Getting an overview of reinforcements

[CheerfullyInsane]

Planning for any battle rather relies on knowing what forces you have available.

So far I've mainly played the Western Front campaigns, since I'm far more knowledgeable about them.
And here reinforcements aren't that big of a deal. Unit-count is fairly low, and the map-sizes are manageable as well.

Eastern Front is considerably different. Smolensk, for example, starts with 5 (IIRC) German divisions on-map, everything else comes as reinforcements over the course of what, 3 weeks?
And while there is (obviously) the Scheduled dialog, it lists every single sub-formation individually, making it nigh impossible (or at least very tedious) to figure out when and where divisions arrive.

So is there an easier way to get a rough idea of what arrives where and when?

[ComradeP]

Not that I'm aware of.

The program has some clear limitations, being 1990's technology. Having said that, I don't mind having to scroll through the "scheduled" dialog as it's functional with one exception.

In most cases, the divisional unit name is shown so you know roughly where a division will appear without checking individual entries. At least in more recent titles, the reinforcement shown usually consist of multiple units.

The exception being that the scheduled window doesn't always show arrivals chronologically. For example: units coming into the map through a strategy decision will tend to end up at the bottom of the list, regardless of arrival turn/time.

[jonnymacbrown]

Planning for any battle rather relies on knowing what forces you have available.

So far I've mainly played the Western Front campaigns, since I'm far more knowledgeable about them.
And here reinforcements aren't that big of a deal. Unit-count is fairly low, and the map-sizes are manageable as well.

Eastern Front is considerably different. Smolensk, for example, starts with 5 (IIRC) German divisions on-map, everything else comes as reinforcements over the course of what, 3 weeks?
And while there is (obviously) the Scheduled dialog, it lists every single sub-formation individually, making it nigh impossible (or at least very tedious) to figure out when and where divisions arrive.

So is there an easier way to get a rough idea of what arrives where and when?

If you click on the scheduled unit it will show you where on the map it arrives and when. This is one feature that never bothers me. jonny

[Liebchen]

Planning for any battle rather relies on knowing what forces you have available.

So far I've mainly played the Western Front campaigns, since I'm far more knowledgeable about them.
And here reinforcements aren't that big of a deal. Unit-count is fairly low, and the map-sizes are manageable as well.

Eastern Front is considerably different. Smolensk, for example, starts with 5 (IIRC) German divisions on-map, everything else comes as reinforcements over the course of what, 3 weeks?
And while there is (obviously) the Scheduled dialog, it lists every single sub-formation individually, making it nigh impossible (or at least very tedious) to figure out when and where divisions arrive.

So is there an easier way to get a rough idea of what arrives where and when?

When I've played campaigns, I've printed out maps and drawn on them, and reviewed the reinforcement menu to hand-write a list of formations.

[CheerfullyInsane]

When I've played campaigns, I've printed out maps and drawn on them, and reviewed the reinforcement menu to hand-write a list of formations.

Yeah, well that would require desk-space of which I have none.
(Nor a printer, for that matter.)

Ah well, I've found my own system using spreadsheets to get an overview.
Just a little annoying, that's all.

[Plain Ian]

When I've played campaigns, I've printed out maps and drawn on them, and reviewed the reinforcement menu to hand-write a list of formations.

Yeah, well that would require desk-space of which I have none.
(Nor a printer, for that matter.)

Ah well, I've found my own system using spreadsheets to get an overview.
Just a little annoying, that's all.

Two ways of getting the reinforcements schedule out of PzC. First way is easy-ish and I guess people must get fed up of me saying this............

1. Download a free copy of Screenpresso and use its screencopy function. Depending on the size or number of lines shown in the Reinforcement Schedule you should be able to capture and display the whole lot as one big .png file. 

eg Here's the entire German reinforcement schedule for #16-03 Wacht



If you don't want it in picture format then buy the software and the full version will allow you to extract text from capture which you can save as an excel file. I don't have the full version so I've never tried this.

[Plain Ian]

When I've played campaigns, I've printed out maps and drawn on them, and reviewed the reinforcement menu to hand-write a list of formations.

Yeah, well that would require desk-space of which I have none.
(Nor a printer, for that matter.)

Ah well, I've found my own system using spreadsheets to get an overview.
Just a little annoying, that's all.

Next way is very difficult and I've never managed it because I haven't spent much time trying to do it. The reinforcement schedule is actually in the .scn file. The .scn file tells you how and in what condition the units arrive in. However the units are listed by an assigned unit ID number.



So here on the 17th December on turn 1 we have 4 units ID 33726/33730/33731/33732 arriving.

To find out what these units are you need to look in the relevant OOB file.



So in fact these units are the von der Hydte units. 

Now if you could import both files into spreadsheets, tidy them up and use a lookup then you could create a table of the reinforcements by comparing both spreadsheets. Even better a person who was skilled in Visual basic could manage it. 

A lot of work when the game does it for you as a display, but if you want some form of print out then this a long winded way.

By the way I'm not 100% sure of everything displayed in the .scn file.

[CheerfullyInsane]

Hmmm.....
Should in theory be possible to export the .scn into a CSV-sheet, and then modify it from there.
Not sure it's worth the hassle though.

Merging screenshots is actually a pretty sleek solution.
Thank you very much. :)

[ComradeP]

I checked a few settings combinations and I'm not sure if there's a way to display the percentage chance of arrival, without displaying enemy reinforcements as well.

Any kind of FOW seems to remove/obscure both the enemy arrivals and the arrival chance of friendly reinforcements. Setting the side you don't want to see to automatic AI doesn't make a difference to the scheduled dialog and automatic FOW AI obscures arrival chance just like hotseat and regular PBEM with FOW.

[Plain Ian]

Hmmm.....
Should in theory be possible to export the .scn into a CSV-sheet, and then modify it from there.
Not sure it's worth the hassle though.

Merging screenshots is actually a pretty sleek solution.
Thank you very much. :)

If you can open up the scn file in Excel then you should be able to do this.

Insert a column B. Put in a formula like A and copy this down. Add filters and filter just the blanks in column A. 

You should get a list of reinforcement dates/times with units by ID. There a few factors (?) which I'm still working out what they are. 

Of course you still need to import the oob file, tidy it up and align all the unit ID's and then do a lookup to find out what the unit ID's are.



Things would have dead easy if the scn file had everything on one line and the oob file was also a bit more easier to import.

I think this should have sent everyone to sleep........