Army Disaster on Java is this a bug

[Ron Saueracker]

ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez

In this case, dropping paras at two bases at the same time may be a gamey move by your opponent. They had few chances to do anything in this place except to cut (for the game) any retreat path and so your whole army surrendered.

I'm kinda of torn on this one.

On one hand, it's a valid military tactic to cut off supply and retreat options with paratroops. What good are paratroopers if you can't use them in the way they were intended to be used?

On the other, its gamey because of the way ZOCs are modeled in the game. Dropping 500-1000 paratroops should not prevent an army's retreat to any great extent.

Chez

It's too abstract a model to allow this. 1,000,000 men can be stopped by 10. Ridiculous. At the very least, the defeated units should be allowed into the enemy hex. If they suffer a subsequent retreat result NEXT TURN from the enemy units present in the retreat hex, then fine, I can live with that. But at least give the unit/s a chance. Why does everything have to be resolved in one turn in this game? How long is it?

[Andy Mac]

What annoys me as well is the way the transports dropping the para came in apparently unescorted to drop paras in bases with over 100 fighters between them from watching the turn I shot down many many transports but one or two got through I am sorry this just seems wrong to me

[tsimmonds]

I'm getting sick of having to make house rules for the game to be playable.

On the other hand, who would sacrifice parachute units in this way other someone who knew their sacrifice would achieve the disproportionate result described? There was no valid military objective for such a paradrop. It was gaming the system. Reasonable people can agree between themselves not to do such things. Do you call that a house rule, or just common sense, or would this be the pointless self-limitation of a pair of lam3rz??[;)]

[Ron Saueracker]

ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

What annoys me as well is the way the transports dropping the para came in apparently unescorted to drop paras in bases with over 100 fighters between them from watching the turn I shot down many many transports but one or two got through I am sorry this just seems wrong to me

I know!!! Transport aircraft ops should be resolved in the air combat phase and be subject to the same routine as any other aircraft.

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: String

ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

You have got to be kidding me on I secure my lines of retreat by garrisoning my retreat hex and this hex is uncontested throughout the period.

But because my opponent drops a few paras that are destroyed in the turn they land because of the size of my garrison in the base hex declares the hex 120 miles from the front contested for 1 day my entire army surrenders....

You are kidding me on right ?

this, is what we call an exploit. Have a little chat with your opponent.

I think this rule was made to stop the retreats into jungles with no friendly base within a 1000 miles...

Why does a lousy design decision have to be "worked out" between the players? The
basic tennants of the rule are fine, but "contested" needs "definition". A force should
have to meet at least a minimum number (it's a 3,000 sq mile hex) and/or minimum
odds (at least 1 : 2 or something) to "contest" ownership of a hex. Otherwise the
situation becomes a farce such as Andy has described.

Saying "change opponants" is stupid---you've invested a lot of time and effort in a WITP
game even if it's only gone a couple of months. You need to have a game that at lease
limits idiotic possibilities to secondary issues. Land Combat is a mess currently, and
needs more than a couple of "bandaids".

[Ron Saueracker]

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

ORIGINAL: String

ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

You have got to be kidding me on I secure my lines of retreat by garrisoning my retreat hex and this hex is uncontested throughout the period.

But because my opponent drops a few paras that are destroyed in the turn they land because of the size of my garrison in the base hex declares the hex 120 miles from the front contested for 1 day my entire army surrenders....

You are kidding me on right ?

this, is what we call an exploit. Have a little chat with your opponent.

I think this rule was made to stop the retreats into jungles with no friendly base within a 1000 miles...

Why does a lousy design decision have to be "worked out" between the players? The
basic tennants of the rule are fine, but "contested" needs "definition". A force should
have to meet at least a minimum number (it's a 3,000 sq mile hex) and/or minimum
odds (at least 1 : 2 or something) to "contest" ownership of a hex. Otherwise the
situation becomes a farce such as Andy has described.

Saying "change opponants" is stupid---you've invested a lot of time and effort in a WITP
game even if it's only gone a couple of months. You need to have a game that at lease
limits idiotic possibilities to secondary issues. Land Combat is a mess currently, and
needs more than a couple of "bandaids".

Simply implement what I suggested in RED in an earlier post on this thread and let the units do the deciding.

[2ndACR]

Here I was thinking the no movement bug had bitten again in the same hex. HMMMPPPPHHH.

[Ron Saueracker]

ORIGINAL: 2ndACR

Here I was thinking the no movement bug had bitten again in the same hex. HMMMPPPPHHH.

When I first saw the thread I was thinking exactly that.[:D] Good news is, whatever bit us seems to be squashed or simply gone bye bye.

[2ndACR]

I hope so. That pissed me off something fierce.

[marky]

[/quote]

It's too abstract a model to allow this. 1,000,000 men can be stopped by 10. Ridiculous. At the very least, the defeated units should be allowed into the enemy hex. If they suffer a subsequent retreat result NEXT TURN from the enemy units present in the retreat hex, then fine, I can live with that. But at least give the unit/s a chance. Why does everything have to be resolved in one turn in this game? How long is it?
[/quote]

totally

even if the a force is blocking a route, then it would be NO contest at ALL if the force that was cutting the MUCH MUCH larger force was attacked by that much larger force

a 100k man army stopped by a sqaud? a platoon? a company? abattalion? a brigade? a regiment? NO FRAKKIIN WAY

not even a DIVISION could stop them,

its been said that 3 men are required to dislodge ONE man defending, and this holds any value AT ALL there no frakkin way even a divison could cut off the retreat of an ARMY[8|]

totslly rediculous

[Bradley7735]

Another fix to this problem would be to not allow surrenders, unless the unit has zero supply and there is no valid retreat path.

Allied troops surrender the very moment that 2-1 odds come up. That's the crap part of the whole equation. Japanese troops with no retreat path require many days of attacks to destroy completely.

Have any of you PBEM players actually had the philipines last until may 42?

I highly doubt that you'll see many Japan players crying about bad land combat in 44. Their units don't get eliminated very quickly. There's usually enough time to open a retreat path.

bc

[Mr.Frag]

A retreat is a retreat, it is not an organized attack into another enemy filled hex.

Much as I hate to ask with the leader bugs, but what was the skills of the leaders involved? A wimp is going to surrender the first time he gets a scratch I would think.

Expecting a retreat to run into another occupied hex makes zero sense. You don't drop your weapons and run away *INTO* a bunch of machine guns.

[tsimmonds]

Saying "change opponants" is stupid

If you enjoy playing someone who insists on using gamey b.s. tactics, then yeah, I guess my suggestion is stupid. But if my opponent would not agree not to use such tactics after I pointed out that it was gamey, I would indeed look for someone else to play with. Fortunately I don't have to worry about that; my opponent is quite reasonable.

[Feinder]

ORIGINAL: AmiralLaurent

ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

You have got to be kidding me on I secure my lines of retreat by garrisoning my retreat hex and this hex is uncontested throughout the period.

But because my opponent drops a few paras that are destroyed in the turn they land because of the size of my garrison in the base hex declares the hex 120 miles from the front contested for 1 day my entire army surrenders....

You are kidding me on right ?

No

People may say the rumor of Japanese paratroops cutting the retreat was enough for the Allied commander to surrender rather than ordering retreat.

That may be a probability. But in WITP it's a 100% probability.

The key to avoid large losses in land combat (in mass surrenders or retreat) is to retreat before being forced out. For this you need to send your troops to a friendly city, they will refuse to accept orders to march to the next hex. But once they will be in the hex (and enemy are no more in the same hex as them) you may give them orders as you want.

It was better in RL to retreat in order rather than in disorder after a successfull enemy attack. So it is in WITP. That is one of the few good points of the land combat model, that needs some severe reworking to be accurate.

Sorry Admiral, gotta disagree with you (about the game mechanics).

Saying, "Well, you should have just marched out first, before being forced to retreat!" is not a solution.

Considering the speed/ferocity of most ground combat, simply marching out is rarely an option. On a good day, it takes you 4 turns to march out of a rail hex. If you've been fighting for a while, and your fatigue/disruption is hight, it will take you 6 - 8 turns to clear the hex.

Even in the example above, the battle only lasted 2 turns. The defender couldn't have stopped the surrender even if he wanted to. If for some reason he actually wanted to retreat from the IJA ghost-paras, he couldn't have vacated the hex in time to begin with.

-F-

[Feinder]

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

A retreat is a retreat, it is not an organized attack into another enemy filled hex.

Much as I hate to ask with the leader bugs, but what was the skills of the leaders involved? A wimp is going to surrender the first time he gets a scratch I would think.

Expecting a retreat to run into another occupied hex makes zero sense. You don't drop your weapons and run away *INTO* a bunch of machine guns.

Frag, I know this is old hash, but if you're army of 60,000 guys, fatigued and/or demoralized, you're still not going to surrender to 100 guys and 5 machine guns (even if the rumor is that there's 200 guys and 10 machine guns!).

Now, for all I care, "What's good for the goose, is good for the gander." I don't like it, and it can annoy me, but that's the current constraints of the game system; and I'll play within it until/if it gets fixed.

(* shrug *)
-F-

[Ron Saueracker]

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

A retreat is a retreat, it is not an organized attack into another enemy filled hex.

Much as I hate to ask with the leader bugs, but what was the skills of the leaders involved? A wimp is going to surrender the first time he gets a scratch I would think.

Expecting a retreat to run into another occupied hex makes zero sense. You don't drop your weapons and run away *INTO* a bunch of machine guns.

This is why the 60 mile hex BS pees me off. The hex size is either claimed as too big or too small, depending on which design flaw is being discussed or more to the point, defended by the brass.

First. This is a bad land combat model, primarily due to the failure of translating it to the hex scale we are using. Agreed?[&:] Thank you.

Second. How can it be assumed that the unit is retreating into machine guns? The hex is so large that in reality nobody is transiting from one hex to the other during a retreat, it is physically impossible to do IRL and during many aspects of normal game movement assuming we start and end in the centre of the hexes. Retreating into another hex is simply an aspect of the game design we need to live with. An abstraction.

But let's not forget that this IS an abstraction and suddenly say the unit is retreating into the guns of another unit when we allow enemy units to coexist in other instances. Do units entering a hex on the mainland occuppied by the enemy IMMEDIATELY undergo defensive fire from the enemy unit present? No. Why? Game mechanics and the need for abstraction.

We need to allow supply, movement, and retreat through co-occupied hexes and retreats and movement into enemy hexes because of the hex scale. Simple. Some way of determining surrender other than ZOC has to be devised. No supply path, lingering "A"s or "J"s in empty hexes etc just don't cut it guys.

[Andy Mac]

My leaders were all top notch Alexander commanded in the south and I had corps and command HQ in range.

The reason I didn not try to retreat was that 3rd Aus Div was 2 days out and would have stopped me losing the base.

Also I had total air superiority over the battlefied and had launched many raids against his ground forces.

We are playing three day turns which increase the risk oif this happening as I cannot order an attack to clear my lines for three turns but that is a game situation I have to live with.

I took a risk re the retreat by trying to hold which fair play to my opponent I lost.

Absoulutley no complaints on that score its the bullshit retreat/ surrneder code on what I thought was a stable front that pissed me off.

Anyway we are redoing the last few turns in total so I am happier now.

Regards

Andy

[Mr.Frag]

Ron, the whole point behind adding the zones of control stuff was that people were bitching about units retreating through units. Problem solved. Now they don't like it. You want to go back the other way where everything retreats no matter what through anything?

You can't just keep inventing rules just because you don't like the way something happens to work. Everyone has the same game in front of them, people need to adapt to changes and live within them instead of constantly fighting up river about the magic change that cures the world of woe.

War gaming has been going on as long as I have been around and debating the rules has been going on ever since the very first rule was written. You can play within the rules or you can invent your own and agree to them. What you can not do is pretend that they don't exist just because you don't like them.

[Ron Saueracker]

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

Ron, the whole point behind adding the zones of control stuff was that people were bitching about units retreating through units. Problem solved. Now they don't like it. You want to go back the other way where everything retreats no matter what through anything?

You can't just keep inventing rules just because you don't like the way something happens to work. Everyone has the same game in front of them, people need to adapt to changes and live within them instead of constantly fighting up river about the magic change that cures the world of woe.

War gaming has been going on as long as I have been around and debating the rules has been going on ever since the very first rule was written. You can play within the rules or you can invent your own and agree to them. What you can not do is pretend that they don't exist just because you don't like them.

They were retreating through them, in effect OVER them. Now no movement is possible at all and units surrender at the drop of a hat. We have bracketed the target! Now we have to FFE and make it work to an acceptable degree. Let the unit retreat "into" (remember abstratcion) enemy zone of control and if enemy units are present, attack next turn, and if a retreat is again achieved, eliminate the units. If not, unit remains. Only way I think this will work acceptably. That and maybe make it harder to achieve a retreat result because of the hex size (abstraction again) as the Allies are getting bounced about like poofs in a men's locker room.

[Mr.Frag]

Only way I think this will work acceptably.

After all this time, you still don't get it ... this is a turn based game, not a multiple turn transactional database where you can go look up what happened last turn and use it to make up what happens.

You go on and on about what would be great yet you are completely dreaming because you are thinking that what happened last turn is tracked magically.

It isn't.

It *once* again would be a completely rewrite from the ground up to have access to the results of the previous turn to allow that type of a system. Not going to happen.

Deal with the realities of what is available and you'll start to understand why the ZoC system is exactly the way it is. You have 1 round with all the data in front of you to make the choice of the outcome. Period.

If you have a idea that fits within *this* framework of possibilities, I'm all ears.