Rout....again....

[GBS]

Unless I misunderstand....the HTTR addon needs #3 patch to work.

[Phoenix100]

In fact they were recovering from the rout for nearly two hours....

[wodin]

I'd have court martial the lot of em...

[Major SNAFU_M]

Hi all,

@ Phoenix and wodin.  I absolutely see your points.

My follow up questions are:

1) Do the units in BftB have a memory?;  and is this taken into account for their actions?  In other words, does that Tiger unit "remember" that it just engaged this engineer unit and pushed it back, or once contact is broken and then remade is it all a fresh evaluation made by the AI.  If the later, then it doesn't "know" anything except what is happening right now, right in front of it, and its reacted might need to be considered in that light.

2) I think, and my reading of history I think backs me up and certainly my experience does, that is situations like this the "experience" factor is probably much more important that the training and even the morale.

I am not sure that I agree that low morale=rout automatically.  I can, and have seen, situations where I would have said the person have good morale, and if they were in control of themselves, they would stick.  Being panicked is more about being over come/over taken by events, not that you suddenly feel that you/your unit/your equipment are no longer of value.  And it only takes one person to "loose it" to infect an entire group (a person is intelligent, smart and discerning - people are dumb, panicky and dangerously stupid).

Edit: Morale does, at its heart speak about the confidence and enthusiasm of the person/unit. But isn't it possible to have confidence in your equipment, etc. and still be overcome by events? "I know my nomex suit is going to protect me, command hasn't given the clear the building code - but I have never been in a building fire like this and that guy over there just cut and ran. Maybe I should run to?"

But coming back to experience, which this unit in question lacks, is the certain knowledge that the defecation can strike the rotary oscillator and yet you can still come out on top.  This can't really be trained - not in the sense I am talking about.

I have seen rock-solid EMTs and Firefighters who are the stars of training, etc. become unglued under pressure when I would have thought nothing would have fazed them.  They don't have the experience to step out of themselves and see the situation impersonally and make good judgements thereby. And I would not, in those circumstances say that they had low morale. Training teaches you what should and might be, only experience teaches you what is and will be.

Again, I speak as a relative newby to BftB. Dave will have to address some of the questions.

just my 2 cents

[Phoenix100]

Great 2 cents MSnaf. Lol at the rotary oscillator.

Great question about unit memory. See if Dave replies.

And true about all those things that could make those Tigers turn tail. If we use our imaginations we can fill in ways that the game has got it right. So, we could imagine that their low experience in fact entails that this unit has never seen combat before - they're highly trained in tigers, but they haven't done the real thing. Then a Tiger burns. So they all infect each other and run. Despite all that training - which would tell them that if they turn their arses to the gun they're more vulnerable. It's possible.

But it seems to happen a lot. That's my problem. So you can't plan with a steady set of expectations (or you could - but you would have to assume that you're best assets might get jittery and run at any point). If I saw more of them retreating and planning a response (I do see this, i should add) then I'd be happier. The rout should be exceptional behaviour. It seems to happen at, say, 50% moral etc at the moment, but if it was 10% I'd be happier, say. Though you have to leave room for them to walk out with their hands up, leaving their Tigers chugging away for souvenir hunters (many of them in RL in this battlefield, and several Tigers still adorning village squares as a consequence [I live here, in Belgium]).

In this battle this unit went on - once it had recovered - to act as a probe out to the far west - to the Werboment exit objective. There it really did get into serious difficulties running into US airborne units (the 82nd?). But, it didn't rout as tank after tank was knocked out over a seven hour period. In the end it was down to 2 Tigers. It routed, then surrendered. Had it learned from previous experience? We're back to the memory question. But I think not. I rather think the behaviour is capricious. After all, as far as I've observed, the experience slider doesn't go up after they've taken a bashing. Am I worng?

[TMO]

Chaps

I have been following this discussion with great interest. I have come across (and I'm sure you have too) first-hand accounts where routs are described in great detail (for instance in 'The Recollections of Rifleman Bowlby' - Alex Bowlby describes trying to run hell-for-leather with his pants around his ankles!) - they undoubtably occurred and we are all agreed upon this. My question is : are armoured unit and infantry unit routs treated in the same way? Infantry, I imagine, just run when routed (one man running can set the rest going). Armour, I imagine, withdraw (the commander is in radio contact and therefore more able to exert his influence over his subordinates) until it's safe to 'run'. Can anyone advise?

Regards

Tim

[Arjuna]

Re unit memory. Short answer = yes but is limited. We store the direction and amount of fires received over the last 20 minutes ( IIRC ). That way we can determine if they have received fire from a previously unknown direction. We have an event log that can tell us wheterh they did a certain action before. For the various SOPs we store the time and place of the last occurence of these and if this is within the designated duration then we'll probably ignore this SOP when considering reactions for the current minute. There's probably a few other things but that is what comes to mind right now and I don't have access to the code in front of me.

[wodin]

Anybody tried the latest patch yet..notice any improvements in this area?

[Phoenix100]

Thanks Dave. Interesting. Their 'memory' is about the equivalent of a wasp, once converted to the real world (wasp is 9 seconds I believe - at least on full speed BFTB might work out like that....)

Still works though, overall, I would say.

Now what I would like to see is every single unit retains a memory of every single thing that has happened to it and its characteristics and behaviour are altered accordingly.... Or the east front game. Or, indeed, the HTTR add-on.

You have to remember - when you're querying BFTB and the engine (or I do, anyway) - how utterly non-existent the AI is in other games - all other games. Just gave up doing Steel Beasts (again) because it is absolutley preposterous that you should be expected - in the heat of combat - to give orders, as the commander, to every single bloody unit on the map in order to get them to step beyond the bloody scripting and do something sensible. Of course it's a great FPS for tankers, but seriously, if you want to play it beyond that (and it has such amazing promise, such tempting possibilities!) and actually do some simulation of a commander in a tank, or other vehicle, then it's absurd. No AI at all beyond simple reactions.

Haven't got round to the patch yet, Wodin. But going there now..

[Major SNAFU_M]

Hi all,

Sorry to resurrect this thread to page one, but now that I have and am reading the HTTR strategy Guide I notice on page 24 that there are two paragraphs that seem to bear on this matter.

It points out that the Permanent characteristics for morale (Training, Experience and Fitness) are far more important that then Temporary factors (Morale, Cohesion,Fatigue, Suppression) and that having high permanent factors is far more important to keeping a unit (even a unit with initially high temporary factors) in the fight.

So this make sense that these Tigers with poor training, experience and Fitness cannot stick for any amount of time once their temporary factors have taken an hit, and that the temporary factors will fall off faster because of the low permanent factors.

I am guessing that the low experience is showing its weight in this instance.

Make sense?

[wodin]

Yet loss of cohesion and moral seems to have a massive effect in the game, I came across something to do with why most attacks broke down after a few days during WW2 and it was due to loss of cohesion. I do find though that moral seems to drop very very quickly.

Major we sort of worked that out thats why some stats for certain unit where going to be upped in the scenarios last patch. When it comes to elan as with the SS units training and experience have far less effect. Due to them being fanatical. Hnece the massive casualties SS untis took even the youngsters of the 12SS stuck to it to the end.

[Arjuna]

From my readings the SS units were more likely to press home an attack but they were routed off on many occassions and not just on Elsenborn ridge but right throughout the Ardennes. This is where I think many earlier wargames have created a mistaken view of the SS. Sure they had some seasoned tough nutters but by this time of the war their ranks were largely populated through conscripts not fanatical volunteers. So the level of fanaticism just wasn't what it used to be compared with the early East front campaigns. nor compared with Normandy in the West. You have to remember that the SS lost heavily in Normandy. Most of its divisions were rebuilt just prior to the Ardenne battles. In many cases the SS did not perfom as well as standard Whermacht formations.

[wodin]

Right, I thought I'd read that the kids in the 12ss were more fanatical than most due to growing up under the Facist state...not very good soldiers though but willing to die for Mr Hitler.

[Jim D Burns]

Crew experience is a huge factor when it comes to how they’ll react to hostile fire or combat stress. I recently watched a documentary where a US veteran recounted a tale of how his 57mm AT gun was sitting exposed in the middle of the street and they were unable to move it quickly due to the fact all the recent firing had dug the two arms of the gun carriage deep into the mud. They heard a tank coming but were stuck in place and couldn’t move to cover.

Suddenly a Tiger II came rumbling into view from the left side of the T junction in the street they were facing down. The Tiger started to turn right onto their street, but when it apparently saw the AT gun, the tank quickly reversed making no attempt to engage the AT gun and backed into a building that collapsed onto the tank knocking it out. If the crew had been experienced, they wouldn’t have panicked and lost the tank, but obviously the green crew was scared to death of the AT gun even though it had no chance to take on a Tiger II frontally.

Jim

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: wodin

Right, I thought I'd read that the kids in the 12ss were more fanatical than most due to growing up under the Facist state...not very good soldiers though but willing to die for Mr Hitler.

There were barely 1,000 of them left after the Normandy campaign. I think they started with about 14,000 on June 6, so it's safe to assume most of the division is raw recruits by the time the Bulge rolled around.

Jim

[wodin]

Jim, whoops, I'm not on the ball sometimes and was way off there, getting confused for a minute and thought the game covered Normandy for some odd reason.

[RockinHarry]

ORIGINAL: Arjuna

From my readings the SS units were more likely to press home an attack but they were routed off on many occassions and not just on Elsenborn ridge but right throughout the Ardennes. This is where I think many earlier wargames have created a mistaken view of the SS. Sure they had some seasoned tough nutters but by this time of the war their ranks were largely populated through conscripts not fanatical volunteers. So the level of fanaticism just wasn't what it used to be compared with the early East front campaigns. nor compared with Normandy in the West. You have to remember that the SS lost heavily in Normandy. Most of its divisions were rebuilt just prior to the Ardenne battles. In many cases the SS did not perfom as well as standard Whermacht formations.

Same with many german paratrooper units (with exception of the ones in italy maybe) serving the last half year of the war. These are oftenly considered "elite" infantry, but generally lack most of everything. German high command rated these at "IV" combat value, which means "limited capabilty for defensive actions". Like with their SS comrades, there was an above average focus on indoctrination and morale boosting measures, which made them perform more aggressive and tenacious, despite lack of proper training, combat experience and weapon/ammo supplies.

I´ve yet to find a good balance for my paratroopers in OP Veritable (2nd, 6th, 7th, 8th division and various corps/army para units). Training and experience will stay rather low, while aggression, determination and morale, as well as unit leader stats obviously would be the deciding factors.