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There was a thread about the Time Stamps but it got out of hands. So here there will be just questions related to examples from FITE2 that I'm currently playing. Don't care wheter SO feels the game is this or that. I want to know why something did or did not happen.

Q1 TACKLED
At the begining of a Turn an Soviet occupied hex is in contact with 3 adjecent German hexes (so the 3 other adjecent hexes are unoccupied).
After the completion of encirclement the 3 earlier unoccupied hexes are now "owned" by German units but which cannot attack (all MPs exhausted).
Battle is executed and the result is that the Soviet units were anihilated because they could not have withdrawn. However the Soviets could have withdraw as there was a gap in German lines when the battle was concluded.
Without going into the whole battle results and so. Where exactly and when the battle took place? I fail to follow that.
My understanding is since the late arrived Germans were in the end fighting the reatriting Soviets the battle took place in all 4 hexes, right? Or is it random?

Q2 TACKLED
The winter of 1941/42 was one of the most extreme. However this was a weather anomaly as previous winter was also extremely cold. I have played around 20 times through 41/42 and it is always pretty much the same weather. Is this hard coded with the events?

Q3
There is already a thread about Ju-87D anti-shipping capabilities but just to make it clear: the values are 4 or 120, or is it possible to have any value between those two? And if so where is it coded [:(]

Q4
Is it possible that small units when overrun not to leave Battle Stamp?
I mean on 5km scale an overrun Military Police should be "swiped" by armoured regiment (unless strongly dug in).

Q1:

I hope I understand you correctly.

The battle takes place when the last unit arrives to surround the Russians. That is probably in round 10 since you say they have no movement points left. So the units that are attacking are waiting to start there attack until round 10 when the encirclement is complete.

In the picture, you can see how it looks in the Combat Chart. The examples in you of mine.

The 41st MotGren Reg was ready to attack the Russian in round 3. But in fact, it could not start its attack until 71st MotGren Reg and 1st/5th MG abt. had arrived in round 10 to complete the encirclement. You can see that form the color of their cells. It is dark Grey meaning it is a wasted round. So the combat started in round 10 and lasted 1 round. Meaning that all involved units spent all their MPs in the combat.

To avoid this I would simply have to either not surround the Russians, or surround them with troops that could arrive there in round 3. As you can see in the chart, in 4 of the hexes the surrounding units did, in fact, arrive on round 3 (yellow BLK).
So this so sloppy (or greedy) play on my part.

I hope this makes sense.


Q2:
It is hard coded in FITE2.

Kristian thanks for the quick reply.

Q1
You got it spot on. I have a follow up question. Even if the unit is not encircled but gets overrun will it get eliminated?
The reason for my question is I have expierenced some strange thing when executing battles. The Battle Planner will show that 9 or 10 rounds will get burned (because of late arriving units) and then after the battles are executed the Rounds get back to 3 or 4 (I once had a case where out of 10 battles 9 were later than the rounds counter reset after battle execution). I'm trying to get the logic behind it.
In my opinion it is not transparent enough. The Battle Planner only takes into account the units actively participating in the battle (so not the one out of MPs) am I correct?

Q2
That's a pitty then :/

The time remaining of you turn is based on the median of the battles.

So if you have 5 battles that end on round 1,3,3,7,10 respectively then the median is 3, mean that the remaining time for the turn is 70 %. (Note that individual units can have less than 70 % of their movement left. For instance, the units in the example that fought until round 9 and 10 will have 10 % and 0% of their movement left, even though the remaining time for the turn is 70%)

Having high Shock seems to alter this a bit (I have experienced that too), and that could account for your example

Q1
Mediana of battle duration [&:]
I get the concept but not the logic. It's so messed up.
In practice a battle had taken time in future (acocrding to the battle rounds) yet the results are moved to "now". Try to explain it to the a logic-oriented guy[:D]

Oh, I thought it was the concept that you needed help to understand.

My bad.

It's all good. Just hard to crack it on monster scenarios. It would be neat if the Battle Rounds counter already be showing the mediana.

On the Q2 I have a follow up question. Does the hard coding means that the weather is coded in the Scenario files and can only be changed before starting the game? Or is it possible to change the file in the middle of the game?
Anyhow, probably it would require changes in events.
Bit shame as the old V for Victory had a probability weather tables and not hardcoded ones.

You can, of course, make the weather more random in TOAW, but you can't change it in mid game. You have to do it before you start.

In FITE2 we just wanted to make sure that the winter 41/42 gets as bad as it did historically. There are clearly both upsides and downsides to this decision (as there is to most decisions), but that is the road we took

Kristian any chance you could elaborate on this: "You can make the weather more random". Is there any tutorial on this?
I have just started my Campaign Studies on FITE2 and the lack of random events (like weather or reinforcements) has its downsides (I cannot pretend not to knowing what comes in winter, thus my decision will be influenced by that hard coded weather).

PS. Any chance on coding reinforcements randomly (e.g.they might be available earliest from T-X but no later then T-X plus 10 OR the particular reinforcements might or might not be available randomly-not based on reaching any parameters)? I know you cam make the reinforcements available based on parameters (like caoturing X by setup date).

<side note>
As I've played tons of boardgames I have always expected that at least the same flexibility will be available when they get digitalized. Back then many things were simply decided by roll of dices. So weather, reinforcements or availability of planes was quite random thing. I very much miss that [;)]

Many thanks,
Chris

ORIGINAL: gliz2

Q1
Mediana of battle duration [&:]
I get the concept but not the logic. It's so messed up.
In practice a battle had taken time in future (acocrding to the battle rounds) yet the results are moved to "now". Try to explain it to the a logic-oriented guy[:D]

Have you read this thread?:

tm.asp?m=4274372

Some sort of randomness in reinforcement can be coded too.

You are more than welcome to change the weather and reinforcement. But to be honest I don't have time I want to use on such a project. We made the scenario the way we like it. But I totally acknowledge that some people see it differently, and wants other things.

So as I said you are more than welcome to try to make the changes.

ORIGINAL: gliz2

There was a thread about the Time Stamps but it got out of hands. So here there will be just questions related to examples from FITE2 that I'm currently playing. Don't care wheter SO feels the game is this or that. I want to know why something did or did not happen.

Q1 TACKLED
At the begining of a Turn an Soviet occupied hex is in contact with 3 adjecent German hexes (so the 3 other adjecent hexes are unoccupied).
After the completion of encirclement the 3 earlier unoccupied hexes are now "owned" by German units but which cannot attack (all MPs exhausted).
Battle is executed and the result is that the Soviet units were anihilated because they could not have withdrawn. However the Soviets could have withdraw as there was a gap in German lines when the battle was concluded.
Without going into the whole battle results and so. Where exactly and when the battle took place? I fail to follow that.
My understanding is since the late arrived Germans were in the end fighting the reatriting Soviets the battle took place in all 4 hexes, right? Or is it random?

Actually it works this way. If the Soviet unit is initially adjacent to three German units and three more German units occupy the other three hexes adjacent to the Soviet unit expending all of their movement points to do so, those three units are not obligated to take part in the combat. Since three German units began the turn adjacent to the Soviet unit they will likely consume, at the most, 20% of the turn (2 rounds). This being true, the three late arriving units were not there to block the Soviet unit at the time of the combat because it took them all 10 rounds to get there as evidenced by the usage of all of their movement points. Yet there they are. The following rule attempts to account for the late arriving units. It does so poorly in my opinion because not all units are 'ants' and not all units can rbc even an 'ant'. (It has been discussed ad nauseam in several threads.)

13.14.1. RBC Escape from blocked
retreat path
Surrounded defending units that are forced to retreat
from combat and have no other path of retreat will
get to attempt to breakout via RBCing any of the
surrounding enemy units. All qualifying defenders
get to attempt the RBCs until a path is cleared or
all have failed against all blockers. Note that this will
require the use of substantial forces in all possible
paths around the defender if that defender is to be
denied a retreat path. “Ants” won’t work.

If I'm playing a scenario I demand without discussion the 'house' rule that if a unit is completely surrounded by enemy units giving no path of retreat then all attacking units surrounding that unit must take part in the combat. This might sound draconian but I see no other way to square time and space considerations with the situation.

Obviously if you are playing against a programmed opponent this is only 50% effective. [:D]

ORIGINAL: gliz2
Follow up:

Q1
Mediana of battle duration
I get the concept but not the logic. It's so messed up.
In practice a battle had taken time in future (acocrding to the battle rounds) yet the results are moved to "now". Try to explain it to the a logic-oriented guy

When we are talking about time we are not talking about one battle as though it were somehow quarantined from the rest of the map. If one battle takes six rounds and one battle takes two rounds why should every battle on the map be given a cost of six rounds? It defies logic. So to attempt to account for this the longest battle is set to the median of all battles on the map and so all battles on the map are set to this median. Since no battle exists in a vacuum something had to be done. Nothing is perfect. Especially in a game that is a couple of decades old +. [;)]

14. Your Entire Force Movement
Allowances Are Adjusted
After combat, all of your units will have their
remaining Movement Allowances adjusted to
reflect the Median Tactical Round needed to
resolve all Normal Attacks. Note that this omits
bombardments, unless the round only included
bombardments – then the round advances to the
median-length bombardment.
Example: If the Median Tactical Round was
Round 7, all of your units will have their Movement
Allowances limited to no more than 30% [(10-
7)*10%] of their full Movement Allowance.

ORIGINAL: gliz2

Q2 TACKLED
The winter of 1941/42 was one of the most extreme. However this was a weather anomaly as previous winter was also extremely cold. I have played around 20 times through 41/42 and it is always pretty much the same weather. Is this hard coded with the events?

You will have to learn to use the event editor. My sympathies.

ORIGINAL: gliz2

Q4
Is it possible that small units when overrun not to leave Battle Stamp?
I mean on 5km scale an overrun Military Police should be "swiped" by armoured regiment (unless strongly dug in).

This is a time and space situation. A unit could not simply stroll through a hex where a combat is taking place, rbc or not, as though nothing is happening there. A time and space cost must be paid to account for any combat action occurring in a hex. That's what BTS attempt to model, time and space. Everything on the map is supposed to be taking place simultaneously but it's a turn based game. [;)] So, because turn based games present time and space oddities the functions to account for those oddities will never be perfect and will never be able to exactly mirror real world time and space.

I was interested in the possibility of doing such things. Would not expect anybody actually doing it

@Bob,
thanks, I knew I read about it.

@Lobster
My point is that the Battle Stamps system is not consistent. There are always some rules that are far from perfect.

The below picture shows (what is in my opinion) big issue/flaw of the Battle Stamps system. It can be easily exploited.
So what I did:
Step 1: I took some deep unit to attack a Soviet front unit and to avoid spending the 6 rounds I made 3 one-rounded attacks. The result of course being 1 round burn (Move 2).
Step 2: I checked the costs of entering the hexes. The one where the Soviet was requires 16 MPs but the adjacent one just 2 MPs (Move 3 and Move 4).
Step 3: I moved the German unit to finish the poor Soviet unit (Move 5) disregarding penalty cost associated with the battle that took place later on.
In my opinion this is an example of earlier moving unit attacking enemy unit which that only was there much later in the turn. And this is what I mean it is not logical. Trust me guys I have learned some tricks with FITE2 on Battle Stamps. It just requires twice the time than normal but you can quite easily exploit the engines with this. In effect You can "ignore" the costs associated with battles freeing the front units by assaulting with later arriving units.

Coming back to random reinforcements, a side effect of doing them with events is that they won't show up in the "expected reinforcements" list, at least unless it is evaporated units start to reconstitue later. Whether this is a desired or undesired effect depends on what you are trying to achieve.
I've done a scenario where ALL reinforcements are random to an extent and so the "expected reinforcement" shows nothing.

ORIGINAL: LLv34_Snefens

Coming back to random reinforcements, a side effect of doing them with events is that they won't show up in the "expected reinforcements" list, at least unless it is evaporated units start to reconstitue later. Whether this is a desired or undesired effect depends on what you are trying to achieve.
I've done a scenario where ALL reinforcements are random to an extent and so the "expected reinforcement" shows nothing.

Well it sounds like a dream come true Snefens. I'm totally agains seeing expected reinforcements in big scenarios

ORIGINAL: gliz2

@Bob,
thanks, I knew I read about it.

@Lobster
My point is that the Battle Stamps system is not consistent. There are always some rules that are far from perfect.

The below picture shows (what is in my opinion) big issue/flaw of the Battle Stamps system. It can be easily exploited.
So what I did:
Step 1: I took some deep unit to attack a Soviet front unit and to avoid spending the 6 rounds I made 3 one-rounded attacks. The result of course being 1 round burn (Move 2).
Step 2: I checked the costs of entering the hexes. The one where the Soviet was requires 16 MPs but the adjacent one just 2 MPs (Move 3 and Move 4).
Step 3: I moved the German unit to finish the poor Soviet unit (Move 5) disregarding penalty cost associated with the battle that took place later on.
In my opinion this is an example of earlier moving unit attacking enemy unit which that only was there much later in the turn. And this is what I mean it is not logical. Trust me guys I have learned some tricks with FITE2 on Battle Stamps. It just requires twice the time than normal but you can quite easily exploit the engines with this. In effect You can "ignore" the costs associated with battles freeing the front units by assaulting with later arriving units.

OK. This was discussed in that article I referenced.

Yes, the BTS doesn't account for the ZOCs of the defenders in the BTS hex. But note that you have to have two empty hexes between defenders for this to be an issue. And all that is missing is the ZOC cost - usually a small cost. Try and imagine how difficult this would be for the game to account for. It's too small an issue to be worth the effort.

FitE 2 should not be used as an example. The scenario author has given the Germans some very extensive movement and ZOC and shock benefits early on. It throws the whole thing off. To make a verifiable study you have to have default values all around.

I will check it later in the game, don't you worry

ORIGINAL: gliz2

@Bob,
thanks, I knew I read about it.

@Lobster
My point is that the Battle Stamps system is not consistent. There are always some rules that are far from perfect.

The below picture shows (what is in my opinion) big issue/flaw of the Battle Stamps system. It can be easily exploited.
So what I did:
Step 1: I took some deep unit to attack a Soviet front unit and to avoid spending the 6 rounds I made 3 one-rounded attacks. The result of course being 1 round burn (Move 2).
Step 2: I checked the costs of entering the hexes. The one where the Soviet was requires 16 MPs but the adjacent one just 2 MPs (Move 3 and Move 4).
Step 3: I moved the German unit to finish the poor Soviet unit (Move 5) disregarding penalty cost associated with the battle that took place later on.
In my opinion this is an example of earlier moving unit attacking enemy unit which that only was there much later in the turn. And this is what I mean it is not logical. Trust me guys I have learned some tricks with FITE2 on Battle Stamps. It just requires twice the time than normal but you can quite easily exploit the engines with this. In effect You can "ignore" the costs associated with battles freeing the front units by assaulting with later arriving units.

Is the 16 movement point cost in move 3 because there is too much equipment in the hex? In move 4 there is no equipment in the empty hexes. Furthermore, the Germans pay ZERO for Soviet ZOC and a reduced cost to enter hexes that are still Soviet controlled. So is this really a flaw or is it an intentional design imposed by the scenario designer coupled with an equipment density that adds movement costs for entering an already over packed hex?

19.1.1. Equipment Density
Up to nine units may be grouped in any particular
location, but in many cases this is a bad idea. Each
location has a specific allowed Equipment Density:
50 + 2 x Scenario physical scale2
Scale Allowed Density
2.5km/hex 68
5km/hex 100
10km/hex 250
15km/hex 500
20km/hex 850
25km/hex 1300
50km/hex 5050
Any location with more than the allowed number
of Vehicles or Horse Teams suffers from traffic
jams (increased movement costs to enter). Any
location with more than the allowed number of
“active defender” equipment suffers from increased
losses in the Event of combat.

This is why you need to use a generic scenario with no special considerations for anyone before you can declare something flawed or a big issue. I'm not sure of the density of the hex but you can display that if you want.

I've looked at this and the reason it costs 16 movement points to enter the hex the rbc took place is because of the distance you moved the unit to get to the hex for the rbc. If you had move a closer unit the cost to enter the hex would be only 2 movement points. In other words the unit didn't conduct the rbc until late in the turn. So of course there's a large penalty to be paid for entering the hex the rbc took place in because you couldn't have entered the hex before the rbc took place because the Soviet unit was still there. And again the Germans pay zero for entering a Soviet ZOC, zero for leaving a Soviet ZOC and a reduced cost for entering hexes still controlled by the Soviets.

The BTS worked as designed. It compensated for the time it took the German unit to get to the hex and conduct a rbc. Next time use a closer unit for the rbc if you want to reduce the cost to enter the BTS hex.

But the problem isn't the ZOC. It is the fact that the closer unit can now attack the Soviet even though the Soviet would not have been there until later in the day. This is a problem with ALL igougo games. It isn't a problem with the BTS. It's a problem caused by the imperfect igougo time and space. In TOAW there are many things that also plague other igougo simulations. Scaling of ZOC based on unit size is also something rarely if ever addressed.