Matrix Games Forums

Hi all,

Regarding armour -infantry cooperation the following is an excerpt from the manual page 84:

"Employ Infantry-Armour Cooperation (Complex Attacks)
For complex attacks, infantry-armour cooperation will only routinely occur if the subordinate HQs each already have a mix of infantry and armour as their organic structure ( see Organic and Attached Units ). Although you cannot force a complex attack to employ infantry-armour cooperation, you can improve the chances of it happening:
Ħ Attach some armour companies to an all-infantry complex attack, or attach some infantry companies to an all-armour complex attack
The attachments must be made as individual companies. For example, if you are attaching some tank companies to an infantry regiment attack, make sure you don¡¦t attach the tank battalion HQ. If you do include the tank battalion HQ, then it will command the tank companies in the assault, so there will be no chance that the tanks will get allocated to one of the infantry battalions. Even when attaching individual companies, it is up to the HQ in charge of the complex attack to decide where to allocate them; better commanders will be more likely to employ infantry-armour cooperation."

Then there is a picture of a brigade HQ attaching a couple of tank companies.........

Does this process only work for the attack order when there are subordinate HQ's involved?? It certainly doesn't work (for me at least) when I issue a move order to the higher level Superior HQ. The units just stay attached to their organic battalion HQ's in all 3 OB displays. Yet if I detach the lower level HQ's I can swap units between them I can get 2 combined arms battalions at the cost of having them under my direct control. As soon as I reattach them (the battalion HQ's) to their original superior HQ guess what happens? Everything is promptly reattached back to it's organic superior and I'm back to where I started. A Reg't HQ with a pure infantry battalion and a pure tank battalion that never employ combined arms tactics.

What am I doing wrong??[&:]

Any advice welcome!

Rob.[:)]

Yes this specific reference in the manual only applies to complex Attacks. However, if you order a Bde to Move it will allocate forces to the various formation subGroups ( ie advance guard, main guard, rear guard and filler groups ). In doing so it can cross attach. It may not, but it can do so.

Hi,

Thanks for the quick response! leads to another question or 2......

Does this mean that the Reg't HQ could create combined arms formations when a Move order with the attack option is selected?

Also if the Reg't attached 2 tank companies from OUTSIDE of it's own subordinates (at any level) those 2 tank companies would stay attached to it and theoretically become available for attachment to either the subordinate infantry or armoured battalion HQ's. Yes??

If so, then a suggestion might be to allow the same functionality from WITHIN the the superior HQ's anylevel subordinates. ie. I'm normally attached to 1st battalion but now I'm attahed to our Reg't HQ. Normally the only way to achieve that seems to be to detach 1st battalion in the current functionality.

BTW/ any word on my bug scenario that's posted in tech support??

Thanks again,

Rob.[:)]

Rob,

When you order a force to Move or whatever then the AI when it develops the plan will throw all the selected units into the mix when it comes to force allocation. It's very complex and I really don't have time to go into this in detail. Suffice to say that each unit has it's suitability determined against each possible role in the formation and through a series of allocation passes it is assigned to one of these. Preferences are given for matching capabilities to the requirements of the role. Eg a recon unit is more likely to get allocated to the advance guard. But maintaining organic structures is also a preference.

As to your bug, I have not had the means to examine it. One of my machines here died, so I had to get a new one, which I decided to use as my dev machine and migrated my old Vista box to the test role. Alas the new one has Win 7 and Visual Studio 2010 dev environment and the latter turns out to have some real issues with our existing drawing code. Well not so much issues it just doesn't recognise the old ddraw.lib file anymore. It's no longer supported by Microsoft. So I have identified the routines we have to rewrite and I'm waiting on Paul to finish these before I can get the Game to compile. Once I can I'll look into your issue.

One of the benefits of this rewrite is that hopefully we can take advantage of the new system calls in Win 7 and Vista to handle multiple monitors and maybe also to run the game in its own window rather than taking over the screen entirely. But we won't know for sure on this till we have it up and running and can try out these.

Okey dokey........

I DO appreciate you are pretty busy right now. As for the rest, none of my postings are deal breakers and can certainly wait until there's more time. I'll happily remind you down the road .

Rob.[:)]

Thanks Rob.