks in question are 17/38,34/12, 82/119, 53/38 the 9 attack beauty

..after 4 tries i still can't get a second round, and yes i sent the original save...NOTE, artillery not supporting but on targeted fire only gives 3 attack rounds when on ignore

..as the file even zipped is too big to upload i've sent it to JaMiAM direct, over to you cos this ain't right

[JAMiAM]

Richard,

The file you sent me has some attack not starting until after round 6. Use the Planned Attacks / % Used feature to check this out. When you load from a save file, to initialize it, simply select one of your attacking units, and order it again to attack. Look at the circlet of stars in the panel on the right, you will see that the majority of them have gone silver.

I don't intend on searching through the whole map, looking for which attack you have planned poorly, but at least one of them has at least one unit ordered to attack that has already expended some 60% of its movement.

[JAMiAM]

Okay, I took a few minutes to check it out. You've got the attack on (31,31) screwed up, because the infantry regiment in (30,31) only has 4 of its 10 MP's available. There may be other problems in other attacks, that I hadn't yet found, but this one, alone, is enough to delay your attack until after round 6 and cause the bulk of your turn to be wasted.

[a white rabbit]

..i can live with that, i'm not asking you to check for error attacks, just the whirlwind ones on the listed hexes, what isn't explained is the 7/9 attack rounds being consumed at once, 53/38 being a continuing culprit, nothing on ignore, especially not artillery

[a white rabbit]

..to continue, the only way i found to stop the hurricane of artillery fire was to set the ground attack on min loss, and up to T4 the scen was running sweet, but from then on, madness, 7 artillery attacks, one after another, is impressive but not what i had in mind
 
..i checked with Okimaw, and nothing of his was on ignore in the target hexes
 
..i seem to recall having this problem in toaw2, but it went away after a patch

[a white rabbit]

..oookkkk, got it down to 20 attacks, shield thingy says 00% for attacks planned, 00% for turn used, and its still going berserker and i lose the turn..?
 
..i'll go thru one more time then send you the SAL

[JAMiAM]

We'll start off by removing the offending regiment from the attack, previously noted. Now, we see that attacks are scheduled to begin after two rounds have elapsed, as the Attacks Planned % is 20%. That's okay, we go on from here...

There are several attacks that are poorly planned. The one on (53,38), shouldn't come as too much of a surprise, since you're attacking a Soviet Tank Regiment, in open terrain, defending deployment, and you are using no tanks of your own to attack it with. What you are using are a couple of split recon companies and a PG Reg, which is only making a limited attack. Three of your HQ or artillery units nearby are not in supporting deployments. Crüwell, in (51,37) has expended no movement points, and there are no other attacks in range, so he should be set to attack directly at ignore losses. Blümm, also in (51,37) has expended too many MP's so we put him in Tactical Reserve. Art.Rgt. 127, in (52,35) also gets put into Tactical Reserve. Although the bulk of his guns are out of range, since the 210mm Howitzers only have a range of 2, this won't help too much, but every little bit counts here. Art.Rgt. 3 has the same issue, with its 150mm Howitzers, but he's already at Tactical Reserve. It's too bad you didn't think ahead, and bring these two units within two hexes, as the extra firepower of the shorter ranged guns would really help here in driving up the attrition rate of the hex, and maybe scoring hits on some of the other assets of the defending Soviets.

Next, we have three Artillery regiments in (49,37) which have not yet moved. One of them is in Tactical Reserve, but only a portion of its guns will reach (53,38) from where it's at. We move the three units, to (51,37), taking care to take not use the autopathing, since it jumps the road and wastes 2 MP's each. This should only take 3-4 MP's per unit, and since they have 19-20 MP's each, you can also set them to directly support the attack, without affecting the round started. Finally, commit the Pz Reg sitting in (53,37) to also make a limit loss attack against the hex. My original assumption in looking at the attack on this hex is based on the feeling that we are attacking T-34/76 (early) tanks, based on the equipment shown in the unit panel. Even though the early war Pz III's and Pz IV's in the unit have relatively low anti-armor ratings, relative to the T-34/76 (early) equipment, you need to maximize the possibility of causing casualties on the unit.

As it turns out, my attack takes only one round, drives out the defenders with losses of 4 BT-7 tanks, 1 T-26 and an armored car. My assumption of the defenders having some T-34/76 (early) was in error, and there was a bit of overkill. However, there were virtually no losses to my forces in this battle, it was prosecuted with extreme brevity, and it drove out the defenders, into an overstacked condition, that would allow for a good followup attack. To channel Guderian here...Smack them! Don't swat them!

Many other examples of inadequate attacks abound where you will likewise burn too much of your turn, due to your forces and the enemy gumming each other with insufficient casualties. The problem is not with the game. It is with a lack of finesse and planning in your attacks.

What I would recommend is when you play this scenario, and any other large ones where you may overlook various turn-burning attacks, due to the sheer scale of the undertaking, that you and your opponent agree to use a scenario that has been modified with a MRPB rating of 3, so that the odd (or multiple) case of bad luck, or bad planning, is less likely to throw a wrench in the entire turn's progress. That is a major reason why we put this feature into TOAW III, and I would strongly suggest that people take advantage of it.

I'm moving this thread to The War Room, where it belongs. It is NOT a support issue. It is a game tactics/techniques issue.

[a white rabbit]

..what on earth do you mean by "gumming each other with insufficient casualties" ?...

..regardless of the tactical errors you consider exist, and you got an unfinished pre-attack SAL i'm looking to stop the 7-9 attacks in a row, 53/38 continues to throw up these as does 82/119, with 24/8 coming a close third ..

..i'm not asking you to rearrange my attacks, there is a logic given the scen in not burning up supply/readiness too early, only using that necessary without going into overkill, the rectified SAL sent takes care of the 2 oversights, and reduces involved artillery, but in repeated play, the 7-9 continuous attacks still occur most repeatedly on the hexes mentioned.

..as for putting in range artillery on support, even if it's moved, it was by taking them out that i calmed the play a little

..in short, 7-9 "Axis attack " without a break given the troops involved are on limit loss is inexplicable, 82/119 should stop after two rounds, not blast on for 9, and 24/8 the same, regardless of the results

..yes, i think it is a support issue, some of the main culprits only go wild if at the start of the combat phase, not if later, i suspect the "multiple rates of fire" combined possibly with the scen itself, are the cause. Avoiding the 7-9 by play is one thing, but that doesn't avoid the fact that it happens and it's that which is burning the turn, the damned engine just won't stop. By fiddling i've narrowed it to the hexes mentioned, over to you, with your socket set now

..example for the attack on 53/38, yes, no tanks in my attack, so ? the attack stops, its all on limit loss, it shouldn't blast on regardless

[a white rabbit]

..modified SAL sent via pm

[JAMiAM]

ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

..what on earth do you mean by "gumming each other with insufficient casualties" ?...

Dwell on this for a bit...

If you are not causing sufficient casualties to the enemy forces, and they are not causing sufficient casualties to yours, then they will continue attacking and defending and yes, you will burn out your turn if you're not using a low MRPB to inhibit how many rounds the forces continue on this way "gumming each other".

The attack into (82,119) is another example of a poor attack. You are attacking a tank regiment again, with a couple of low prof Rumanian infantry regiments, and an Rumanian Eng battalion that have almost no AT weaponry to speak of. Your HQ is scheduled to do a bombardment of (83,119) instead of helping out with the attack into (82,119) or at least to be in Tactical Reserve to assist in this attack. All these units are at limit losses, so unless the Soviet tanks get really lucky they are going to just keep sucking up the few losses that the tanks will cause, without doing any harm in return.

Then, to top it off, your opponent has the Cavalry regiment in (82,120) set to Tactical Reserve, and it jumps into the battle, in a now Ruined Urban Hex, which consequently raises its defense strength, and now you have another unit which is sticking around against your understrength attack. This is a case of a hex that should not be assaulted, until you can bring up sufficient force to do the job right. Either sit next to it, and guard it, or bypass it, but don't complain that it's the engine that is being wonky, when it is your ill-conceived attacks and your opponent's defense tricks that do you in.

If Guderian doesn't appeal to you, then let's go with Napoleon..."If you start to take Vienna -- take Vienna!"

[JAMiAM]

My apologies.

I just opened this scenario up in the editor, and for some inexplicable and wholly undocumented reason, the author has set the attrition divider to 50!?!?!? This will cause only a fifth of the casualties that the default value of 10 will cause. This is likely a BIG source of the problems that you're having with this scenario. You are really going to have to pick your battles carefully, and as much as possible, fight a battle of maneuver rather than frontal attacks. Those attacks that you do make are going to need to be prosecuted with utmost virulence.

I don't really agree with the author's design choices in this one, as between the lack of active disengagement "required" by the house rules, and the low attrition rate (high divider) things are likely to devolve into trench warfare too easily.

[a white rabbit]

..my thanks, you understand under the hood better than i do..and i do mean that..

.. however from my next move, we now have a situation where inf regts will, regardless of setting, suicidially throw themselves against tanks ? where three full strength german regts attacking from 3 sides with assault engineers will not only not smash the last divided remnant of a recon btn (shades of small units won't die) but will also continue to attack, suffering few casualties but eating the turn totally

..not to mention the heroic but stupid Roumanians in regt strength with engineer support, crump the HQ but die on the guns of some tatty armoured cars ??? or rather don't die, just keep attacking well beyond my preset limit, and eat the turn.....

..at the moment i'm not sure if its a toaw problem if i can replicate in an acow ancients BioEd mod, if only because it does give a surprisingly good representation of genuine berserker attacks..or enraged elephants.....

..and yes, i'd got to leaving armour alone, ringing them with 88s and moving on. Strangely large parts of the russian front line is now unsupported armour as previous combat has busted his infantry..

[Industrial]

Turn-burns and their evil twin the early-turn-ending are my two most hated 'features' in TOAW, join my campaign to get rid of them as proposed in this thread [:)]

[golden delicious]

Attacking pure armour with infantry? Come on, Richard, rookie error.

To counter Industrial's link, here's one of my own:
http://www.tdg.nu/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1152466524

[a white rabbit]

ORIGINAL: golden delicious

Attacking pure armour with infantry? Come on, Richard, rookie error.

To counter Industrial's link, here's one of my own:
http://www.tdg.nu/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1152466524

..they're Russians, it's 1941, frankly 1 man and his (German) dog should be able to beat them, and all i wanted to do was engage them, not watch troops throw themselves on the chevaux-de-frise without command

..

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

..they're Russians, it's 1941, frankly 1 man and his (German) dog should be able to beat them, and all i wanted to do was engage them, not watch troops throw themselves on the chevaux-de-frise without command

Right. But this is TOAW. So you don't attack pure armour with infantry. Got it?

[a white rabbit]

ORIGINAL: golden delicious

ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

..they're Russians, it's 1941, frankly 1 man and his (German) dog should be able to beat them, and all i wanted to do was engage them, not watch troops throw themselves on the chevaux-de-frise without command

Right. But this is TOAW. So you don't attack pure armour with infantry. Got it?

..you do when you got them surrounded..

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

..you do when you got them surrounded..

I'd say leave them be. Try to get an RBC once per turn.