Question on "Replans"

Command Ops: Battles From The Bulge takes the highly acclaimed Airborne Assault engine back to the West Front for the crucial engagements during the Ardennes Offensive. Test your command skills in the fiery crucible of Airborne Assault’s “pausable continuous time” uber-realistic game engine. It's up to you to develop the strategy, issue the orders, set the pace, and try to win the laurels of victory in the cold, shadowy Ardennes.
Command Ops: Highway to the Reich brings us to the setting of one of the most epic and controversial battles of World War II: Operation Market-Garden, covering every major engagement along Hell’s Highway, from the surprise capture of Joe’s Bridge by the Irish Guards a week before the offensive to the final battles on “The Island” south of Arnhem.

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Rosseau
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Question on "Replans"

Post by Rosseau »

As I recall, in HttR and COTA if you reattached a unit to its HQ, the HQ had to go through a replan. I assume this has not changed in BftB. What is the effect of this exactly?

Specifically, if you reattach a company to a BN, does the whole regiment have to go back to the drawing board? I can't see a reattachment being so disruptive in real life. Or maybe I am misunderstanding how it works in the game.

I am still getting my head handed to me in HttR. I cannot imagine how BftB will humiliate me when I get up the courage to play it!

Thanks for an incredible series of games.






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henri51
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RE: Question on "Replans"

Post by henri51 »

I asked this question way back when (May 26) and only got a reply from Markshot that one should be careful about giving detaching units in attacks. So I am repeating the questionshere, because it is still unclear to me...[&:]

I would like a clarification on orders delay.

Let us say I have a company detached from a battalion. If I give it the order to reattach, I understand that both the company and the battalion will have to replan, which will introduce a corresponding delay. So if the battalion was in the process of carrying out some orders, it will stop executing the orders, replan and then carry out the new orders? This could be a major pain if the battalion was in the process of carrying out an attack.

Now suppose that the battalion was under AI control, carrying out some orders from a higher HQ, say a division HQ.Then I presume that the battalion will stop carrying out its orders and execute a replan as above. But what will the Division HQ do when one of its battalions suddenly stops to replan? Suppose that the battalion in question was in the process of carrying out an attack in conjunction with another battalion under the same Division HQ? Will the other battalion also stop executing its orders too while it waits for its sister battalion to get organized? And will this also force a replanning of the whole division? If so, this could mean a delay of 2 hours or more before starting to carry out orders, which could be disastrous if the whole division was in the process of executing a complex attack!

I am not sure which it worst:1) The other battalions etc continuing to execute their orders despite one battalion stopping in its tracks and replanning, or 2) the whole division coming to a screeching halt and everyone replans. If the latter is the case, it would mean that reattaching a single platoon to a company could force a replanning of a whole army, if everything but that platoon was under AI control! So which is it? The same question applies to DETACHING a unit, which one is often tempted to do (and which is recommended) to meet unexpected circumstances in the middle of a battle.

So it seems to me that one should be extremely careful about the time and circumstances when one detaches or re-attaches a unit, because it could throw a monkey wrench into the whole apparatus! If fact it would seem to me that whenever one detaches or reattaches a subunit, unless its parent unit is doing absolutely nothing, it is better to also put the parent unit under player control (which will reduce the time delay before it starts to execute its next order since they don't have to go through a higher HQ).And if this is the case, one should detach the parent unit first, and/or reattach the subunit first to reduce the amount of replanning involved.

Now this could get hilarious as one is forced to put more and more units under player control, unil eventually the top HQ gets overloaded - I would rather not think about the consequences of that!

Please tell me I missed something...


Henri
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Fred98
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RE: Question on "Replans"

Post by Fred98 »

If you plan you're attack correctly, each battalion will have the corrent number of companies attached prior to comencing the attack.

If I, as a battallion commander, is suddenly given an extra company in the middle of a battle, I would place the company in reserve. There would be no time to include the company in the attack.

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Rosseau
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RE: Question on "Replans"

Post by Rosseau »

Exactly right, Joe. I hope that's how the game is handling it. It should be pretty easy to test in-game, though. Anyone know for sure?
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PirateJock
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RE: Question on "Replans"

Post by PirateJock »

From p115 of Game Manual ...

Changes that Cause a Replan
Adding units to a force, or taking units away (by issuing orders directly to those units, including them in a new force group, or by reattaching them if they were not an organic subordinate of the force) will cause the force to replan. Changing allow Basing will incur a delay because it will modify the force groups.


So I'm working on that attaching Coy to Bn will cause Reg replan. Haven't confirmed that in-game though.
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Arjuna
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RE: Question on "Replans"

Post by Arjuna »

Yes that is so. Maybe we neeed another option on the order view to initially keep all reatttachments in reserve and not force a replan. When the force replans for whatever reason it could then reallocate those reserve units. ANother one for the Future Directions - Features thread.
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MarkShot
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RE: Question on "Replans"

Post by MarkShot »

Dave,

If you keep adding check boxes, it's going to start becoming like ordering coffee at Starbucks.

I am not so sophisticated ... just give me one McD's supersized attack with an extra side of arty to go.

Thanks.
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Haiku
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RE: Question on "Replans"

Post by Haiku »

ORIGINAL: MarkShot
If you keep adding check boxes, it's going to start becoming like ordering coffee at Starbucks.

The first time I encounter this "replan on reattach" behavior (few years ago with COTA), I was pretty annoyed. But in the end, it's not so terrible. If you don't want the task force to replan, just wait until the job is done, before adding the unit to the group. Still a check box to do so would be nice by removing some micro-management.

Rosseau
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RE: Question on "Replans"

Post by Rosseau »

Haiku's suggestion seems like a good one. Probably not worth getting in the first patch, as there's so much else to do. But I still disagree that in real-life a Regiment would replan an important attack because a lousy company happened to re-attach at that time.

Best to all!
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Mac_MatrixForum
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RE: Question on "Replans"

Post by Mac_MatrixForum »

I think generally, trying to replicate the real-life in detail leads to numerous preferences and options, that must be included in the planning process. Having too many options may confuse or intimidate the player. It does certainly intimidate me, so I don't usually use all those details with aggro, ROF etc. However, sometimes the options are required to come up with precisely the necessary, realistic and believable outcome. And without lots of extra micromanagement. Consider that in traditional wargames, you do the plans in your head at any detail you wish and push the counters as you need to. In effect you get the attached forces joining the assault or not and the replanning is extra load in your head as well as pushing more counters.

Such details as having reattached units cause a replan warrant some thought as to what should happen. Some preferences for the outcome of such decisions by the AI are affected by the doctrine, some by the current situation of the force etc. I think the best possible implementation would be to have the option of forcing reattachments to the reserve or forcing a replan. That is for the player to choose. But in addition there should be an option for the AI commander to make a decent educated guess based on its current situation. The third option gives most players the option to ignore this choice in most situations as well as makes the AI side better.

The decision that needs to be made by the AI is roughly something, that if the force reattached is significant, then maybe indeed it must replan to take advantage of the assets to achieve its current goal. If it's already engaged in an assault and is doing well, it may just use the attachment as extra reserve. I think this isn't necessarily a difficult piece of code and should work in more cases than not. However, I don't know anything how difficult it is to add such details into the decision making process. Well this code happens to be what interests me [:)].
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Arjuna
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RE: Question on "Replans"

Post by Arjuna »

All good stuff. Please bear this in mind. As a general rule the AI should never second guess the Player. By that I mean it should try to not do something the playerwould not expect. The trouble here is that there are cases where you may want to replan and cases were you don't. We opted to replan as the default as this was the safest option given all the cases we could think of. It guaranteed that a reasonable plan was developed for the force as a whole. Now picture this scenario. The Player hits the reattach button for one of his Bns to resubordinate it to its organic Bde HQ. The Bde has been trying to assault through the enemy with just one of its Bns. Now it has a second. Would you be happy then if it just left that second Bn in reserve.

Perhaps, as some have suggested we could have two reattach buttons. One for reattach and replan and one for reattach into reserve.
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Mac_MatrixForum
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RE: Question on "Replans"

Post by Mac_MatrixForum »

What is the current capability of the AI player? Does it detach and reattach and if it does then when does it choose to reattach? As humans we would be able to make use of the two reattach options but what about the AI?

When the game and the AI get more and more complex, indeed it's more difficult to predict all that it does and as a player you will get surprises. It's a natural tendency for the player to see more to an action than there is. A randomly selected good move can be seen as a stroke of genius by the AI though there is no code or good play behind it. On the other hand, following a simple standard procedure may look like an idiotic AI though the principle might be sound in 99% of situations.

As far as I can see the only possible counter to complexity is to increase the transparency of the decision making. When you reattach a unit the game would log what decision it made and depending on your log filters you could see it right away. Also the manual would need to explain the decision making at such points, when it happens etc. This would give vocabulary for the players to reason and talk about the game. Also you could see that well it made the stupid decision because it used a basic sound principle that makes sense but in this case it just was not the right decision.

This might introduce a lot of extra that is not relevant to all players. But I would think that it's also useful in figuring out what the AI does as an implementer and provide a lot of material for discussion. The game will get more complex with every new version so something will eventually have to happen to solve the complexity.
DanOppenheim
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RE: Question on "Replans"

Post by DanOppenheim »

Could the replan not just cover the reattached unit? So the current sub units carry on as before and the HQ decides how to use the reattached unit, e.g. to send it into a hole in the line or to keep it back in reserve.
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henri51
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RE: Question on "Replans"

Post by henri51 »

The simplest solution would be to have no replan delay for reattaching or even detaching a unit. For example, if a battalion is defending and one of its former companies is reattached, the batallion commander in real life could immediately send the company where it is most needed. For detachment, it can be assumed that if a commander can afford to detach a company, he can afford to carry on.

The delay for transfer of the detach or reattach order (say brigade HQ to company HQ) would be maintained, because it still takes time for orders to trickle down. So let us say that the player is playing the Division commander and wishes to detach a company from a battalion. It would take the normaldelay for the order to reach the company, which would then be detached, but then ONLY the battalion would carry out an INSTANTANEOUS replan, the other HQs being unaffected. Of course it would still be possible for the force to decide to replan when it periodically reasses its situation. A threshold could be added so a replan does not take place if the situation has not changed enough from the previous replan.

I understand that this could occasionally lead to unrealistic effects, but this would be a lot less unrealistic than a whole Corps stopping for four hours to replan because a company has been reattached to one of its battalions...[:-]

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Arjuna
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RE: Question on "Replans"

Post by Arjuna »

Henri,

The trouble with your suggestion is that players would then capitilise on it to unrealistically force a replan. It would become a "gamey" ploy. I think it better to work out an acceptable modus operandi here and implement that.
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