Matrix Games Forums

If you have a formation moving along, and say you want to change its mission. If you issue another order, the formation will keep moving until the command to wait and replan propogates down. IF however you pick the HQ, give it a "fire" command, targeting empty place nearby, and right-click the timer down to one minute, then the formation will all stop, turn to face the target location and fire (if they can deploy) for a little bit. At that time, all units in the formation will defend in situ. You then can issue orders like normal. So for the price of a little bit of small arms ammo, you stop your units from continuing along a now-undesired path (or worse).

Is this gamey, or is this a feature? I can see where a commander can give a quick, 'hold up!, change of mission coming' order IRL, so that the unit defends in place while the staff plans the new mission.

edit: Woohoo, 1st post in the War Room!

Seems gamey. Fire orders from on high should take just as long as anything else to reach the units in question. Once they get there, however, the order should be quickly implemented. You don't need a conference of company commanders to discuss which rifles to fire at a clump of trees on the side of the road. Of course, by the time the order arrives, the units may not have LOS to the target spot anymore if they kept moving, so they would take time to organize a move to a firing position.

It seems gamey to issue a [legit] order to fire, or it seems gamey to have a commander issue 'stop in place and defend' order over the radio net? An explicit "stop" button would be nice, but you have to work with what you have.

I don't know if it is gamey, but boy it is useful.

Hi,
You have hit here the spot, that I have been considering putting on the "wishlist" from some time.
The idea was to include in the game 2,3 ..or 4(depends on the scenario etc) emergency "abort mission immediately" orders. And I ment immediately.. Most platoons have its own radios, so it hits the realistics. Placed alongside such things as AirStrikes, could be a good add.
But I wasnt 100% sure about it, so i didnt posted it.
Nevertheless i think such thing its gamey, but only when ensnared.
If the "fire" order imitates this, its breaking all the borders..
And thats a good sniping by you FN

The Fire Command needs an orders delay. I can see that Panther wanted people to be able to micromanage a firefight if they desired, so no orders delay on the fire command would be the only way to do it right? There is an alternative...

Here's a swell idea I hope Arjuna will see.
The amount of orders delay on a Fire command should be based on the proximity to enemy units. If you give an order to a unit with an enemy unit in range and under observation, they will start firing immediately. I know I would.
If you give a fire order to a unit in road column in known friendly territory with no enemy reported for clicks in any direction, that will have the full amount of Orders Delay. It's the kind of order that a commander would rightly call back to HQ to get a confirmation on. Little chance a commander would immediately stop an entire column on a dime and shoot at the nearest tree.

Another idea would be to crack the problem from the other direction.
Create a check box in the orders area, under Bypass and Stragglers or something.
The checkbox would be "Halt on Warning Order" or even shorter as "Halt on WO"
Checking this box means the unit will stop in a reasonable amount of time when new orders have been received at the parent unit. The amount of delay before stopping could be from a couple of minutes to 15 minutes, depending on unit size and command and control available.
Leaving the box unchecked means the unit willl carry out its orders, even when higher HQs are planning new orders for the unit (as it is now).

I would find this box most useful for reinforcements that I want to get moving, but don't have a final destination for yet.

Seems gamey to me. I'd have thought every order needs some order delay. Maybe there'd be no need for a reorg with a fire order, but there should still be a delay as it moves down the command structure.

ORIGINAL: Franklin Nimitz

An explicit "stop" button would be nice, but you have to work with what you have.

Actually, I suggested that around 2 or 3 years ago: a dedicated stop-button. Dave dismissed it. For instance, say you have a column of relatively light but fast moving vehicles (say trucks, jeeps and motorcycles), the entire column will "bump" into an enemy ambush, especially with low aggro settings, and will experience an evil amount of casualties, since they're fired at by an ambush party while they're moving.
In real life, a commander would give the order to dismount and find some cover, and the following units would halt on their own (due to the sounds/signs of fighting and gun fire) most likely, without having to wait for orders (to stop) from a high rank in the command chain.

The fire command is the only way to stop such units (if you're playing with order delay), so even if using it may sound gamey at first, it actually covers a hole/oversight in the engine's feature list and logic, imho.

ORIGINAL: DanO

Seems gamey to me. I'd have thought every order needs some order delay. Maybe there'd be no need for a reorg with a fire order, but there should still be a delay as it moves down the command structure.

While Dave and others argued that the engine focuses on macromanagement, and that it is not desired to boast micromanagement (since the player is supposed to control stuff at the top level, not the Coy level), I've long advocated a review of the order delay for detached units (say single platoons or companies).
With parts of the historical German doctrine at least, a Coy commander had some freedom regarding the execution of an attack, to some extent, and even to quite some extent on some occasions. At some stages of the war, this level of freedom used to go mainly for Bn commanders (say he was tasked to take village X at 15:00, he could set angle of attack, set up pincer movements, or whatever he liked, IF he would just attack and take/attack the objective around the scheduled time), but even Coy commanders had quite some freedom at times, when smaller objectives had to be reached/taken.

Now, a Coy does not have the same prep time as a fully fledged Bn or even a division, though, so the delay for a company should be reduced, if not disabled (depending on situation and type of order: was a move order issued or a attack order?) for what I'd call "local" decisions. At least a detached company (given a move order by the player) should not run into the enemy at full speed (which it does currently, due to the order delay) and then be shot to pieces because the player can't stop it (unless he uses the fire command), as a Coy in real life would just stop immediately and try to find some cover and stay put to evaluate the situation (and the size of the enemy formation).

The current inflexible order delay does not cater for that.