Command Ops: Battles From The Bulge takes the highly acclaimed Airborne Assault engine back to the West Front for the crucial engagements during the Ardennes Offensive. Test your command skills in the fiery crucible of Airborne Assault’s “pausable continuous time” uber-realistic game engine. It's up to you to develop the strategy, issue the orders, set the pace, and try to win the laurels of victory in the cold, shadowy Ardennes.
Command Ops: Highway to the Reich brings us to the setting of one of the most epic and controversial battles of World War II: Operation Market-Garden, covering every major engagement along Hell’s Highway, from the surprise capture of Joe’s Bridge by the Irish Guards a week before the offensive to the final battles on “The Island” south of Arnhem.
I've asked this question before, sort of. At scenario start I very often find the facing of defending troops to be odd. I assume (though I know nothing about scenario design) that the designer probably doesn't manually face every company, rather gives a defend order to a battalion, say, then the AI handles the displacement of individual companies, including their facing. Which is why I raise it. If it's not the AI aand it's the designer then I would need a solution, if anyone has one. I need a solution anyway, I guess.
Take, for example, WE FIGHT AND DIE HERE. Boot it up as allies, have a look at the disposition of the 26th Infantry Regiment. It's covering all the appraoches to Dom Butgenbach, and I wouldn't want to change that. The troops are all nicely entrenched. BUT, click on the individual companies and you get the facing icon. For example, a crucial front line company - K company, right across the road the Germans are clearly going to advance up, is facing towards Butgenbach, backs to the Germans. Why? There's not just this unit that's awry. And there's nothing I can do about it, given initial orders delay. And even if there weren't an orders delay, if I give some kind of order to get this right then they will all have to get out of their trenches and re-dig them.
I notice that you can get a different facing each time you start the scenario - so I assume thre AI calculates it afresh when you start (and it's not 'scripted'). It seems to place most of its units facing roughly the right way (according to the facing indicator over the HQ unit), but then tries to make sure that there's some rear or flank cover too, but sometimes not very intelligently - hence lining up front line units facing away from the enemy. It needs to take the intelligence into account. Not sure if this happens, or will happen in the patch.
The AT unit in the picture above was placed very nicely, I thought - actually facing the road, so that its 3 AT guns could ambush and hit the armour as it passed on the road - ie wait until it passed then fire at its weaker side armour. I wondered whether this would happen, wondered whether the AI was that good. I gave a defend in situ order to the 2.26. I then ran it and the 2.560 Jagdpanther unit arrived after about half an hour, engaged the wrong facing infantry (who stuck to their positions, turned round, stayed entrenched, fired off all their AP bazooka rounds (about 27, if I recall) and (maybe - who knows with it being night whether the reports were accurate) took out one Jagdpanther!! For 27 rounds!! Can this be right? (I know this has been raised in other threads)). I was happy that they took out one, anyway. The AT guns, meanwhile, gave their position away whilst they were still facing the wrong way and started, uselessly, to engage. The Jagdpanthers broke through and stormed up the road, with the AT guns reporting a retreat recovery (whilst remaining entrenched and not moving!!). The AT guns fired off only 2 more rounds before the jagdpanthers stormed up the road towards my HQ unit, where I dropped a mortar barrage on them. They then routed!! and, if the reports are to be believed, lost 4 Jagdpanthers, presumably to the 81mm mortar fire. Is that possible? Of course, this was all at night and my only way of knowing what was going on was the current intel tab and the info provided, which might have been innaccurate. Maybe it was the AT guns and the bazookas which knocked out 4 tanks, and not the mortars, but maybe the count was only accurate when the tanks got in range of the HQ. I don't know. But it would seem wrong that the 81mm could take out Jagdpanthers.
Whatever actually happened it was a pretty intense hour (game time) and very interesting. The result, however it was brought about, seemed about right, to me - about what happened historically, when the 26th Inf did, of course, wreck a lot of tanks in the course of halting the German attack on Dom Butgenbach.
