routing towards me

[Phoenix100]

Is this WAD, as they say? The US armoured car company approached my engineers on the bridge and were attacked. They began to rout, towards me.....

I thought this was all fixed, but maybe not.



A few minutes later they were destroyed by my engineers, somewhat predictably.

[wodin]

Wouldn't the best solution for the routing code be that a unit routed back down the patch they came from...as usually that will be behind their lines? I imagine it will cut back on the amount of times a unit routs straight into the enemy. Or even abit of cheating code for routing units where they can see where enemy units are within a certain radius thus they willa void them when routing..

[RockinHarry]

I have that sometimes happen with AI armored units moving ahead of any infantry support. In my latest Veritable test scenario it is small Crocodile or Churchill platoons of 4 AFV and when taking a single loss (25% of ESTAB) they rout instantly and settle into nearest cover, which oftentimes contains some my Panzerfaust wielding para units. The enemy AI surely knew my infantry was there as it was repeatedly engaged before, but I rather suspect the heavily armored Churchills do not see a true "threat" and thus move to where they shouldn´t.

Even worse the rout/rout recovery unit takes usually 4-6 hours in this state and in the mids of enemy positions. In this time my infantry spends whole payloads of Panzerfausts, incl. intermediate resupplies, before the rout recovery unit finally gots destroyed.

I also remember AI infantry routing into a village, that was previously occupied by friendlies. And that case was also away from friendlies and towards enemies. "Cover" appeared to be the attractive point again.

In any case nearest "protective" terrain was obviously prefered, before getting away from enemy units or towards own frontlines.

As Wodin said, I´d also prefer routing units moving the way they came from, no matter if there is cover or not.

Also rout recovery needs to be looked into.

[Phoenix100]

Ditto noticing the 4-6 hours recovery period. For 7 Tigers, for example, that seems absurd. What are they meant to be doing during that time? Getting counselling?

[Arjuna]

Re the time it takes to recover. This simulates that when a unit routs it doesn't do so as a coordinated force. Rather it's every man for himself and elements go in all directions. It takes a long time to get them all back together again. Now for a whole host of reasons (of which processor load is but one) we don't split the unit up and manage these as seperate entities.

Re the direction of routing.There is already code that biasses the rout back along the route. However, this is also affected by enemy firepower along that route. What can happen is that the AI reckons its safer to dive for the nearby covered terrain rather than to expose themselves along the road. I have tweaked this a lot but it's not perfect. I suspect I will be a tweaking this for many iterations to come.

[wodin]

ORIGINAL: phoenix

Ditto noticing the 4-6 hours recovery period. For 7 Tigers, for example, that seems absurd. What are they meant to be doing during that time? Getting counselling?

[:D][:D][:D]

[Arimus]

Dave,

Did you consider just having the unit disperse or evaporate and have it reappear at a base? From what I have read, routed units tend to end up clustered near supply bases and rear HQ's anyways.
That would be preferable to routed units getting hammered till they surrender.
Actually, if the route recovery period represents the time it takes for a dispersed unit to come back together, then what is being fired at? [:)]

[wodin]

Arimus I like your thinking. Though again no way could units rout as often as they do at present in the game as you'd end up with alot of unit shuffling from the base to the frontline...

What would have to happen though is you'd need to be informed that a unit has routed otherwise you may wonder where so and so unit went. Infact their could be a tab that list routed unit's and approx times they will be reformed back at base...though I imagine your looking at a day at least. By the time they all got back and then rested abit to be reformed and sent back out I'd say 24hrs from the time they originally routed.

Obviously the unit would have lost a few men due to getting lost or captured.

The more I think about it the more I like the idea and think it's well within the realms of plausibility

[Arimus]

Actually, I was thinking a unit may actually regain some strength and equipment, depending on the length of time it was out for reorganization.
I'm assuming that some of the casualties a unit suffers are minor or represent MIA that turn up later.

But yeah, I agree that a rout would have to be a ROUT and retreats replacing some of what we see now.

Anyways, it's not my idea. TOAW has evaporating units to represent units that have been over run or routed. BtFB, like TOAW, cannot be expected to track hundreds of unit fragments. This is a nice way to simulate it I think.

[wodin]

I think for game purposes you should have less..remember after routing quite a few men I expect will be keeping low somewhere as they say "shirking". Also it is a form of penalising the unit.

[RockinHarry]

ORIGINAL: Arimus

Actually, I was thinking a unit may actually regain some strength and equipment, depending on the length of time it was out for reorganization.
I'm assuming that some of the casualties a unit suffers are minor or represent MIA that turn up later.

But yeah, I agree that a rout would have to be a ROUT and retreats replacing some of what we see now.

Anyways, it's not my idea. TOAW has evaporating units to represent units that have been over run or routed. BtFB, like TOAW, cannot be expected to track hundreds of unit fragments. This is a nice way to simulate it I think.

I like the evaporation and rally near HQ idea. +1