Turn burn unknown when defender ignores losses

[toawfan]

One of the very few supreme aggravations with this game and your ability to true carry out a strategy and plan is turn burn caused by hidden or unknown settings by your opponent.

No matter how meticulously you check the battle planner to make sure you are not burning a turn, you still can have a PBEM session end abruptly. It appears to be because the defender has "ignore losses" as a setting that prolongs battle rounds.

This is not fair; should be fixed to prevent an entire round from burning; or should be reflected in the battle planner.

[Panama]

There are other things that cause turn burn. If you use one or more units that has a red health indicator or pure bad luck with a failed check.

I do agree with you on turn burn though. One combat 500km away can cause all of the combats across the board to take the entire remainder of the turn regardless of their complexity or odds. Totally unreasonable.

[toawfan]

ORIGINAL: Panama

There are other things that cause turn burn. If you use one or more units that has a red health indicator or pure bad luck with a failed check.

I do agree with you on turn burn though. One combat 500km away can cause all of the combats across the board to take the entire remainder of the turn regardless of their complexity or odds. Totally unreasonable.

But an attack with red health or when you're low on movement points would show up in the attack planner as taking more rounds, if I understand correctly.

I scroll through all attacks to make sure that I'm not burning the turn -- yet it still happens because of something the defender has done or that is certainly not reflected in the attack planner.

It seems like we should be able to assume that the attack planner is accurately showing how many rounds we have left in a turn. It is so essential to strategy. Otherwise, you end up not setting your defense, not moving into gaps and not setting your air status.

[Panama]

In history how many battles went as planned? If nothing, it shows us to expect the unexpected to happen. Once a battle plan is put into motion it is beyond anyone's control. What shouldn't happen does happen. If the game exactly reflected what you had planned it would be so far from the realm of reality it becomes fantasy.

[toawfan]

ORIGINAL: Panama

In history how many battles went as planned? If nothing, it shows us to expect the unexpected to happen. Once a battle plan is put into motion it is beyond anyone's control. What shouldn't happen does happen. If the game exactly reflected what you had planned it would be so far from the realm of reality it becomes fantasy.

But I think you're missing the point here. There's a big difference between a battle not going as planned and the inability to make the battle plan to begin with.

In the case of unknown turn burn, that's the same as saying, "I could not give my orders because there was no more ink in my quill to write out the orders."

The game still has all the fun and realism of variables and uncertainties if you actually get to carry out your battle plan such as: Not knowing exactly how many defenders there are; how strong; movement points left; tactical, local or other reserves that will enter for defender; fog of war; etc.

The other impractical result of turn burn is like this: I just crushed my enemy and know that others might counter-attack. But I'll just stand here, not prepare for defense, not dig in or anything because I don't have any orders. And all of my aircraft who were involved in the early sorties will not switch back to air superiority (patrols) or anything. They'll just stay in mid-air after the combat attacks because no one ordered them to do anything.

[pionier]

[align=center]maybe you got to learn alot about toaw.

The turn end eighter when after the resoloution of all combats less than 20% movement points are left or if your force proffiency check fails.

detail:

Your turn will end if either of the following conditions apply:

You have launched no attacks. The mean remaining movement allowance of your entire force is too small to allow for successful exploitation of your attacks, i.e., and average of less than 20% of the movement points remaining, among the units involved in the last series of attacks. Your force fails a proficiency check. This is the primary use of the force proficiency value, though it should be noted that the force proficiency value is not the exact probability that the turn will continue after each series of attacks.

From the manual:

Force Proficiency(0-100%) - This represents the overall proficiency of the force. This characteristic is used to determine the length of your turn. Reconstituted unit proficiencies are averaged with this value.

and

The turn ends if 1) a random number from 1 to the maximum number of remaining rounds equals 1, and 2) The current player's force proficiency is less than a random number from 1 to 100.

this leads to this table: (left: remaining rounds left,  center: force proficiency values)


[/align]

[Panama]

If you really want to end turn burn open the scenario in the editor and change the maximum rounds per combat to one.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: Panama
If you really want to end turn burn open the scenario in the editor and change the maximum rounds per combat to one.

OOOooooh, hey this is a really quick, really easy fix. Thanks for that.

[Telumar]

ORIGINAL: Panama

If you really want to end turn burn open the scenario in the editor and change the maximum rounds per combat to one.

One is insane. Why at all bother with the loss settings then? Just make sure your unit doesn't break up and set everyone on Ignore Losses.

Three might be a better value.

[Panama]

ORIGINAL: Telumar

ORIGINAL: Panama

If you really want to end turn burn open the scenario in the editor and change the maximum rounds per combat to one.

One is insane. Why at all bother with the loss settings then? Just make sure your unit doesn't break up and set everyone on Ignore Losses.

Three might be a better value.

He didn't want turn burn at all and wanted a guarantee with that. That is the way to do it. It's not something I would do but nothing else seemed to matter.

[Telumar]

Hehe, definitely...

And I just tried to show him the golden middle..

[Sker]

I think 3 it's the best value for mrpb. It likely make you have 3 combat per turn and still doesn't screw so much the realism of the game.

[Panama]

And then there are the people who don't like all of the combat rounds. They complain that it's too much to keep track of or something like that. All they have to do is change the number to 10. Give them one round and nothing to complain about. [:D]

[toawfan]

The proficiency, movement points and health already seemed to be reflected in the attack planner. If you click on the unit that is low in either, all of the buttons will light up to show that you will burn the turn.

I really think the hidden turn burn has to do with something on the defenders' side that is not reflected but should be -- like ignore losses or something.

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

ORIGINAL: Panama
If you really want to end turn burn open the scenario in the editor and change the maximum rounds per combat to one.

OOOooooh, hey this is a really quick, really easy fix. Thanks for that.

Note that that guarantees that the tenth combat round will be left unused. When you get to eight rounds used, the player-phase is guaranteed to end after the next combat execution. So, since you can only get one round per battle, you can't get that tenth round.

Also, note that this will not prevent early-turn-ending. It will only prevent early-turn-ending that is caused by turn-burn. There is another mechanism that causes early-turn-ending: After every combat phase, there is a random check against force proficiency and rounds left. If that check fails, the player-turn ends. Note that, since this mandates that each combat phase be one-round long, it maximizes the number of times that this check will be performed - increasing the chance of early-turn-ending by this mechanism.

In fact, if your force is very low proficiency, you may not want to shoot for one-round phases for this very reason. Shooting for two-round phases may give your force a better chance to get the full ten combat rounds in some cases. See my article about maximizing combat rounds:

tm.asp?m=2231066

One final point - I tried using an MRPB of one once, and strange things seemed to ensue. For example, it seemed to become much more difficult to get defenders to retreat. But these were not rigorous tests, so your mileage may vary.

[ralphtricky]

Elmer takes the tactic that he plots only 3:1 odds or better in the first three rounds, then only 2:1 for the next 3, and finally only 1:1 or better. The theory there is that the decisive combats will be done first and they will take few rounds. It seems that the 1:1 slugfests are the ones that will burn the turn since neither side is taking enough casualties to break it off.

I may be off on the numbers, but that's the basic idea that Elmer uses. It doesn't seem to work well with all scenarios, but it's the basic idea. Designers can edit those values now, so I'm hoping that will help Elmer.

[toawfan]

It just keeps happening to me and it's very, very frustrating. Really does drain the fun or strategy out of this game for me.

Here's what just happened. I was on my first turn; planned a critical amphibious assault; went on the offensive on several fronts; battle planner showed no burns beyond six icons; the stars showed I would have 40 percent left.

Make my moves. Boom. Everything over in one turn. My amphibious assault is left completely hanging, easily slaughtered while still on the boat; I have no chance to set defense; I am unable to advance on fronts where I really hurt the opponent; and worst of all, I did not get to set my air superiority at all.

This is a real game-killer.

I've read the manual several times; every single posting I can find about planning combat and avoiding turn burn; either this is needlessly complicated to explain or something is wrong in what the icons and battle planner are telling me.

It's the single most aggravating thing to an otherwise wonderfully complex game. I know I'm a rookie and learning, but if this happened in too many competitive games where I'm trying to win and not just trying to learn, I'd probably hang the game up and not play any more.

By the way, my force proficiency exceeds 80 percent.

[ralphtricky]

You might try posting what you tried to do in the war room, possibly in a SAL file to get some advice there.

If it showed 60%, that is where the last combat STARTS, so I'm not too surprised that the turn ended on you. One artillery or air combat on ignore losses starting on round 6 would push the ending to round 9 at the EARLIEST, and either the proficiency check kicked in, or a combat that started on round 6 ran long to end the turn for you.

I generally try for only 10-20% used in the first round although it does depend on the circumstances. I will be a bit conservative and delay some of the attacks until after the first round of attacks are finished. Sometimes it bites me, but it's generally better.

Ralph

[toawfan]

But is that possible in your one and only round? In other words, I make all my moves and see that I'll have 40 percent of my turn left. Then click and instead the entire round is over and I have to email my PBEM?

I'm not exactly sure what to email. Nothing special about my moves. I attacked in areas where I had supreme advantage, used sea transport to begin an amphibious assault, checked to make sure that I would have turns left. Boom. End of turn.

This game is rewarding as you learn all the twists and turns, especially stuff that's not in the manual and has come from Larry's teachings. But this is one where I've studied, asked, read again and still don't get it and am getting snakebit to the point where it's destroying any sense of a strategy.

It's like planning a D Day invasion, having everything set, ready, going as planned and then you dock offshore, drink a spot of tea, and allow Germany to move every bit of reinforcement to the beaches to shoot you before you get out of the boats.

[ralphtricky]

ORIGINAL: toawfan
But is that possible in your one and only round? In other words, I make all my moves and see that I'll have 40 percent of my turn left. Then click and instead the entire round is over and I have to email my PBEM?

I'm not exactly sure what to email. Nothing special about my moves. I attacked in areas where I had supreme advantage, used sea transport to begin an amphibious assault, checked to make sure that I would have turns left. Boom. End of turn.

Yes, it's possible. You had combats starting as late as round 6, that's what the problem was. You should go through and look at your combats to see which ones were starting after round 1 and whether or not they were really necessary. Try to do assaults in the early rounds with overwhelming force to avoid ending early.

Set the same scenario up as single player and try a couple of things with save games. Try attacking only with units which can reach the combat in round 1 or 2. Watch the results pane of the combat results for each combat, and it will show when the combat started, and when it was continued through additional rounds.

Remember that you can save at any time, and since you're learning, check with Larry to see if you can send him a save file to review, or if it's OK to post in the war room.

Ask someone in the war room to post their starting moves for that scenario. Beach landings are tricky, I've seen a couple of posts on how to do them, and I never can get as far as they do in the walk-throughs.

Ralph