Divisional level and up ...

[Sensei.Tokugawa]

Gentelmen, I need a piece of advice - for quite some time I have been consequently avoiding scenarios that covered units bigger than those of a regimental or brigaded size as I saw that as a shift to some higher level requiring empoyment of some brader picture and a greater frame - I though that this is the place where we leave the operational level and move to startegic, simply put. In the Red Army doctrines however it is clearly stated ( I think that Col. D. Glantz supporetd that view as far as I can remember precisely ... or it was L.W. Grau? ... ) that up to a corps size it's pure tctics and operations were handled by armies and fronts. On the other hand the use of the 1st Allied Airborne Army in the Netherlands back in '44 was " the only case of the usage of paratroops in the WWII Western theater in startegic role" ...

Anyway, I am having some difficulty with reaching a decision whether for instance the active disengagement should be on or off. In TOAW III as far as I know successful disengaging without a penalty was often a matter of placing some serious arty assets nearby etc. - at divisional level the artillery equipment is often incorporated into the unit itself and not represented as a separate one.

Would that make a difference in Your opinion if we were talking in succession about a WWI and WWII - the active disengagement should on or off to have the situation as close to the battlefield reality as possible?

[Curtis Lemay]

I think that operational/tactical depends on scale. Strategic depends on scope. A scenario can be regimental in scale while being strategic in scope. Think of FITE.

And, obviously, I think you can make operational decisions with Corps/Army sized units - see my "Soviet Union 1941" & "Germany 1945". In fact, those scenarios have less of the micromanaging issues that smaller scale scenarios suffer from. They do also have strategic elements to them - but so does FITE. I keep the disengagement rules on for them, for what that's worth.

[1_Lzard]

burroughs,

"the active disengagement should on or off to have the situation as close to the battlefield reality as possible?"

Generally, I leave the 'disengagement' on (all the time) unless the designer states this isn't an option for his scenario...... This would be part of the 'black box' that the puter uses to compound it's attacks, eh? This really does occur (tho I forget which scenario, LOL!).

[sPzAbt653]

... successful disengaging without a penalty ...

My opinion would be that this is scenario specific and designers can set things up to allow historical results/action. Turning disengagement off would be too 'easy'. I think I recall that there was one scenario that recommended turning disengagement off for that scenario, then after further playtesting that opinion was reversed.

... active disengagement should on or off to have the situation as close to the battlefield reality as possible?

When I initially started with COW, I felt that active disengagement sucked so I tried playing with it off. I found this to suck even more, so now I always have it on. When playing against Elmer, scenarios can play quite differently with disengagement off.

[Sensei.Tokugawa]

Many a thanks for the feedback; I also go for the active disengagement on as a rule of thumb and I was opting for that solution in that particular scenario , too.

Yes, there is a WWII east Front scenario which title I canot recall now, but I am sure it promoted turning the cative disengagement off so as to give one of the sides or even both of them a greater flexibility in adjusting its manoeuvers accordingly. I guess I must have come across an older verion of that apparently ... That was actually a food for thought that perhaps sticking to the "always on" doctrine might sometimes be not so reasonable after all.

[Grungar]

I think using organic artillery to disengage represents a desperate measure ie sacrificing its self in rear guard duty unless the element is motorised. This fantastic game accounts for that too since a mobile unit is more likely to get away from a slower unit

[Sensei.Tokugawa]

I think You got me wrong, Grungar - I meant the ranged artillery fire in support of units or subunits attempting to break contact with an enemy one in a combat deployment ie. the one that hasn't been routed or made reorganizing or separated from its organic formation and support of friendly assets thus still having something to say in regard to wheteher their commander fancies reeacting aggressively or not. If he would then both arty and air support on hand in some decent numbers and of reasonabkle values come hand in making him change his mind - not exposing my own batteries in a rear guard action or delay attempt as that's a nonsese mostly - unless it works acording to a lesson learned of the Green Berets form the Vietnam War - what is stupid and works is not stupid. Generally it is and it doesn't so I meant indirect fire by the book.

But sure I'll be glad to hear Your stories about such feats of either courage or insanity and their result above all. Good luck with that.

[Anchovy]

Personally, I tend to feel that having division or smaller units as the basic maneuver units for operational-strategic campaigns like the Soviet-German War is an overkill as one can only take micromanagement so far. I grew up playing a few WW2 table-based wargames in which most of units consisted of corps/army sized units plus some air and naval units, hence my bias. Even a simpler game like Civilization can become pain in the rear-end once a player has a dozen or more cities and multiply that by least 3 to account for military and support units. (Not terribly bad in the classic version, but becomes increasingly annoying in II, III ...... ?!?) Exception would be having a huge scenario specifically intended to tweak scenario parameters and AI programming, kind of like using TOAW like SimCity3000.