Needs improvement - reformation of HQ units

[Glenn Saunders]

You can only use these HQ units for gamey purposes like air spotting or trying to seize VP locations.

....and for that matter you can use any unit for gamey purposes. Why couldn't a HQ be used for Spotting Air Mission? But HQ cannot Attack so they can't seize an objective from a unit of a single Gun, Vehicle or Man - so the rule of thumb for this would be to garrison captured Objectives if you are overruning enemy units.

In this case I German lost the game and the few HQs in the russian Rear had not captured any objectives.

I would have like however to continue to use these Corps HQ during the game to attach units to ( that is what sparked my original post ) .

Nothing in the rules of the HQ location to prevent this! Just wait for the Midnight turn

Looking at the map almost at the end of the game it looks a bit odd to see many corps HQ units having reformed on subordinate units wandering around the map.

There were three Corps HQs that I saw and only one had no unit attached to it. Although there was a Division HQ with some units nearby that could be attached to it on the next midnight turn.

I just felt that an HQ was better reforming on its parent HQ rather than on any unit within its remaining organisation.

....and the design is that the unit with the destroyed HQ is taken over by surviving units of the division (or formation) at a location randomly selected but ON a hex with subordinate Units. So a Corps HQ is generated on a combat units form one of the units in the Corps.

I think what happened in the case of this Minsk game is many units were overrun and left in the enemy rear. When the HQ anywhere on the map it was regenerated at a hex where units of that formation was located which is how the game has always worked.

However I also see that an isolated organisation no matter how small may generate an HQ - KG style I suppose

We must be careful how the term ISOLATION is used here - the units that spanned these HQs as far as I can tell were NOT Isolated. There were a few units which were Isolated - that is cut off where they could not trace a line of hexes free of enemy ZOC to a Supply source. The units Michael is referrng to are behind the liines - cut off - but not Isolated and the game has no way to determine which units are on what side of the Lines.

Most of the units and HQs in question were in the rear - behind the action but not marked with the label on the unit Window "ISOLATED"

And the Rules for HQ regeneration says:
"Headquarters units that have been eliminated are eligible to be restored on a subsequent turn. This is automatically determined at the beginning of the player turn and reported in the Command Dialog of the Main Program. The probability that an HQ will be restored is based on the Quality of the unit with higher Quality units having a higher probability. An HQ unit that has been eliminated is eligible to be restored on each player turn following its elimination. However, the HQ does not perform its functions on the first turn it is restored. The HQ unit is restored with a randomly determined strength and is Disrupted on the first turn it is restored."

...nothing about a minimum size of the surviving units or anything. You see units without an HQ are penalized and so regenerating the HQ is an important game function. So it is important to have an HQ and a chain of command or those units without it suffer. If that were the case and units could never pass a command test because HQs were not regenerated, I would expect players would complain.

What we have here is an odd situation where the German Army has been decimated and the game engine is is trying to maintain the HQ structure after the German army of 240000 men or 40000 point has been reduced to 8000 men and 2600 points. So you can see where the game engine has created a situation which is a bit abnormal.

As I said before Glenn and Edward have looked at the file and the game system is functioning normally.

Thank you for clarifying that Michael.

Glenn