Motorized units with no ferry cap. crossing blown bridge?

[carll11]

If I read 12.3 correctly, theres an issue...

I am playing West wall and Brit Motor. units with very small ( less than 10%) eng.s and no ferry cap are just blazing across Suez canal and super river blown bridges. Recon units get accross too, but NO other units can, not foot inf. any other units period.

If they occupy the hex they are also repairing them in like 1 turn, 2 tops, with major enemy units adjacent etc.


...aside from being seriously unrealistic, it doesn't appear the rules sppt. this so (?)


12.3.
Land units cannot usually enter Super River or
Suez Canal locations. Units that have a Major
Ferry Capacity of greater than 10% have the ability
to enter these locations and create temporary
crossing points for other units. If the hex contains
a blown bridge, a unit with engineering equipment
can move into, or through, the hex and even
attempt to make repairs.

[golden delicious]

Units with an engineering % have to be able to enter blown bridge locations to be able to fix them- or else you'd need a ferry unit AND an engineer unit to fix the bridge.

If you want a rationalisation, I would think that most blown bridges are just a single span having been taken out, and it's relatively trivial for the engineers to work across the span- versus crossing the whole super river.

Anyway, I normally avoid putting small numbers of engineer squads in combat units for a number of reasons, and this is one of them.

[Lobster]

British divisions did indeed have organic bridging capability.
http://niehorster.org/017_britain/44_org/__44_org.html

[carll11]

bugger the brits and their engineers!

[Rescue193]

The best description of the organic engineering support, its function and capabilities, within a British infantry battalion in 1944, can be found below at the WayBackMachine web archive link to the old “Bayonetstrength” website. It provides a more detailed breakdown, over and above that which Niehorster provides, of various formations.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160425143250/http://www.bayonetstrength.150m.com/General/site_map.htm

Assault Pioneer Platoon - the renamed Assault Pioneer Platoon deployed two Assault Sections and one Pioneer Section under an Officer and Pioneer Sergeant.  Each five strong Assault Section had its own jeep and trailer, while a 3-ton lorry carried the bulk of the Platoon stores.  The Platoon commander also had a Jeep and batman-driver.  The Assault Sections provided specialist men and equipment for the disposal of mines and breaching obstacles.  The British Army was not really keen on flamethrowers, but if issued the Pioneers would no doubt have deployed them.  The Pioneer Section was comprised of tradesmen, a mason, bricklayer and carpenters under the Pioneer Sergeant, necessary to turn burnt out buildings into bearable accommodation for the riflemen.


As you can see the platoon wasn’t really equipped for the business of bridge repairs or the fording rivers and canals, that was the bailiwick of the engineering companies attached to the relevant brigades/divisions/corps.

One point to note about the the units with “Ferry-Bridging teams” is that, in the British Army at least, these were Royal Army Service Corps (RASC) units which simply delivered the kit to where ever it was needed. It was the engineering units that actually built the bridges, rowed the boats or whatever else was required.

I haven't worked out how to model this too accurately in TOAW IV (but if somebody knows how to do it I’d be pleased to hear) so as a compromise I tend to do away with the RASC element and put the “Ferry-Bridging teams” into a few of the higher echelon engineering units. It’s not perfect but it works.

[Lobster]

The German army in the invasion of the Soviet Union had a very large number of bridging battalions without transport. Also without anyone to put the things together. It was just the bridging and that was it. They depended on other HQs to provide the transport and personnel for assembly. To model that in TOAW would involve rules applied outside of the game program.

When Bob made it possible for units to disembark he also unwittingly allowed part of this to be modeled. The bridging battalions without transport can begin the game disembarked. They can then embark drawing transport from the on hand pool. You would still have to have a rule in place requiring construction engineers to be present to assemble the various parts after the bridging unit disembarked. It's nice to see his work paying off in unintended ways.
You would also rule that these units cannot move even one hex without transport, just as you should do with artillery over a certain size that has no transport.

What would really be a nice addition to the game is if Bob made it possible to unlimber artillery in effect disembarking it yet leaving it on the map. This could be used for many other things also. [;)]

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Lobster

When Bob made it possible for units to disembark he also unwittingly allowed part of this to be modeled. The bridging battalions without transport can begin the game disembarked. They can then embark drawing transport from the on hand pool. You would still have to have a rule in place requiring construction engineers to be present to assemble the various parts after the bridging unit disembarked. It's nice to see his work paying off in unintended ways.
You would also rule that these units cannot move even one hex without transport, just as you should do with artillery over a certain size that has no transport.

This just sounds like a good way of giving the player lots to do without actually adding very much to the game.

Above are a couple of descriptions of the nitty-gritty of how different armies managed bridge repair and river crossings, but I would argue this doesn't really belong in TOAW any more than one needs the divisional bakery company to give a 1% readiness boost to adjacent units because they get their bread still warm from the oven. I would suggest that bridging works just fine provided you put the equipment in a specialist unit which needs to be brought along if you want to cross a river- the way it works at the moment.

There is a broader need for Truck units to work more or less the way that transport helicopters work today- but I really wouldn't want the player to be able to scoop up trucks from whatever unit he wants as transport establishments would need the necessary training, equipment and organisation to be able to do this. I think you'd get into a real mess this way.

[Rescue193]

Limbering/unlimbering artillery would be an ace addition to the game. Could it even be taken as far as reducing the combat effectiveness of limbered guns in the same way that entrained units are unable to attack and have defence strength reduced by 75%?

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Rescue193

Limbering/unlimbering artillery would be an ace addition to the game. Could it even be taken as far as reducing the combat effectiveness of limbered guns in the same way that entrained units are unable to attack and have defence strength reduced by 75%?

Doesn't this seem like a tactical decision though? At an operational scale, one shouldn't have to be constantly buggering about with limbering/unlimbering forty times per turn.

There's a case for this for very heavy guns which can't be fired without major emplacement work. It's nonsense to have a 12 inch gun potter down the road a bit before firing a shell, as siege artillery often took days rather than hours to emplace. However this would affect only a tiny minority of artillery units and so wouldn't be an imposition on the player's time. One could achieve this quite simply by giving the unit a truck icon with a control which converts it to a "fixed artillery" icon, but which is only available if the unit hasn't moved that turn (this same logic is already present for embarking). When flipping back to the truck icon, the unit would default back to 0 MPs (this should happen automatically since the existing game logic will translate 0/0 MPs to 0/15 MPs)

Naturally in some scenarios one turn will be too long to emplace the gun and in others not long enough- but I think simplicity is a virtue in itself and the above would be an improvement on the current state of affairs for siege guns.

[76mm]

ORIGINAL: golden delicious
Doesn't this seem like a tactical decision though? At an operational scale, one shouldn't have to be constantly buggering about with limbering/unlimbering forty times per turn.

You're right, but the problem is that TOAW has expanded its hex/time scales into the tactical realm (250 meter hexes, one hour turns) without any corresponding change to underlying rules. It has also expanded to the grand-strategic level (200 km hexes, annual turns), with the same problem. Kind of wish it would have stuck to its bread-and-butter operational scales.

[Zovs]

Personally I like the expansion, but with that should have came code to compensate and handle those tactical and strategic expansions.

Instead without those considerations coded, scenario designers (what little left of us there are) have to make 'kludges' to make things work with what the software provides.

[Lobster]

ORIGINAL: golden delicious

ORIGINAL: Rescue193

Limbering/unlimbering artillery would be an ace addition to the game. Could it even be taken as far as reducing the combat effectiveness of limbered guns in the same way that entrained units are unable to attack and have defence strength reduced by 75%?

Doesn't this seem like a tactical decision though? At an operational scale, one shouldn't have to be constantly buggering about with limbering/unlimbering forty times per turn.

There's a case for this for very heavy guns which can't be fired without major emplacement work. It's nonsense to have a 12 inch gun potter down the road a bit before firing a shell, as siege artillery often took days rather than hours to emplace. However this would affect only a tiny minority of artillery units and so wouldn't be an imposition on the player's time. One could achieve this quite simply by giving the unit a truck icon with a control which converts it to a "fixed artillery" icon, but which is only available if the unit hasn't moved that turn (this same logic is already present for embarking). When flipping back to the truck icon, the unit would default back to 0 MPs (this should happen automatically since the existing game logic will translate 0/0 MPs to 0/15 MPs)

Naturally in some scenarios one turn will be too long to emplace the gun and in others not long enough- but I think simplicity is a virtue in itself and the above would be an improvement on the current state of affairs for siege guns.

I've always said every game element should be able to be controlled by the person putting together the scenario. Much like JT Panzer Campaign series.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: 76mm


You're right, but the problem is that TOAW has expanded its hex/time scales into the tactical realm (250 meter hexes, one hour turns) without any corresponding change to underlying rules. It has also expanded to the grand-strategic level (200 km hexes, annual turns), with the same problem. Kind of wish it would have stuck to its bread-and-butter operational scales.

Agreed. I would rather as-close-to-perfect for one scale rather than doing all scales badly.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Lobster

I've always said every game element should be able to be controlled by the person putting together the scenario. Much like JT Panzer Campaign series.

So, what I do for a living is deploy Software-as-a-Service. The product I work with has a lot of configuration options but a lot of other stuff is hardcoded, much like TOAW.

The advantage of this approach is that you know that, within the bounds of what the engine is actually capable of, it's reasonably rigorously tested and the whole thing is not going to suddenly fall over because you changed two factors which, somewhere in the code, multiple up to produce eighteen-trillion operations all at once, or whatever.

In any piece of software there has to be a compromise made between stability and making the solution actually hang together as a stable platform. Actually one of my big beefs about TOAW IV is that it is much slower and less stable than TOAW III, and the more stuff is hacked onto it the worse I think this problem is going to get.

That's not to say any given variable shouldn't be unlocked- but there's a limit past which you're just making the program more cumbersome, for everyone, not just for people who choose to use the new feature, but for everyone. Consequently I'd like to see the core product polished to within an inch of its life: make it so that land warfare at the operational scale between about 1930 and 1950 works perfectly. Then and only then would I start to expand the scope.

[Zovs]

ORIGINAL: golden delicious

ORIGINAL: Lobster

I've always said every game element should be able to be controlled by the person putting together the scenario. Much like JT Panzer Campaign series.

So, what I do for a living is deploy Software-as-a-Service. The product I work with has a lot of configuration options but a lot of other stuff is hardcoded, much like TOAW.

The advantage of this approach is that you know that, within the bounds of what the engine is actually capable of, it's reasonably rigorously tested and the whole thing is not going to suddenly fall over because you changed two factors which, somewhere in the code, multiple up to produce eighteen-trillion operations all at once, or whatever.

In any piece of software there has to be a compromise made between stability and making the solution actually hang together as a stable platform. Actually one of my big beefs about TOAW IV is that it is much slower and less stable than TOAW III, and the more stuff is hacked onto it the worse I think this problem is going to get.

That's not to say any given variable shouldn't be unlocked- but there's a limit past which you're just making the program more cumbersome, for everyone, not just for people who choose to use the new feature, but for everyone. Consequently I'd like to see the core product polished to within an inch of its life: make it so that land warfare at the operational scale between about 1930 and 1950 works perfectly. Then and only then would I start to expand the scope.

Those are all excellent and valid points and they way this software should (or could) be designed. But it's not how it seems to have panned out. It seems a lot of features have been just tacked on making TOAW IV not as robust as TOAW III has been.

Case in point is all the CTD one can get in various ways while in the editor. That is the main reason out of sheer frustration when the software just crashes and you loose hours and hours of work, I just have had to walk away and go play some other game.

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: 76mm

ORIGINAL: golden delicious
Doesn't this seem like a tactical decision though? At an operational scale, one shouldn't have to be constantly buggering about with limbering/unlimbering forty times per turn.

You're right, but the problem is that TOAW has expanded its hex/time scales into the tactical realm (250 meter hexes, one hour turns) without any corresponding change to underlying rules. It has also expanded to the grand-strategic level (200 km hexes, annual turns), with the same problem. Kind of wish it would have stuck to its bread-and-butter operational scales.

I provided those scales because there are subjects that will work under them. See my Shiloh 1862 and Chickamauga 1863 scenarios. (Unlimbering is handled via house rules). Designers can make their own decisions whether their subject will work in these scales. We're treating them as adults.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Zovs


Those are all excellent and valid points and they way this software should (or could) be designed. But it's not how it seems to have panned out. It seems a lot of features have been just tacked on making TOAW IV not as robust as TOAW III has been.

Case in point is all the CTD one can get in various ways while in the editor. That is the main reason out of sheer frustration when the software just crashes and you loose hours and hours of work, I just have had to walk away and go play some other game.

The TOAW editor has always required regular saving to avoid disaster. Ever click "fill to border" and miss the window to hit "undo"?

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

I provided those scales because there are subjects that will work under them. See my Shiloh 1862 and Chickamauga 1863 scenarios. (Unlimbering is handled via house rules). Designers can make their own decisions whether their subject will work in these scales. We're treating them as adults.

The problem with this is not so much extending the scale in itself as now someone is going to ask, why can my direct fire artillery shoot through a hill? How come there's no rules for smoke obscuring the battlefield? Really, I shouldn't be able to give orders to a unit 2 miles away and have them respond within thirty minutes....

All of these are problems that need solving in a tactical, 19th century simulation. So now you either have to solve these problems or admit that TOAW is never going to be a serious competitor to other games in this space.

This is less of a problem at the top end of the scale (e.g. 100km/hex), although you do hit some limitations of the TOAW system with a longer turn length: one can hardly counterattack effectively if the other guy has two whole weeks to carry out his offensive before you can respond.

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: golden delicious

The problem with this is not so much extending the scale in itself as now someone is going to ask, why can my direct fire artillery shoot through a hill?

Handled via house rules.

How come there's no rules for smoke obscuring the battlefield?

Actually, that's exactly how it functions (unfortunately). [:D] There's no line-of-sight spotting in TOAW, or opportunity fire. I give a little theater recon and hope it spots enough of the enemy to give some semblance of this.

In other words, Picket's Charge didn't advance under a fog bank (unfortunately for them).

Really, I shouldn't be able to give orders to a unit 2 miles away and have them respond within thirty minutes....

They have standing orders and initiative. Turns are long enough for orders to be delivered by courier over significant distance.

All of these are problems that need solving in a tactical, 19th century simulation. So now you either have to solve these problems or admit that TOAW is never going to be a serious competitor to other games in this space.

Are you in the habit of playing 19th century tactical simulations that handle smoke obscuring the battle field, opportunity fire, and aide-de-camp rules? I've never played one - or even heard of one. Certainly the paper games that the above scenarios were based upon didn't.

Regardless, the other area this scale would be necessary and workable, as I noted when I released it, would be Pacific Island battles. Now there's no smoke and you have radios.

This is less of a problem at the top end of the scale (e.g. 100km/hex), although you do hit some limitations of the TOAW system with a longer turn length: one can hardly counterattack effectively if the other guy has two whole weeks to carry out his offensive before you can respond.

Again, it depends upon the subject. You may recall that someone made a Punic War scenario - full year turns. That's where longer turn intervals and hex scales will be needed. And I've seen full ETO games made with very large hex scales and seasonal turns.

Again, we're treating designers like adults. They can decide for themselves if their subject will work under these scales.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

Are you in the habit of playing 19th century tactical simulations that handle smoke obscuring the battle field, opportunity fire, and aide-de-camp rules? I've never played one - or even heard of one. Certainly the paper games that the above scenarios were based upon didn't.

That's because they're paper games.

I don't play a lot of 19th century tactical games- but I recall there was one released in about 1988 where one had to issue orders and request reports from AI subordinates rather than just moving tiles around the map as though one were God rather than a general on a hill with a telescope.

Aren't there modern simulations that do this? Where your perfectly laid out plans fall over because one flank simply didn't know what it was supposed to do? If not then the industry really is worse than I thought.

Regardless, the other area this scale would be necessary and workable, as I noted when I released it, would be Pacific Island battles. Now there's no smoke and you have radios.

Didn't Talonsoft release a tactical game more or less specifically for this subject? As I recall it had the same 3D icons from TOAW. You might want to look at that.

Again, it depends upon the subject. You may recall that someone made a Punic War scenario - full year turns. That's where longer turn intervals and hex scales will be needed.

Sounds great. How does he model Hannibal living off the Roman countryside? Or are we talking about the first Punic war- are there rules that cause your units to attack when you're not ready because they want the glory of defeating Carthage before their year as Consul runs out? Or are you the consul and you only play one turn?

Again, we're treating designers like adults.

No you have chronic scope creep and you will never be able to model everything from a duel to an intergalactic war in a single engine with any kind of fidelity.