Hierarchy Module Document

[Curtis Lemay]

This scenario only took 5 days to upgrade. That's more like what I've been expecting. I've been hoping that if the scenario is fairly "normal" the upgrade won't be too hard. I was so encouraged by this that I'm now going to do one last upgrade: Okinawa 1945.

[ncc1701e]

This is incredible. Hope there will be soon a sign of what Matrix is willing to do next...

[Curtis Lemay]

I've now finished adding the Hierarchy/Commander stuff to my Okinawa 1945 scenario.

Tasks required were:

1. Using the new Hierarchy features, created hierarchies for both sides.
2. Added Commanders for both sides, including spare commanders.
3. Events generated for commander casualties => VPs.
4. Made extensive use of the 32 characters for formation and unit names where appropriate.
5. Formations given sizes, nationalities and service arms.
6. Units given nationalities and service arms.
7. Updated the briefing.
8. Japanese Land Units have “Prohibited” disband checkbox checked.
9. Added Formations and units for higher naval and air force HQs.
10. Added “Amphibious Command Ship” equipment for several of those HQs
11. Added more refinement in DD and DE equipment types.
12. Made all carrier air groups subordinates of their carriers.

Here's a shot of the American Commanders added (65):

[Curtis Lemay]

And here are the Japanese commanders (15). (obviously, Japanese commanders were hard to come by):

Of the 80 total commanders only 10 were in the canned list - price of doing a battalion scale scenario.

[Curtis Lemay]

Here's the American Hierarchy. (If you're wondering where TF-56 is, it's the Tenth Army ground forces. Ground forces were actually under Admiral Turner, but that won't work for the game since naval commanders are penalized if commanding ground forces. So, I have the ground forces kept independent of the naval commanders. They didn't really command them past the beaches anyway):

TF-54.6 was a reinforcement task force commanded by a Captain. It's ships would be distributed to the other TF-54 gunfire ones.
TF-57.1 was the BPF battleship group - but it was commanded by Rawlings himself, so I put it on top. (A BB can have multiple HQs in it, but the game can't handle that. A comander can't have multiple commands in the game either).
TF-58.2 was mostly not on site at the start and arrives piecemeal over the course of the scenario.
Second Marine Air Wing was commanded by Mulcahy, who also commanded the overall Tactical Air Force above it. I can't have him in both places, so I left the Air Wing without a commander.
Five Army Infantry Regiments are without commanders. I just couldn't find them.

[Curtis Lemay]

Here's the Japanese hierarchy. Only the highest commands have had their commanders found. The Japanese aren't well documented, it seems:

[Curtis Lemay]

This scenario took 13 days to update. That's a little longer than I expected, but there were a lot of complications with the naval commands.

That's the final update I'm going to do pre-launch. It's back to coding now to the finish!

Clearly, my estimate of 1st quarter 2025 launch was too optimistic. But maybe I can get the code into shape for a beta test by the end of that quarter though. Stay tuned.

[ncc1701e]

Great alpha test with this scenario!

[Curtis Lemay]

I forgot one more update I made to Okinawa 1945: All carrier air groups were made subordinates to their carriers. That means those air groups no longer ride on top of the carrier counter. Instead, they are an internal part of that counter. That has a beneficial effect on both stacking carriers and moving carriers through other carriers (no more swapping air groups upon doing so). Also, the right air groups are damaged/destroyed when the carrier is damaged/destroyed.

[Cpl GAC]

Assigning units to other formations - how is that going to affect units in garrison mode?

It could be argued that it was transferred to move it elsewhere and into action with its new formation. Have you weighed that?

[Curtis Lemay]

Assigning units to other formations - how is that going to affect units in garrison mode?

It could be argued that it was transferred to move it elsewhere and into action with its new formation. Have you weighed that?

Units cannot be detached if the formation is in garrision or otherwise not ready for orders.

[Curtis Lemay]

Time for a progress update. I can announce that I have finally finished the last feature coding.

This feature was the "Commander Vacancy Auto-Fill procedure". Now, commander vacancies will be auto-filled during the interturn phases. PO-controlled forces auto-fill on each player-turn. Human-controlled forces auto-fill only on the non-friendly player-turn. (This gives the player the opportunity to first fill the vacancy himself however he desires in his player-turn.) Vacancies are sought first in the "Available" commanders. Such commanders failing to match rank can receive a promotion if that will match rank. Next, the vacant formation's subordinate formations are checked for suitable commanders (including the option of a promotion again). Note that if such a commander fills the vacancy that will generate a new vacancy in his formation. Recursion is then used to fill that new vacancy (repeated as necessary). If the vacancy still hasn't been filled by those two sources, then a commander is "Spawned" to fill the vacancy. Spawned commander parameters are generated via a normal random function applied to the Force Proficiency. Obviously, spawned commanders must fit within the Commander Inventory limit (1500). If that limit is reached, the vacancy can't be filled on that player-turn.

You can perhaps imagine how complex this routine was - and the legion of bugs that had to be ferreted out to get it to work. I still can't claim it has been exhaustively tested yet. That will come later in the Beta Test.

One benefit of this new feature is that the PO can now incur commander casualties (since this procedure fills their vacancies). Before, the game ignored PO commander casualties since there was no mechanism to fill their vacancies.

I also found, in my scenario updating, that some more refinement was needed in a couple of events: The Withdraw Commander event originally placed the withdrawn commander into "Unavailable" status - no option for any other status. I changed that so that designers can also opt for withdrawing the commander into "Killed", Captured", or "Wounded" statuses. I also found that Promote Commander and Demote Commander had issues: The designer can't know in advance what the current rank of the commander will be when the event is triggered (due to player promotion/demotion actions). So, simple increment/decrement may need an alternative. For that, I created one more event: "Set Commander Rank". Using this, the designer can be sure what the commander's rank will be when the event triggers.

Now, I'll illustrate some Commander Vacancy Filling and show how the new events work. Here, I've highlighted the commanders of AGN and AGC (they will be subject to vacancies):

[Curtis Lemay]

Here, von Leeb and von Bock have been detached from their formations. So, those formations are vacant, and their commanders are now "Available":

[Curtis Lemay]

Now, I advance the turn, and during the inter-turn period, those commanders fill the vacancies (they go right back where they were):

[Curtis Lemay]

And the Commander Inventory report shows that they are indeed back in their old places:

[Curtis Lemay]

Now, I'm making it more complicated: von Bock has been killed and von Leeb captured (achieved in the editor):

[Curtis Lemay]

And, this is reflected in the Commander Inventory (so...two vacancies):

[Curtis Lemay]

First, I made this shot back when I was having trouble getting the routine to work properly (the vacancies should be filled from the formation's subordinate formations, but that wasn't working). So, the final option (Spawning) was effected. Note that the spawned commanders are inserted at the end of the commander inventory. Their names are auto generated as shown (Force-Name Turn-Number Commander-Number):

[Curtis Lemay]

However, I finally got it working right and this is the result: There were no suitable available commanders, so the vacancies were filled by subordinates of the vacant formation. AGN had 18th Army at the top - it was commanded by von Kuechler. AGC had 3rd Panzer Army at the top - it was commanded by Hermann Hoth. Note that both had to be promoted from GeneralOberst to GeneralFeldMarshall.

[Curtis Lemay]

Of course, using commanders that were already assigned, creates a new vacancy - and those also have to be filled. Here you see that the 18th Army vacancy is filled by Reinhardt and the 3rd Panzer Army vacancy is filled by von Manstein (again, both had promotions from General to GeneralOberst).