Units Breakdown

[Skryabin]

I don't know if someone looking here for sugestions about the future updates, but I got one. Isn't it kind of annoing and unreal when having lat's say four arty units with four tow tracks, you loose two of the tracks and after that it is impossible to move even a part of the battery? It would be nice to brakedown and move at least two guns. Any thoughts?

[Herr Straße Laufer]

That might be cool. If you can do that and have the guns that stay abandoned?
Hook up the remaining guns and take the other crews with them. No commander is going to leave crews on suicide missions?

I'm just not sure that sophisticated enough coding could be done within the game engine.



HSL

[Skryabin]

That might be cool. If you can do that and have the guns that stay abandoned?
Hook up the remaining guns and take the other crews with them. No commander is going to leave crews on suicide missions?

German commander probably not, Ed, but Japanise or Soviet - easely And might be not suiside mission, but just a tactical move.

And not only Artyllery, btw. Imagine, that you can breakedown recon units and send four armored cars in different directions on their suiside missions instade of moving and dieing together. Same with oters: armor, infantry etc... To let the player deside.

I'm just not sure that sophisticated enough coding could be done within the game engine.

Yes, this question to developers.

[Jason Petho]

Sounds like a good reason to keep your trucks out of harms way?

Jason Petho

[PawelM]

I think this would require changes to the game engine. As is this would for instance encourage slitting platoons into smaller units for the purpose of smaller losses when the unit(s) are fired at. If the platoon was considered as few units of 1sp it would favor this over a single units given the way the direct fire works at the moment. For instance a platoon of 5sp could loose 2sp in a single fire action by the enemy unit, but when split in 5 x1sp "subunits" the attaacker would need to select only one target hence only a single SP could be eliminated with one fire action.......

This would need to be addressed at the same time as the proposed change...

Other than that I think it is an interesting idea :)

[TheGrayMouser]

Hmm Steel Panthers 3 (which was platoon scale just like CS) allowed this in a way that satisfied both camps. Basically if a truck platoon lost 50% of its trucks, you were allowed to pick up its "load" , be it artillery tubes, infantry platoon etc, however you could only pick up 50% of the them. The remainder did NOT remain on map as a new sub unit but basically were removed from play.(although the "loss" wasnt counted against you for victory conditions) Pretty good trade off methinks>

[Big Ivan]

Folks,

This goes back to the age ole question of being able to split and recombine units. Splitting is a wonderful thing and recombining even better. Example: 11 Sherman tank strength points 5-5-1 firing at a target with no leader. The attack is resolved 5-5-1 instead of 11 to the target or 5-6 or 5-4-4 to the target.

In CS combat from what I read strength points are everything! Lower SP units get less hits than higher SP units. It is related directly to the number of combat die rolls per attack. In reverse it works to a defenders benefit. Lower SP units seem harder to get hits on than higher SP units.

As a test try a scenario design in 1944 where you give the Soviets full strength point T-34/85 (usually 3 SP's) tanks against German tanks Mk-IV's and Mk-V's at 3 SP each MAXIMUM. Throw out the effect of any leaders. I think you'll find the play a bit different as the Panthers and Mk-V's won't seem as powerful with normal SP's of 4 and/or 5. Of course the range thing gets in the way which always benefits the Germans. So design your scenario around visibility of 3-4.

The same argument goes for towing stuff around, moving and unloading, Platoons. Need to be able to break down easily to the default of 1 not 3-4-5 or 6.

ItB:smoke2:

[Skryabin]

This goes back to the age ole question of being able to split and recombine units.

Yes, Split/Recombine Optional Rule in future major update. Turn it On or OFF as you like. That would be fantastic

[Schwerpunkt75]

This has been mentioned already, but I don't think you can do "Splitting" without addressing the impact on indirect fire. If splitting were possible, players whose units were in danger of being subjected to field artillery fire would be able to split their units into 1-SP elements, giving them MUCH better survivability against indirect fire. Splitting/Recombining is good on paper, but this aspect would have to be addressed first, in order not to totally affect game play.

[Larry Reese]

Let's not get started on the abyssmal indirect fire modeling in the CS. This is probably my biggest problem with the system, as you can walk right through a continuous barrage if you time it right.

My observation is this: higher strength points should equate to more vehicles, or men, or artillery tubes, etc..., firing on the particular target. More shells should equal a higher chance of hitting. Same in reverse. If there are more guys trying to hide behind the same number of trees or buildings, it's going to be easier to hit some of them than if there are fewer.

The problem seems to me, to be if the game engine disobeys these rules for smaller units. I've seen games where, for example, a 1 SP unit is given an artificial boost (because it IS weak) and this generally made the game more interesesting until players figured that out and then would send their entire fleets into combat as individual units instead of a fleet, allowing that little arbitrary bump in effectiveness to incredibly whittle down enemy forces much more than an attack of all those individuals combined would have.

The big payoff in CS, is that, except for area fire weapons (read: indirect artillery) 6 1SP units would be more survivable than 1 6SP unit because the enemy would have to fire and get hits at least 6 times before those 6 1SP guys would all be dead, while there would be a chance that two 3SP hits, or 3 2SP hits would kill the single 6SP platoon. Of course, with the area effect weapons, damage would be increased - a single artillery attack on the 6SP unit, while 6 separate attacks on the 1SP units would likely yield more damage.

Even, if everything was linear, and statistiaclly the additional number of fires did not yield an increased number of hits and damage even with fewer firing SPs, you'd have to (in my opinion) build into the system some kind of incentive for keeping the units together (combined units getting some kind of "leadership" or "effectiveness" bonus or something), or you'd have essentially converted the game to a fire team scale instead of platoon scale game.

Anyway, it's late and I'm not thinking straight...

LR