Pointless merges and fixed platoons

[Rift]

I love the flammpanzers they are awesome tanks but Pz. Kp. 224 is small, it has 4 vehicle slots available but only 2 support slots which only allows you 2 infantry squads to cover the tanks. This seems ridicules there is no way a BG would go into battle like this. Maybe the other way round with 2 tanks and 4 infantry units?? Although to be honest going into battle with only 6 squads seems too little to have a good fight on these huge maps.

I thought that by merging PZ Kp 224 with another BG I could provide my lovely Flammpanzers with some shiney SS and FJ troops so I merged them with KG Walther.

On carrying out the merge I discovered that I had lost all but one of my tanks. It would appear that whatever is in the active roster is lost and not returned to the forcepool. This must be a bug surely??

Is it also possible to look at altering the vehicle/support/infantry layouts IMO it would be best to remove the restrictions on each platoon. The introduction of the fixed inf. veh. and sup. only platoons is an interesting idea but for me it just results in unrealistic load outs. Particularly in Pz. Kp. 224 and 280 Stug. BDE.

What are your thoughts?

[Rift]

Here is the end result of the merge, all but one of the Flammpanzers is lost:

[xe5]

Ive also seen teams in the active roster of the subordinate BG get lost when merging. This is contrary to the game manual: "Merging Battle Groups moves all teams from the absorbed Battle Group into the forcepool of the absorbing Battle Group." (pp. 62-63).

Always possible they meant to say "...from the forcepool of the absorbed battle Group..." but the loss of the absorbed BG's active teams from the combined forcepool is a penalty that doesnt make sense. Penalty enough that you cant 'un-merge' and have one less manuever BG.

[Ivan_Zaitzev]

You can always just put them together but not merge them.

[Rift]

Sadly that doesn't seem to work either:

As you can see in the photo below you can't choose anything from Kp Pz 224 even though there is an empty slot??

Yeah sorry just realised why I couldn't choose any tanks, NO CREDITS!! doh my fault.

However it still illustrates that even if I didn't merge I could only have used one of the tanks (if I had the credits).

[RD Oddball]

ORIGINAL: xe5

Ive also seen teams in the active roster of the subordinate BG get lost when merging. This is contrary to the game manual: "Merging Battle Groups moves all teams from the absorbed Battle Group into the forcepool of the absorbing Battle Group." (pp. 62-63).

Always possible they meant to say "...from the forcepool of the absorbed battle Group..." but the loss of the absorbed BG's active teams from the combined forcepool is a penalty that doesnt make sense. Penalty enough that you cant 'un-merge' and have one less manuever BG.

Steve provided that section of the text for the manual writing so doubtful he meant to say something else. I'll report it as a bug and see what he says. Maybe there's an explanation but it doesn't look like it at first blush.

[xe5]

Apparently you can keep merging BGs (and absorbing static BGs) until youve merged your entire OOB into a single BG with a huge forcepool...so huge the forcepool slider cant handle the load and it cuts off at the start of the available FJ units.

[xe5]

Sometimes the Infantry/Vehicles/Support platoons arent so fixed. Occasionally the game will stock my Veh Platoons with Ersatz.

[stolidog]

Nice, thats like a corp size BG, im suprised the slider even went that far to show all those units/teams

[Ivan_Zaitzev]

Today I put two AB BG in a map, one of them was really mowed down, with only a couple of HQ a sniper and a Bren squad. The other one was in full strength with all the slots filled.
When the I was to choose my forces for the battle, the main BG was the mowed down one, and I could only put one squad from the other BG, that was pointless. [:(]

[xe5]

@Ivan - unfortunately that battle was "pointless" due to an incompetent Allied commander who remained ignorant of how Battle Group Orders work (pp. 60-62).

[Ivan_Zaitzev]

ORIGINAL: xe5

@Ivan - unfortunately that battle was "pointless" due to an incompetent Allied commander who remained ignorant of how Battle Group Orders work (pp. 60-62).

I Know it was my mistake, just sharing.
[:D][:D][:D]

[TheReal_Pak40]

Yet another bug in the strategic layer and another reason to wait for the patches before playing the campaigns. *sigh*

Oddball, The merging topic reminds me of a question I've been yearning to ask:

Why on earth can you merge units but not split them? Seems like every battalion should have the ability to split from it's parent regiment/brigade/kamfgroup, much like they did in real life. You should at least have the ability to split units that were previously merged, but to be realistic it should be all battalions. If map crowding is the reason then you could just simply force auto-merges of 3 or more units on the same map.

[Andrew Williams]

I Know it was my mistake,

I've heard that can happen