Defending a river line

[rhinobones]

Appears that the two biggest gripes against hex side rivers is expectation that the functionality of engineer and riverine units is somehow diminished. I don’t think that a hex side scheme would create such a liability, in fact, if these units were to have a special movement allowance which enabled them to move onto the hex side their characteristics would in fact be enhanced. At least I think it would be enhanced.

Add this to the comprehensive wish list, please.

Regards, RhinoBones

[rhinobones]

Was thinking about hex based games with Koger Rivers and the only example I can think of is the TOAW series.  On the other hand, there are plenty of examples of hex based games using the hex side river scheme.  Anyone care to add to this list?
 
Makes me wonder what it was that Koger was thinking. Did he know something that no one elese knew, or did he just miss the boat?
 
Hex Based Games With Koger Rivers:
 
TOAW Series
 
Hex Based Games With Hex Side Rivers:
 
V4v Series
Guns of August 1914-1918
W@W Series
Commander – Europe at War
Battlefront
Avalon Hill Board Games
John Tiller's Campaign Series
Combined Arms (if and whenever)
 
Regards, RhinoBones

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: IronDuke
God save Texas....[;)]

Guess where I'm posting from.

It's late here so I'll come back to respond to Curtis tomorrow but suffice to say I think this about sums it up. Even if we assume that some mingling might happen in a 50 km wide hex...

or 25km, 20km, 15km, 10km, 5km, or 2.5km hex.

...because any attack within the hex would not be designed to breach that wide an expanse, no breach within that hex would occur until the attacking unit had actually been ordered to get in the boats and charge.

or cross at an undefended point.

This is what is missing from curtis's theory....attacking intent.

because it's completely irrrelevant.

No matter how wide the hex, no one is going across until the order is given. Deliberate river assaults are serious set piece affairs. You can't assume intermingling if both sides want to defend.

Regardless of how, you can assume intermingling, period.

The area properties of rivers are undeniable, no matter how hard you try. And the larger the scale, the more those properties dominate. There's more than the meandering thing I've mentioned. Think of minor tributaries along the river, oxbow lakes created by meanders silting up, the marshiness of bottom land, minor escarpments at the edge of the flood plane, etc.

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: Iron Dragon

I would like to toss my two(mebbe one) cents in here if I could.
I don't have a problem with river hexes.  They are significant terrain features and obstacles from a military stand point.  Forces involved in a conflict are not always in contact throughout the entire front.  There are always areas of 'no mans land'.  If both sides want the defensive bonus of the river, then you will end up with areas that are not occupied.  That's life, that's war.  You're not always going to grab the belt of the enemy if you aren't going to gain any benefit from it.

I wonder if I should pronounce that "this about sums it up"?

However, it is more difficult to take a bridge intact.  To solve the flanking issue in regards to holding the bridge hex, how about creating a defensive bonus modifier for units dug in on an intact bridge hex?

We could just change where the 0.7 penalty is applied. I can think of a couple of ways:

1. Change it so that it is applied to any units that attack into a river hex, rather than attacking out of the river hex.

2. Change it so that it is applied in both cases: Attacking out of the river hex and attacking into it. In that case, to be consistent, it might be best to split the penalty up to its square root - 0.84%.

[rhinobones]

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay
Regardless of how, you can assume intermingling, period.

The area properties of rivers are undeniable, no matter how hard you try . . .

If this logic was only applied to bridged rivers (crossed either by engineers or a physical structure) where troops have ready access to both banks, I would subscribe to your argument. However, when you apply it globally to all rivers “period” you are overstepping the bounds of any military doctrine I ever learned. Don’t know what your military experience is, if any, but in the USMC we never, ever, automatically did this “intermingling” thing you talk about. Unit integrity equals strength and unit commanders do not intentionally deplete their strength by deploying as you propose. The only time my unit crossed a river, or any type of physical barrier, was with the pure intent to be on the other side as a combat capable unit.

Another question is, why is this logic is only applied to river hexes? Why is this logic not applied to beach hexes, or town hexes or any hex other than roads and rails? Beaches, towns, hills, mountains, forests, etc are all handled as hex side terrain features. Why isn’t a hex half beach and half water? Why isn’t there Koger beaches? Why isn’t a unit half in the water and half on the beach? Same thing goes with towns, mountains and everything else. All other hexes are black and white, yet you continue to argue that rivers deserve to be gray.

To extend your logic to the entire game, for all hexes, except for the roads and rails, you can assume intermingling, period. The area properties of terrain hexes (hex sides?) are undeniable, no matter how hard you try. Well . . . let's hope this doesn't happen.

Someone also made the comment that hex side rivers were ugly . . . that’s another remark based on questionable logic. See any big, ugly differences in the attached scenario maps?

With all that said, I don’t see why there can’t be two versions of TOAW. One with, one without. Add in some WEGO to the “with” version and Matrix could save themselves the trouble of completing Combined Arms. Think that would make us both happy.

Regards, RhinoBones

[IronDuke_slith]

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

ORIGINAL: Iron Dragon

I would like to toss my two(mebbe one) cents in here if I could.
I don't have a problem with river hexes.  They are significant terrain features and obstacles from a military stand point.  Forces involved in a conflict are not always in contact throughout the entire front.  There are always areas of 'no mans land'.  If both sides want the defensive bonus of the river, then you will end up with areas that are not occupied.  That's life, that's war.  You're not always going to grab the belt of the enemy if you aren't going to gain any benefit from it.

I wonder if I should pronounce that "this about sums it up"?

However, it is more difficult to take a bridge intact.  To solve the flanking issue in regards to holding the bridge hex, how about creating a defensive bonus modifier for units dug in on an intact bridge hex?

We could just change where the 0.7 penalty is applied. I can think of a couple of ways:

1. Change it so that it is applied to any units that attack into a river hex, rather than attacking out of the river hex.

2. Change it so that it is applied in both cases: Attacking out of the river hex and attacking into it. In that case, to be consistent, it might be best to split the penalty up to its square root - 0.84%.

No 1 wouldn't work because you could never clear your own side of the river of enemy troops without attracting unwarranted penalties since the last refuge of those troops on your side of the river might be the minor river hex itself.

Unless you could differentiate within the rules between assaults so that a limited assault didn't attract penalty in this way. Hitting them and not advancing into the hex cpould be deemed as clearing your bank without running the risk of being in the hex itself.

[ColinWright]

Maybe the above could go to war with Sausageland: Weiner, Bratwurst, Salami, Keilbasa...

[IronDuke_slith]

ORIGINAL: IronDuke
And with respect you're very wrong. Sides only intersperse where parts of the river's length may not be held for example. That's fine because you can get across the river in those places and not get over it in another where it is held as things stand in the game right now.

ORIGINAL: Curtis LemayNo. I'm completely and totally right. They definitely were mixed along the Seine in 1944. That's the general case. It was the case for every other river from Normandy to the Rhine as well. The few cases where they were all lined up each on their own sides of a river were the exceptions.

But they were mixed because the Germans never really tried to defend the Seine. They blew bridges (ones not already bombed anyway) blocked crossing points with hasty rear guards, fought a few delaying actions but they essentially mingled because the Germans were not actually emplaced behind the river in anything like the required strength to defend it. We would have been able to count the mingling that occured without direct combat rather easily had they been entrenched behind it for it would have been zero unless the Allies had attacked.

I can "half see" that at 50 km per hex some of these attempts might be successful and others not successful within a hex that wide.

Maybe there's some hope for you yet. Although I think you're now being willfully obtuse, I'll try one last time.

One of your least attractive traits is this assumption that because I think you're talking nonsense and am willing to argue the toss, I'm being obtuse! With respect, suffice to say this suggests there is little hope for you whatever the outcome here.

Try this: Envision a 2.5km/hex scenario with rivers in it. Envision combat along those rivers. Will those rivers be breached in 20 hex wide spans? Because that's 50km. What about 10 hex spans? That's 25km. What about 4 hex spans? That's 10km. Would players wait until all enemy units are cleared from one side of the river before attempting any crosses anywhere?

The answer is no in all cases. The rivers would mostly be crossed in single hex breaches. And breaches will be attempted as soon as the force is in place to try - long before all resistance has been cleared from the friendly side of the river.

Yes, but try the above scenario without rivers and you can see how willfully complicating you're attempting to make it in order to apologise for the current rules.

Lets take something most people will be familiar with like the Somme. Now, if memory serves, you could get the entire encounter inside one 25Km hex. Now, in any game scale above or around that, the entire British force in TOAW III is going to move as one from its home hex into the German defended hex.

However, in real life, advances as much as a mile or more were made in places, whereas in other parts, the troops didn't get ten yards from their own trenchline.

Now, we don't take account of this within the game one bit. The German defences are a barrier in a hex and you either take the whole hex or none at all. You advance everywhere at a uniform pace or nowhere. The game engine doesn't recognise intermingling in those terrain features (flat dry ground and urban) where it would occur most at any and all scenario hex sizes.

you want to interpret the current river rules to suggest it happens automatically in any and all river settings. It isn't consistent and it is't necessary.

The death of your current position is the farce that had the British tried to launch the assault across a river into the face of the machine guns and barbed wire at the Somme, your apology for the River game rules would have seen them have some success, because sat on the river hex trying to charge through the withering fire and barbed wire, they would have been treated as if they had intermingled as they did in real life and got into the German defences.

But because they chose to launch it across dry land, they get penalised when the Germans rebuff their assault because nowhere do they make any territorial gains within the hex being attacked. It's bizarre. they start and end in their own hex, not an inch across the 25km front having been deemed to have been taken, unless they cross one of Curtis's super river hexsides first (as if the defences on the Somme weren't bad enough) because doing this sees them classed as having intermingled, got across the river in places and actually had the success they had in real life.

Under this interpretation, every hex should be a river hex because it is the only way to simulate the intermingling of land combat without rivers as well.

TOAW deals in absolutes, rather like chess. You're in this hex or that one. Nowehere does it attempt to model intermingling save during combat, but at the end of that combat the two sides are very firmly in separate hexes whatever the result. It is an unwarranted anomaly to graft on this intermingling explanation to river rules in this way.

It simply isn't consistent. You're placing a layer of rules on the river crossings to explain the situation that have no equivalent in other equally needy areas of the game. Rules can't be different like this, right or wrong, they must be consistent. Consistency is everything.

So, at the very least you should be able to "half see" that intermixing will occur for all cases above 2.5km/hex. Then all you have to do is "half see" a tactical board game to get it for 2.5km/hex too.

As above, so what? This intermingling occurs even more readily in terrain devoid of rivers in real life, and we don't take account of it one single bit, do we? You want to take account of it on rivers though to help explain away some anomalies with the rules and graphic approach. Intermixing occurs throughout the battlefield, even more so at 50 KM per hex, even more so in urban and forest settings, but we don't take any account of this when resolving combat. Why do it with rivers?

However, given the units being deployed at that level are Divisional or as likely Corp strength, you can' simulate battalions or regiments getting across in such a way that entails the entire Corp to suffer defensive penalties, surely.

However we read it, units don't mix in hexes in TOAW, it's as simple as that. Therefore, the rules only work where you assume everyone is in one hex or another.

That wasn't the point. The point was that if the river is modeled as a hexside, then both sides are neatly on one side or the other of the river. If it's modeled as a hex, then that is not the case. The unit on the river can be across in some places and not in others. The crossing is only fully completed after the unit moves beyond the river hex (and pays the river combat penalty in the process).

Yes, but it is across the river, as I keep stating, without having to even attack. The unit is paying the river combat penalty after actually attacking, but getting no defensive bonus even if the attack hasn't taken place. How can this be right? Also, in your model, intermingling is still only going to occur in real life where there is intent to attack across the river. Movement in to the river hex is being deemed as intent regardless of whether it actually is or not, and the whole intermingling edifice essentially falls down when you consider that "intermingling" assumes some people are across and some not, but when counterattacked the programme in your model decides everyone has got across because even those who have not "intermingled sufficiently" to get across the bank end up getting shot at, grenaded and bayoneted as if they had.

Finally, I can only repeat, why should we have outrageously rampant intermingling on river hexes but not anywhere else? Try taking a City without intermingling in real life, or a forest. The game simply isn't modelling things in the way you want it to and shouldn't do this by accident with rivers, because it introduces other anomalies.

Indeed, scale is everything. In 50km scale, units in real life are not going to penetrate on 50km wide front and push forward with 50 km wide thrusts. Indeed, you have to thrust forward at least three hexes abreast to prevent tactical penalties from flanking attacks from either side of the thrust. However, the game has no way of simulating smaller unit action within a hex (except in the Curtis Lemay Riverine warfare mod). the game is simple, you either own all of a hex or none of it. Sitting on a river and being treated as if you are half in the next hex doesn't work from either a logic or consistency point of view.

But with the one hex exception around Remagen IRC, everyone was in this position around the much discussed Rhine, if you set up a map within a TOAW scenario. The same at the Meuse in 1940 until Guderian launched his assault. You can't simulate that tactical complexity within this game by postulating combats in the way you want to. Such occasions depend on tactical circumstance, but your preference seems to be for rules which automatically assume these circumstances occurred.

The Rhine and the Meuse were exceptions.

[&:]

Read the thread. The only examples thus far brought forward IIRC are the Seine 44, the Rapido 44, Meuse 40 and the Rhine 44/45. Now, three of the four examples confirm my position, yet by some magical sleight of hand, I am actually the one with the "exceptions". We could briefly survey WWII to make the point. The Russians are encircled at Kiev because von Kleist if memory serves makes a deliberate crossing of the Dniepr (intermingling didn't come into his thinking) further south and then went east and north to meet Guderian.

Coming the other way, the Russians do get across in numerous places because there are few or no Germans actually watching the thing (although such seems to be dismissed as mere "theory" hereabouts).

Kleist ends his career with his forces arrayed along the Bug if memory serves, awaiting the Russians. The Oder, the vistula etc etc etc were all taken by deliberate assaults. the way the game works is by simulating bridgeheads in whole hexes. Realistic when the scale is 50 km per hex, no. But acceptable given the way the game is functioning at these scales, absolutely.

Wherever you look, defences are anchored on rivers but the scales we use and the game engine we use demands that we cross them in a set fashion, sometimes by liberating 50km of the far bank at once. It doesn't recognise what you are seeking to impose on it. It isn't that accurate, it isn't that detailed, and nor should it be.

Areas you don't get into or past until you make an assault, which essentially means they act like boundaries does it not? You don't cross a trenchline without violence, but under you're thinking, we're simulating (whether it was possible or not - you overestimate how often it happened) the patrolling or or small and very small unit hasty crossing of individual sub-units regardless of the scale in river hexes (which can go as low as say 2.5 km per hex).

Is there any terrain you might think should be modeled as areas? You don't get to a forestline until you assault. You don't get to the mountain defenses without violence. Etc. etc. This is getting ridiculus. Trenches are modeled as areas for good reason. They have transverse defense benefits - just like rivers.

But you don't intermingle within these areas so they don't fit your model. Fortifications act like a barrier in the game. You take the entire hex or you take nothing at all. The game doesn't model things the way you suppose. At the highest level, urban areas covering 50km hexes are cleared (or not) in a single battle. Trenchlines are taken in 50km stretches and where does this transverse stuff keep coming from. No one gets across a river hex side without paying an offensive penalty whichever direction they are going, so what does transverse have to do with it.

But if they snake, your defending forces still only dig in on one side IRL (in a snake like line), meaning they still act as boundaries.

Wrong on both counts. They could be mixed as to where they've crossed or not, and if modeled as boundaries they would not provide transverse defensive benefits.

Firstly, it isn;t incorrect if the attacking side hasn't tried to get across is it???

As abpove, if modelled as hex sides, no one gets across without paying the penalty (unlike the LeMay mod). Where would any crossing attempt not pay this penalty?

Distortion is inevitable with the mapping tools and rules being used, and the scales sometimes employed. Indeed, it's inevitable and to be welcomed if the alternative is rules which simulate the mixing of units in and around rivers even where it never and couldn't happen.

The quantity of distortion is not inevitable. Some methods are less distorting than others. And since mixing usually did happen that extra distortion would be doubly unwelcome.

So, we're going to accept dodgy rivers to simulate mixing, but forget about non river and (even more so) urban combat and accept all or nothing there? There was never any mixing in urban combat settings apparently [&:].

No, I just want the simplest option which makes sense. You arrive at a river and stop unless you're ordered across. What is so hard about that? Put another way, we arrive at towns and don't simulate aggressive patrolling of the defences do we? We only launch our urban assault if the units are told to.

What are you talking about? Stop at the river hex. There is no mechanism that forces you to enter it. And apparently what "makes sense" to you is to ignore all tactical considerations but one.

Yes, there is, I have to enter it as a prelude to getting across it. However, entering it deprives me of any defensive benefits of being behind it, which I surely am until I launch an attack across it.

Aha, so the fact that we got across the Rhine is not more important than the factors at play is it, because the Anzio experience wasn't repeated at Tarawa or Omaha. Shall we reconsider the Rhine question now. Why did we get across the Rhine so easily, but get slaughtered on the Rapido?

Again, the "why" is theory. Stick to the facts. Fact: the Rhine was crossed easily in multiple places in 1945. You are welcome to your opinion as to why. I've expressed mine.

Again, rather unnatractive to dismiss debate in this fashion. Therefore, we can draw from this that Curtis LeMay believes all amphibious assaults should be bloodless because "Stick to the facts. Fact: The coastline at Anzio was easily crossed in 1944. " The why is theory."

It simply doesn't wash and I believe you know it, you're just unwilling to concede anything at all.

the 30% penality reflects the difficulties of deploying weaponry and firepower whilst in a boat, the vulnerability of that water borne assault and the narrowing of tactical options for the attacker. It is well justified and applies whether the bank is well defended or not. It only really matters when the bank is well defended, though, because the 30% reduction affects the relative combat strengths much more than when the bank is relatively poorly defended. Herein lies the golden rule re river assaults. They are easy if the enemy are nowhere in sight, really difficult and bloody if he is well dug in on the other side in anything like comparable numbers to the attacker.

It's a 30% reduction. That's all. You simply can't wiggle out of that. And it gets imposed now - just not exactly like you want. Most of the problem for assaulting comes from the other terrain and deployment mode that the defender enjoys.

Rubblish, because the 30% reduction applies whether the other bank is a machine gun infested nest of concrete and steel bunkers manned by hardened SS Grenadiers, or a sandy Childrens play area defended by half a dozen bored Girl Guides. The 30% reduction models exactly what I said it does, the issues of paddling across open water.

Anyway, what the defences are like on the other shore is irrelevant on a second count: Who said?

"Fact: the Rhine was crossed easily in multiple places in 1945."

I have no problem with anyone's argument provided it is at least internally coherent.

Not what I've been arguing, and not what the counter argument has been. Also, since huge cost/huge gain stuff has thus far been thin on the ground, then what else is there to argue about.

It's been a large part of the counter argument. This is a very high cost change. As for its benefits, you can't even prove that scenarios will work better with it. That's the bottom line. And there are plenty of other, much more important, issues to discuss.

Like database editors? [&:] this was the High cost/high value item I was given earlier.

Now, if I've got my names right from the bio refs you gave earlier in this thread, then I appreciate I'm not going to get much of a look in here having just scanned the notes on the database editor in the docs folder and seen who wrote it, but do we really think that the ability to accurately model the (unlikely and unhistorical) success of the Yamato's last mission is more important than getting the rules right about combat river crossings in a game almost exclusively concerned with land combat in a world criss crossed with rivers?????

Did we really suspend work on formations and the supply model so we could instead model the limited availabilty of HVAP amongst American Sherman crews in North West Europe in 1944-45?

I don't want a fight about this, but Database editors are just "nice", what do they really add to the game? To coin your argument before, they add absolutely nothing to existing scenarios and are surely unproven in their ability to change anything overall because the overwhelmingly vast majority of possible equipment was already modelled and in the game beforehand.

Indeed, having spent years here watching arguments about whether the Zero was better than the F4F, whether the 76mm was much of an improvement over the 75mm (and whether it made any difference when facing Tigers/Panthers), and having watched arguments ad infinitum about the Pershing, I'd argue database editors are really just a license to skew the game from scenario to scenario for Designers who are not guaranteed to have thought things through (even if I disagree with you) as much as you have (and that's the closest thing to a complement you are likely to get so make the most of it).

Ultimately, this is irrelevant anyway. You're arguing on grounds of area intermingling and such like. This argument about importance you can deploy if you accept the area intermingling stuff is not a good enough argument, but if you're going to spend posts arguing about area intermingling, I'm surely going to respond.

Respect and regards,
IronDuke

[IronDuke_slith]

ORIGINAL: rhinobones

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay
Regardless of how, you can assume intermingling, period.

The area properties of rivers are undeniable, no matter how hard you try . . .

If this logic was only applied to bridged rivers (crossed either by engineers or a physical structure) where troops have ready access to both banks, I would subscribe to your argument. However, when you apply it globally to all rivers “period” you are overstepping the bounds of any military doctrine I ever learned. Don’t know what your military experience is, if any, but in the USMC we never, ever, automatically did this “intermingling” thing you talk about. Unit integrity equals strength and unit commanders do not intentionally deplete their strength by deploying as you propose. The only time my unit crossed a river, or any type of physical barrier, was with the pure intent to be on the other side as a combat capable unit.

Another question is, why is this logic is only applied to river hexes? Why is this logic not applied to beach hexes, or town hexes or any hex other than roads and rails? Beaches, towns, hills, mountains, forests, etc are all handled as hex side terrain features. Why isn’t a hex half beach and half water? Why isn’t there Koger beaches? Why isn’t a unit half in the water and half on the beach? Same thing goes with towns, mountains and everything else. All other hexes are black and white, yet you continue to argue that rivers deserve to be gray.

To extend your logic to the entire game, for all hexes, except for the roads and rails, you can assume intermingling, period. The area properties of terrain hexes (hex sides?) are undeniable, no matter how hard you try. Well . . . let's hope this doesn't happen.

Someone also made the comment that hex side rivers were ugly . . . that’s another remark based on questionable logic. See any big, ugly differences in the attached scenario maps?

With all that said, I don’t see why there can’t be two versions of TOAW. One with, one without. Add in some WEGO to the “with” version and Matrix could save themselves the trouble of completing Combined Arms. Think that would make us both happy.

Regards, RhinoBones

The problem of being a wordy (and generally boring) orator like myself, is that you sometimes spend 30 mins or an hour composing a withering argument only to post it and find that someone else has made the point with equal or better clarity and much quicker whilst you were typing.

My compliments (not bad for a Grunt [;)])

Regards,
IronDuke

[rhinobones]

ORIGINAL: ColinWright
Maybe the above could go to war with Sausageland: Weiner, Bratwurst, Salami, Keilbasa...

I like all of those. Definitely good eats.

The scenario was one of the 10 turn challenge scenarios . . . I thought it would have a bit of originality if it had a theme. But Sausageland, that's a winner, especially during Oktober Fest!

Ever spent an October in Europe? It's something to live for.

Regards, RhinoBones

[IronDuke_slith]

ORIGINAL: rhinobones

Was thinking about hex based games with Koger Rivers and the only example I can think of is the TOAW series.  On the other hand, there are plenty of examples of hex based games using the hex side river scheme.  Anyone care to add to this list?

Makes me wonder what it was that Koger was thinking. Did he know something that no one elese knew, or did he just miss the boat?

Hex Based Games With Koger Rivers:

TOAW Series

Hex Based Games With Hex Side Rivers:

V4v Series
Guns of August 1914-1918
W@W Series
Commander – Europe at War
Battlefront
Avalon Hill Board Games
John Tiller's Campaign Series
Combined Arms (if and whenever)

Regards, RhinoBones

Oh...this hurt...

Anyway, this is how Combined Arms models it...

[rhinobones]

ORIGINAL: IronDuke
Oh...this hurt...
Anyway, this is how Combined Arms models it...

Sorry for the dig, it was meant to be more of a friendly push. But, as a manager, you know how it is with the consumer . . . always more and always now. It is especially hard when simple questions are posted on the CA site and they seemingly go ignored. Makes people wonder about the commitment.

As for the screenie you posted . . . beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. WEGO, elevation, hex side rivers . . . we could always ask for more, but this will do wonderfully.

Any chance of a Christmas present?

Thanks again for the post.

Regards, RhinoBones

[Telumar]

ORIGINAL: rhinobones

ORIGINAL: IronDuke
Oh...this hurt...
Anyway, this is how Combined Arms models it...

Sorry for the dig, it was meant to be more of a friendly push. But, as a manager, you know how it is with the consumer . . . always more and always now. It is especially hard when simple questions are posted on the CA site and they seemingly go ignored. Makes people wonder about the commitment.

As for the screenie you posted . . . beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. WEGO, elevation, hex side rivers . . . we could always ask for more, but this will do wonderfully.

Any chance of a Christmas present?

Thanks again for the post.

Regards, RhinoBones

I would second that question....[:)]

[IronDuke_slith]

ORIGINAL: rhinobones

ORIGINAL: IronDuke
Oh...this hurt...
Anyway, this is how Combined Arms models it...

Sorry for the dig, it was meant to be more of a friendly push. But, as a manager, you know how it is with the consumer . . . always more and always now. It is especially hard when simple questions are posted on the CA site and they seemingly go ignored. Makes people wonder about the commitment.

As for the screenie you posted . . . beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. WEGO, elevation, hex side rivers . . . we could always ask for more, but this will do wonderfully.

Any chance of a Christmas present?

Thanks again for the post.

Regards, RhinoBones

Ah, no offence was taken, I missed adding the smiley that would have made that clear.

I'll be quick about CA as it isn't really appropriate here. It won't be out before christmas, I believe, but we're about to reach a very serious milestone and the pace will certainly start to pick up. There is plenty of testing to be done, but we're almost there with the features and functionality so we're approaching the home stretch.

I take the point about the forums and will raise it and get it addressed.

Regards,
IronDuke

[rhinobones]

We all thank you very much for the response. Good news for the fans.

If, BTW, you would care for a couple of hypothetical scenarios for the release, please give me a ring by private mail. Think there are tons of possbility with CA. No need to restrict the initial release to the same o' same o' WW II scenarios.

REgards, RhinoBones

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: rhinobones

Appears that the two biggest gripes against hex side rivers is expectation that the functionality of engineer and riverine units is somehow diminished. I don’t think that a hex side scheme would create such a liability, in fact, if these units were to have a special movement allowance which enabled them to move onto the hex side their characteristics would in fact be enhanced. At least I think it would be enhanced.

Add this to the comprehensive wish list, please.

Regards, RhinoBones

You do realize that implementing such an effect will massively increase the cost of an already very costly change, don't you? And for very little purpose.

You don't even seem to have thought it through very well. Note you didn't show any regular units adjacent to the hexside units. Will there be 18 units in the adjacent hexes and 9 more in the hexside? That, at the very least is a massive increase in unit density. How will combat be conducted against units in hexsides? Can engineer units move via hexsides? What are the movement costs of entering a hexside? etc. etc.

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: rhinobones
If this logic was only applied to bridged rivers (crossed either by engineers or a physical structure) where troops have ready access to both banks, I would subscribe to your argument. However, when you apply it globally to all rivers “period” you are overstepping the bounds of any military doctrine I ever learned. Don’t know what your military experience is, if any, but in the USMC we never, ever, automatically did this “intermingling” thing you talk about. Unit integrity equals strength and unit commanders do not intentionally deplete their strength by deploying as you propose. The only time my unit crossed a river, or any type of physical barrier, was with the pure intent to be on the other side as a combat capable unit.

Perhaps you've misunderstood what "intermingled" refers to in this discussion. Clearly, a unit can be on the other side of a river as a combat capable unit without spaning 50km, or even 2.5km. That's all that intermingled means in this case: Within operational scale hexes, both sides can have forces on either side of the river.

Another question is, why is this logic is only applied to river hexes? Why is this logic not applied to beach hexes, or town hexes or any hex other than roads and rails? Beaches, towns, hills, mountains, forests, etc are all handled as hex side terrain features.

??? This is just wrong. None of those features are hexside terrain. The unit in the hex is only known to be somewhere within the hex. It need not be hugging the hexsides. Just like river hexes.

To extend your logic to the entire game, for all hexes, except for the roads and rails, you can assume intermingling, period. The area properties of terrain hexes (hex sides?) are undeniable, no matter how hard you try. Well . . . let's hope this doesn't happen.

Again, this is just a misunderstanding of my point. In fact, it is the case for all other non-hexside terrain. The unit is in the hex somewhere. Exactly where it has drawn it's defense line is not specified. For a river hex, that means the force in the hex may or may not be across the river at all or any parts of its defense line.

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: IronDuke
But they were mixed because the Germans never really tried to defend the Seine. They blew bridges (ones not already bombed anyway) blocked crossing points with hasty rear guards, fought a few delaying actions but they essentially mingled because the Germans were not actually emplaced behind the river in anything like the required strength to defend it. We would have been able to count the mingling that occured without direct combat rather easily had they been entrenched behind it for it would have been zero unless the Allies had attacked.

I also listed every river from Normandy to the Rhine. And let's add every river after the Rhine up to the linkup with the Soviets. Even the Rhine only counts on a technicality, since the Germans didn't fall back to it - they fell back to the Westwall, well to the west of the Rhine. And, let's go double or nothing on WWI: Check a map of the Western Front over most of the war - you won't find any river defense lines.

Yes, but try the above scenario without rivers and you can see how willfully complicating you're attempting to make it in order to apologise for the current rules.

I'm not making anything any more complicated than necessary for you to see my point about intermingling. It's been a monumental chore. But, from your reply above (the "Yes"), Perhaps we've finally made some progress.

Lets take something most people will be familiar with like the Somme. Now, if memory serves, you could get the entire encounter inside one 25Km hex. Now, in any game scale above or around that, the entire British force in TOAW III is going to move as one from its home hex into the German defended hex.

However, in real life, advances as much as a mile or more were made in places, whereas in other parts, the troops didn't get ten yards from their own trenchline.

Now, we don't take account of this within the game one bit. The German defences are a barrier in a hex and you either take the whole hex or none at all. You advance everywhere at a uniform pace or nowhere. The game engine doesn't recognise intermingling in those terrain features (flat dry ground and urban) where it would occur most at any and all scenario hex sizes.

EXACTLY!! At 25km/hex the Somme offensive is greatly abstracted. The game doesn't specify exactly where in the advance-hex the advancing force is. (Sometimes, it fails to advance, while expelling the defenders, or some of them - representing a partial success that didn't equate to full capture of the hex.)

you want to interpret the current river rules to suggest it happens automatically in any and all river settings. It isn't consistent and it is't necessary.

No. That's never been what I've been saying. This entire sub-thread can be traced back to my statement that real world forces wouldn't usually be neatly lined up - each on their own side of the river hexside, at operational scales. You claimed they would be. You seem to have finally gotten it.

In contrast, river hexes don't specify where in the hex the occupiers are, exactly. It can represent partial crossing (they have, after all, paid the MP cost to enter the hex). Full crossing of the river isn't modeled until the force moves on beyond the river hex (paying the combat penalty as it does so).

The death of your current position is the farce that had the British tried to launch the assault across a river into the face of the machine guns and barbed wire at the Somme, your apology for the River game rules would have seen them have some success, because sat on the river hex trying to charge through the withering fire and barbed wire, they would have been treated as if they had intermingled as they did in real life and got into the German defences.

But because they chose to launch it across dry land, they get penalised when the Germans rebuff their assault because nowhere do they make any territorial gains within the hex being attacked. It's bizarre. they start and end in their own hex, not an inch across the 25km front having been deemed to have been taken, unless they cross one of Curtis's super river hexsides first (as if the defences on the Somme weren't bad enough) because doing this sees them classed as having intermingled, got across the river in places and actually had the success they had in real life.

Under this interpretation, every hex should be a river hex because it is the only way to simulate the intermingling of land combat without rivers as well.

Wow, are you confused!

If the 25km hex the British were attacking out of had been a river hex, then they would have paid the river penalty for the attack. It's that simple. If they advanced, then the river would have been considered fully crossed.

TOAW deals in absolutes, rather like chess. You're in this hex or that one.

But exactly where in that hex is not specified.

Nowehere does it attempt to model intermingling save during combat, but at the end of that combat the two sides are very firmly in separate hexes whatever the result. It is an unwarranted anomaly to graft on this intermingling explanation to river rules in this way.

It simply isn't consistent. You're placing a layer of rules on the river crossings to explain the situation that have no equivalent in other equally needy areas of the game. Rules can't be different like this, right or wrong, they must be consistent. Consistency is everything.

Again, you're misunderstanding my point. The real world has intermingling, including river crossings. River hexes allow the interpretation of a partial crossing of the river. River hexsides do not. You appear to be writting a book on this issue when, as I've said, it traces back to the simple statement that I bolded above. If you can now, finally, agree to that statement, we can move on.

Yes, but it is across the river, as I keep stating, without having to even attack.

No. It is not considered fully across the river until it moves beyond the river hex - paying the river combat penalty.

The unit is paying the river combat penalty after actually attacking, but getting no defensive bonus even if the attack hasn't taken place. How can this be right? Also, in your model, intermingling is still only going to occur in real life where there is intent to attack across the river. Movement in to the river hex is being deemed as intent regardless of whether it actually is or not, and the whole intermingling edifice essentially falls down when you consider that "intermingling" assumes some people are across and some not, but when counterattacked the programme in your model decides everyone has got across because even those who have not "intermingled sufficiently" to get across the bank end up getting shot at, grenaded and bayoneted as if they had.

That's pretty incomprehensible. But it seems to be your usual complaint about tactical issues related to crossing the river. I'll just repeat what I've stated before, that neither method addresses all tactical issues. Rivers have both boundary and area properties. River hexsides will not model the area properties.

I'm going to skip a bunch of repetitive stuff that doesn't cover anything that isn't already dealt with above. Try to be brief.

Now, if I've got my names right from the bio refs you gave earlier in this thread, then I appreciate I'm not going to get much of a look in here having just scanned the notes on the database editor in the docs folder and seen who wrote it, but do we really think that the ability to accurately model the (unlikely and unhistorical) success of the Yamato's last mission is more important than getting the rules right about combat river crossings in a game almost exclusively concerned with land combat in a world criss crossed with rivers?????

Did we really suspend work on formations and the supply model so we could instead model the limited availabilty of HVAP amongst American Sherman crews in North West Europe in 1944-45?

I don't want a fight about this, but Database editors are just "nice", what do they really add to the game? To coin your argument before, they add absolutely nothing to existing scenarios and are surely unproven in their ability to change anything overall because the overwhelmingly vast majority of possible equipment was already modelled and in the game beforehand.

The equipment editor was probably the most heavily demanded item in any wishlist. And you are incorrect about not affecting existing scenarios. There were a huge number of ACOW scenarios in existence that already used BioEd modified equipment. Implementing the equipment editor feature immediately made all those scenarios (some of them among the best) available for TOAW III. You're wrong about its impact as well. It's a very powerful tool with almost unlimited uses. For example, CFNA benefited greatly via adding recon to lots of equipment.

Ultimately, this is irrelevant anyway. You're arguing on grounds of area intermingling and such like. This argument about importance you can deploy if you accept the area intermingling stuff is not a good enough argument, but if you're going to spend posts arguing about area intermingling, I'm surely going to respond.

My argument from the start (and you can check) has been that it is not cut-and-dried which way works better - hexside rivers or river hexes. Neither models all the features of rivers perfectly, but, the larger the scale, the better river hexes do, and the worse river hexsides do. There is no assurance that rivers will be better modeled as hexsides. You want to focus on one single tactical consideration and ignore all others.

On the other hand, we can be assured that coding hexside rivers will be a huge task. We can also be assured that no existing scenario's map has river hexsides. The benefits will be vanishingly small.

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: IronDuke

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay
1. Change it so that it is applied to any units that attack into a river hex, rather than attacking out of the river hex.

No 1 wouldn't work because you could never clear your own side of the river of enemy troops without attracting unwarranted penalties since the last refuge of those troops on your side of the river might be the minor river hex itself.

Unless you could differentiate within the rules between assaults so that a limited assault didn't attract penalty in this way. Hitting them and not advancing into the hex cpould be deemed as clearing your bank without running the risk of being in the hex itself.

It's an abstraction. No method is going to model all tactical factors. This change would at least make the decision of where its best to defend simple - on the river hex.

It would certainly be an easier change to code than hexside rivers, and it would affect all existing scenarios.

[ColinWright]

ORIGINAL: IronDuke
I don't want a fight about this, but Database editors are just "nice", what do they really add to the game? To coin your argument before, they add absolutely nothing to existing scenarios and are surely unproven in their ability to change anything overall because the overwhelmingly vast majority of possible equipment was already modelled and in the game beforehand.

I've been amazed at how much I've added with the database editor. Perhaps your opinion derives from a lack of experience.