Night Fatigue question

[Dog Soldier]

Rick,

First to be sure we are calibrated, I am only testing how the Night Fatigue OR works and not the new night disruption rule which is not yet rolled out in patches to all the PzC games. That new OR is only in the F14 game and one or two recent patches in PzC, IIRC.

I tested taking units out of travel mode during the first of the customary two turn night turns, without any movement from their hex. Then I checked those units the next night turn for fatigue gained.

Small units I used were T-34 tank units in the stock K44 game where there is 10 or less tanks. One of three units with B quality (no fatigue so B morale also) did not accumulate any fatigue with the NF OR on by just expending 1/3 MP to deploy from travel mode.
C morale units fared worse. All accumulated fatigue.

I repeated the tests today. After testing 12 times I only had the one B morale tank unit (nine tanks) fail to accumulate fatigue. this suggests that my original test of one in three units escaping fatigue is actually much more rare.

I did some further tests and determined:

1. Taking a unit out of travel mode during a dusk or day turn immediately preceding a night turn does not accumulate night fatigue.
   
2. Taking a unit out of travel mode on the last night turn will still accumulate night fatigue in the next dawn or day turn after the night tuen in which the unit is deployed from transport.
   
3. Units brought on board as reinforcements do accumulate night fatigue even if not moved after being placed on the board from the reinforcement dialog.
   

The first and second cases are as expected from experience. Even though the night fatigue is assigned to the unit at the beginning of the next turn the game correctly accounts for the turn in which the MP are expended. This can lead to confusing fatigue accumulation for novice players who do not realize how this mechanism works.

The third case was a bit strange to understand as the units were simply placed on map from the reinforcement dialog during a night turn and did not expend any MP to do so. Yet they are treated as having expend MP for the purpose of the night fatigue OR. Since they had to travel from off board to arrive on board, this makes sense, though no MP are deducted from the units to make this movement.

So while it is possible to escape night fatigue by expending MP during a night turn to move from travel mode to deployed mode, it is rare and may not be a function of unit size at all as you suggest, but only a coincidence of many trials over time. The assignment of fatigue is random and certainly not related to unit size. I found small units (>100 men equivalents) receiving up to 25 fatigue points. the same rang held for larger (>100 men equivalents) units.
All this means is small units can receive a disproportionate amount of fatigue during a night turn compared to larger units since size is not a factor in the fatigue point algorithm. Commanders should be cognizant of the additional fatigue when moving smaller units at night.

Dog Soldier