Command and Control

[Agrippa]

Given that the game is based on commands at the platoon leader level, I would sure like to see some penalties for spreding your platoons out. It seems unrealist to me to have a platoon spread out over the map and still have teams remain in contact. What I would like to see is that if a platoon leader moves beyond a certain raidious from his teams they can no longer receive orders. It's not like every team leader had a radio. Communications within the team relied mainly on hand and arm signals. Just some food for thought[8|].

[Capitaine]

Good comment.

[NefariousKoel]

I believe there is an accuracy penalty if a squad is more than 150m from the platoon leader.

[Capitaine]

Actually, though, an accuracy penalty doesn't make much sense to me.  The separation between subunits would seem to affect the receipt of and ability to coordinate with orders; not whether a unit/tank can shoot straight.

[thewood1]

This is why I sometimes feel the platoon orders thing is forced.  It seems little artificial.  If you had some serious penalties for being out of contact, like friendly FoW, or delays for getting messages through the net and back down, it would make more sense.  I would also like to see it taken to the company and battalion level, as far as showing the communications net and its effect.

[Joram]

Interesting point Agrippa but remember we are dealing with 1km square battlefields.   That's not very far.  But if you didn't have radio's, then even 50-100m in woods would degrade communications.  But in open, you could easily communicate two-three times as far.  This in turn needs to be balanced by the length of time in a turn.  I think they said 40 seconds.  I don't have an answer of course to what's reasonable but the answer may not be as clear-cut as you may think.
 
In any event, I agree with Capitaine for the most part.  You could argue that coordination of fire is more difficult but I think that's adding something that doesn't need to be added.  After all, there's no bonus if all units are in close proximity is there?
 
 

[Mobius]

ORIGINAL: thewood1
This is why I sometimes feel the platoon orders thing is forced.  It seems little artificial.  If you had some serious penalties for being out of contact, like friendly FoW, or delays for getting messages through the net and back down, it would make more sense.  I would also like to see it taken to the company and battalion level, as far as showing the communications net and its effect.

Maybe something like that in the future. Especially when mixed type units can be made. The technical TO&E platoons that include a support weapon or two different types of tanks.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: NefariousKoel
I believe there is an accuracy penalty if a squad is more than 150m from the platoon leader.

It's -1 to Accuracy and -1 to Initiative. The idea is that your independent squads/vehicles are slower to react and benefit less from any corrections to their fire by the platoon leader being able to see what exactly they're doing.

There's no bonus for being close because that would be redundant - if you'd rather look at it as +1 for close instead of -1 for far, then feel free. [8D]

Also left unmentioned here is the more subtle difficulty for the player of coordinating widely separated platoons within the orders system since you can only issue one base order at the platoon level. As a player, if your platoon is spread out across the map, it is rare that all of them will be in a situation that is ideally suited by the same exact platoon order. So you will always be compromising, probably picking one of the more flexible orders rather than the specialized ones, just so that your platoon can be effective.

Although we'd like to do more on this in the future in terms of game mechanics, I think the modifiers above combined with the effects of the platoon orders system do a good job of encouraging platon cohesion.

Regards,

- Erik

[Joram]

Hmm, I understand what you are saying but I really have to agree with Capitaine here.  By your line of reasoning, there should be some kind of coordination penalty if you have multiple units from different platoons firing on the same unit.  Does that exist?  I believe the Soviets were notorious about inflexibility of command but not sure how far down the chain that issue was.

[Capitaine]

I think your point about the orders being more difficult for spread-out platoons is a good one, Erik.  I also don't think the accuracy penalty is totally bogus, I just said that it isn't the first thing I'd look at for loss of communications (I was thinking more of tanks, too, which seem to fire more independently).
 
But generally I would support a more developed command and control scheme in keeping with the overall game philosophy.  For the future.

[Agrippa]

I agree that a fire modifier does not seem like the best answer.  Perhaps for tanks and indirect fire it is more important to be in command when firing, but for infantry and crew weapons it would have little effect.  My answer for command would be to have a set command distance from platoon leader to teams with a modifier for terrain.  If a unit gets ouside that range they become limited in what they can do.  I would say they could only take up a defencive mode.  I would also like to be able to drop units in key possitions.  Say I have a platoon and want to leave a unit in a building and move on with the rest of the platoon, I think to get the detatchment back under command to function with the platoon again I should have to go back for them.
 
Of course I don't know what is involved in modifing the software.  If it is too hard to change something like that I understand and will enjoy playing as is.  

[thewood1]

One thing I find annoying with platoon orders is support weapons.  I can't attach a HMG to support a company or platoon.  If I do, I have to keep screwing around with the HMG platoon's HQ, even though they are half way across the map.

[rickier65]

ORIGINAL: Agrippa

..... I would say they could only take up a defencive mode.  I would also like to be able to drop units in key possitions.  Say I have a platoon and want to leave a unit in a building and move on with the rest of the platoon, I think to get the detatchment back under command to function with the platoon again I should have to go back for them.
....

I would agree on increasing the order penalty if squad was beyond a certain "command" distance, but I'd rather not have it drop inot defensive mode. That would be too limiting. I don't want to have my HQ squad have to go running arund picking up stragglers (this might work if there were leaders - but I don't think you can afford to have a whole squad (20-30% of your platoon strength) busy gathering stragglers.

Rick

[Stridor]

Whilst I don't disagree with a lot of what has been said so far, I find it interesting that new players bring this topic up.

It is not something we saw a lot of during testing because of the simple reason that it simply doesn't work to win games (split platoons that is), so we just never played it that way. I think this is a similar problem in some ways to the complaints about vehicle pathing collisions. I remember when I started playing PCOWS I had path hitches all the time, and even posted something to that effect on the forums. What I realized finally was that I was giving crazy movement orders to individual squads which criss-crossed and so were apt to cause collisions! When I started thinking platoon-centric, using order paths and anticipating just a little, than all my movement problems went away [;)]

Unless there is some weird initial placement issue where your platoon is widely separated (and there are a few even in the stock scenarios I will admit) to begin with, why would you ever split your platoon up? Just asking that is all? I found (as I think that all the testers did) that if you do that you won't play as well than if you kept them together. This is probably a dictum the Military discovered early on as well! Sure you can argue that some of the huge Russian tank "platoons" could be split and still stay a potent force (against doctrine), but on the whole I felt that I didn't need any arbitrary penalties enforced upon me to keep my platoons together, ease of command and control with supported firepower was enough of a reason. I am not saying such penalties shouldn't exist in some form, but even if they didn't, I still can't think of a reason why I would want greatly split platoons.

Now as I said at the beginning, I think the whole issue should be thought on some more. At a smaller scale that what is represented by PCK then maybe it would make more sense, but just right now I can't see it as a major issue.

Just my 2 cents of course [;)]

[Joram]

Well, you hit the nail on the head Stridor, the issue lies with the stock scenario's.  The few I've tried had this issue.  Maybe I just got unlucky, lol.  In general, there are few situations where I'd want to, except as thewood1 implied, splitting up some heavy weapon units.  Against doctrine with Soviets perhaps but not sure if it would be in the German army.

[rickier65]

ORIGINAL: Joram

Well, you hit the nail on the head Stridor, the issue lies with the stock scenario's.  The few I've tried had this issue.  Maybe I just got unlucky, lol.  In general, there are few situations where I'd want to, except as thewood1 implied, splitting up some heavy weapon units.  Against doctrine with Soviets perhaps but not sure if it would be in the German army.

You could probably do this in scenarios you design yourself by creating a 1 team MMG, in the unit name field you could give it the proper designation, but it could then act indepentantly to support a Rifle platoon.

(I did this a little with the Balta SL scenario to provide some Hvy Wpns support that could support separate platoons - hope this doesnt deviate too far from game designers intent).

Rick

[Erik Rutins]

One of the things we have on the plan for the next release is to allow mixed platoons, which would allow us to include a HMG Team in the same platoon with infantry and so on. Right now you have to do it manually and in effect that starts to enforce company cohesion, but I can understand that some find it annoying.

[Trigger Happy]

nevermind

[PDiFolco]

ORIGINAL: Stridor

Whilst I don't disagree with a lot of what has been said so far, I find it interesting that new players bring this topic up.

It is not something we saw a lot of during testing because of the simple reason that it simply doesn't work to win games (split platoons that is), so we just never played it that way. I think this is a similar problem in some ways to the complaints about vehicle pathing collisions. I remember when I started playing PCOWS I had path hitches all the time, and even posted something to that effect on the forums. What I realized finally was that I was giving crazy movement orders to individual squads which criss-crossed and so were apt to cause collisions! When I started thinking platoon-centric, using order paths and anticipating just a little, than all my movement problems went away [;)]

Unless there is some weird initial placement issue where your platoon is widely separated (and there are a few even in the stock scenarios I will admit) to begin with, why would you ever split your platoon up? Just asking that is all? I found (as I think that all the testers did) that if you do that you won't play as well than if you kept them together. This is probably a dictum the Military discovered early on as well! Sure you can argue that some of the huge Russian tank "platoons" could be split and still stay a potent force (against doctrine), but on the whole I felt that I didn't need any arbitrary penalties enforced upon me to keep my platoons together, ease of command and control with supported firepower was enough of a reason. I am not saying such penalties shouldn't exist in some form, but even if they didn't, I still can't think of a reason why I would want greatly split platoons.

Now as I said at the beginning, I think the whole issue should be thought on some more. At a smaller scale that what is represented by PCK then maybe it would make more sense, but just right now I can't see it as a major issue.

Just my 2 cents of course [;)]

It depended on doctrine, but for the Germans, when on the defense from 44 on, they had huge front to cover with few troops, and it wasn't unusual to spread a platoon out for some hundred meters if situation needed. As some pointed out, the platoon orders to separated (in game terms) squads is sometimes rather artificial/forced.

An idea : there should be a way to make (temporarily, player order choice) some units "independent", with some penalties according to training/doctrine/experience, and then play them individually. This will keep the game basics while curing the platoon-orders problems you have when squads are separated, and it will allow to add some hvy support weapons to some squads/platoons with much less hassle. And it will be rather realistic.

[Mraah]

ORIGINAL: PDiFolco
An idea : there should be a way to make (temporarily, player order choice) some units "independent", with some penalties according to training/doctrine/experience, and then play them individually. This will keep the game basics while curing the platoon-orders problems you have when squads are separated, and it will allow to add some hvy support weapons to some squads/platoons with much less hassle. And it will be rather realistic.

I like this idea. Although I agree with Stridor regarding why you would want to ... I think giving the player this ability is the point, which I agree.

Keep going ... What type of penalties did you have in mind (spit out some modifier's for us based on the PcK engine).

Thank you,
Rob