Page 1 of 1
Newbie question about formations and frontage
Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2012 10:26 pm
by Nox0s
Are these relevant when you're issuing an order to a single unit (i.e. an infantry company) or do they only come into play when you're giving an order to more than one?
I ask because it's clear when a battalion for instance arranges itself into a line attack, but when you're attacking with only one company... does it matter what formation you assign it?
RE: Newbie question about formations and frontage
Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2012 11:01 pm
by Arjuna
Welcome NoxNoctum.
Yes it does still matter as the unit formation type will be copied from the task formation type. As to frontages well that depends. In general the unit's frontage will try and match that set for the task but there are practical contraints that it won't exceed.
Does that help?
RE: Newbie question about formations and frontage
Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2012 11:06 pm
by Lieste
Yes, it directly affects actual footprint, projected firepower and vulnerability. This is for every unit, whether operating as part of an order group, or on it's own.
For larger groups moving together there is also an effect caused by deployment laterally and in depth, which will further modify specific vulnerabilities for fire received from a given threat etc.
RE: Newbie question about formations and frontage
Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2012 2:41 am
by Deathtreader
Hi all,
In the same vein then...... if I want a a foot inf battalion to sweep a forest approx a klick wide would the best order be move with a battalion frontage of 1 klick?? I'm asking because I'm generally less than pleased in my attempts to conduct sweeps. The units always seem to bunch up or brcome mired in the woods or whatever...
what's the best way?? Maybe a new order type called sweep??
All suggestions welcome............
Rob.[:)]
RE: Newbie question about formations and frontage
Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2012 9:35 am
by Lieste
Use a wide enough formation. Ensure that all troops are 'woods capable'.
You will also need to use assault, or possibly 'probe' and use an explicit FUP and Objective on either side of the wood you want to clear.
Using movement orders will prioritise movement speed over position and they will follow flatter ground, trails etc for most of the distance, hence the clumping...
You might get some good results from using 'covered' option rather than shortest or fastest, to keep most off trails.
Blocking major junctions and trails using motorised blocking forces can break up the area, allowing faster capture of elements caught up in the sweep.
Usually all this is a major waste of time and combat power, and seldom worth the effort vs the AI.
RE: Newbie question about formations and frontage
Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2012 11:28 am
by Nox0s
Ok thanks guys that helps a lot. On a somewhat related note, is it worth reducing frontage and depth of a formation drastically to fit them into a village or patch of forest when on the defensive? Is there some kind of penalty for having a ton of units in a small area? And if there are penalties do the benefits of extra cover outweigh them?
Also, as a separate question (don't want to spam this whole forum
), why is it that when I right click on terrain to sett the to-hit % it shows a different value than in the COTA manual?
For example, if I right click on "village" terrain it shows in-game that there is a 20% chance to get a direct hit, but in the manual it says that vulnerability is 61% (so 39% chance to hit). Similarly, light woods in the game shows 26% chance of a direct hit, but in the manual it shows 81% vulnerability (which I guess would be 19% chance of a direct hit) Were these values tweaked in a patch or something? (I know the manual says the values vary across different maps, but it also says that the ones presented are for the Iraklion map, which is the one I was looking at)
RE: Newbie question about formations and frontage
Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2012 9:47 pm
by Lieste
No vulnerability is the chance of the hit ~ rather than 'safety'.
The difference between the figures is that the tool-tip version includes 'estimated' firer/target factors (33%) for a typical engagement, while the terrain table only lists the factor directly relating to terrain.
61% x 33% ~ 20% to 0 DP.
81% x 33% ~ 26% to 0 DP
RE: Newbie question about formations and frontage
Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2012 11:30 am
by wodin
Here is a game idea I ahd and posted about on my FB page. Command Ops is the sort of game I was thinking about, but with this way of showing your units....
"I had an idea about a PC wargame the other morning. Rather than counters and hexes it was all about unit footprint. The footprint of the unit though was organic, think of a fluid. Lets say the unti covers an area roughly in the shape of an oval so that what youould see, however the size of the Oval is dependent on the density (amount) of troops. Now lest say you told that unit, call it a coy, to send out three squads to recon a forest. What would happen is three circles (roughly circle shape depending on the formation issued the shape would change) would breakout out of the oval. The oval would reduce in size by the amount the three squads are. When the squads return they join back into the oval which gets that bit bigger again. However if the squads took casualties the shape would shrink in size relative to the amount of casualties. It would all look very fluid and though abrstract in one way it's less abstract than a counter. I imagine this system in a game like Command Ops where you do away with the counter and very abstract footprint for this more organic shape like unit. Say you wanted to spread out and sweep the shape would elongate and thin out keeping the same surface area but a different shape. Surface area is reduced if squads \platoons split off or through casualties. The shapes would be colour coded and have the unit info written on them similar to a counter. Not sure how to show who a squad has detached from..maybe an arrow flows from the main unit just behind the squad unit, giving a battle map \AAR look.
So the principle would be about surface area. A certain amount of surface represents one man or tank or whatever pref to scale of the map but not of the size actual soldier as such but the amount of ground the soldier would be given between it and the next soldier. That may get a touch complicated, butt some abstract method could be employed.
This system would be perfect for anything from ancient warfare to modern warfare. Ancient warfare upto napoleonic was all about shape and formation, so in those games the shapes would be more rigid and block like until charging,melee or routing\retreating. In more modern warfare the shapes would be more fluid like. When we look at old maps of WW2 we see units drawn down in ovals or large curved like crescent shapes, which shows the units coverage. So thats what I want. It hasn't been done before yet strikes me as something that would really work and I'm unsure why it hasn't been done before as it seems to make sense."
RE: Newbie question about formations and frontage
Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2012 4:26 am
by Nox0s
Related question to my original one:
Is there any penalty for stacking lots of units in one area (I don't just mean the icons, but the actual white outline real location)? How exactly does direct fire from enemy units affect this? Will it always only cause casualties to the unit it is targetting or if a few units or on top of each other will it damage all of them equally? Split three ways?
Also, does having a large frontage and depth reduce casualties from direct and indirect fire in any way (since your men are more dispersed) or give a penalty to firepower?
Also, on another issue, is there any downside to splitting up a battalion into a bunch of units directly under your command apart from extra workload for the HQ?
thanks
RE: Newbie question about formations and frontage
Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2012 9:14 am
by swkuh
Nice idea, wodin... any computer wargame could use the idea so why are we still using cardboard counters in this era?
Anyone know of an implemetation like this idea?
RE: Newbie question about formations and frontage
Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2012 11:28 am
by RocketMan
ORIGINAL: wodin
Here is a game idea I ahd and posted about on my FB page. Command Ops is the sort of game I was thinking about, but with this way of showing your units....
"I had an idea about a PC wargame the other morning. Rather than counters and hexes it was all about unit footprint. The footprint of the unit though was organic, think of a fluid. Lets say the unti covers an area roughly in the shape of an oval so that what youould see, however the size of the Oval is dependent on the density (amount) of troops. Now lest say you told that unit, call it a coy, to send out three squads to recon a forest. What would happen is three circles (roughly circle shape depending on the formation issued the shape would change) would breakout out of the oval. The oval would reduce in size by the amount the three squads are. When the squads return they join back into the oval which gets that bit bigger again. However if the squads took casualties the shape would shrink in size relative to the amount of casualties. It would all look very fluid and though abrstract in one way it's less abstract than a counter. I imagine this system in a game like Command Ops where you do away with the counter and very abstract footprint for this more organic shape like unit. Say you wanted to spread out and sweep the shape would elongate and thin out keeping the same surface area but a different shape. Surface area is reduced if squads \platoons split off or through casualties. The shapes would be colour coded and have the unit info written on them similar to a counter. Not sure how to show who a squad has detached from..maybe an arrow flows from the main unit just behind the squad unit, giving a battle map \AAR look.
So the principle would be about surface area. A certain amount of surface represents one man or tank or whatever pref to scale of the map but not of the size actual soldier as such but the amount of ground the soldier would be given between it and the next soldier. That may get a touch complicated, butt some abstract method could be employed.
This system would be perfect for anything from ancient warfare to modern warfare. Ancient warfare upto napoleonic was all about shape and formation, so in those games the shapes would be more rigid and block like until charging,melee or routing\retreating. In more modern warfare the shapes would be more fluid like. When we look at old maps of WW2 we see units drawn down in ovals or large curved like crescent shapes, which shows the units coverage. So thats what I want. It hasn't been done before yet strikes me as something that would really work and I'm unsure why it hasn't been done before as it seems to make sense."
I have been looking for a game like that for a long time, but haven't been able to find one. My idea is similar to yours with some modifications.
My idea is that a units footprint is not only organically shown on the map, but is also shaded to show its firepower. For an extreme example of a unit only armed with rifles occupying flat open ground, the footprint would be a circle with a dark, transparent center section that would fade out to be a lighter, transparent color at some percentage value of the maximum.
This range could be preset to some percentage or could be modifiable by the player (from 100% down to max effective range for instance). How dark and/or transparent the overlay is at a point represents how much firepower a unit can bring to bear on that point. And when multiple units firepowers overlap, it shows the total firepower that can be brought to bear from all units represented by how dense the overlay is.
If this was paired with 3D terrain and some logic about how a unit occupies an area (along the ridge line, at the leading edge of the forest, occupy a village, etc.) it would make a great game.
I'm sure the computation power required for a game like this is non-trivial, but I would think we have to be getting close to being able to simulate something like this on a home PC.
RE: Newbie question about formations and frontage
Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2012 6:51 pm
by Arjuna
RocketMan,
There is a difference though between the occupied area - ie the are physially occupied by troops on the ground - and its firepower influence area. The latter is always going to be greater than the former.
Within CO we already have range rings. I like your suggestion that these could be shaded to show the attentuation of effect over distance. But that is going to require transparency effects. We cannot achieve this under XP with the MFC graphics engine we currenty use. IF we ditch XP support then the new MFC engine does provide transparency effects.
RE: Newbie question about formations and frontage
Posted: Sun Dec 02, 2012 1:57 am
by RocketMan
ORIGINAL: Arjuna
RocketMan,
There is a difference though between the occupied area - ie the are physially occupied by troops on the ground - and its firepower influence area. The latter is always going to be greater than the former.
In my mind, the amount of firepower a unit can bring to bear on an area is the most important aspect of the unit, but it can't be known without also knowing the physical space a unit is occupying. Ideally, each asset in a unit would be represented by it's firepower, with the total for the unit being a combination of all assets in the unit. You could then determine, as a player, the physical space a unit is occupying by the darkest points in the field. As a game designer you of course have to know the location to calculate the firepower from.
How far down you chose to go would have to be worked out. For instance, at Command Ops scale of Companies and Platoons it would probably make sense to represent squads on the map as point sources of firepower. You could go to fire teams or even individual weapons, but that would probably be too computationally intensive. Vehicles and guns might beneficially be modeled down to the individual unit or left at the Platoon level.
ORIGINAL: Arjuna
Within CO we already have range rings. I like your suggestion that these could be shaded to show the attentuation of effect over distance. But that is going to require transparency effects. We cannot achieve this under XP with the MFC graphics engine we currenty use. IF we ditch XP support then the new MFC engine does provide transparency effects.
I understand it would take a completely new game engine and isn't really possible with the current Command Ops engine, but it is something a game designer for games of this type might want to consider if they are working on a new game. One of the reasons I play Command Ops is because it comes the closest of all the games out there to this concept.
RE: Newbie question about formations and frontage
Posted: Sun Dec 02, 2012 8:39 pm
by Arjuna
It would not require a rewirte of the engine just the graphics display.