Berserkers

[Oleg Mastruko]

Are there any REAL drawbacks to putting all units on Fastest/Rapid/Quickest/Bloodiest/Ignore Losses/Kill Everything/Berserk settings all the time?

Playing COTA and HTTR before that I naturally pushed the envelope of aggressiveness further and further, realizing in most scenarios there are no real penalties for doing it. It's even worse than HTTR, as in HTTR because of simplified supply system, berserk play could have left you with no ammo. In COTA, with better and advanced supply system, investing just a little care into taking supply/HQ units along, you can "afford" your combat units to go Berserk practically ALL the time.

Yea, you'll say "but, fatigue, losses, supplies?". OK; but neither of those is real hindrance to use Berserker tactics. Berserkism just pays off in the end - sometimes it's the only tactics that pays off. Perhaps under lesser settings units are simply too timid?

Today, I am playing all my games vs AI with most aggressive/berserk settings and I usually win, and/or if I don't win I do achieve better results than would ever be possible with more timid settings. It's almost that I'd like for most basic orders (Attack, Defend) to come with Berserk settings preset so that I don't have to click 5 times to tweak them.

Probe is example of order that benefits from more cautios setting but I find I am using Probe, as such, very very rarely.

Comments? Perhaps it would take smart human opponent to teach me the drawbacks of Berserkism? Vs AI I just don't see any.

Oleg

[jungelsj_slith]

It would be interesting to see certain troop types limited to certain levels of aggression, etc.  It doesn't seem like low morale/untrained troops should be able to fight 'aggressively.'  
 
One reason for not turning up agressiveness is if you do want to take an area, but with low losses.  Another reason to lower agression - if you're trying to move through an area quickly, you dont want your troops stopping to deploy their weapons every time they see a target of opportunity. 

[Fred98]

Oleg,
 
Please replace that photo with one of a beautiful blonde woman.
 
Thanks!
 
 

[Oleg Mastruko]

ORIGINAL: Joe 98

Oleg,

Please replace that photo with one of a beautiful blonde woman.

Thanks!

Since you asked so nicely... [:D]

[Oleg Mastruko]

But I miss my Materazzi already! [:(]

[Brady]

lol[:)]

[Arjuna]

ORIGINAL: Oleg Mastruko

But I miss my Materazzi already! [:(]

Oleg,

I didn't realise how easy it was to get you do something. Will you please change that avatar of yours to a nice friendly frog? Pretty please! [;)]

[jungelsj_slith]

and now a brunette?

[HansBolter]

Have you played any scenarios that last more than three days?

In the Maleme scenario, by day 4 I had 4 battallions that that were completely exhausted and had to spend an entire day resting.

I use probe all the time. It seems to take far less org time to get going that full assaults and covers ground at a faster rate. The key is to up the aggressiveness and acceptable casualties levels for the probe order.

[Jakerson]

ORIGINAL: Oleg Mastruko

Are there any REAL drawbacks to putting all units on Fastest/Rapid/Quickest/Bloodiest/Ignore Losses/Kill Everything/Berserk settings all the time?

Yes there is you are quite short on ammo at some para drop 9 days scenarios toward end of scenario. So you have to conserve and monitor ammo levels some way as para droping and air supply brings limited amonth of new supplies in.

Also some AT-gun units use up their AP ammo pretty fast with max aggro on defence without doing much damage to enemy and in lower aggro AT-guns shoot from closer range possible causing massive damages to enemy armoured units.

In defence MAX aggro all out berserk defence might cause your whole battalions and regiments destroyed or/and surrounded by attacking force and later destroyed. In think Soviets learned this well when 300 000 of their troops where surrounded at Kiev only becouse stalin said that retreat is not an option. Germans learned this at Stalingrad.

In defence you cant be 100% sure where attacker main body hits and setting all out defence is very risky especially when orders delay is on and you cant change plans with instant telepathy.

Also if you are in defence and only want to harrass attackers advance with artillery bombardment its wise idea to do it low ROF to conserve artillery ammo. This way you could shoot much more harrassing bombardments with same number of artillery ammo. Attacking troops dont like to run trough bombardments even if there is only few shells coming on. Making harassing bombardments with rapid ROF is total waste of ammo.

[GoodGuy]

ORIGINAL: Jakerson

In think Soviets learned this well when 300 000 of their troops where surrounded at Kiev only becouse stalin said that retreat is not an option. Germans learned this at Stalingrad.

These might be some different pairs of shoes, like we say.

1941
I think you've got the Kiev cauldron (1941, September) in mind here. The German High Command (OKW) officially registered (they claimed that at least) 665,212 Russian POWs from the Kiev cauldron, which displayed a real desaster for the Red Army: The Troops at the Russians' South West front, with 4 armies (and the main bodies of another 2 armies), had been destroyed or captured and a strip of around 400 km had been ripped open - through the embracement of these troops.

In October 1941, a double battle (the battles of Wiasma and Briansk) took place, resulting in a final cauldron in each battle. The german encirclement strategy used here was a novelty, because the germans formed 2 rings, during the embracing operations: An inner ring, consisting of Infantry (almost exclusively) - transforming the pocket into a cauldron, and an outer ring consisting of armoured/mech. units.
Unlike the Kiev cauldron (which was anything than "airtight", as small groups - even 2 Marshalls and a Commissar - could escape after the cauldron got formed), these new cauldrons were way tighter. These 2 embracement-battles resulted in approx. 660,000+ Russian troops facing a POW life.

Although there might have been an order from Stalin to hold Kiev, it rather looks like that the german pincer movements were so fast during each of these operations, that Stalin's order or even a mass escape (if ordered) couldn't be executed at all. I've seen interviews with german vets, who reported that mostly unarmed Russians (in parts of the cauldron) tried to "storm" the german lines (they ran outta ammo), also, he estimated that several times up to 1000 troops were conducting such "attacks", because they were so desperately trying to get back to Russian lines. Also, there was a kind of mass movement to give up and just stop fighting, with vast numbers of Russians preferring to be POWs, 'til after these embracement-battles. Even many Russians joined the German Army (we're not talking about troops who were forced to join) after these battles, and this wasn't limited to volunteers from the baltic region.

So I don't think that Russians had been in Berserk mode in any of these early battles.

Germans learned this at Stalingrad.

Stalingrad

This was indeed more like a berserk thingy. Both sides regarded Stalingrad as a symbolic battle, where Hitler aimed at Stalin's archetype of a socialistic city, and maybe at the river Wolga's transport capacity (he thought he could cut off supply lines by controlling Stalingrad) as a secondary objective. In fact, it was rather a propaganda vehicle than a military target of importance, for both sides, and might have been a German AND a Russian berserk thingy in many ways.

The battle used to bind vital german troops and around 90 Russian divisions in the entire process, especially with the grim city fights later on, where both sides kept pumping several hundred thousand troops into the city fights (with like 95% of the city in german hands eventually).
Around 22 Divisions (Germans, Italians, Romanians, other axis nations, etc.) with around 330,000 troops got encircled, and the support for the cauldron ate up vital resources (still insufficiently supplied by the german air force though), where 90,000 faced war captivity when General Paulus surrendered later on. Around 6,000 of these POWs survived captivity, and returned to Germany up to 10 yrs after the war in Europe ended.
From a military pov, the loss of the 6th German Army in Stalingrad wasn't as bad as the loss of the Russian Armies in '41 described above, since the loss of the 6th Army did not enable the Russians to make a broad breakthrough, in particular it "just" threatened to cut off the German units in the Caucasus, and endangered the South front in general. The germans had to take back the lines and escaped, and the 6th Army could be seen as sacrifice to stabilize the entire southern front. After the battle, the rather propagandistic battle, with the 6th Army holding out in that cauldron, turned out to be a stabilizing factor and might have avoided a (partial - complete) collapse of the german east front as early as 1943.


There's an interesting book about "Russia's War", from Richard Overy.

Also if you are in defence and only want to harrass attackers advance with artillery bombardment its wise idea to do it low ROF to conserve artillery ammo. This way you could shoot much more harrassing bombardments with same number of artillery ammo.

If you're facing strong enemy units with good morale and strength (let's say you play Allies and you face a Pz/PG Division) LoF won't do that much, unless you increase the amount of time to shell these units, which might result in the same amount of rounds u'd have to spend using normal rate or RoF eventually, in order to achieve a decent effect. That said, short bursts of combined arty fire do an excellent job here, and may even halt/slow down armoured attacks.

[Jakerson]

ORIGINAL: GoodGuy
If you're facing strong enemy units with good morale and strength (let's say you play Allies and you face a Pz/PG Division) LoF won't do that much, unless you increase the amount of time to shell these units, which might result in the same amount of rounds u'd have to spend using normal rate or RoF eventually, in order to achieve a decent effect. That said, short bursts of combined arty fire do an excellent job here, and may even halt/slow down armoured attacks.

I have been in the real life army (not in the artillery but I know a bit about artillery too) so I know how they use artillery. There is three ways of shooting artillery barrages one is harassing fire, second is suppressing fire and third is destructive fire.

Harassing fire idea is to shoot low number of shells with long time harass freedom of threat movement. Most of the time troops don’t like to advance trough artillery barrage front of them even if there is as low as 1-3 shell dropping per minute.

Suppressing fire idea is to shoot larger number of shell in to enemy position suppress enemy positions just before your troops assault.

Third way is destructive barrage idea is to shoot very high number of shells to some area literally destructing all living force in the target area. This is very consuming way of using artillery because even a one barrage uses thousands of shells. This is only used against very valuable targets. If you want to shoot destructive fire you have to use multiple batteries with same time. Rocket artillery is more ideal to destructive fire as it can shoot large number of rockets at once.

One company is never considered so valuable target that destructive fire is used. Enemy divisional or Brigade HQ or main supply dump is example of targets that are worthy of destructive fire or large concentration of units at same place.

ADDON: I'm not sure if game mechanics allow destructive fire in this game there seem to be quite low number of artillery at all scenarios so only option is suppressive and harassing fire.

[GoodGuy]

ORIGINAL: Jakerson

I have been in the real life army (not in the artillery but I know a bit about artillery too) so I know how they use artillery. There is three ways of shooting artillery barrages one is harassing fire, second is suppressing fire and third is destructive fire.

I was referring to the game and its mechanics, not to RL military terms, effects or procedures. [:)]

[Jakerson]

ORIGINAL: GoodGuy

I was referring to the game and its mechanics, not to RL military terms, effects or procedures. [:)]

It dosen't matter no wargame is 100% realistic but I love this game it allows you to plan operations and manage your troops just like a real general would do and in real-time your troops do fight even if you dont give orders if they encounter enemy larger scale coordination just might not be very good without ordering troops around.

[nubbin77]

Oleg,
 
I agree completely.  I would consider myself a mediocre wargammer at best, and have only played the demos of RDOA and HTTR.  But I find myself crushing the AI through every scenerio by being very aggressive.  One thing I find odd is that when I first started playing I was always very worried about charging my men across clear areas.  However the losses are not significantly higher than from fighting from the cover of forests or from towns, churches or industrial areas.  I see the #'s and the percents and know that they should really be affecting the fights qutie a bit, but in realikty , the mechanics of this game don't seem to really reflect the need for me to plan as much as I do. 
 
Jakerson  your comments are true of reality, but not of this game (at least from my 30 or so hours with the game so far).