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Does anyone have any tips on using C&C ON other than the obvious "keep your formations tight" and "carefully plan where you set your units' objectives?" After a short test, this all seems rather easy, but I'm affraid I'm going to miss something important and get my *** handed to me the first time I try PBEM with C&C ON.

General Questions that spring to mind:
I can't make sense out of which HQ unit a squad looks to for orders changes. Sometimes it is its own #0 unit, sometimes it is a higher HQ.

Any tips for staying in contact? If there is a tree blocking LOS between my C0 and C1 unit but they are still only 2 hexes apart, does that mean they are still within command range?

How are vehicles different from infantry with regard to objectives?

Is it better to error on the side of placing the objective at the extreme edge of the map so that the unit just moves forward?

Should I be changing stance between Defend/Advance often or is Defend only used rarely?

When is it best to plot arty? At the beginning of a turn when you know you have Orders or at the end of the turn assuming that someone will have Orders left.

Should you horde Orders and only use them when absolutely necessary or is it a "use it or lose it" situation. I ran a simulation with Russian and German infantry and the Russian Colonel seemed to have bunches of Orders and the German A0 only had a few each turn. So, is there a random factor that effects available Orders each turn so you can't count on having a certain amount of Orders each turn.

These are just thoughts off the top of my head to help C&C experts understand my line of understanding/misunderstanding.

Thanks for any thoughts.
Bob

So far only played against computer, but always with c&c

p75 to p79 manual.

orders = (comand rating +rnd(0-9) - 40 + national modifier)/10

I can tell you how I use C/C.

During deployment, I try to set objects that are optimistic and as flexible as possible.

Some things that affect setting the objectives.

More that one v-hex area that can be reached with a single objective.

Place the objective behind the place you want to go, not right on the v-hex for example.

I try to set objectives that if reached, will at least result in a draw.

I pre-spot artillery in such a way as to compliment the attainment of objectives.

Try to keep all units of a formation together. Move the O unit last so it will not be suppressed prior to moving its subordinate unit.

On defense, I try to set those units likely to counter-attack to an advance stance. Also, those likely to retreat. This conserves orders later in the battle.

Try to set retreat objectives for on-board artillery and ammo trucks so they can move without using up orders to retreat or advance. Try to set these units to advance stance during deployment.

Begin if possible, playing C/C on with U.S. or German - they are ridiculously easy to manage. Later, try Soviet or other "have not" countries. 1941, 1942 Soviets are a real challenge since so many units do not have radios.

Pay particular attention to units without radios. If those are in a defensive stance and not very close to their leader, they may be stuck for the duration of the battle.

Be prepared to lose at first while you learn. I personally found losing with C/C on more fun that winning by dashing to and fro with C/C turned off.

Practice C/C against the AI - it really levels the playing field for the AI and is very good practice since you can switch C/C on and off while playing to adjust things without losing a lot of time due to starting over. A scenario is the best tool for learning C/C quickly and painlessly that I have found.

Redleg, thanks for those helpful considerations. I hadn't thought of placing retreat objectives. I also didn't see that in the Manual. How do you place a retreat hex?

A language problem - by retreat hex, I mean for example:

I have a section of Katy rocket launchers. I know it it will be the subject of a concerted effort by a human. So I decide that when it is attacked, where will I try to go with it and its ammo supply. So I pick a hex where I will like to move it. Then I change its stance to advance and set an objective to that hex. Then I can "shoot and scoot" to safety.

Another thing I sometimes do with Katys is put an ammo dump somewhere so I can shoot and scoot to the ammo dump for a reload. In that case, I try to set the units objective so it passes through the ammo dump on its way to another place. In this case, it objective (retreat hex) is beyond the ammo dump. If the Katy survives long enough, it will have to have new objectives before it can return to the ammo dump. The good news is that a single ammo dump can suckle several mobile artillery units as they maneuver to escape counter-battery fires. The bad news is that AA guns don't usually do well defending an ammo dump.

I liken C/C turned off to be equivilent to "training wheels". It is (IMO) the single best feature of SP3 and SPWAW. It is hard to imagine why those who speak so much about "Realism" play with C/C turned off. To me, it is the most realistic feature in SPWAW.

A beach assault or river crossing with C/C turned on is the most interesting and challenging thing I have seen in SPWAW - especially with British, Soviet, or Japanese forces.

A mobile defense is extremely effective but very difficult to work out with C/C turned on. But great fun!

Another thought. Move units without radios first then those with radios, lastly, those without radios. Remember that orders by radio cost more than proximity orders. Try to not move an 0 unit and leave radioless units behind.

This is great fun. Wait until you have a couple of KVs hidden in trees only to discover that you failed to change the stance and even though it has an objective, it cannot move because its O unit is destroyed or suppressed.

So, if during my movement phase, I move my #0 unit first and out of LOS/contact of his subordinates, I could freeze the subordinate units in place resulting in the need to have to run back with my #0 unit to reestablish contact?

Can you move to an out of contact unit and re-establish contact during your turn, or is contact gone for the whole turn once lost so you have to wait until next turn for contact to be established?

I guess what I'm asking is: Is Contact dynamic? Does it come and go during a turn or is it either estabished or not at the beginning of each turn

Also, is it generally true that it is critical to keep units without radios within 5 hexes and LOS of their HQ or else they will be frozen in place?

one of the best ways to get around the limitation of movement, buy nothing but recon type units,they are not limited to you placing unit objectives, the brits,germans,and russians have good armored recon units.

now once you have bought them you take your infantry and reassign the to the recon platoons now you have units that are not recon and can move freely since their HQ is now a recon unit

let me know if you want to know more
Rick 3/2 ACR

If you have a unit it has a radio.

Then you move the 0 unit away from its radioless units.

The other units can move toward their previously assigned objective only. That is, if the units have their stance set to advance. If they are in a defend stance, you are in deep stuff.

If the direction toward the objective is now dangerous, you will have to use up orders to change your 0 unit objective so it can move back to rescue its subordinates. Then reset your objectives for the entire formation....... This is not good.

The stance is critical since it takes orders to switch in and out of defense. That is why I often use advance stances in both delay and defend scenarios.

If your 0 unit is destroyed, the leadership may pass to a unit that does not have a radio and is therefore out of contact with his boss and cannot get orders. Eventually, this entire formation will be without orders and only able to move toward their previously set objective.

Playing Japanese or Soviet, what will happen a lot is a unit without a radio will retreat beyond the influence of its leader. If the 0 unit has already been moved, it cannot rescue its unfortunate subordinate. It will then be necesary for the 0 unit to wait for the unit in trouble to recover and begin to move forward again.... or expend orders to take the 0 unit to the rescue.

It is quite easy to get a formation (platoon or section) separated from its mates and that means eventually, fighting with 2 squad platoons, etc.

If you have a section of 2 KVs. 0 has a radio and the other does not. The 0 unit is killed. The radioless unit will only be able to proceed in its previously defined path or stay put.

I haven't played a Brit C/C on battle for a long while but earlier incarnations of the game were not kind to the Brits. The last beach assault I tried found my Brit units without orders left and right. Trying to redefine objectives used up my orders. No artillery possible since units were out of contact. Great stuff. And, a resounding defeat by my opponent who played a very good battle.

I'd guess that you would not like to learn all of this stuff as I did. Much better to get a small scenario vs the AI and set some objectives for each unit and explore. Start with C/C on. If you get bogged down or messed up, just turn C/C off and move your units to re-establish contact, then turn C/C back on.

I lost a goodly number of pbem battles over a period of several months trying to figure out the nuances of C/C. But I think a couple of small scenarios will illustrate all of the essentials in a couple of days. Much better and a heckuva lot less frustration.

For example, load up either of the Red October scenarios I recently posted - both of these have initial objectives set for all human controlled units. Experiment with all of this stuff in a controlled battle and it will come.

Or generate a small battle vs the AI and have yourself attack the AI's defense. Then, reverse the role and play defense and experiment with changing stances, etc.

C/C gets more difficult as the battles get larger - partly because the orders from the AO must flow to too many units. SPWAW is really a battalion (+ or -) designed game. (IMO)

Just for grins, after I suggested playing "Battle of Attrition", I played it again, this time with C/C turned on.

The first bad thing that happened was I used up my orders and was without mortar support for a while since I chose not to cheat and use self-spotting artillery. Later in the game, about 1/3 of my artillery was unable to fire for one reason or another making the battle much more difficult.
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Question: Why would someone play with C/C and then try to find gamey ways to defeat the purpose? I don't get it. The gamey stuff is why I gave up on PBEM. H2H online is better since players do not have as much time to manipulate things and replaying turns, incremental saving, etc is not possible.
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At the end, there were 3 victory hexes still in AI control and my squads were flat decimated.

The battle ended in a 2:1 point margin for me (A draw).

I have played this scenario several times without failing to get a marginal victory. But I can tell you that it was more fun to get a draw this way than getting a marginal win without C/C turned on.

Viva C/C

rbrunsman: A few little off-the-wall tircks if nobody else mentioned them.

Get a feel as to what your order maximum for the whole force is first. In early campaigning with GE for example, my orders for each platoon are usually 3, but I suppose they could get higher.

What you'll run into every once in a while, even if you're placing objectives on the opposite side of the map as I do (on offensives), that when you move an entire platoon from on stance to another, that one Joe will be out of range, or that you won't have enough orders. Sometimes if you have only 1 or 2 orders when the advance is given, you'll be better off changing 1 or 2 unit's stance (which uses 1 order apiece) instead of waiting for the platton's orders to climb to 3. I've had 2 or more turns in a row where the platton was stuck because the orders didn't reach 3. You just have to play it be ear sometimes. Advancing one-at-a-time is better practiced of course with units that have radios, in case the others following takes too long to retain platoon cohesiveness.

The above situation is more common with defensive missions which have sprung into advances, or for when somebody might advance and then decide to change to defends to get better cover. Myself, I screwed around with changing stances on offensives once I hit my spot to stay put but I hardly ever saw much profit in it. What's more, if you're ever playing the AI, the AI never switches from an advance to a defend, so even if there is a considerable advantage to having done it. I'm sort of cheating when being done against the AI. From what I've seen though, the AI would be so limited by switching stances that his offensives would be even more inept. I just don't think their getting cover benefits enough to be worth it, particularly where using CC is concerned.

You spoke about HQ's switching. I don't know if this is a help or not, but with SPWW2 they put in a very structured diagram to show the command chain. The way this may be pertinent to SPWAW, is that I noticed that every platoon not assigning to a company got assigned to A0. If that is true to SPWAW it brings a up a number of issues. Firstly, that as platoons on their own, seem easier to keep together than "all" the platoons to a company HQ, even if their immediate command is A0 it's not that much of an issue. Keep in mind also that Co HQ's have longer command ranges than platoons. If you're into platoon cohesiveness and rarely get units strayed from their immediate command, you will find that the Co HQ's take over because the platton ran out of orders and therefore the unit switching to the Co HQ is a good thing. It's not all that infrequent that some units will switch to A0 as the command.

Generally what I do, is I try to rally units to where they depend only on their platoon and the Co HQ, if there is one. I try to use bombardments as the last act of each turn. With the emphasis of rarely if ever using the A0 to change orders, I therefore save orders with A0 to use for bombardment orders, should my FO run out of them. Commonly, your FO will be able to plot 2 barrages a turn, and after that will switch to consuming A0's orders. A0 will find itself a lot of times with 5 orders. It's a balance you have to keep weighing throughout the battle: do you have more thundering barrages for longer periods or do you start changing stances and objectives.

Another thing about bombardments, you can use a LOT of your general units to call up bombardments. If you want to keep a barrage going and the accuracy is only minimally important, you can bombard the same spot previously with a unit that isn't thinking of using it's remaining orders, therefore preserving more orders for the more important FO and A0. I will do that often enough and then when there's a 'new' target to bombard I will make sure I use my FO to minimise delay. From what I've observed the ordinary units can call up bombardments just as quickly as an FO if the artillery bombarding it is just rehashing it's previous order or making those slight adjustments. It's a waste to use the FO for such things, though using the FO for them isn't entirely out of the question, since in an emergency you might want pristine accuracy for a particualr barrage, such as an 150FH down to it's last four rounds on a new threat.

Another thing about using orders on the defensive. You'll often want to put a platoon of AFV's to not go forward or backward as their objective, but comapletely to the opposite flank. What I'm talking about is putting a platton on one flank, to go for the other flank. What this does is give you a full platoon on each flank which can aid the other flank easily, should one flank be untouched while other is overrun. If a platoon were given what is usual for me, the forward opposite end of the board, as an objective, when the time came to switch a platoon from one flank to the other, they might not be able to make the move all at once, but if their objective is already set for that flank, they will be able to move, communicating or not. Just make sure and always set objectives while setting up your forces though. The only slight handicap with setting up a platoon pre-attack with an opposite flank, is that if they get bombarded like crazy and have to get back to where they started, it might be quite difficult, since their objective would take them to the opposite flank instead. You can see that if you're absolutely sure an attack will come on a flank, that from such a flank you might be better off not assigning any platoons for the opposite flank, but certainly doing so on what is anticipated to be a quiet flank would likely be wise.

Another trick you might want to try, which I've done in certain situations, and I would certainly welcome comments by others on this, and that is, that particularly with recon units, once they have achieved the maximum cover allowable in the battle, if I anticipate needing to move them in short order, switch their defensive stances to advance, though leaving them in one place. My thinking is that the defend order causes the cover to get better, but that apart from that the defend order doesn't help defense any. IOW, it's the cover that determines your likelihood to get hit and not your stance. I do have one idea which counters that a bit, and that is that I think an AFV being hull down isn't possible in an advance state, unless it's on a higher elevation than the enemy firing unit. Comments?

rbrunsman:

So, if during my movement phase, I move my #0 unit first and out of LOS/contact of his subordinates, I could freeze the subordinate units in place resulting in the need to have to run back with my #0 unit to reestablish contact?

I could be wrong on this, but here is my take. It seems to me that contact with units is established at the end of the enemy turn. What that would mean, is that if B0 would move beyond range of B1 through you moving it (player turn), it wouldn't affect B1 for that turn assuming they were in contact at the beggining of that turn. Using CC, it doesn't seem to matter too much to me, if I move B0 or B1 first in terms of being in contact or not. The only exception I can think of to what I just said is the aspect of "in-turn" command changing. The only way in-turn command can change is if B0 actually gets adjacent to B1, which of course would suggest that moving B0 first would be the better thing, but as I look over my playing tendencies, if I move B0 first I am unlikely to look at B1 and determine that I should've moved B0 adjacent to it. It's only when I see B1 first and determine it needs orders for something that I consider B0 moving next to it (BTW, though I believe I've seen HQ's not in communication to a subordinate adjacent to it, I'm not sure if it matters whether the HQ moves next to it, or the subordinate moves next to the HQ).

Thanks for all the tips guys. That is quite a lot to digest. I think I need to print this out and use it as a reference while practicing with C&C on.

I play C&C on whenever I can find an opponent that will play that way. I've noticed that you can establish contact during a turn by moving a commander in that chain of command next to your out of touch unit. If a unit starts the turn in touch, it stays that way, unless the zero dies, and sometimes even then( I assume it goes a step up the ladder). Set up is very important, since it doesn't cost any command points. Stay away from the minor powers until you get a handle on C&C. I horde my command points, but I may overdo that, since I have passed on things I maybe shouldn't have. C&C is a good way to slow down the arty freaks. Conserve your recon. They are useful in all games, but they are vital with C&C on. And don't worry about getting beat. Only cheaters stay undefeated.
T.

So I guess it is also a good idea to buy Company strength formations to get the extra Orders points from the Company CO, right? I hardly ever buy Company strength formations (i.e the ones with the B0 unit as Company HQ) when I play without C&C on.

It also seems very important to make sure your units have radios. With a radio, a subordinate unit doesn't have to be so bunched up for the unit HQ to be in control/contact. Is there a way to ensure that you get radios? IIRC, there is just a % chance to have a radio which goes from 10 to 90% which you can find on the unit purchase screen.

rbrunsman: That's one of the neat things about getting companies, that is, your lead section is totally recon capable, something of a bonus. You have to experiment with any nation that you play. A lot of nations have a company that has a section, or b0 "and" b1, which in the Germans case is the medium tank one. I'm not sure if support (PZIVC's) company has that additional tank, the B1, in there with the command, but having recon the calibre of medium tanks is quite a good thing. Naturally you don't want to lose your B0, but at least the B1 is expendable, and since B1 and B0 can go any place at any time, they are a good fire brigade. I "think" anytime you buy something self-propelled that has a recon status it always has radios, although most of my observation has been from the GE viewpoint, which their regular non-recon medium tanks are at a 90% rate anyway (though not having "recon status" will disable them having a 360 degree objective movement area.

One thing you'll find about self-propelled recon though, is that it's probably wise not to ever give them an objective. What you can do is set their objectives as very radical, such as the beginning 0,0. Therefore any unit you see with 0,0 will warn you of two things: 1) They are recon or 2) They are units you haven't assigned objectives to yet. Having your ercon do something atypical like 0,0 as objective is important too because when you click them the first time they don't show the true 360 degree freedom from objetive restrictions they have.

You have to actually buy a few companies to see if they come with recon as the lead section of tanks. I think most so-called independant companies and medium companies will come with recon versions of the same battle tank, the only problem is that's nothing too special if the lead section is just one tank, because the loss of that one tank doesn't help the company very much. I rather like the power of having those mediums recons out there. In the early GE campaign my B1 is almost always one the main killers, with B0 being a little more average as I am trying to place it generally more towards the rear. Later on. I can't see myself abusing those recon B's and make them KTigers, but I probably will make the B0 as the best low, heavy-armored TD and then make B1 as maybe a Panther.

Actually, you also don't have to worry too much about having too much of your tank arm in one company if you don't want. For instance, I think the medium GE tank company comes with 4 tank platoons of 5 each, along with the 2 tank lead section. That's 22 tanks. If you get between 30-35 tanks like me, that could be limiting somewhat, but, then again, having two of those as recon makes up for quite a lot of the deficiences. In any case, if you're keen on purchasing SPAA in platoons, you can always delete one of the tank platoons and purchase the SPAA's in it's place, thereby the SPAA's becoming part of the company and leaving the rest of your tank force to perhaps be of individual platoons.

Here is another useful tactic when using C&C ON...

If you have a unit that is close to its objective flag at the start of your turn, then you will get a movement radius that extends in the direction of the objective flag up to the limit of that unit's movement. You can use this to your advantage, especially when command points are scarce.

For instance, I typically use this for transport units that I want to use as shuttles to-and-fro.

Simply set the objective about midway between where you want to shuttle to and from.

Practice this with some jeeps and mortars, for instance, and you will see how useful it can be. Also, it can be extremely useful when using barges during river crossings. Just set the objective midway in the river and your barges can now shuttle to and from each side of the river without having to spend command points to change directions.

Happy gaming,
Victor

vahauser, in practicing against the AI, that is one of the first things I noticed, but I didn't catch the ramifications as well as you have just described them here, thanks.

And Charles_22, thanks for all the time and effort you've put into your posts here.

All of the comments of the contributors to this thread should be part of the manual IMHO.