Formations - Progress

[wodin]

Hmmm...personally as I don't micro manage and prefer the thought a commander is in control following my orders so this isn't an issue for me. I just put it down to how the game plays...i.e you give orders and your sub ordinates try and follow it through sometimes well sometimes not so well. yes they don't always do what I'd want them to do, but hey thats part of the beauty of the game to me.

maybe you need to let go of the total control mentality and play it as a commander role where your orders will not always be carried out the way you want them to..role play it abit. I certainly don't get hung up over total control with this game..for me thats not what it's about. Other games yes I find it important but not this game.

[Phoenix100]

Well, we've been through this response a few times, I think, Wodin - not with me, necessarilly, but in this forum. It's not much use, in my very humble opinion, telling someone to relax and put up with whatever as part of the game, when what we're trying to discover is whether some thing is an intentional part of the game or something that should be improved, or even fixed. Why don't you relax about the casualty issue (to pick the last issue you did seem to care about), the close combat detail? Stop micromanaging it. Sometimes people get killed, sometimes they don't - it's all part of the game. Right?

I don't micromanage. Very far from it. The beauty of this game is that it allows the user to pick the level of involvement they choose. Asking a Bn to move to a certain part of the map with a certain set of given options that are part of the interface of the game is hardly micromanaging.....

[wodin]

fair enough..I just think the other issues are issues where the engine isn't working right..where as the issue of full control of a unit isn't what this game is about. Trying to pick the exact route one unit moves is for me abit to much control. Maybe commander stats come into play here..a poor commander might take the wrong route for instance. Where as casualty issue has nothing to do with subordinate commander AI but to do with the combat engine.

Anyway I obviously hit a sore spot here. Personally I don't see such a major issue myself.

[Arjuna]

phoenix,

Thanks fo an actual example. The screenshot speaks volumes. Do you have a save taken before the waypoints disappeared and it re-routed through Butgenbach?

[Phoenix100]

No. Sorry, Dave. I wiped it and started again, in fact, (not because of that). But it seems to happen often enough in that scenario (which I'm playing at the moment) so I can get you one easily enough. Will send when I have.

[wodin]

Whoops..OK I'm wrong as usually it seems on this forum..sorry..whenever I seem to say something it appears I've got it wrong when Dave steps in.

I think I'm to quick at times defending the game. Every time I step in and Dave says the opposite I promise myself not to speak up again. I'm going to step back I think on commenting on CO from now on.

I'll get my coat;)

[Phoenix100]

No sore spot, Wodin. And no offence intended by me. It's not about 'full control' of the units though. Note, the order is to a Bn, not a company. And whilst you might like to simply click on the map and select the destination (as might I, in some circumstances, but not always) the option to do it differently (with waypoints put in) is there in the game, as part of the interface, so people (me included, sometimes) will use it, and then you get the chance to look at the results and say to Dave 'Hey, hang on a minute - is it meant to happen like this?'. That's no diff to what you're doing complaining about how close combat casualties are implemented.

We're all just trying to play the thing and see how it works.

[BletchleyGeek]

Now I totally see what you mean phoenix. I think here we're seeing an interesting thing about the interaction of enemy positions and the terrain. Below there is an screenshot of the area around Butgenbach taken on the Map Maker. The white areas in the grayscale image are impassable to motorized formations.

I think that the route we're seeing is indeed the shortest one indeed: avoiding enemy units and impassable terrain.

[Arjuna]

Excellent point Miquel. I should have picked up on that myself. Phoenix, if you go back to your screen shot you will see a black outline south of the Butgenbach. The pathing routine is going to avoid this but as Miquel points out the option to flank right is not there because of the impassable terrain. I suspect that when you originally started you did not have that enemy intel and hence the original route probably drove straight though its location.

[Phoenix100]

A-ha. Thanks Bletch. This is possible - arrival of enemy units, mid-column, as it were, shuts off only passable route that follows closely to my desired waypoints. I hadn't, in fact, noticed that patch of impassable terrain at all.... My original route would have went perilously close to it. The lead elements got through on my original route, ish, because the contact wasn't there blocking it. I understand. I'll keep an eye out for what exactly is going on, with the terrain, if I see this again. Thanks Dave and Bletch.

[GBS]

I'm glad thats settled......now on to the casualty issue.

[Arjuna]

Late last night, well early this morning I revisited the cas issue. In fact it is more than just a cas issue. Just tweaking various factors within the fire event code will certainly increase casualties but if that's all that's changed then units will be bled dry before the end of the scenario. In short we will end up with ahistorical cas rates. So other changes must be made in conjunction with the fire event.

What I think we need to get to is a case where an inf Bn assaults an inf coy the inf coy is forced out and suffers some casualties. This at the moment is not happening within a reasonable time. The inf coy stands far too long in the face of significant fire. This can be valid where the enemy coy is dug in or in urban terrain, but not in general.

A standard inf coy deploys on a 300m frontage with a depth of 200m. An inf force with a 3 to 1 superiority in firepower should be able to advance 100m in 15 minutes. In other words it should take about an hour to clear the objective once the forces are in direct contact. If the force is entrenched or fortified then it can take significantly longer to clear them.

So what we want is to increase the cas from APerFP to a point where the enemy coy suffers some casualties. This would probably be in the order of 5 to 10 percent for such an engagement. Patton used to say that he would never trust cas reports stating that more than 20% casualties were inflicted in an engagement. We also want that enemy coy to consider retreating once it has taken some of its cas rather than standing and dying to the man or finally routing when it is too late. That happened on a few occassions but not in general.

So I have tweaked the cas rates and reduced the rout threshold from 30% to 20%. This means that the unit is now 10% more likely to retreat instead. I stepped through the code as I was running the tutorial as a test. One thing I noticed was the frequency of times when a unit would convert a retreat to a retreat in place ( ie cower where it was rather than pulling back ). This was primarily due to it being suppressed. This is a by product of an earlier change we made in one of the more recent builds to reduce cas and increase suppression. So you see how making a change for a good reason in one place can sometimes have adverse consequences in another.

As I ran through the first 24 hours of the tutorial there was certainly more movement and more casualties. Probably too many. I will need to ease off on the fire effectiveness. I will also revise the suppression code and see if I can add some smarts to this cowering code that make it a variable rather than an absolute choice.

[navwarcol]

Hi Dave.. great job here, great game!
The formation work here is truly a thing to behold as well. As for the casualties, is this perhaps somehow already able to tweak just by playing around some with things such as "determination" and "aggressiveness" in the unit and commander stats, in editing scenarios at large and using the "loss tolerance" button on the attack or defend orders if the side in question is player commanded?

[Arjuna]

No the solution to the cas issue lies in tweaking the code I'm afraid. It may take several iterations.

[wodin]

Dave sounds good to me. Looks like your on it and will get a sweet spot.

[RockinHarry]

Thanks for letting us know, Dave! [:)]

My main concerns with casualty rates so far, are actually more specific. It´s about that defending units in good cover, particularly when dug in or entrneched, keep as good as unharmed, when the attacker is almost on top of them. I´d also assume that at this point, also some bloody hand to hand combat (hand grenade range and below) would start to occur, or any other sorts of combat to be assumed at point blanc range.

Note: There´s different terms/definitions floating around that are confused oftenly. The german term "Nahkampf" is very oftenly translated to "close combat", which is differently defined in english literature and linguistic usage.

Here´s the main differences:

German: Nahkampf = (hand to hand combat) Edit: "Close quarters combat"
German: Kampf auf nächste Entfernung (100m and below) = close combat
German: Kampf auf nahe Entfernung (300m and below) = no idea about english definitions...

German terminology is well defined and normally leaves no doubt, whether a "close (range) combat" or actually "hand to hand combat/close quarters combat" is described or credited.

The german Nahkampfspange (close combat badge) thus is credited for ("hand to hand combat") Close quarters combat and not "close combat" (combat at short yet not clearly defined range).

This all lead to the wrong believes, that actual "hand to hand combat/close quarters combat" was a very rare occurance during WW2 and thus is little worth to be considered properly modelled in wargames.

I know, that something like a "grenade bonus" is used in BftB, obviously to take into account that very close range combat, when both sides unit footprints start to overlap. In fact, I do not see any such "effects" happening at all, beside that there´s no ingame feedback about that (or I´m not aware that there is any).

From my observations that leads frequently to situations, that the closer infantry units get to each other, the less bloody the results will be, particularly for the defending unit. I´ve seen occurances, where units are completely sitting on top of each other (complete overlap of footprints), exchange a tremendous amount of fire, without taking any personnel losses (sure for defender when human played, not sure for AI attacker).

As said in another thread, I spiced up accuracy ratings of small arms for ranges 100m and below 3 times above original values. So the usual 0,9... something, now reads 2,9....and this produces usually 1 casulty per fire exchange, but oftenly enough still 0. (defender dug in in good cover terrain).

At least with this values, a defending unit does not start to retreat in completely unharmed state, as one would normally expect. Too oftenly I see units retreat from pure presence of enemy (FP indication and TLOS) nearby, without having noticable suppression, cohesion loss or morale drops, not to speak of not having taken a single presonnel loss beforehand.

This leads to the oftenly seen situation, that defending units are "scared" out of their foxholes, just to take their first personnel losses, when retreating back and getting hammered by the allmighty enemy artillery outside the original defensive position.

AI artillery usage is a different issue, so I do not work that out here.

[Lieste]

Are those German terms the correct way around?
Not a speaker, but I interpreted the meaning as 'Close combat' 'Fight at "next" range' and 'Fight at close range'. Where, my guess is next is ordinal:
Close, next, middle, long, extreme (say).

Of course it might be "next" as in adjacent ~ but leads to 'Close' being split by another term.

[RockinHarry]

ORIGINAL: Lieste

Are those German terms the correct way around?
Not a speaker, but I interpreted the meaning as 'Close combat' 'Fight at "next" range' and 'Fight at close range'. Where, my guess is next is ordinal:
Close, next, middle, long, extreme (say).

Of course it might be "next" as in adjacent ~ but leads to 'Close' being split by another term.

These are the definitions, taken from WW2 german FM:

Nahkampf = Edit: likely "close quarters combat"
Nächste Entfernung = (<=100m) nearest range
Nahe Entfernung = (100-400m) = close range
Mittlere Entfernung (400-800m) = middle range
Weite Entfernung (>800m) = far range

Einbruchsentfernung = (200-300m) = break in range

Approximate range at that an infantry force prepares for the final break in to the enemy position.

Fixing bayonets, preparing hand grenades, awaiting last mortar and artillery falling on enemy positions before storming and initiating "Nahkampf" assault.

Can´t tell what comparable definitions from US/UK manuals are, but with reference to "Close combat", it´s oftenly misinterpreted as non "hand to hand combat", when german sources are referred to or translated. Thus the "Nahkampfspangen" Example:

http://www.ww2awards.com/award/99

Edit: Had a look at Wiki for english definitition of "Nahkampf", so "close combat" is not wrong, although "close qurters combat CQC" fits the german definition better:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_quarters_combat

[Arjuna]

RockinHarry,

Thanks for the detailed explanations and feedback. After the tweaks I have made I am certainly seeing higher cas and especially when units close. Perhaps the best thing is to review this after I put out a new build in the coming week.

[dazkaz15]

I'm not sure if the problem I see when the footprints overlap is just about casualties.

I think the surrender mechanics might be a bit out as well.

I usually try to get a complete encirclement with a lot of the isolated units entrenched in forests, or other high cover areas, and not only are they not taking casualties, there not surrendering either.

I know you are trying to get a realistic casualty figure, but does this include realistic surrendering figures.

If my tactics are a lot different than those used historically, like I said I like to surround my enemy so when they are routed they can't get away, would there not be a lot different figures than those used historically.

What I'm trying to say is I hope you're not forfeiting a plausible a historical outcome for the sake of historical figures, because It won't work in a game like this that allows you to do tactics that were not used historically.

I would much rather the results where plausible than historical.