Night Time is the right time for sleep? Are you kidding??

[HirooOnoda]

Now aside from the MC games where one side is encouraged to fight at night, NATO with its TI advantage, in the PC games I never get to rest my troops as my opponents always insist on fighting just as hard in the night as they do in the day.

I'm not talking about random patrolling attacks, but full-fledged fighting.

If Im not mistaken even on the Eastern front Ivan was remiss to engage in night-time attacks. The Americans were loath to even patrol at night, let alone fight!

Opinions?

[Dirk Gross]

I think in shorter scenarios, like 2-3 days (20-30 turns), there's not much of a disincentive to fight all night. But, for campaign games covering many days to over a week, you'll find it beneficial to withdraw damaged and fatigued formations for rest and refit. If you keep pushing on offense in the long battles, you'll become so ineffective that your attacks will stall and be ripe for a counter-attack.

[Volcano Man]

I guess it depends on who you play. If your enemy is fighting at night then it must be because they can afford to do so. I generally rest all my units at night, but it depends on the situation. A perfect example is Bulge '44 where the Germans cannot afford to rest given the time constraints placed upon them by the scenario.

[Volcano Man]

Dirk Gross brings up a good point. I think that in these shorter scenarios, the main reason why you don't rest your units is because most of these scenarios begin with all units at 0 fatigue. This is not true with all scenarios since some do begin with varying levels of fatigue applied, but I think that most scenarios are designed (even if they are D+X into the campaign!) with full strength and full fatigue, simply because the designer may not have the time or want to expend the effort to go through and apply losses and fatigue to all units.

[Dog Soldier]

I think some of the shorter scenarios that start later in the campaign have units with less than full strength when compared to the CG.

Still it would be interesting to see a later in the CG scenario with fatigue levels. Just how to set such levels would be problematic and not a function of time and effort. So many variables to juggle....

Dog Soldier

[Al]

The Night Fatigue rule should always be used. Just my opinion.:soap:

[Mr Grumpy]

I think you cannot expect players to rest at night in a scenario with 40 or less moves, scenarios often have tight time limits to meet the victory conditions and so to stop at night is not the right option.

I have always felt the fatigue rules always work best in the longer games when you have to rest your troops, not that all my opponents have taken any notice of their climbing fatigue levels and fought until their army fell apart. Another aspect is that i am sure that some of them were unaware of the penalty of night fighting, having not read the rules all the way through!

Scenarios during a campaign where units start at 0 fatigue and 100% are not very accurate but as VM said how do you as a designer know what these levels should be? EA42 is a good title in this respect, many scenarios do have fatigued units at the start.

[Marquo]

Scenarios during a campaign where units start at 0 fatigue and 100% are not very accurate but as VM said how do you as a designer know what these levels should be?

However, it is a relative situation. If most of my units have A/B morale, whereas my opponent is C/D, then night movement and combat is a good thing; his army will fall apart at E/F much quicker than mine at C/D...of course he does not have to move all his units, and neither do I...so these games are amoung the best ever. :soap:

[HirooOnoda]

Marquo,

But the reality is that at night in WW2 combat became rather static.

Not in these games. It is always full-speed ahead 24/7.

I'm just venting here, but it does detract from reality and that does bother me.

[Engelbrekt]

Maybe the fatigue penalty for night activity should be higher? And at the same time the reward for resting could be better, triple fatigue recovery instead of double.