Matrix Games Forums

In the attached picture, it is the round or duration values average used to compute the remaining time in a turn?

In combat report, we have "delay", "round" and "duration". Round is the current time consumed after summing "previous rounds"+ "delayed round" and current combat "duration"?

see this thread:

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4274372

Also, here are some dated but still helpful articles:


McBride ten tactical rounds
Commentary on Successful Attacks From Daniel McBride


How many TOAW grognards out there have actually had a ten-round turn? How many opt for the easy route and turn the system into a basic all-unit-move-and-then-attack game? Well you are obviously using your Porsche to drive to the corner store, in first gear all the way.

In this article I propose to demonstrate how all-out 10-phase attack turns might be planned for, and made an integral part of your attack strategy. I find myself adopting 3 distinct modes of attack in TOAW:
1) Breakthrough mode (moving all units to their maximum and attacking--I don't want to risk losing any forward movement and one attack will suffice.
2) 50% movement and attack, which usually assures you of a breakthrough phase and a second attack. One sustained attack upon a tough position can ruin this, which leads to
3) Intensive attacks on tough positions.

These must be anticipated and I will use my scenario to be posted soon, Rundstedt's Plan Martin, as an example as I am play testing it daily at this point. In this Bulge variant the initial German assault is far stronger, as was Rundstedt's intention, and German reserves are fed into the battle quickly and not held back as they were historically. Even so, this is no walk-through for the Germans, and in most cases American airborne units can make it into Bastogne if desired. The town has its own supply point and can thus last indefinitely while surrounded. As the German this presents the obvious dilemma: do I go all out to take it, or sprint for the Meuse? We assume here the former and it serves to demonstrate a tough, multi-hex, position. These are obviously places of strategic import, or of such natural defensive characteristics, that we can assume the enemy will go all-out to hold them. Their units will be on "ignore all losses", and this is what will ruin any plans you have for multiple phases in a turn if you choose to attack one of these. And so the idea is that you refrain from doing so until you decide upon an intensive attack turn.

I am suggesting that you anticipate this turn and set it up according to the following criteria:
1) Move up all the units you want to attack and have them echeloned, the second echelon behind the front on a road leading forward if possible to reduce movement costs to engage.
2) Position your HQ's near your units on roads to feed in replacements before the attack at an increased rate. Your units sitting and waiting for the order to attack will also increase their readiness turn by turn.
3) Have all your artillery in place and begin softening up the target hexes for a turn or two.
4) Plan your attack for an AM turn for maximum impact (for half-day turn scenarios such as mine--your attack strength is enhanced on AM turns)

The rest of your front can move and engage as desired during this build-up period; however, you must anticipate "H-Hour" in the sense that it would be better if you had your units elsewhere close up against the enemy and ready to engage without having to move far as you are not going to allow any unit to move more that 10% of its MF that AM turn. Also, and this is important, no attack is to be launched into a hex whose terrain cost to enter exceeds that of your intensive-attack target (yes, you finally have to sit down and figure out exact terrain costs). If a desired movement path requires more than either, forget it. Your priority for that turn is your intensive attack and these units will benefit by sitting it out and recovering supply and readiness in any case. It is not time lost.

In launching the attack you have a number of options. You can start off with a limited attack to feel out the defense, and then escalate it next turn to a regular attack with limited losses, and finally an ignore losses phase if it looks ready to break. You can also go for an all-out assault and mop-up. Keep an eye on your supplies and readiness and pull out units that dip too low, as their losses will be incommensurate with gains--feed in your 2nd echelon assault troops. If you have a number of target hexes, attack the least desirable first to possibly draw off reserves from your primary target.

It is unlikely you will get a 10-phase turn, although I have had it happen (truly a War-gaming epiphany if there is one); however, even a 2-5 phase turn can reduce a series of defensive positions that would take as many normal turns using the move-and-attack mode (1) discussed above. If we are dealing with extensive defenses--i.e. multi-hex locales--then it is imperative that you have fresh reserves to feed into succeeding phases, or even succeeding turns, as you should resist the temptation to just hammer away with depleted, low-readiness troops, or you will be known as the "Butcher of Bastogne" as I came to be known as playing the German in one game. This strategy allows you to take tough positions quicker than usual AND with the chance for reduced casualties if handled properly. Nonetheless, you should anticipate horrific casualties, and this is the beauty of this system in that nothing is guaranteed. You must decide, in advance, if the strategic goals of your larger plan warrant such sacrifice.

Brown ten tactical rounds
Commentary on the Ten Tactical Rounds The Basic Concepts

From Andy Brown

The tactical rounds system is a good way of coordinating combat and movement. Battles take time, represented by tenths of a turn, to resolve. Whilst a battle is being resolved, units not involved in the battle continue to move or to fight their own battles, which also take time.

As a player, you need to appreciate that you must move those units you want to move before resolving any battles. This is because at the end of a battle which takes, for example 30% of the turn to resolve, all friendly units on the map have 30% of their movement allowance deducted if they have not already used it. By the same token, a unit which uses 50% of its movement allowance to join a battle automatically results in that battle taking a minimum of 50% of the turn to resolve and maybe longer according to the amount of resistance the defender puts up.

This means that if you carelessly move that unit to the battle, plan the attack and click "resolve battles" WITHOUT moving any other units, all your other units will automatically have 50% of their movement allowance deducted at the end of the battle. As a player, therefore, you need to discipline yourself to move, THEN fight.
How much time will my attack take? (or: What are those gold squares?)

How do you know how long a battle will take? Check the little gold and silver squares in the "Time Expended" box of the Attack Planning Dialogue.

If you plan your attack and you see 5 gold squares, that means this attack will finish AT LEAST 50% of the way through the turn. It may be longer if the defender is tougher than you expect. In the worst case, the attack could last the rest of the turn and you won't get to move anything again. (If you're worried about this happening, wind your attackers down to "minimize losses" and they should break off if things get sticky. Of course, if you do that, they may break off just as the defenders were about to give way...!).

If some of the squares are silver, it means you've got other battles planned, which are already going to take up that much time. Gold squares mean that the time used is dependent on THIS battle.

If you have half a dozen units starting the turn next to an enemy, their attack will take a minimum of 10%. If you move a seventh unit half its movement allowance to join in the battle, this minimum time shoots up to 50% You can see this by clicking on the unit you moved in the Attack Planning Dialogue to add or remove it from the combat. The line of gold squares expands and contracts accordingly.

The trick, therefore, is to program your battles in strict chronological sequence and to coordinate the movement of any units you want for exploitation etc to these battles. Fight your 10% battles, first, then your 20% battles etc. Problems arise when you try and squeeze too much out of the system and you miss out on a 60% battle because a 30% battle you wanted to get out of the way first went on longer than you thought it would. Exactly how you fight many battles in a turn is a judgement call, which may or may not work out the way you hoped it would.

In trying to guess exactly when your turn is going to end, it's important to note the following extract from page 46 of the manual under the heading "Turnover". (Your turn will end if) "The mean remaining movement allowance of your entire force too small to allow for successful exploitation of you attacks." This means that if you have a large force and are intending to spend the turn moving most of it, you must coordinate this movement with any battles you wish to fight. It's a hassle, but if you want to get the maximum number of battles per turn out of those units that are in contact, it has to be done.

It's hard to know exactly when the "mean remaining movement allowance" of your force becomes "too small to allow for successful exploitation" but basically, this important rule works as follows.

Let's say 10% of your force is in contact and the other 90% are making some bold, Patton like maneuver deep into the enemy's rear. The force in contact is confronted with half a dozen small units that your unscrupulous opponent has deployed one to a hex to slow you down. These units are too big for automatic victory but individually, your contact force can take them in a series of battles, each lasting one tactical turn.

If you move your maneuver force its entire movement allowance before resolving any battles, 90% of your units will end up with zero movement left. After the first battle, therefore, your "mean remaining movement allowance" is going to be pretty close to zero and your turn will probably end with 5 enemy units still intact.

If, however, you initially move the maneuver force, say, only half of its movement allowance, your "mean remaining movement allowance" will be at least 50% and you should get to fight further battles. Once again, if you try to squeeze too many battles out of the system, you may end up wasting a few movement points, especially if an enemy position proves tougher than you thought but, with a bit of practice, you should be able to judge the end of your turn with a fair amount of certainty.
A couple of miscellaneous points...

At present, there is a bug affecting ranged artillery specifically allocated to an attack (i.e. it shows up in the "Support" column on the right hand side of the Attack Planning Dialogue and you dedicate to the attack by clicking on it, rather than just leaving it in general support). Such artillery will keep blasting away at a tough enemy for the rest of the turn, even if the adjacent assaulting units have all broken of their attacks. This can be good, because you can pulverize the enemy with this super artillery, or it can be bad because, if the enemy doesn't retreat or evaporate, you're going to burn up all your turn in this one battle. Norm has promised to fix this bug in the .05 patch. (Ed - it's fixed!)

Finally, I'm not positive about this but I think that, in order for a unit to be eligible to take part in an attack, it must have enough movement left to move into the target hex.

Also see in the manual the discussion on page 81-83.

The articles are a bit dated (from COW or earlier days) but worth reading even after 15?+ years.
The math behind it all is explained also somewhere, but I can't find it ATM.
Will post that when I find it, unless someone else does in the meantime.

edit: here it is

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4274372

thanks a lot. Yes I'm familiar with the concept of time stamp. I have no problems with it.
I would like to confirm my understand on how the information is presented in the reports.

In my example I have rounds 2,2,3,3 so in average 10/4=2.5 so if we round up, the turn will consume 3 rounds after this attack, right?
But does it include the delay the units have when starting an attack? I guess yes?

In screen report, "Round" includes "Delay", so "duration" should always be equal or smaller than "Round", right?

No idea. I just play for fun. In the modern parlance, I think my son would call trying to understand all that "min-maxing"; I'm only just now figuring out how best to use my air units ---

PS: now I think I see what you mean. In your equation there, I think you are missing another factor. The duration of a TURN also is dependent on the average of remaining movement points of ALL units on the map (and of course passing a force check). IOW, length of a turn is not entirely dependent on length of rounds?

I think I said that right. I'm sure someone else more knowledgeable about that can explain it better.

ORIGINAL: fulcrum28

In the attached picture, it is the round or duration values average used to compute the remaining time in a turn?

In combat report, we have "delay", "round" and "duration". Round is the current time consumed after summing "previous rounds"+ "delayed round" and current combat "duration"?

First of all, the first two combats are bombardments. Bombardments aren't used in the timestamp figure (unless only bombardments had been used). So, only the two land combats, which ended on rounds 6 and 5 are used. I don't remember what happens when there is an even number of samples, but I think the 5 will be used as the median. Then a BTS will be placed in the 6 round battle hex.

What was the resulting round of the turn after this?

thank you, Curtis. So you counted round+duration values to get each battle final round? so it is 3+3=6, and 3+2=5, so 6+5=5.5 maybe 5. So 50% time consumed, so we start with the 6th round battle for the remaining time right? I understood time stamps so i am familiar with the TOAW concepts, but in a practical example using the reports data, I was not sure how to count the rounds, because we had "delay", round and duration terminologies... so the reading of my battles was..one battle starts in round 3 and has a duration of 6 so it reaches round 6. the second battle starts in round 3 and takes 2 rounds so reaches round 5. as an average we are in round 5.5 (round down 5), so we start at round 6.

i dont recall the result of this battle, but i will try another one. I have many since im playing D21 !

ORIGINAL: fulcrum28

thank you, Curtis. So you counted round+duration values to get each battle final round? so it is 3+3=6, and 3+2=5, so 6+5=5.5 maybe 5. So 50% time consumed, so we start with the 6th round battle for the remaining time right? I understood time stamps so i am familiar with the TOAW concepts, but in a practical example using the reports data, I was not sure how to count the rounds, because we had "delay", round and duration terminologies... so the reading of my battles was..one battle starts in round 3 and has a duration of 6 so it reaches round 6. the second battle starts in round 3 and takes 2 rounds so reaches round 5. as an average we are in round 5.5 (round down 5), so we start at round 6.

i dont recall the result of this battle, but i will try another one. I have many since im playing D21 !

We don't take an average. We take the median. If there is an even number of combats, the median is not obvious and I don't remember which takes precedence.

The median is the middle score of a distribution. To calculate the median

Arrange your numbers in numerical order.
Count how many numbers you have.
If you have an odd number, divide by 2 and round up to get the position of the median number.
If you have an even number, divide by 2. Go to the number in that position and average it with the number in the next higher position to get the median.