Patch #2 Fixes/Changes

[Arjuna]

Let me clarify that any unit not resting during daylight is going to accrue fatigue. If they are moving then they accrue faster than if they were stationary. Only during the night do defending units ( as opposed to non-resting units ) recover. The rate defending units use has been at 50% if no enemy nearby ( ie within 1500m ) or 25% if the enemy is near. Regardless of time of day units that are engaged with the enemy accrue.

The bottom line is that units have to be rested and recover fatigue regularly. You can't flog them night and day especially in the freezing conditions experienced in the Ardnees in 1944. Part of the trouble you are seeing is due to the fact that attacks are not being put in within a reasonable duration because of the formation lockups. I believe I have fixed that issue (touch wood).

But this alone doesn't account for the forces accruing at the rate they do. I have undertaken another review and I am basically happy with the modifiers I am using for the various factors ( eg mods for the type of task, terrain, temperature, enemy nearby, under fire etc ) except fore those applying to the recovery rates when defending at night. I will increase these rates a little.

However, I have decided to reduce the standard fatigue accrual rate from .0008% to .0006% and increase the standard recovery rate from .0008% to .001%.

As a baseline we will assume that reasonably fit and trained force should be able to attack for around four days before being too tired to continue and that each day it will be assaulting for say half the daylight ( ie 6 of the 12 hours ). The remaining 12 hours of dark will be spent defending and not resting. If we work on an ineffective mark of 80% fatigue then, this measn that on average it will accrue 20% per day.

Units that assault accrue at 1.15 the standard rate. Units that are engaged ( ie within the last 15 minutes ) accrue at 1.25 the std rate. So we'll assume that assaulting troops accrue on average at 1.2 the std rate. Thus the daylight accrual rate will be on average 1.1 the std rate if it is assaulting for half the daylight. So its accrual rate will be .0006 x 1.1 = .00066 per minute or 4% per hour. For the 12 hours of daylight it will be 48%.

Units that rest recover at the std recovery rate. If they are defending instead then they recover at 0.67 the standard rate if no enemy nearby ( ie within 1500m ) or 0.4 the rate if near to enemy. We're assuming the worst case so we are looking at a recovery rate of .0004 per minute or 2.4% per hour or 28% per 12 hours of night.

This leaves us with an average accrual rate of 20% per day. After four days the unit will be at 80% fatigue and ineffective.

Now if the same force were to rest for say 6 hours per night then it would recover at .001 per minute or 6% per hour x 6 = 36% plus 6 x 2.4% = 14.4 = 40% per night. In other words if you can rest your force for half the night it will only accrue an average of 8% per day. This means it can operate for 10 days before being ineffective.

I'm happy with these adjustments but we'll need to test it some more. I will arrange for another public beta version to be made available. Thanks for your assistance.

[BletchleyGeek]

ORIGINAL: Arjuna
I'm happy with these adjustments but we'll need to test it some more. I will arrange for another public beta version to be made available. Thanks for your assistance.

Thank you for the very detailed explanation. This certainly clarifies - for me - quite a few things.

I'm certainly looking forward to that new beta patch [:)]

[GBS]

Super explanation of how things are working under the hood, Dave. Hope the mentioned patch comes quick.[;)]

[fleischer]

I can't say I was able to follow that explanation, but, formation lockups or not, having units fighting for *four days* before becoming ineffective is FAR away from the actual reality of the game I have been playing. You only need to fire up Hofen and order the regiments to attack to see that. They will reach 80% before midday, even with simple, head-on attacks.

[Lieste]

That is probably because they are being fired at (particularly with artillery). If they also rout, this will render them exhausted fairly rapidly...

[Arjuna]

ORIGINAL: fleischer

I can't say I was able to follow that explanation, but, formation lockups or not, having units fighting for *four days* before becoming ineffective is FAR away from the actual reality of the game I have been playing. You only need to fire up Hofen and order the regiments to attack to see that. They will reach 80% before midday, even with simple, head-on attacks.

I think if you re-read my posts above you will see that I have indeed stepped through your save of the Hofen scenario and I acknowledged that the fatigue rates needed adjusting. I was explaining in my last post the basis on which I have set the new rates. That's all. You will be able to check these out once Matrix release a new beta patch. We have signed off on it. However, they are very busy right now, but hopefully it will be done shortly.

[fleischer]

Alright, I will do that.

[fleischer]

Just tried Hofen with the .248 patch. Still getting formation lockups/inefficiency.

753 is ordered to probe at 0600, but never moves out. 751 and 752 also took a long time, but eventually this was solved and they shook out into assault formation:
http://www.picpaste.com/pics/lockup-JmV ... 559531.png

Saved game: http://www.2shared.com/file/0fdg_fQF/Fl ... veout.html

[wodin]

Looking at the Training, experience and Moral of 753 maybe thats having soemthing to do with it?

Then again it is 12 oclock gone. So that is awhile for them to get a shift one.

Send the commander to the Russian front. That would be cool if you could rant and rave and threaten the commanders with a chance of them pulling their finger out, but if you do it when it's not needed you could end up with less motivated troops.

[BletchleyGeek]

ORIGINAL: wodin
Send the commander to the Russian front. That would be cool if you could rant and rave and threaten the commanders with a chance of them pulling their finger out, but if you do it when it's not needed you could end up with less motivated troops.

That should work very well, indeed [:D]

But I think the real problem is to have the supply bases attached to the command. Check out the Höfen Mini AAR I put up on the AAR section.

[fleischer]

ORIGINAL: wodin

Looking at the Training, experience and Moral of 753 maybe thats having soemthing to do with it?

It's a lockup.

[simovitch]

fleischer, I think wodin is not too far off the mark here. You ordered your Regiments to probe the front, but only with minimum losses. I can only imagine your Feldwebels are looking at their orders and looking at what they have to work with and shaking their cumulative heads. They got intel for you, what more do you want?

What is missing is the otherwise ubiquitous warning message that tells you "Sir, this aint happening".

Try it again with maximum losses and see if they deliver what you really want from them... the objectives.

[fleischer]

This has nothing to do with training, experience or anything like that. I give it an order and it freezes in column formation without doing anything. The minimum losses setting doesn't work that way, and never has. The formation clearly locks up, as is evident from the saved game, and as anyone with the barest amount of experience with the game can verify. Trying to explain away faults and bugs by pretending the game is more sophisticated than it really is, is not going to make a better game.

Am I wasting my time here?[&:]

[simovitch]

ORIGINAL: fleischer
The formation clearly locks up, as is evident from the saved game, and as anyone with the barest amount of experience with the game can verify. Trying to explain away faults and bugs by pretending the game is more sophisticated than it really is, is not going to make a better game.

Am I wasting my time here?[&:]

I have a bit of experience with the game herr fleischer, and I took your saved game and changed the aggro, losses, and ROF settings to max and hit go and the 753rd is assaulting inside Hofen by noon. I'm not making this up.

Did you change the settings and test it yourself before coming in here and popping off?

[Arjuna]

Can we calm down here please.

fliecher,

I appreciate you want to try and help get a better game but your "max aggro" attitude is not helpful.

Richard,

I appreciate your attempt to assist here but issuing a new order can in fact obviate a lockup. So there could still be one there. I need to step through the code and work out exactly what is happening here.

I am working on another issue at the moment and won't get to this till tomorrow at the earliest. In the meantime:

fliecher,

Can you please confirm if this save was from a game started with an earlier build or was it started from this current build - ie did you start the scenario from scratch under build 248?

[BletchleyGeek]

While it might well be that Arjuna actually finds something, I tried you game Fleischer, detaching the bases.

This caused 753rd to re-plan, inducing a delay of about 80 minutes (about 60 clogged up in the Rgt staff, and about 15 to propagate plans to Coy staffs and start executing).

[center][/center]

In the picture above you can see how they're moving to the FUP - pretty quickly. They don't spend too much time in the FUP, and the probe/attack goes underway with little delay

[center][/center]

30 minutes later, they're engaging the US troops in Höfen

[center][/center]

This thing with the bases might or not be WAD, but seems to me to be clearly related to "lockups" or "delays". Perhaps is something related to the "Basing" setting, I don't know.

Here you'll find two savegames. One right at the time of yours, where I have detached Rgt bases, and another one matching the time stamp of the last screenshot.

BftB is certainly sophisticated, fleischer, very sophisticated.

[fleischer]

Well, of course changing the settings might "untie" the lock, because changing the settings causes a replan(this includes adding/detaching units), and thus changes the whole situation. That doesn't mean min aggro will cause units to freeze and do nothing for no reason.

Anjura: It's just annoying when someone doesn't pay attention and throws out an opinion without looking at the facts. In those cases, max aggro IS necessary to ensure a breakthrough sometimes

This was from 248 - both when I started it and when I saved it. 100% sure.

[BletchleyGeek]

ORIGINAL: fleischer
Well, of course changing the settings might "untie" the lock, because changing the settings causes a replan(this includes adding/detaching units), and thus changes the whole situation. That doesn't mean min aggro will cause units to freeze and do nothing for no reason.

There are "lockups" with no reason, and others have a reason. You provided a savegame with the order aleady "planned". If the base was the cause of the "lock up", then it all makes sense to detach the base, doesn't it?

Try to issue the same order without the Base, as I did, and tell me what you find. This was exactly what I learnt in the exchange I had with simovitch on the mini-AAR thread I pointed you out to and looks like failed to impress you in the slightest.

I agree that these WAD "lockups" should better explained/documented. Here I have become convinced that one needs to put more thought in order to sail around fuel and supply shortages. If the base doesn't have enough fuel, it just won't move forward. If you leave the "Basing" setting on, then the base will try to move in formation with the rest of the Regiment. This might considerably delay deployment, for instance, of the Rear Guard element.

Or perhaps cause other problems which aren't WAD and probably Arjuna will sort out.

Assuming that people want to shout you out and then make some vague, and worse, inaccurate remark about a game quite a few people around here like a lot, will make very unlikely that will put some real effort in order to try to help you out (as both simovitch and me tried to do, with screenshots and savegames).

[Phoenix100]

In those cases, max aggro IS necessary to ensure a breakthrough sometimes

I don't think rudeness is ever necessary in this forum, with these developers - Dave always checks the posts, always replies, always looks into things. But maybe you didn't realise you were coming across as rude - that sometimes happens with the language thing - and, for all we know, you might be only fifteen years old (not being rude suggesting that, but it's true that you just never know who you're talking to...) and have the impatience of youth bearing down on you.

[Arjuna]

As I said above I will step through the saved game provided and report back here in the next few days.