EP '14 mechanics/balance

[Nitram Draw]

Otherwise, just moving forward and firing on the enemy for several turns usually causes you to accumulate less fatigue and break the defender sooner. Just sayin' for anyone looking for a tip - excessive assaulting will get your exhausted in no time. ;)

Sheesh just moving up next to an artillery piece with an MG in the hex usually ends my dreams of assault!

[Al]

Otherwise, just moving forward and firing on the enemy for several turns usually causes you to accumulate less fatigue and break the defender sooner. Just sayin' for anyone looking for a tip - excessive assaulting will get your exhausted in no time. ;)

Sheesh just moving up next to an artillery piece with an MG in the hex usually ends my dreams of assault!

No kidding

[Volcano Man]

Yep, two words: draw fire. ;)

I think I hear about this the most -- that someone used a unit to draw off fire for an assault. It happens in all of these games (PzC, MC, FWWC) and it can be explained as harassing fire/probing. But usually the artillery never cooperates and they give you a devastating blast right when you try to assault. Good thing now is that you can usually move that now disrupted unit back, and bring up another infantry battalion and repeat (before the disruption got you stuck). :)

Also I think that if the defender is relying on opportunity fire to break up the attack then they are doing it wrong -- it is time to fall back. I always assume my opportunity fire will do nothing and that the defender must be broken up during your turn.

Then again, if you are playing phased play (MDF on) then good luck. I am certainly not a fan of how different the game plays that way (completely pro-defender).

Again, just saying...

[ComradeP]

The game does play differently to PzC as disrupted units are now good bullet sponges at the front or can be used for "dancing" to attract opportunity fire (they can't lose their movement points during the turn, after all, as they're already disrupted). Fatigue gain may or may not be significant, but at least your other units won't be hit by whatever expended its opportunity fire chances firing at the disrupted unit.

Assaulting and defending can still feel random, but that's something I can live with in this case. It's frustrating if a 10 men result disrupts your attack or defender, but it happens to both sides.

Not sure what you mean in regards to reducing fatigue accumulation to 1? But then again I haven't had much sleep lately.

I was referring to this part of the manual: "Fatigue Accumulation. Fatigue is gained from losses in combat.  The factor used to determine Fatigue accumulation depends on the size of the unit. • For Battalions, the Fatigue accumulation factor is 2. • For Companies and Platoons, the Fatigue accumulation factor is 6 (When 2 Companies are Combined, the factor is 4 and when 3 or more Companies are Combined, the factor is 2). "

Considering that your losses can be...rough if caught by an MG, it can take a day to recover from that and it makes your troops feel somewhat more shaky than their historical counterparts, who could absorb heavy losses and keep going after what in game terms would be a limited amount of rest.

[Volcano Man]

I was referring to this part of the manual: "Fatigue Accumulation. Fatigue is gained from losses in combat.  The factor used to determine Fatigue accumulation depends on the size of the unit. • For Battalions, the Fatigue accumulation factor is 2. • For Companies and Platoons, the Fatigue accumulation factor is 6 (When 2 Companies are Combined, the factor is 4 and when 3 or more Companies are Combined, the factor is 2). "

Considering that your losses can be...rough if caught by an MG, it can take a day to recover from that and it makes your troops feel somewhat more shaky than their historical counterparts, who could absorb heavy losses and keep going after what in game terms would be a limited amount of rest.

Ah, I thought you were referring to something in the PDT. OK, but yeah, thought of that already and it didn't quite work as mentioned (it just made everything more intense than it already is, which would be on the verge of insanity).

I don't feel the same way about fatigue. If you take a good order unit into a fight, it takes quite a bit to put that unit into red fatigue. Red fatigue range is about the area that you would need to rest for a full day to get it back into something useful again and that kind of fatigue doesn't really happen unless you are subjected to extremely effective fire for three or more turns (6+ hours), unless you assault either repeatedly or with heavy losses in which case it seems about right to me.

As I said, the fatigue goes both ways and I think the current accumulation and recovery helps place emphasis on the side with reserves, and helps allow for continuous defensive lines to be broken/shattered.  You could try something small, like +5 recovery on your end, but really I think that if you adjust it then it simply makes things more difficult for the attacker. Of course fatigue accumulation and recovery affects how quickly an offensive will burn out, and how quickly it can resume again, but you figure that any attacker should have local superiority in numbers (higher density of units) in the first place.  This is another thing that helps the Russians early in EP14 too.

[ComradeP]

This might be one of the cases where a decimal is supported by the system, so maybe the value could be 1.5, but I agree that the effect going both ways might limit the advantages it would offer the attacker.

Walking up to a good MG/field gun/infantry stack is - and should be punishing in terms of casualties, it's just the jump fatigue takes (deep into yellow in one turn) that makes it difficult to be around prepared positions. On one hand, that's as it should be, on the other hand it nearly exponentially increases the effect of digging in to even the currently limited -20% trench value.

The Russians then have the added problem of their HQ's not being able to support both resting and advancing units on turns where the advance is greater than 2 hexes, it's one of the areas where their limited command range hurts. You either have to keep the entire brigade around to let several battalions rest, or advance and let the battalions recover much more slowly. With 7 instead of 3 hexes covered in a line by their HQ, German regular brigades don't have the problem to the same extent.

[Nitram Draw]

[quote pid='405339' dateline='1446553060']

Walking up to a good MG/field gun/infantry stack is - and should be punishing in terms of casualties, it's just the jump fatigue takes (deep into yellow in one turn) that makes it difficult to be around prepared positions. On one hand, that's as it should be, on the other hand it nearly exponentially increases the effect of digging in to even the currently limited -20% trench value.

[/quote]
Considering how many of each type, MG and Art, there are it is almost impossible not to advance on them. If you are facing a line of them you are in for it as it is so hard to disrupt entire stacks. One turn can put a Russian regiment out of commission for a day!

[ComradeP]

Or a German regiment, the slightly higher defense value doesn't help much if you're being fired at by large stacks. You can recover from the losses fairly easily as the Germans, but not from the fatigue.

It feels like the removal of combat effectiveness happens too quickly, which is why I was wondering if lowering the fatigue acculumation was considered.

[Nitram Draw]

Or a German regiment, the slightly higher defense value doesn't help much if you're being fired at by large stacks. You can recover from the losses fairly easily as the Germans, but not from the fatigue.

It feels like the removal of combat effectiveness happens too quickly, which is why I was wondering if lowering the fatigue acculumation was considered.

Yes launching an assault across the line that still leaves you with troops in some sort of reasonable order is something that takes a lot of planning, and bit luck. I'm not very good at it but have a blast trying!

[Volcano Man]

This might be one of the cases where a decimal is supported by the system, so maybe the value could be 1.5, but I agree that the effect going both ways might limit the advantages it would offer the attacker.

Well, I am not against a fatigue accumulation value of 1.5, as this might be a safe and acceptable change, while at the same time further separating the series from its PzC roots (which I do look for at every opportunity). That said, I think a value of 1 is too extreme, as it would essentially mean that a unit would suffer up to 300 casualties before getting max fatigue *at worst* but in practice would be more like 500 (because remember, this just establishes the MAXIMUM fatigue accumulated, since it can be anywhere between 0 and X, X being the modifier times the actual casualties).  500 casualties means that a unit would be 50% strength before being exhausted and this is just too extreme to be an average I think.   The user should be encouraged to manage his fatigue, not just throw everything at the enemy in some mindless Mongol rush.

Anyway, that said, this is not something I am in control of since it is a game engine adjustment. But I can see what John thinks about it. Like I said, it seems safe enough, but on the other hand we are also talking about all those hard-to-kill units suffering EVEN LESS fatigue than they do already (guns, MGs, A quality units, etc).

So yeah, it is nice in theory, and ideas like this are easy to come up with, but in practice there are more things to consider.