Matrix Games Forums

Alrighty then. I am brand new to the game, and just completed the basic tutorial. I did the first two missions that the tutorial recommends I do, before moving on to the Advanced tutorial.

It involves attacking a mountain with lots of Germans at the top, and 80% of the mountain is covered in forest. The problem here is that my whole force is mechanized infantry and/or light tanks.

Since my options for flanking are limited, and I have a lot of firepower (tanks), I decide to do a push up the center highway, with some other tank battalions on the right across a river, covering them.

So they get to the end of a long stretch of highway, where it then turns. I have the attack order set on "Quickest" path, so they follow the road. What happens then? THEY DECIDE to move into the forest! They get bogged down, and essentially sit there the rest of the scenario until my eventual loss.

I am fairly confident I would have won if they did not do this (due to the speed at which I was advancing before, when they stayed on the road). I want to know how the hell I am supposed to keep them on the road, or at LEAST out of the forests..


Thanks.


One more side-question; can vehicles move along tracks? That is, do they count as roads?

Demonic Spoon,
 
Welcome.
 
What you describe does not sound like the Advanced Tutorial. Rather it sounds like one of the two "Tactical Exercise - Day ( or Night ) Attack" scenarios. If that's so, then you best check out this thread, which has a full discussion of those issues:
 
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1283842
 
re vehicles and tracks. Short answer = on most maps tracks represent foot paths and do not provide a benefit to motorised units.
 
Long answer = the map maker specifies the movement cost of each terrain type in the map. He can use the standard default values or override these. So each map could have diferent values. Most use the default values. These are listed in Annex E of the Reference Manual ( page 192 ). However, you can simply right click on the map in the Game and the terrain popup will tell you what the effective movement costs for motorised is at that point. Now this is the cumulative effect of all terrain at the location ( eg track + village + slope effect ).

I know...I meant I was trying the scenarios that the Basic Tutorial recommended I do BEFORE I moved onto the Advanced Tutorial.

Also, I still don't really get how you calculate whether or not they can travel on it. Basically, I want to know how to tell if armored units will be able to move through forests on tracks.


And it still really don't answer my question...How can I get my troops to avoid using the woods? As I said, my main problem was that they refused to stay on the road, or at least out of the woods.


Thanks.

Demonic,
 
Check out page 31 of the reference manual for an example of and details for accessing the terrain popup. This will include two percentage values for foot and mot ( motorised ) movement rates. If the "mot" calue is 0% then motorised units cannot enter.
 
You may find in that particular scenario that you cannot move your AFVs through that area ( because of terrain or slope ). In which case, use the pathing tool ( page 34 of Ref manual ) to determine if it's possible to reach the desired objective.

Hmm. It's not the BEST terrain for vehicles, but still, the movement rate was 32%, compared to the 18% of the forest they wandered in to.

I played the two short brigade exercise scenarios over the weekend and I had a similar problem to the one Demonic was having. Although I didn't have trouble with the tanks moving off the roads they didn't seem inclined to use the tracks around the hill. If the unit started on the track and I set the waypoint further up the track, with the movement options set to 'quickest', they still strayed off the track.

The path preview tool shows the best path is through the wood for some distance (see screenshot below). The problem, I think, is that the slope here is just too extreme for the vehicles to negotiate, the terrain in some places is rough and light woods, and the track makes almost no difference. So even if the vehicles stayed on the track they don't get any further.

The 'movement effect' of tracks for motorized on this map is 0, i.e. they can't be used by motorized transport. So these tracks are more like the narrow mule tracks which are too small for vehicles.

The movement effect can be specified per map file, so on other maps the effect can be different. You can have a look at the exact figures by opening the map file with the mapmaker utility that comes with the game. And if you are really that desparate to use the tracks you could even change the movement effect to ... let say 200. [;)]

Thanks Vance. And here is a screen dump of the MM showing the zero move rate for motorised units on tracks.

Hmmm. Then maybe there's something more complex going on (maybe FoW on maps?). Because in-game if you look at the terrain values it is possible to move along the tracks. Not very well but you can. The attached screenshots show that. I chose two close together locations with the same terrain and slope.

First, on the track:-

Now, off the track...

Were you moving into LOS of the German Eng Unit so they diverted through covered terrain?

OK let me clarify this then. Tracks don't provide any benefit to motorised, so they must then rely on whatever other terrain there is at that location. Eg if the location was woods and track then the mot unit could not move through as both have a zero rate for mot units. If the location had a track and broken terrain then it would use the broken rate modified by any slope effects - so probably around 5%.
 
Does that help?

I often wondered about this myself. Any other terrain set to 0 makes it prohibitive to movement. Tracks are different in that '0' setting means ignore right?

So my (maybe obvious) question is, at any other movement rate setting besides '0', do tracks modify movement the same as other roads?

Tracks, Roads, Highways...they all work the same. If a unit is in road column and the rate is > 0% then it uses that rate, otherwise it uses the underlying terrain.

ORIGINAL: JeffK
Were you moving into LOS of the German Eng Unit so they diverted through covered terrain?

In my playing no, I was trying to send a cavalry company to cut behind roadblock hill to shoot up the en units that were using the dead ground NE of the hill to recover from retreat/rout. I had the route set to 'quickest'. They didn't receive any fire.

Mike.

ORIGINAL: Arjuna
Does that help?

Yes, that and the next two posts helped considerably.

Thanks, Mike.