The Gap Tutorial: Group Movement Bug?

[chrisdk]

Okay, so here is what happened and which I am not clear about wether it's a bug or me being stupid.

I am in the first round of "The Gap" Tutorial as the germans. I want to do a group move with all my units that I pay with CAPS only.

I select all my units to form a group.
I then give the group two additional AP via CAPS.
I then have a two of the LMGs move into the woods (a 2 AP move).
I then move the rest of the units generally to the front right, spreading them out a bit so that there is only one unit per hex.
The Units moved into the woods hex are labeled as having 7 AP, the others as having 8 AP.
Upon the last moved unit the Russians take their turn, usually firing at one of my units.
Now all my units are shown as having 7 AP, as it should be.
So, in my next turn, I click anywhere on the map to deselect the group since I will usually just want to do a rally action with one of them. But in this instance all the units in the open only show 6 AP instead of the 7 they should have.

Is this a bug or am I missing something?

[chrisdk]

Apparently this weird "some group members loose 1 AP upon deselecting a group" happens in a few other moments as well, so far only when I had used CAPs on the units in the previous turn.

[ericbabe]

If you use CAPs to increase the APs of a group, deselecting the group will cause the units in the group to lose any APs they received because of CAPs. If it did not work this way, one could form a huge group of units, pump up their APs with CAPs, deselect the group, then have a bunch of units each with increased APs.

[chrisdk]

So, just so I understand it correctly:

in Turn 1 I form a Group of Unit A and B (both infantery).
I give it 2 CAPS.
As my Group Move, I move Unit A into heavy woods, costing 2 AP and unit B for 1 AP.
This leaves me with Unit A at 7 AP and unit B at 7 AP
On my next turn, the group is still selected. It still shows Unit A at 7 AP and Unit B at 7 AP.
If I now deselect the group, it switches to showing Unit A at 7 AP and Unit B at 6 AP even though I didn't need to use any of the CAPS of the unit to get it where it is.
So basically the unit is being penalised for being part of a group that did something slightly more expensive.

It just feels weird to me that this would be intended behaviour and not just an unintended consequence of how loosing Caps upon deselection works.

[ericbabe]

The point, I guess, is that we don't want players to get more than 1 AP per CAP spent.

[Lebatron]

ORIGINAL: chrisdk

So, just so I understand it correctly:

in Turn 1 I form a Group of Unit A and B (both infantery).
I give it 2 CAPS.
As my Group Move, I move Unit A into heavy woods, costing 2 AP and unit B for 1 AP.
This leaves me with Unit A at 7 AP and unit B at 7 AP
On my next turn, the group is still selected. It still shows Unit A at 7 AP and Unit B at 7 AP.
If I now deselect the group, it switches to showing Unit A at 7 AP and Unit B at 6 AP even though I didn't need to use any of the CAPS of the unit to get it where it is.
So basically the unit is being penalised for being part of a group that did something slightly more expensive.

It just feels weird to me that this would be intended behaviour and not just an unintended consequence of how loosing Caps upon deselection works.

You did find a rule error. Here is what you did in CoH terms. You paid for a group move using only CAP. That makes it a 'command action' which means none of your units should be penalized after you disband the group. To group move you play the highest move cost of whatever units are in your group which you did. The forest move was 2AP in cost. You paid 2 CAP to cover it. The end result is that on your next turn both infantry should still have 7AP after you disbanded the group. Had you moved the group with AP instead then you would be locked in and if you disbanded that group before you used up all the AP you would lose them points. CAPs are supposed to be super AP that allow flexibility so that you can form groups and disband without penalty. There are issues yet with the game engine knowing the difference between an AP point and a CAP point.

[chrisdk]

ORIGINAL: Lebatron

ORIGINAL: chrisdk

So, just so I understand it correctly:

in Turn 1 I form a Group of Unit A and B (both infantery).
I give it 2 CAPS.
As my Group Move, I move Unit A into heavy woods, costing 2 AP and unit B for 1 AP.
This leaves me with Unit A at 7 AP and unit B at 7 AP
On my next turn, the group is still selected. It still shows Unit A at 7 AP and Unit B at 7 AP.
If I now deselect the group, it switches to showing Unit A at 7 AP and Unit B at 6 AP even though I didn't need to use any of the CAPS of the unit to get it where it is.
So basically the unit is being penalised for being part of a group that did something slightly more expensive.

It just feels weird to me that this would be intended behaviour and not just an unintended consequence of how loosing Caps upon deselection works.

You did find a rule error. Here is what you did in CoH terms. You paid for a group move using only CAP. That makes it a 'command action' which means none of your units should be penalized after you disband the group. To group move you play the highest move cost of whatever units are in your group which you did. The forest move was 2AP in cost. You paid 2 CAP to cover it. The end result is that on your next turn both infantry should still have 7AP after you disbanded the group. Had you moved the group with AP instead then you would be locked in and if you disbanded that group before you used up all the AP you would lose them points. CAPs are supposed to be super AP that allow flexibility so that you can form groups and disband without penalty. There are issues yet with the game engine knowing the difference between an AP point and a CAP point.

Yeps, that's it pretty spot on
It would be really neat if the "Command Actions" from the boardgame were possible like they are there. Right now the "the whole group goes down to the lowest AP" creates a lot of situations for me where it is unwise to use Group actions, since I would be involving a Unit with 2 or 3 AP in a Group with only fresh units and all of a sudden they all go down to the lowly number. Took me a while to realise that that "All go to lowest level" was why my AP kept disappearing

[raizer]

the free action cards dont work with groups as far as I can tell as well-the free action card should enable an entire group to perform some type of action, move or shoot, for free, instead only one unit can use the card

[Lebatron]

ORIGINAL: chrisdk
Yeps, that's it pretty spot on
It would be really neat if the "Command Actions" from the boardgame were possible like they are there. Right now the "the whole group goes down to the lowest AP" creates a lot of situations for me where it is unwise to use Group actions, since I would be involving a Unit with 2 or 3 AP in a Group with only fresh units and all of a sudden they all go down to the lowly number. Took me a while to realize that that "All go to lowest level" was why my AP kept disappearing

The trick to learn is avoid adding low AP units into a group. You don't want to be set at that units low number after doing a group action. Persistent AP created some very strange exploits that I analyzed in depth during early beta. A restriction like this and a few others had to be invented during dev to plug these exploit holes. When Uwe and WCS decided to go persistent AP the whole idea had not really been playtested throughly. As I obviously discovered. It created a lot of chin scratching I imagine when I pointed out how groups mechanics really broke the persistent AP system.

[chrisdk]

ORIGINAL: ericbabe

The point, I guess, is that we don't want players to get more than 1 AP per CAP spent.

Well, using CAPs for Group moves has always been one of the most cost effective uses of Caps in the board game. So it's something that I would really like to see implemented as closely as possible in the PC Version.
Right now there is a pretty big disconnect for me as to what mobility tactics I can use in the board game and which work in your version. As you may be able to tell, I am not really happy with that

[raizer]

Action cards and caps have to be integrated into groups-its what makes the game so hard to master

[ioticus]

I'm really baffled why they chose to make so many changes to the proven design of the board game. They should've made a straight port and then later added "improvements" to make a more "realistic" PC game if that's what people really wanted (which I doubt).