Why do the reinforcements have such great advantages at the reinforcement place？

[Xavier Joy]

In my several PBEM games, I found that when my troops arrived at the opponent's reinforcement location before the arrival of enemies' reinforcements, their reinforcements would suddenly flash out and kill all my troops before my troops (either the Warsaw Pact or NATO) responded. So my question is, why are the reinforcements unstoppable when they arrive suddenly, or what other problems do I ignore?

[DaShox]

It is to stop "gamey" actions such as ambushing reinforcements before they can do anything.

[cbelva]

Which scenario(s) are you talking about. There is only one that I know of where that is a possibility. I would like to take a look at them. And no, reinforcements do not have an advantage when they come onto the map.

[Xavier Joy]

Which scenario(s) are you talking about. There is only one that I know of where that is a possibility. I would like to take a look at them. And no, reinforcements do not have an advantage when they come onto the map.

what made me so confused is that as soon as the reinforcements appear, they can immediately fire earlier than my forces and kill them all.
I met this situation in An Autobahn Too Far and The Ride of the 12th Cuirassier as WP and NATO side respectively.

[Xavier Joy]

Which scenario(s) are you talking about. There is only one that I know of where that is a possibility. I would like to take a look at them. And no, reinforcements do not have an advantage when they come onto the map.

On the other hand, in actual combat, it is reasonable to have a plan to deal with the reinforcements of the other side. Before the reinforcements of the other side arrive, our side will take the lead in arriving at a favorable place to defend, or encircle, or ambush, which is a reasonable tactical consideration. But the problem now is that the enemy's reinforcements will ignore our preparations, arrive at the predetermined location on time and without any influence, or even appear directly in the rear of our troops, which is very unreasonable.

[cbelva]

If you have a saved game of this, I would be willing to look at what happened. There could be some adjustments we could make. But I would need to see an example to know exactly what was happening.

In the play testing, some of the tester complained that it was too easy to pick off the reinforcements. Also, there are 5 different battleplans for the WG's in this scenario. In the intelligence briefing you are warned that there may be forces coming from the southern flank.

[PeterStep]

I guess that the treatment of arriving reinforcements has caused a compromise between realism, playability and game mechanics from the development team which is absolutely fine. There are a few things I have noticed which may benefit from a rethink though, rarely would a unit arrive on a battlefield without some sort of movement order and the command cycle (at worst) means that it could be upwards of 50 mins before the owning player could give that to units that sit in their deployment hexes in a hold stance.

Reinforcements (which are usually sub units of the formation already in play) should arrive with orders to go somewhere and do something to make an impact and for that it feels that arriving at say 90 mins game time in then waiting perhaps another 30 before they can receive an order is artificial. It may not be feasible from game mechanics but I would like to see them appearing as off map assets in the orders cycle before their due time so that they can be issued orders to act on once their actual arrival time occurs, starting in their predetermined deployment hexes. I have seen WP tanks in Ride of the 12th arrive, sit at hold until issued an order then wait until all delays have cleared. Call it a pre orders phase. If that is not possible then perhaps any inherent order delays could be subtracted from time already taken sitting in their arrival hex before they can actually be issued an order?

Anyone else have any ideas?

Rgds

Peter

[cbelva]

Reinforcements don't have delays on the first turn that they receive orders (just like units that start the game have no delays on the first turn). They should start moving as soon as they have orders.

[PeterStep]

OK can see that works, but in the example below it is 26 mins before I can issue any orders to the arriving reinforcements

4 68 GTR.png (3.09 MiB) Viewed 746 times

Doesn't chime with the excellent realism elsewhere. Does the computer opponent have to wait until the orders cycle is complete too or do its reinforcements arrive and manoeuvre immediately?

[WildCatNL]

Does the computer opponent have to wait until the orders cycle is complete too or do its reinforcements arrive and manoeuvre immediately?

The computer opponent has the same problem, having to wait to the next orders cycle before being able to include units having just arrived on the map in maneuvers.