Matrix Games Forums

I am posting here hoping to get some comments and answers. Not to beat a dead horse but the whole fatigue issue is getting me fatigued. It looks to me like:

*Most scenarios start with troops fatigued to near 20%.
*Fatigue builds up rapidly when moving. A company on foot seems to fatigue to over 50% after a two Km. walk on a small road or foot path. Again probably realistic.
*Fatigue disapates very slowly even when not under attack.
*Fatigue never seems to recover to less than 20% to 25%.
*when fatigue approaches 75% all activity stops except for defensive actions when attacked.

This all may be very realistic and reflects what actual happened during BfTB. The problem is that from a pure gameing standpoint, most battles with Germany on the attack, ALL movement activity comes to a standstill after about 48 hours. Again this most likely reflects what actually happened but how do we play the game that last over 4, 5 or 6 days?

I started Eisenborn Ridge with the idea of making fatigue management a priority. Rather than just ordering an Attack on an objective 10 to 12 Kms away I am only asking Bns to move on foot two maybe three Kms and then defend with rest set to normal. I watch their fatigue and when they have recovered fatigue to around 35% I move them again. So far I am approaching midnight on day 2 and have not made much progress with the FJs and Volks Grinadiers except for securing the two southern objectives. I am also holding back the SS units like Peiper etc. I'm already at the point where I looking at a quiet map with everyone asleep. I tiptoe away from the monitor so as not to disturb anyone [:D]. I hope Arjuna doesn't take this the wrong way but how much fun is that.
I'm sorry for rambling and I don't have any hard numbers but I wager that everyone knows what I am talking about. Is there any chance that adjustments will be made to fatigue just for game purposes?
If I didn't like this game so much I wouldn't bother to post. Also I may start again and record some numbers to illustrate.

Try dividing your force into two groups. While one is attacking, the other rests. So you end up leap frogging.

In the meantime I will review the fatigue rates when I get a chance.

IMO units fatigue way too easily when just moving.
I had some Volksgrenadiers walk the same route as I did in winter 2008 2009. I have (41 yr old don't do much sports, was wearing backpack, shovel, detector and digging along the way) way much more stamina than the electronic soldiers. I was tired after about 15 km walk near Hofen (some of it off-road/path) , but not nearly as fatigued and recovered very very much faster than the electronic soldiers.

I also did a similar walk near Gey in the Hurtgen with a 35 yr old British technical sergeant and I can tell he was not tired whatsoever after about 12 km that day and walked with an incedible tempo.

A review of the fatigue settings would be in place, they are quite far off what is realistic, as far as just movement is concerned.

Huib

Thanks Huib, you said that much better than I could. I would also look at fatigue recovery . It would seem that a unit resting quietly, not under attack, for 4 hours should recover most (80%?) of its fatigue. I don't want to stop playing this game which I think is potentially the best ever produced. JMO.

ORIGINAL: Huib

IMO units fatigue way too easily when just moving.
I had some Volksgrenadiers walk the same route as I did in winter 2008 2009. I have (41 yr old don't do much sports, was wearing backpack, shovel, detector and digging along the way) way much more stamina than the electronic soldiers. I was tired after about 15 km walk near Hofen (some of it off-road/path) , but not nearly as fatigued and recovered very very much faster than the electronic soldiers.

I also did a similar walk near Gey in the Hurtgen with a 35 yr old British technical sergeant and I can tell he was not tired whatsoever after about 12 km that day and walked with an incedible tempo.

A review of the fatigue settings would be in place, they are quite far off what is realistic, as far as just movement is concerned.

Huib

Fatigue in the game is at least as much mental as it is physical. Next time try stopping and dropping every time a pretend bullet or shell zips by your head.[;)]. Individual accounts by soldiers are rife with "stop, dig in, move on, stop, dig in...

As Dave indicated, we will take a look at it. I agree that the march through freindly territory to the front should not be quite so fatiguing. One thing that may help is if I up the fitness values on all the scenarios by maybe an additional 10% for the next patch.

Another vote for fatigue accumulating too fast and recovering too slow. The way I see it, when a unit goes over 80-89%, it will be too tired to do anything- even get out of danger. Too me, that's analogous to a unit that has been up for several days without rest, and is literally dropping in their tracks. Fatigue levels that high should be an exceptional event following extended periods of fighting or forced marching. Not an everyday event. I guarantee you, at 10pm tonight, if someone started shooting at me, I'd be WIDE awake.

Something I also noticed when looking over unit logs- units seem to resort to forced marching often, even without the "fastest" setting.

IMO this would also make the AI more effective on attacks as I don't believe it manages fatigue all that well.

ORIGINAL: Franklin Nimitz

Another vote for fatigue accumulating too fast and recovering too slow. The way I see it, when a unit goes over 80-89%, it will be too tired to do anything- even get out of danger. Too me, that's analogous to a unit that has been up for several days without rest, and is literally dropping in their tracks. Fatigue levels that high should be an exceptional event following extended periods of fighting or forced marching. Not an everyday event. I guarantee you, at 10pm tonight, if someone started shooting at me, I'd be WIDE awake.

Something I also noticed when looking over unit logs- units seem to resort to forced marching often, even without the "fastest" setting.

IMO this would also make the AI more effective on attacks as I don't believe it manages fatigue all that well.

Agreed........

If I'm allowed to cast my vote, I am nether in favour nor against a different fatigue behaviour.

I am much more in favour that the developers and scenario makers get it exactly right, which means to model it as historically and phisically (or should I say psycho-biologically) accurate as possible.

This may mean to review the fatigue mechanisms itself, but also to carefully check how all the relevant factors (morale, cohesion, experience, training, fitness, ...) interact together.

I can, though, confirm one thing Franklin said: with an ordinary (no "fastest") move order to a HQ, its subordinates seem to often be force marched. Again, this may or may not be right, and maybe the force marching periods are just short intermediate tasks used by the HQ to put the units in the formation in order not to have the whole battlegroup stay on prolonged wait.

On the other hand, to say something on GBS's remarks, if you pick a scenario with very fit and trained troops (for example play as Allies in the Tutorial St. Vith scenario), you'll notice how much more responsive and snappy they are throughout, so I assume fitness and to some extent training are two remarkably important factors in the overall fatigue modelling.

Again, I really don't know, so I also cannot tell if an ad hoc rule of thumb or a quick&diry tweak of adding 10% of fitness to all units would do.
But I trully would love to be able to rely not only on the fact that the "AI will do a reasonable job" (as a motto of the game says), but also that, while doing that, the AI operates in a reasonable world.

Keep on the good work.

Cheers.

ORIGINAL: simovitch

ORIGINAL: Huib

IMO units fatigue way too easily when just moving.
I had some Volksgrenadiers walk the same route as I did in winter 2008 2009. I have (41 yr old don't do much sports, was wearing backpack, shovel, detector and digging along the way) way much more stamina than the electronic soldiers. I was tired after about 15 km walk near Hofen (some of it off-road/path) , but not nearly as fatigued and recovered very very much faster than the electronic soldiers.

I also did a similar walk near Gey in the Hurtgen with a 35 yr old British technical sergeant and I can tell he was not tired whatsoever after about 12 km that day and walked with an incedible tempo.

A review of the fatigue settings would be in place, they are quite far off what is realistic, as far as just movement is concerned.

Huib

Fatigue in the game is at least as much mental as it is physical. Next time try stopping and dropping every time a pretend bullet or shell zips by your head.[;)]. Individual accounts by soldiers are rife with "stop, dig in, move on, stop, dig in...

As Dave indicated, we will take a look at it. I agree that the march through freindly territory to the front should not be quite so fatiguing. One thing that may help is if I up the fitness values on all the scenarios by maybe an additional 10% for the next patch.

I was just referring to movement through friendly territory. In my perception fatigue is a slower process that mainly sets in after hours/ days in combat or under fire and over a longer time recovery rates will drop. Physically you don't get really tired from forced marching only 10 or 20 km daily and digging in couple of times. There also seem to be a difference between Germans and Americans, the latter being more spoiled and less used to long forced marches (at least in the eyes of the Germans). I think that was mentioned in Gerhard Mertin's "Letzter Lorbeer" about the FJ Pionier Bn 5.

Not to concerned with it rising to fast as it makes you think about and plan appropriately as Arjuna said divide the force with one rest and one upfront. It makes you use real tactics rather than just pushing your troops all day and night whilst fighting (I played BftB like that at first and it was a very unrealistic way to play and I thought they carried on the fight longer and further than they by rights should have done I expect).

HOWEVER I do feel the rate you recover while it rest is way to slow....I've had troops asleep for near on 24 hours or more and it still havn't fully recovered...
In many books I've read just one night out of the line with some hay to sleep on and food\drink and they felt fully refreshed the next day...

Some vrey unfit or extremely lazy pixeltruppen...

These WW2 boys are a bunch of pussies. Try occupying an active front line trench for five days with so much water and mud in it that you could not lie down. Want to sleep? Do it standing up. And "..night marches to our two assembly positions, then 3000 yards to the Green Line followed by our attack across 5000 yards of enemy territory... That afternoon we dug in and that night did another move of nearly a mile to take over the Blue Line... " And so on. EPF.Lynch on his WW1 experiences.

Seriously, five days strenuous activity with maybe an average of an hour or two sleep per day with a battle or two thrown in was fairly common.

I would like to see the effects of fatigue reduced, as it will partially make up for units moving around way too much when forming up or leaving the spearhead of an attack to redeploy 2km backwards for no reason that I can see.

ORIGINAL: Arjuna

Try dividing your force into two groups. While one is attacking, the other rests. So you end up leap frogging.

In the meantime I will review the fatigue rates when I get a chance.

I hope Arjuna will have time to look at this and respond. I know he is busy and this game is not at the top of his list. This whole fatigue thing is keeping me from playing.

GBS,

I hope to get to look at the fatigue issue later this week.

Any update on this potential issue?

I can't help feeling its also a scenario design problem. The germans are really being punished in this game, bad experience, no training, bad fitness etc. Makes offensive operations difficult.

For example, I looked at the Widening the Corridor scenario: both Pz Lehr and Fuhrer Begleit Brigade are pretty much green formations with no training etc.

I don't know, maybe the RL german commanders were just so much better than me at getting results with all cards stacked against them

ORIGINAL: Count Sessine

Any update on this potential issue?

I can't help feeling its also a scenario design problem. The germans are really being punished in this game, bad experience, no training, bad fitness etc. Makes offensive operations difficult.

For example, I looked at the Widening the Corridor scenario: both Pz Lehr and Fuhrer Begleit Brigade are pretty much green formations with no training etc.

I don't know, maybe the RL german commanders were just so much better than me at getting results with all cards stacked against them

There can always be issues in the game engine or scenario design, but historically many of the German troops in this campaign were indeed second-grade.

One thing I've seen is that routing/retreating pushes fatigue up far faster than just normal combat/movement.
Simply resting seems to do little - re-orging first till the morale has improved, and then setting a rest period seems to help immensely - but protecting some portion of your forces from rout/retreat to maintain a sharp 'edge' to ongoing & subsequent operations and to promote future successes is imperative.

Let's not forget here that these poor soldiers are marching during the winter. Try taking your backpack and walk when there's 30+ cm snow! It's extremely fatiguing I can tell. When I was in the army back in the 90's and I had to lead my squad in assault when it was half a meter of snow we could only make about 100 meters or so before we were totally exhausted. We had only about 15 kg with us including the rifle. I'm ok with the fatigue levels, but if using only roads fatigue should be lesser.

Does anyone know how much snow there was during the Battle of the Bulge? And is deep snow somehow simulated?