Panzer Campaigns - Road Stacking

[BigDuke66]

Hi
From the manuals description it should be obvious how the road stacking works but what I see in the game is a bit different.
I'm fooling around with France 40 and Alt scenarios of Volcano Man, the road stacking here is 350 so I expected to break my battalions down to companies to be within that limit to benefit from the road, but now I see that also a single battalion can move by road and benefit from that road movement but these full battalions are close to 600 men strong.
So I guess what the manual tells is not the whole tale, anyone here can explain how it works?

[ComradeP]

The limit is checked/applied when moving a second unit through a hex with a unit in it, or moving two or more units in the same stack along the road.

The road movement limit is theoretically identical to the max stacking limit (or rather: the largest single unit, as shown in the example below) if there's just 1 unit in a hex, as far as I know.

Similarly, the rail transport capacity is also counted per unit, so a nearly full Panzer regiment in a single unit takes up as much capacity as a howitzer battery.

[Mr Grumpy]

Ok that is interesting I have never noticed that myself, it is easy to test by trying to move the 600 man unit along a road without any other units and then try again with other units on the road, it should then be obvious from the result how the rule works in practise.

[ComradeP]

Though realistic, it would also be rather cumbersome to have to split all units down to max road limit size to move them around. In some cases, that might not even be possible.

I think there being no hard cap on the road stacking limit for single units could be considered an abstraction of the unit also using the road in adjacent hexes, if there are no units there.

As I interpret it, the limitation is designed to limit movement of large formations using the same road to realistic distances per turn and to model traffic jams. When there is just 1 unit in column, there would be no traffic jams or movement limitations in most cases.

[ComradeP]

An example, with the largest single unit above the regular stacking limit I could think of without having to edit the OOB.

Moscow '42, most of 7th Panzer's Panzer Regiment.

Setup: 153 Panzer 38(t)'s in T-mode on a major road in one hex with a single (1) Panzer II on a major road two hexes to the west.

First screenshot: The Panzer II blocks movement along the road and the unit can't enter the hex due to the maximum stacking limit. The stack would have a value of 1540. The limit is 1500.

Second screenshot: the selected decombined unit (company) can move along the road and in and through the hex with the Panzer II as the road limit is 350 men, and the total of the two units is 180 men.

Third screenshot: the Panzer II moved off the road. Both units selected at the same time can't end their movement in the same hex due to the maximum hex stacking limit being 1500, so 30 less than would be needed to fit all the tanks into the hex. Though it looks like they can move into the same hex as displayed by the highlighted reachable hexes, in practice one unit will lag behind 1 hex.

This is what happens for road movement with a stack starting in the same hex: as units move one by one, some units will lag behind if the road stacking limit is lower than the value of the selected units, because they pay regular movement points for the terrain to enter a hex with a road that is "occupied" by another unit.

Fourth screenshot: the combined unit can move along the road normally, ignoring both the maximum road stacking limit and the maximum stacking limit in the destination hex, because both only apply to situations involving more than 1 unit.

[Mr Grumpy]

Thanks for that you do live and learn!

I don't own that many PzC titles and doubt I have seen any single unit that exceeded the maximum stacking limit and if i rack my brain I think there has been a few occasions where a large unit has moved further by road than I expected, but I never thought to question it.

[Volcano Man]

Yes, this is an abstraction to basically restrict road stacking to a single unit, or several small units. It is understood that the column may stretch into neighboring hexes and is intended to control excessive road movements but cut down on annoyance as much as possible.

This is correct. :)

[BigDuke66]

Could you tell how you came up with 350?
I find that a bit problematic as I can't get 2 German infantry companies into one hex on road movement, so leading the companies together to reform a battalion will take some more movement points from the incoming companies as they will have to pay a higher price.

[ComradeP]

The road movement limit is shown in the parameter data dialog. The example shown, 350 road limit and 1500 hex limit, is for Moscow '42. Each game has its own road movement limit and maximum stacking limit.

[BigDuke66]

Yep and France 40 used 350/1400 in Volcanod's Alt scenarios.