St-Vith - 51st Armored Inf Bn initial assault questions

[Major SNAFU_M]

Hi all,

I installed the patch and fired up St. Vith.

I set up my standard initial attack, which in the past always saw the 51st leading off in advance of the 318th Inf Rgt.

But now, the 51st always is slow off the mark. I've rerun the beginning 10 times with the similar results. What I don't understand is why the 51st always attacks in a line, and always seems to have 2 or more elements still reorging at the very beginning of the attack. Perhaps it did this pre-patch and I am not remembering correctly?

I am leaving all settings as default for both the 51st and 318th. Both have secure crossing and arty restricted to own attack.

Both the 51st and the 318th received their orders at the very beginning of the scenario. Here is a picture that is representative of what I am seeing.

This is the extent of the 51st's progress by shortly after 7:00. If I let the game run until 7:50, none of the 51st's units will have moved, nor will the 2 that are reorging have come out of reorg status during the 40+ minutes. Only the B.51 is taking fire.

I just ran the game forward to 08:50. Only just now have the 2 units in reorg come out and begun advancing on toward the objective.

UPDATE: I have run some more passes, each from the same saved-game point. The 51st finally kicks off its assault as early as 08:50, but I have seen it not go until as late as 10:10. It always sends one unit (and it is not always the same unit - sometimes it is A.51, sometimes b.51 and sometimes the engineering unit) to the crest of the hill by around 07:00 and that unit takes fire until the rest of the unit attacks. I am also sending the AAA and armored unit to the crest of the hill as demonstrated in the video. Very difficult to get the timing correct and the AAA unit always seems to take a different route.

Many complex, new things are obviously happening. At this point I would suggest that the tutorial movies may have to be re-done....

It looks like Mech infantry takes much, much longer to shake out into an attack with the new patch. Just something to plan for.

UPDATE #2: On the last time through the 51st assaulted at 07:20, which is what I would have expected. This time I didn't have in the delayed move of the AAA and then B.35 onto the hill top added into the orders (but their orders were delayed until after 08:15 in any case) I am confused by the large variability in unit response.

[Gandalf]

ORIGINAL: Major SNAFU

Hi all,

I installed the patch and fired up St. Vith.

I set up my standard initial attack, which in the past always saw the 51st leading off in advance of the 318th Inf Rgt.

But now, the 51st always is slow off the mark. I've rerun the beginning 10 times with the similar results. What I don't understand is why the 51st always attacks in a line, and always seems to have 2 or more elements still reorging at the very beginning of the attack. Perhaps it did this pre-patch and I am not remembering correctly?

I am leaving all settings as default for both the 51st and 318th. Both have secure crossing and arty restricted to own attack.

Both the 51st and the 318th received their orders at the very beginning of the scenario. Here is a picture that is representative of what I am seeing.

This is the extent of the 51st's progress by shortly after 7:00. If I let the game run until 7:50, none of the 51st's units will have moved, nor will the 2 that are reorging have come out of reorg status during the 40+ minutes. Only the B.51 is taking fire.

I just ran the game forward to 08:50. Only just now have the 2 units in reorg come out and begun advancing on toward the objective.

UPDATE: I have run some more passes, each from the same saved-game point. The 51st finally kicks off its assault as early as 08:50, but I have seen it not go until as late as 10:10. It always sends one unit (and it is not always the same unit - sometimes it is A.51, sometimes b.51 and sometimes the engineering unit) to the crest of the hill by around 07:00 and that unit takes fire until the rest of the unit attacks. I am also sending the AAA and armored unit to the crest of the hill as demonstrated in the video. Very difficult to get the timing correct and the AAA unit always seems to take a different route.

Many complex, new things are obviously happening. At this point I would suggest that the tutorial movies may have to be re-done....

It looks like Mech infantry takes much, much longer to shake out into an attack with the new patch. Just something to plan for.

UPDATE #2: On the last time through the 51st assaulted at 07:20, which is what I would have expected. This time I didn't have in the delayed move of the AAA and then B.35 onto the hill top added into the orders (but their orders were delayed until after 08:15 in any case) I am confused by the large variability in unit response.

ditto

These things were happening prior to the new update. I agree that the tutorial movies need to be redone to reduce the confusion factor... Seems to make a newbie feel like he's doing everything wrong.

[smittyohio90]

I downloaded the demo, and am seeing pretty much the same results.... Reproducing the steps exactly as in the tutorial, I cannot come anywhere near the results from the movies.   My armored units take a long time to get going, and my infantry pretty much can't make any dent on the right side, even with heavy artillery bombardments by both the 66th and 22nd units...  Once my armored units do start the attack, they are inexplicably going back into reorg mode all the time.  Unfortunately, this isn't making me feel good about plunking down my money and buying the game.  I'm not expecting total control, but I can't get these guys to do anything, and my timetables keep getting thrown out the window.

[johndoesecond]

Sorry, I just quickly parsed your message, but from the screenshot, it seems to me that you set the FUP for the armoured Bn too far ahead.
If the units are halted, fired-at, bombarded or disturbed in any other way during the operations of preparation for the attack, that could significantly prolong the preparations for the attack, and can sometimes completely disrupt it.
(For example, look at that B.51 coy: it's is still heading to its FUP, but is engaged).

So I'd suggest you try to pick a more retreated FUP, possibly covered from enemy sights. Also, keep your eyes on and adjust accordingly the frontage and depth of the FUP area.

[Gandalf]

ORIGINAL: johndoesecond

Sorry, I just quickly parsed your message, but from the screenshot, it seems to me that you set the FUP for the armoured Bn too far ahead.
If the units are halted, fired-at, bombarded or disturbed in any other way during the operations of preparation for the attack, that could significantly prolong the preparations for the attack, and can sometimes completely disrupt it.
(For example, look at that B.51 coy: it's is still heading to its FUP, but is engaged).

So I'd suggest you try to pick a more retreated FUP, possibly covered from enemy sights. Also, keep your eyes on and adjust accordingly the frontage and depth of the FUP area.

In my (runs), I placed the FUP literally on the starting location (further back then the tutorial movie example) and it's still behaves like the OPs description. The OP's point was that the tutorial results do not play out anywhere near the tutorial movie following the tutorial steps no matter how many times you run it through. Something has changed in the recent patches to significantly alter the game play.

[johndoesecond]

Something has changed in the recent patches to significantly alter the game play.

Ah, yes, you can bet on that. The engine has been significantly overhauled.

[Lieste]

I'm not enamoured of your routeing - If I wanted 51st to advance in the first wave, then I'd set the route to either pass to the left or right of the hillcrest. The immediate threat is the infantry battalion dug-in around the woods in front of the bridge, to the left route gets you further on before becoming engaged - however it is overwatched by the defenders of Lommersweiler, so it will fare badly unless you are very lucky... I tend to favour the route just 'uphill' from the wooded road, flowing around the shoulder of the hill, and engaging each German unit in strength as it becomes unmasked.

My actual chosen solution though is a dismounted attack on the right by 318 Inf, a mounted attack over the right shoulder of the hill by the 37th? Arm'd Bn, and to perform support by fire from defensive positions on the left shoulder using the 51st AI Bn - avoiding excessive exposure of the light vehicles to direct fires from Panzerfaust, ATG, Flak and Stug units, while usefully suppressing their fires on my heavy armour.

[Gandalf]

@ Lieste

The OP is attempting to learn the game like most newbies by following the tutorial movie placement setups. His point that I was agreeing with is that the movie tutorials are now poppycock in that newbies that try to use them to learn the game play are seriously disconcerted by the results that don't even come near to the tutorial movie's results due to recent changes in the game engine. Obviously to old timers, you learn to adapt to the new changes, but old timers have been playing the game for a while already. In order to learn the system, newbies need tutorial movies that at least somewhat coincide with actual current game play OR they end up thinking that they are doing something wrong over and over again and most will quickly turn the game to shelfware and move on to other software publishers. This game system has a ton of promise. So much so, that I went ahead and purchased the older games, HTTR and COTA the next day, but the tutorial movies are a major turnoff for the newer BftB game engine now that the game no longer plays out in any way near to the movie results. This does not mean that I dislike the new game engine improvements. It means that newbies expect tutorial movies or other tutorial formats to encompass those new game engine improvements as a courtesy to help sell the game instead of presenting visual results that are no longer obtainable with the current game engine.

[Major SNAFU_M]

Okay. Whoa!

I didn't mean to say that anything was wrong, just that I was surprised at the results with the new patch.

I do not recall seeing these results when I first ran this scenario after purchasing the game. Moreover, I was not trying to say that anything was wrong. I actually had tried, but had ot time to post, sending the 51st around the rit shoulder like Lieste suggests and I found that the attacks went off much more like I was expecting.

But the poster who said that b.51 is still heading for the FUP, I don't understand. The FUP is clearly located out of LOS of any enemy, behind the hill and only slightly in front of the the original starting place for the 51st. What I was not expecting, and don't recall form my first play through a month or so ago of this scenario is that the 51st would stall when then first unit. Crested. The hill. It seemed like things flowed differently - which is a good thing (I want to stress this) because the patch will have changed how the AI deals with threats.

It seems like my post was taken far more as a harsh critique than as an observation of ochanges in behavior post-patch.Q


The last thing I wanted to do was to cast doubts or cause people considering to purchase this game to hesitate ot stop. It is a great game and deserves a larger player-base.

I am regretting my initial post at this point and will forebear commentary on game behavior in the future until I have a good deal more time in with the engine.

[Lieste]

The FUP isn't a 'point' as such, rather the focus of an area in which the unit deploys into formation... the chosen attack formation appears to be column - not what I'd specify but one of the possible formations - It is hard to tell exactly what has already happened, and what remains undone, but I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the column 'head' wasn't still travelling to the designated jump-off point when it came under fire. This will delay the re-org task, and if the fire is in any way effective could prevent it entirely.

Under these circumstances I would order B.51 to defend, removing it from the attack tasking, and consider re-routeing the remaining units to a more covered route.

[Major SNAFU_M]

ORIGINAL: Lieste

The FUP isn't a 'point' as such, rather the focus of an area in which the unit deploys into formation... the chosen attack formation appears to be column - not what I'd specify but one of the possible formations - It is hard to tell exactly what has already happened, and what remains undone, but I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the column 'head' wasn't still travelling to the designated jump-off point when it came under fire. This will delay the re-org task, and if the fire is in any way effective could prevent it entirely.

Under these circumstances I would order B.51 to defend, removing it from the attack tasking, and consider re-routeing the remaining units to a more covered route.

Ah. Theis a nugget of info that I didn't afore to have. Thanks. That makes things much more clear.

[johndoesecond]

ORIGINAL: Lieste

... the chosen attack formation appears to be column ...

My guess is that it was "successive lines".