A greeting and a few comments.

[mostat]

Hi,

First off, thank you to all those involved in creating such a great game, I enjoy it very much. I've had the game for about a month now but am new to the forum.

I've read through this forum some and have herd all the praises towards the AI. I agree it's very good but I have witnessed some things that at times really drive me crazy. Had I intended on writing this i might have taken detailed notes...

One thing that really bothers me is when sending a Reg. to attack the HQ unit always seems to lead the assault. 4 out of 5 times this HQ Bn retreats right away and stays in a retreat recovery mode for a very significant ammount of time. For example if my Reg attacks in a spear formation the HQ is at the tip... why?

Another very upsetting thing is the constant desire for retreating units to retreat into the open. I understand there are times when it's the only option. My problem is when the unit choses to retreat into the open insted of falling directly back towards friendly units. There is no logical explination that I san see for this.
Along the same lines....
I have a situation now playing the historical Arnhem campaign where I have units on the upper side of the bridge. Units are about 5 Bn strong forming a sort of triangle on the left side of the road leading to the bridge. One unit is on the right side in the square section of the city. This unit was being attacked from the lower right road by two units. One armored car company managed to cross the large opening with the "lake" directly above and entered the city to the upper right of the one unit. About the same time they both retreated. My unit chose to retreat away from other friendly units, to the lower right, and where the most intense fire was comming from two strong units. The logic here as far as the programming, as far as I can see, is it chose to retreate into strong enemy forces still firing intensly because the retreating armored car unit was closer? This armored car company was not even firing on the unit, it was assaulting in another direction. This just seems a bit wrong.? (I have this saved actually if anyone is interested)

Why don't units fall back to their own "lines?"

There are a few other things that im slightly bothered by that I can't recall at this time, but I will add them later.

There could be logical reasons for everything i've experienced, but I can't think of them. Thanks for any feedback.


I just thought of something after I posted this:
Could any of these situations be a result of a Bn being detached from its HQ?

[KNac007]

The AI could have some tweaking in these details, yes. I suppose that as the AI gets more complex with time and it's improved these amazing things will dissapeir. I sometimes get crazy too, specially with the retreating issues! And start screaming to the screen, hehe. Somekind of retreating code should be added in future games, or if it's allready there, improve it. Something like "When you retreat search for cover, and do not stop at any concern" or "search friendly unrouted & unretreating units". However, note that if they are routing (not retreating), they are supposed to have taken high casualties and being totally desmorallized, so they really don't know what they are doing and are just running around screaming for help and crying "get me out of this hell!" or soemthing like that.

About the attacks. When you order a reg/bde attack, I have never seen the reg/bde HQ attaking itself, yes for the subHQs (bn hqs), but that's just the standar procedure, the HQs retrating and standing that way for a "long" time could be just because they are recovering from the retreat.

[mostat]

I'm glad im not the only one screaming at my monitor...

I understand and can accept the decisions made by routed units. If they're routed I pretty much tell myself they are dead, and if they come back and have any significant effect, then thats a bonus.

I hope, as you said KNac007, the coding for retreating units improves. When playing a scenario such as the one im currently playing, every unit, especially when they're defending the bridge, is very valuable to me. Having them retreat into certain death really hurts. I would think commanders would give fall back orders ahead of time, kind of like setting a rally point.

I can accept that nothing is perfect, I just hope the proper attention is being paid to this issue. I've refrained from noting all the positive things about this game for two reasons: It'd take way too long to write and others have done a fine job.

KNac007 you mentioned that HQ units leading an assault on a Bn level is standard procedure; this seems wrong to me. I'm not doubting you, but I just don't see how or why this would be. I thought the days of saber waving officers on horseback leading the charge became obsolete during this era. A Bn HQ is essentially the same thing, I would think. I was under the impression HQ's were staffer types and the weapons they carried were to be used defensivly as a last resort. Also, the retreating HQ units in "retreat recovery" mode, which im aware of, seem to take longer to recover. This is probably intentinal, which seems fine to me, but would add to the questioning of the logic behind HQ units leading an attack.

Thanks for the reply.

[Arjuna]

mostat,

Thanks for your feedback.

Are you playing with the patch?

Re. HQ leading the charge. For basic attacks - ie where there is only one HQ unit - the HQ will be the hub of the assault group. As such they will deploy a few hundred metres behind the assault guard groups ( usually the line companies ). Now sometimes if the assault companies retreat the HQ can end up in the thick of the fray. But then this is what happened. HQs in HTTR represent what was referred to as a Tac HQ. This comprised the CO and his immediate ops, int, comms and fire spt staff. Admin and log staff would normally be referred to as the rear or second echelon. By design, they would not be at the sharp end. These have been incorproated into the Base units. So a Regt Base would have the rear echelons of its subordinate battalions and the Div base would have the rear echelons of its subordinate Regiments and so on.

Now for Complex Attacks - ie those where there are more than one HQ - the commanding HQ will Move to the Reserve location and defend there for the duration of the attack. What I believe you are seeing is the Regt HQ Moving to the Reserve and doing so before the subordinate Bns get moving. So it looks like they are leading the charge. This has been noted and we have modified the code to reduce this occurence. We're testing this at the moment and it should be fixed in Patch 2. hopefully we'll have this ready in a week or so.

Re Retreats. We do have a fair amount of code already to handle this. I agree that at times it is not perfect. We made changes to stop units leaving good cover to retreat into the open. This was included in Patch 1. I have noted the odd occassion where a unit appears to retreat towards the "gun fire". Sometimes this is a case of competing enemy fire. Each unit tracks the directions it receives fire from and will tend to retreat way from these. However, if there are two or three of these it can sometimes make a poor choice. I agree we can look at this further. I'll add it to our Task Tracker database.

[mostat]

Thanks for the info Arjuna.