Matrix Games Forums

While the manual fails to explain how order delay is determined, I think it's safe to say that it greatly depends on the type of movement order? In my experience, the base order delays for fresh units seem to correspond to:

10 min MOVE HASTY
20 min ASSAULT
30 min MOVE DELIBERATE

These values will probably be further modified by unit status (readiness/morale), being already on the move (roughly -5 min?), being under fire (+50%, whatever the base of that 50% is...?), being dug-in when ordered to move (+5 min), and HQ status (malus for being out of command range of directly superior HQ, unless Recce unit; the manual also mentions that the readiness of the HQ might have an effect).

While the "delete first waypoint to cut order delay"-exploit seems to be gone in this new iteration of the game, you can now retroactively change the movement type of individual waypoints. So, e.g. you could plan "move hasty" orders everywhere in order to keep your order delay at a minimum and then retroactively change your orders to "move deliberate" or "assault". In my tests, the order delay was not updated.

Also, dragging around waypoints does not induce any order delay, which can also be exploited.

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First off, we're looking at this. And there is a bit of history to this class of issue (conversations from before I was on the team, back in the RS Era, circa 2015).

History: Back then, Waypoint editing was restricted to moving the location or changing the delay. The challenge was trying t determine whether the change was "originating" at local HQ or higher. If higher, then a delay should be applied. But there are plenty of tie where minor adjustments come from the immediate commander and there should be no delay ("push further left!"). Our analysis was it was pretty much a non-problem. Waypoint delay changes just take no time to execute. While location changes might be used in a gamey fashion, we had no complaints about that happening. And, it really did make it easier and more realistic in Players doing a Movement to Contact or Attack for March. So we left it as -s at the time.

So SS introduces the notion of different Orders at each Waypoint. Why??? It is to accelerate a mounted attack. In RS, you could Assault across the map (which the I did a lot of) and when you made contact be at 50% Readiness due to fatigue. Or you could Move Hasty most of the way, and be good on Readiness, the give an Assault Order. But, you had a lot of delay, from waiting for your next Command Phase. The tempo was really off, both for human and AI players. The simplest User Interface solution was to just keep initial order definition the same, but allow for changing movement type at each Waypoint. What we missed was the most planning intensive (meaning Order Delay) part isn't the initial Order but something else.

Like I said, internal discussions ongoing and a change is forthcoming.