12 shot wonders

[Pack Rat]

Just ran into anotherr unit that had more then twelve shots to shoot at my oncoming units. It isn't the first, I know why the system is allowing it but gawds there really should be some kind of limit. Maybe twice the shots it has set to go at the beginning of the turn, maybe twice its fire control, something. It was friggen swiss cheese and kept on firing. I admire the heroism that appears in the game it's very cool. But how will the new features coming in version 5 work if you can't get into the same hex with them. If it was only one or even two times I see this, that would be fine, but geeeze ain't nobody that good.

PR

[Tankhead]

Are you playing with limited ammo off and historical off???

Tankhead

------------------
Rick Cloutier tankhead@tankheadcentral.com
Coordinator: Tankhead's SPWAW Resources
http://www.tankheadcentral.com

[Pack Rat]

nope

[ruxius]

I understand you..
I like the idea that units have an op-fire but sometimes it seems a single unit can face every enemy unit is coming , even if she is heavy outnumbered...maybe there should be a random upper bound to limit op-fire round per turn..
However it's not so simple because you gain the same benefit when defending yourself (especially in AA-fire )and in all cases this causes the enemy to lower its ammo...

have you tried to make fire all of your units in sight only one shot before a second one ? this sometimes scatters enemy fire while its suppression will at least prevent her to fire at you ..

[Pack Rat]

Originally posted by ruxius:
have you tried to make fire all of your units in sight only one shot before a second one ? this sometimes scatters enemy fire while its suppression will at least prevent her to fire at you ..

If I'm following you correctly, you're saying shot from one unit and then switch to another and then another? This keeps the to hit percent low because the enemy is switching targets? Depends, if I see the percent chance start to rise to the higher levels I switch units firing.

In this case I came at the greyhound with 2 or 3 tanks (PZIVh's), 2 PSW-233's and a couple of infantry, the infantry couldn't get close to the enemy due to fire. The greyhound was immoblized at some point and was hit with other less effective shots. I don't mind that the unit survived, but that inspite of all the shots fired at it it always had more than one round to shoot at what ever was coming at it. The first go round it must have fired 3 or more shoots with the first PZIV to attck it and at least 2 shoots for every other unit that attacked.

Now before anyone jumps my bones saying I'm crying about the Germans being underpowered or the like. I'd like to say it isn't the first time I've seen a unit (the Greyhound) pass all its morale checks. It is just as likely it has happened for my side in a game. Where I think this hurts the game is in the ability for infantry to get close for the assault. You carefuly suppress the unit with others so you can get your closer units in for the kill (or attempt) only to have the enemy roar back to life as though nothing has happened. Most times I would say the sytem works and the return fire isn't way out of line, but there are these "wonder" moments.

Pack Rat

[ruxius]

Originally posted by Pack Rat:

1) If I'm following you correctly, you're saying shot from one unit and then switch to another and then another? This keeps the to hit percent low because the enemy is switching targets? Depends, if I see the percent chance start to rise to the higher levels I switch units firing.


2) Where I think this hurts the game is in the ability for infantry to get close for the assault. You carefuly suppress the unit with others so you can get your closer units in for the kill (or attempt) only to have the enemy roar back to life as though nothing has happened. Most times I would say the sytem works and the return fire isn't way out of line, but there are these "wonder" moments.

Pack Rat

1) Yes , correctly followed..in addition you also avoid excessive suppression and damage against a single unit of yours...but I did not understand what you mean with the next phrase...I am sorry but I am not english..so will you try to explain it again so I can answer to you ? exactly what do you have to check for cycling firing from your units ?

2) Definitively approved...that was my usual way to assault enemy's tanks in SP1..a repeated multiple fire from more units that gets the enemy pinned for the final close assault of infantry...this was the best way in the late years of war to face soviet tanks..with low battle points I trusted in infantry..

[Don]

Recent experience in mega-campaign testing has shown that "limited ammo" must be on, or strange things will happen. I would try that, and then see if other things need to be done.

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Don "Sapper" Llewellyn, Coordinator
SPWAW Tactical Training Center
http://www.nwbattalion.com/spwawttc/ttcmain.html
EMAIL: egcwman@mindspring.com

[Pack Rat]

Originally posted by ruxius:
1exactly what do you have to check for cycling firing from your units ?

..

As a unit fires at you the read out shows "thier" chance to hit you. As I continue to fire I watch this number. When it gets to the point I feel unsafe for the next shot I switch firing units. More shoots from one unit, better chance to hit and if I don't need to use another unit I've saved the other unit for other things. It's a gamble on my part, sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't.

PR

[Pack Rat]

Originally posted by Don:
Recent experience in mega-campaign testing has shown that "limited ammo" must be on, or strange things will happen. I would try that, and then see if other things need to be done.

Yeah I love the limited ammo feature and always use it. So I can only assume it's the morale check being passed a large number of times. I just don't undersatnd why the main gun still had that many rounds to fire in one turn.

PR

[ruxius]

Ok thank you for explanation...that's right..I play with lowest delay in displaying messages so I didn't look at it..but it seems you know how to manage the situation...I too love limited ammo, never played without this feature ! As Mr.Don wrote that seemed to be some sort of a bug...

[Paul Vebber]

To clarify - With limited ammo off that means there is unlimited ammo -ie nothing ever runs out of ammo. With REDUCED ammo on, then units start with 10-30% or so less ammo than the OOB designates. The button cycles between 3 alternatives, Limited Ammo OFF, Limited ammo ON and Reduced ammo ON.

We are reviewing some potention inconsistencies in the "special opfire" routine...we will let you know.

BUt the basic thing to remember is that each turn represents 2-3 minutes and most tanks could fire 6-8 rounds per minute so 10-20+ shots are potentially available and becasue of the "time warp" of IGO-UGO play, you can't always think of things as happening strictly sequentially.


[This message has been edited by Paul Vebber (edited March 10, 2001).]

[Mike Rothery]

Originally posted by Pack Rat:
In this case I came at the greyhound with 2 or 3 tanks (PZIVh's), 2 PSW-233's and a couple of infantry, the infantry couldn't get close to the enemy due to fire. The greyhound was immoblized at some point and was hit with other less effective shots. I don't mind that the unit survived, but that inspite of all the shots fired at it it always had more than one round to shoot at what ever was coming at it. The first go round it must have fired 3 or more shoots with the first PZIV to attck it and at least 2 shoots for every other unit that attacked.

Pack Rat

As the owner of that unit, which died the next turn, and had the crew shot up by a vindictive Pack rat, I thought they fought valiantly to hold of the hoards.....

Mike R

[Pack Rat]

Yes Mike it was your valiant Greyhound. It fought with extreme gallantry. Always to be appriceated no matter what side they fight for. They tied up the top of the hill which was needed to try and help control the rest of your onslaught. I am in deep trouble. If I could only instill that type of fight in my units. <sigh>

PR

[Venger]

Originally posted by Paul Vebber:
BUt the basic thing to remember is that each turn represents 2-3 minutes and most tanks could fire 6-8 rounds per minute so 10-20+ shots are potentially available and becasue of the "time warp" of IGO-UGO play, you can't always think of things as happening strictly sequentially.

The problem with this supposition is that you are allowing time to compress for one unit but not other units - a Panther on a hill can swing and shoot all 12 units I move into sight. But I cannot move all 12 units simultaneously. It's a serial result in what should be a parallel move. How you change this is a diificult proposition, but to allow a unit 12 shots of opportunity fire ignores the brilliant military tactic, the "bum rush". I can shoot 1000 people one at a time, but I cannot shoot them all at once...

Before special opfire, people could bum rush a unit to overrun it. This may have sucked for the defender, but it was absolutely true to life. A Tiger would never try and stand up to 10 M4a3e8's that poured from a treeline, but it would happily play whack-a-mole if they came one by one, which the game engine forces...

In reality, the Tiger should see 10 tanks emerge, take her shot, and take 9 or 10 shots of return fire - in other words eat an APCR round in the mouth. But the game engine forces the Tiger to see just one enemy tank, fire, then see another enemy tank, fire, lather, rinse, repeat...

I'm for ditching special op fire. It's horribly unrealistic and gives an inordinate advantage to anyone standing still, which is not neccessarily what occurs in real life...

Venger
P.S. Time to start a thread on this methinks...unless it's already been done, pardon me if so...

Venger

[Paul Vebber]

You have the problem exactly backwards Venger! If you move 10 T-34s one at a time, a few hexs at a time things work as they should and you describe - that Tiger shoots and 10 rounds come back.

But since you can "warp time" and have each T-34 move its full turn's movement SEPERATELY, if you don't have a special OpFire case, then you end up where one or two tanks can be used to "soak off" all the Tigers fire - where in reality now the turn should be over. But because you move each unit in a completely asynchronous way, The Russian has 8 T-34s that can waltz up completely unscathed to the Tiger.

Special Opfire creates the effect of moving the 10 tanks "a couple hexes at a time" and exposing all of them to fire, even if you move them one at a time. It ensures that you are never certain whether the defender is a "sitting duck" or not, as should be the case.

Doing away with it is what is "horribly unrealistic" and its addition has forced players to engage in much more realisitc tactics to suppress an enemy with fire before rushing it rather than using cheap "sacrificial lambs" to make the unit use up its know amount of OPfire.

That said - As I indicated there seems to be a problem in some cases with how much of this special opfire occurs, but believe me if you have ever played without it against someone adept at "soaking off" it becomes the height of "gamey" play.

[Pack Rat]

Originally posted by Paul Vebber:


Doing away with it is what is "horribly unrealistic" and its addition has forced players to engage in much more realisitc tactics to suppress an enemy with fire before rushing it rather than using cheap "sacrificial lambs" to make the unit use up its know amount of OPfire.

That said - As I indicated there seems to be a problem in some cases with how much of this special opfire occurs, but believe me if you have ever played without it against someone adept at "soaking off" it becomes the height of "gamey" play.

Yep couldn't agree more. To get rid of the special opt fire would be a bad thing. I'm guilty of trying to soak off a targets fire or pin them down for the bum rush. However in defense of my "gamey" habit, I do draw the line at using cannon fodder trucks or the like. What I do use to soak it off is important stuff to me. The routine is a good thing, makes life interesting on the field. I can't ask for anything more than have you look at it. Hope it's just a small bug that can be fixed easliy.

[Venger]

Originally posted by Paul Vebber:
You have the problem exactly backwards Venger!

The problem is the 12 shot wonder, that problem is exactly as stated.

If you move 10 T-34s one at a time, a few hexs at a time things work as they should and you describe - that Tiger shoots and 10 rounds come back.

That Tiger shoots 10 times, in which time it only makes sense that the advancing tanks could shoot 10 times EACH.

But since you can "warp time" and have each T-34 move its full turn's movement SEPERATELY, if you don't have a special OpFire case, then you end up where one or two tanks can be used to "soak off" all the Tigers fire - where in reality now the turn should be over.

The turn should be over - for those units that moved. Soaking off is perfectly legitimate strategy AS LONG AS the defender has opfire deny ability, so a sniper can't soak off tank rounds unless the defender wants to. Having a pair of Sherman's soak the entire opfire rate of a Tiger is EXACTLY what occurred and should be expected in battle.

Take 10 Shermans (76) and 1 Tiger. If the Shermans advance on the Tiger, we should expect, given medium range, the Tiger to pick off a couple Sherman's at most, because as he exercise's opfire, the advancing Shermans should be exercising advance fire. Tiger takes a shot, hit's a Sherman, 9 shots come in return, maybe he lasts another turn to shoot, but is being outshot 10 to 1.

But in the current game mechanics, you cannot move them in unison. So a coordinated advance is piecemeal. What special opfire does is rather than allow a couple units to soak off the Tiger's opfire (two targets is all he got in the above scenario), he get's 10 one-on-one confrontations, and usually with a first shot advantage. Above, if the Tiger managed to shoot 9 of the 10 tanks, tank 10 would have had 9 first shot chances at the Tiger before expecting return fire. But now, each tank is one-on-one, advancers being at a disadvantage. That blows.

The right way to do it would be...well, the a combo of current and former policies - the defender can selectively opfire from a finite pool of shots (with maybe a special bonus shot pool, no more than 25% it's normal fire rate). This allows the Tiger to ignore a .30 cal Jeep and reserve his shots for armored opponents. He can get some shots off in defense, but he's extremely unlikely to fend off a coordinated assault.

But because you move each unit in a completely asynchronous way, The Russian has 8 T-34s that can waltz up completely unscathed to the Tiger.

Well yeah, that's about the way it ought to go. If the oncoming tank gets 4 shots, why should the defender get 20? The math works out at the end because the likely outcome is maybe a couple dead Sherman's (or T-34's) and a dead Tiger. But what we get more often than not is a landscape littered with whack-a-moled tanks, tanks that should have had attacked with 10-1 odds but instead fought 10 1-1 battles with a first shot disadvantage.

Special Opfire creates the effect of moving the 10 tanks "a couple hexes at a time" and exposing all of them to fire, even if you move them one at a time. It ensures that you are never certain whether the defender is a "sitting duck" or not, as should be the case.

But it's singular effect is multiplying the firepower of any unit into the battlefield equivalent of an Aegis cruiser.

Doing away with it is what is "horribly unrealistic" and its addition has forced players to engage in much more realisitc tactics to suppress an enemy with fire before rushing it rather than using cheap "sacrificial lambs" to make the unit use up its know amount of OPfire.

If the attacker is cheap, then the defender should select 'N' for opfire.

That said - As I indicated there seems to be a problem in some cases with how much of this special opfire occurs, but believe me if you have ever played without it against someone adept at "soaking off" it becomes the height of "gamey" play.[/B]

I can imagine that someone who sends two man squads against a Tiger that has to shoot back until it's opfire is gone then drives a crappy Sherman 75 up to it for a point blank shot is putting up a real punk game. But look, if I want to send 5 2 man crews and a Sherman in a coordinated attack against a Tiger, guess what - in real life, no more Tiger. Failure to provide proper infantry and fire support for a Tiger is not solved by giving the Tiger a Phalanx CIWS.

Venger

[Major Ed]

There were 1 or 2 board games that tried to address this aspect but it increased the record keeping tremendously.

During an "Orders Phase" of the turn you had to write orders for each unit, i.e. advance to coord x,y, hold, shoot or overwatch.

Then both sides revealed their orders (a la Diplomacy)

The "Combat Phase" was then divided into "impulses". The number of impulses was the number of movement points of unit with the highest movement allowance. You then referred to chart to determine when a unit could do somehting (i.e. move or shoot).

It really slowed things down and you still had the problem of not being able to adapt to the changing situation, once orders were given they had to be carried out to the letter, no changes allowed.

In the world of computer programming, unless you design something into the system to begin with it's really hard to go back later and do it then. We all seem to have grow up in turn based games and know the inaccuracies they impose.

It may be that the conditions for special op fire need to be looked at or, as I'm told quite often - "Man, you got some really bad die rolls."

[Randy Stead]

Whew! Quite a thread here with good arguments for both sides. It almost makes me want to go out and get Combat Mission: Overlord, the game where both sides plot movement one turn at a time but execute simultaneously. I've seen that game in play, but it seems to come down to so much micro-management that it's hard to keep an overall perspective. Not knocking that game for those who like it, just saying that it's not for me.

I do enjoy that there is some special opp-fire, but it does seem to get riduculous at times. When this was first introduced to WAW I had an enemy tank surrounded by about seven of my own and it returned shot for shot an unbelievable number of times. I actually lost count. On the other hand, the cheap tactic of the bum's rush was totally unsatisfactory. Let's just hope that this can somehow be resolved in a fair way.

[Paul Vebber]

Well, you state the solution for the 12 shot wonder is a 0 shot idiot, I'm saying the solution is not in throwing out special opfire, but fixing the flaw that makes it occur somewhat too often.

But what is too often? In an IGO-UGO game the "TURN" is the combination of BOTH player turns, so the rate of fire of a unit should be based on what happens in both player turns. Each full turn is meant to represent 2-3 minutes so there nothing wrong in theory with a unit firing 12- or 18 or even more times. THe question is how to determine when the unit gets to fire its shots.

Apart from the "asynchronous" problem where each unit gets to move its full movement before the next unit moves, you have the problem that the enemy is "frozen" in time during the enemy turn, so if you assume that you get a large majority of your shots in YOUR turn, you could massacre enemy units in sight because you would have 12 or 18 shots and he could not move out of the way.

So we nominally give the player a small fraction of the of "his shots" in his turn, when the enemy is "frozen" and the rest, potentially - if the enemy is aggressive and closes with him - to fire when triggered to do so by an enemy giving him the opportunity to engage.

Pure rate of fire does not determine the number of "possible engagements per turn". It limits it certainly, but that is in the neghborhood of 12 or 18 shots for a medium tank in 2-3 minutes - so that should not be the issue. What determines number of engagements is enemy cooperation in allowing you a target for all those possible shots.

You can have an ROF of 100rpm, but you get no engagements if the enemy is hiding.

So the trick is - don't penalize the "non-phasing player" too much just because he is stuck in the "end of turn time warp". So limit the number of "player controlled shots in that circumstance. The assumption being that the enemy isn't really frozen and isn't really dumb enough to just sit there and let you take pot shots at them. But becaus of the system you have to let the player get some in.

Now in the other guys turn if he is going to present you a target rich environment, then you should have the opportunity to take advantage of it! WW2 tanks could not hit worth a darn from the move and would short halt to fire (why you lose MPS for shooting) so a stationary WW2 defender DOES have a significant advantage over a moving one.

The anomoly you cite that the Tiger gets more shots than it should is simply the correllary to the 10 moving tanks potentially getting more than 2-3 minute worth of movement if they each rush up individually. It violates our sensibility about time running linearly, but no more so than allowing 10 tanks to take 2 minutes worth of movent and start after the guy next to him stopped! That is the fallacy of the soak off, you can't orchestrate it in the given timeframe. Especailly idf you use infantry as the intial "rush". In reality the tanks and infantry would have to move up together proportionally and you would be left with a platoon of infantry threatening to move 'one more hex" and assault you if you engage the tanks, because it would be clear whether they were attacking you or not.

Special opfire is triggered randomly as a function of experience, so an experienced Tank commander is assumed to "sniff out" your soak off and take appropriate action, a lousy commander may well sit still for it. Fight veteran troops and you will find it difficult to out smart them with soak offs, isn't that what you want?

Your 10 shermans against a Tiger is a perfect example - move 1 sherman closer closer, you hold your fire until it moves right up behind you and parks on your 6 becasue you know if you fire, then the otheres will try the same thing. SO you shoot it and kill it at one hex, dead, the next one trys, same thing, and the next one - miss and your 4th shot hits, 3 dead shermans, and now the 4th comes up and sits on your 6 and wham, lets say it takes two of them to get you - thats 5. OK not so bad...

But hears the rub, those other 5 Shermans now are back at the start of their turn, with the big exception that no Tiger is there! And there is a decent chance if the US player got lucky it might have only taken 4 and only 2 got killed! So instead of teh swarm of ten coming at the Tiger, it turned out ot be only 5...and the those other shermans can pull the same thing on another Tiger knowing the results of what transpired.

Now that is a common gripe about IGO-UGO games, and a valid one. But using techniques like special opfire you can at least introduce some uncertainty that the rush of Shermans may fial, or may take 6 or 8 of the 10 tanks and you may lose 5 or 6 of them.

Certainly 2 tigers facing 10 Shermans across open ground, would not die alone...but I;f seen it happen without special opfire! (especially with "flying monkey" engineers loaded on the tanks...)