Last Hoorah of the "Staff Battery"
Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 4:23 pm
It's unfortunate -- the last battle I ever fought that included the "Staff Battery" (two, no less) and the Staff Batteries (with a few well-said prayers and a heckuva lot of displacing) performed wonderfully.
Truthfully, my two little staff batteries were like 20th Maine -- I left them all alone on a little hill on my right flank, while my rifle battalion covered the juicy objectives. The Russian onslaught came right at them. In the end, my riflemen had to deal with a few T-26s and scattered infantry platoons, while the staff batteries, confused and out of supply (of course) wound up taking a russian rifle battalion, a company of T26s, and a company of T-34s right in the face.
In the end, I wound up having to flex my reserve company and an engineer platoon over to the right to help them out, and even after having made a mid-battle decision to bug-out, I turned them around and got them back into the fight. Most of the sections made it through OK.
Unfortunately, it was after that battle that I decided to dig a little deeper into why I was constantly receiving these seemingly useless support units over and over and over again. I found that when the campaign was selecting my attachment forces, it was using a huge chunk of my available resources on them.
I don't know who decided to include them in the oob, but I made a call and went ahead and commented them all out of my battalion oob file, then restarted my campaign and I have seen hide nor hair of a "Staff Battery" since. Don't get me wrong -- it's cute being reinforced by a unit that's as useful as a guy in a giraffe suit on a bicycle and monkey playing a kazoo. My little riflemen really got a kick out of those guys around the campfire at night, but it was even better starting my next battle and seeing a little tear in my men's eyes when StuG IIIs and 150mm Howitzers came rolling in to support (these units were nonexistent before I made the aforementioned omission).
Basically, those staff batteries broke the game... on the german rifle battalion level, at least. Do yourself a favor, go into your battalion.oob, find every line that has "Staff Battery" in it, and put that line in brackets. Then restart your campaign (or just cut your old campaign info into a new one), and enjoy the war.
P.S. Does anyone know what needs to change in the platoon oobs so my 105mm howitzers will once again be capable of laying smoke?
Truthfully, my two little staff batteries were like 20th Maine -- I left them all alone on a little hill on my right flank, while my rifle battalion covered the juicy objectives. The Russian onslaught came right at them. In the end, my riflemen had to deal with a few T-26s and scattered infantry platoons, while the staff batteries, confused and out of supply (of course) wound up taking a russian rifle battalion, a company of T26s, and a company of T-34s right in the face.
In the end, I wound up having to flex my reserve company and an engineer platoon over to the right to help them out, and even after having made a mid-battle decision to bug-out, I turned them around and got them back into the fight. Most of the sections made it through OK.
Unfortunately, it was after that battle that I decided to dig a little deeper into why I was constantly receiving these seemingly useless support units over and over and over again. I found that when the campaign was selecting my attachment forces, it was using a huge chunk of my available resources on them.
I don't know who decided to include them in the oob, but I made a call and went ahead and commented them all out of my battalion oob file, then restarted my campaign and I have seen hide nor hair of a "Staff Battery" since. Don't get me wrong -- it's cute being reinforced by a unit that's as useful as a guy in a giraffe suit on a bicycle and monkey playing a kazoo. My little riflemen really got a kick out of those guys around the campfire at night, but it was even better starting my next battle and seeing a little tear in my men's eyes when StuG IIIs and 150mm Howitzers came rolling in to support (these units were nonexistent before I made the aforementioned omission).
Basically, those staff batteries broke the game... on the german rifle battalion level, at least. Do yourself a favor, go into your battalion.oob, find every line that has "Staff Battery" in it, and put that line in brackets. Then restart your campaign (or just cut your old campaign info into a new one), and enjoy the war.
P.S. Does anyone know what needs to change in the platoon oobs so my 105mm howitzers will once again be capable of laying smoke?