HQ in the Saddle (HITS) - advice?

[Grotius]

Anyone tried HQ in the Saddle (HITS)? I've read a couple of helpful threads on the subject over at the Norbsoft forums, including this AAR/guide:

http://www.norbsoftdev.net/forum/hits-h ... ostle-farm

I'm curious whether anyone here has any further suggestions.

On a related topic: I can hardly control my troops with Goodyear-blimp views, so I have no idea how in the world I'll handle HITS. I have trouble telling my infantry units apart, for starters. Plus, I always seem to get these weird snake-like formation-changing things, especially when I try to wheel, but sometimes also when I try to shuffle left or right. Any general tips on how to keep your forces from walking backwards, wandering around in snake-like lines, etc?

[Zap]

If you have Gettysburg the 1.61 patch (according to posters here)has been reported to improve the snake like actions.
But if you only have Chancellorsville no patch was made for it.That's my situation. Birds eye view for me is hard to control and slow. So, I wish someone has some comments.

[kkomisarcik]

I only play HITS so this advice comes from that perspective. The largest number of complaints about the game seem to be related to the path units take once they are in battle. This is of the conga line or snake movement of troops. Much of this behavior is due to players bunching their troops too close together. Players have the mistaken idea that if there are a lot of troops in a small area, they have a superior position. Actually, the opposite is true. A brigade takes up a lot of real estate. Take a brigade at the start of the game and click the single line button. After it deploys, you'll see how much space it needs to maneuver and fight. Most players try to cram 2 or even 3 brigades in that space, so it is small wonder that troops spend most of their time meandering around looking for a way to the front line. In the process, they tire themselves out and become very ineffective when they manage to finally make it onto the firing line.

If you want to minimize the frustration of watching your troops move in bizarre patterns and increase the historic realism of a battle, then give your brigades plenty of room just like 19th century generals did. It will not completely eliminate the behavior, but it will greatly diminish it. It is difficult to judge the space needed for a brigade when you are at saddle height. It just takes practice. It is better to give them too much rather than too little space. Also remember that, historically, line formations did not move much once they were up and firing. They would move forward, but not sideways. Try not to micro-manage your regiments. The less time you spend trying to put them in a perfect position, the more time they will spend firing at the enemy.

Hope that helps.

[Grotius]

Thanks for that very helpful reply, MarchingThruGeorgia. I'm sure I've been bunching brigades (and regiments) too close together. I'll try adjusting that. I'm curious: do you use the courier system exclusively when you give orders? What info (if any) do you have displayed on the map? What difficulty level -- Historical?

Zap, I have the Gettysburg anniversary edition, patched to 1.61. I think MarchingThruGeorgia may have identified my problem.

[kkomisarcik]

I play at Custom level with camera height set to 2 feet, (has to be manually set in the ini file), with couriers at brigade level and above. The map has just the eyeball on it. I have printed out a set of the command maps that I have in plastic sleeves. I use water soluble markers to delineate the position of troops in the battle if it is a complicated situation.

I use the order system for battery/brigade and division movement. I use point and click if I want to move an individual gun or regiment. The order system can be used and I even added a few movement commands for regiments to the Courier&Maps mod, but in general it's very difficult move them where you want them. As a rule, I try not to move individual regiments very much. I leave that mostly to the brigade commander. Although I will sometimes pull a tired or shaky regiment off the line, TC it and rest it next to me, behind the fighting. Once it is restored, I turn it loose again to be controlled by the AI.

The real secret to being successful at playing in this style is learning how to control your brigade commanders with the stance settings based on his abilities and style. Again it is a matter of trial and error and a lot of practice.

[Grotius]

Ah, interesting. I'll print out a map or two. That might help.

Another problem I have is absorbing who's who in my OOB. I suppose that comes with practice? Maybe that's another thing that I could print out to have nearby. Do you just know your commanders by heart now?

Edit: I forgot to ask: is there a new "shout" ability in HITS mode? I can give orders without a courier if I'm close enough to the recipient?

[kkomisarcik]

I rarely remember which units are mine at the start of the game. The very first thing I do is go to my OOB and look at the characteristics of all my sub-commanders. That way I will know which ones I can count on for attack or defense or keep in reserve, (usually the poorest ones). Doing that also lets me know how short a rein I need to keep on some of them. If I have a very aggressive commander, I need to give him a stance that won't allow him to advance whenever he likes. That is usually hold or hold at all costs. Then I look at the regiments in each brigade to see what their experience is. That also tells me how what role to place them in. Trying to hold a key position in the line with militia grade troops will probably not turn out well.

I must admit that I do have a fondness for III corps of the AOTP. So much of the time I command either that corps or one of its divisions. I know what I can expect from them. I imagine most players develop a fondness for some particular unit.

Yes, if you are close enough, the order is transmitted instantly. You have to be within a few feet of the recipient for this to happen. So even if a courier was sent out, there would be almost no delay. But the commander you give orders to will most likely send out couriers to at least some of his units that are out of range.

[Grotius]

Thanks for your reply. OK, I'm going to fire up a simple custom scenario and then start by looking at the OOB. I don't remember whether the game pauses when you look at the OOB; I guess I'll find out.

[Grotius]

OK, using courier orders only, I had a successful skirmish in a small sandbox scenario in Kansas, just brigade vs brigade. I forgot to set the difficulty to Historical, but I tried to keep the focus on my General. I er think I had one too many layers of command; ordering my immediate subordinate (presumably a division commander, but now I don't remember) didn't do anything; but sending orders to the brigade commander worked great.

My main question was how to go about creating a reserve. Detach a single regiment? Or Detach the regiment and also Take Command of it? Is one even permitted to Take Command on Historical difficulty?

In the event, I picked my least experienced regiment, detached it from the brigade, and Took Command of it. I then kept it behind the front lines until seeing how things developed. After a bit I let the AI resume control of it, and presently the AI commander marched the reserve force to the front. Fortunately, it was an opportune move; the unit pinned a facing unit, which in turn was flanked by one of my other regiments. I ended up doing quite well, facing down Longstreet.

[Grotius]

I tried my first full-blown HITS scenario: blood in the water. It was a Major Defeat for me, -300 score or so, but it could've been worse! I just had trouble arranging my regiments into an acceptable line. Marching in column, they arrived at the front bunched too close together, and I never recovered. But I was able to issue commands and stuff, and it wasn't all my fault -- Reynolds was killed early, and I got swarmed by Confederates swooping in from the north. Anyway, two more questions:

1. How do I edit the keyboard.csv file to add a hotkey for Order of Battle? How about one for "Me"?
2. Is there any way to turn my commander's head faster? He turns so SLOOOOOOOOOOOWLY.

It was great fun. It felt like being there.

[kkomisarcik]

It sounds as if you did a pretty good job for your first time playing this way. Don't worry about your score. The numbers that determine whether you were victorious or defeated are determined by playing the game in the Goodyear Blimp with instant orders given and most units TC'd. You are now playing at a much higher level than that. I use two criteria for determining victory or defeat. 1. Did I achieve my objective? 2. Do I still have a viable fighting force left? After all, those are the criteria that are used to judge historic battles, not some arbitrary counting system.

If you are fighting a brigade-sized battle, it is better for you to be the brigade commander. That way you have direct control of all the regiments. As a division commander, managing several brigades, I only move individual regiments infrequently. Usually it is after I have sent in my reserve brigade and I am now merely a spectator. When I do take command of a regiment, I usually detach it from the brigade, so the brigade commander doesn't try to interfere. After I have it where I want, I may re-attach it so it doesn't become an orphan when I forget what I have done and ride off to some other crisis on the field. If the regiment is anywhere near the rest of its brigade, the brigadier will usually leave it to do the job it is currently doing, so long as that involves actual firing. I don't TC it, or else it will not respond to new threats that approach. The only time I TC a regiment is when I want to drag it off the firing line and place it near me so it can recover fatigue and morale. I don't detach it, for the brigade commander will often ride to it and add his morale bonus to mine. That speeds up the rallying.

For a reserve brigade, I do sometimes TC the brigade commander, especially if he is near the fighting. But usually I place the reserves well back of the line. There, I usually just give him a 'hold at all costs' stance and he will stay in place.

TO change the camera turning speed, open up the sowgb.ini file. You'll find it in the work folder. Scroll down to [MapPerf] and look for these lines:
CamFwdSpeed=50
CamPanSpeed=50
CamUpSpeed=50
CamTurnSpeed=25

Increase the numbers to speed up the camera movement.

To mod the keyboard.csv file, also in the work folder, just follow the pattern used for the other keys that are already defined. You can either pick an unused key or redefine one that you never use.

For showing the oob, the command is: loadscreen:OOB:-1
For Goto Me I think it is just: goto

[Leffe7]

Hi Grotius

What I have done is add these lines to the keyboard.csv file in the Work directory:

stop,END,stop,,,,,
goto,INSERT,goto,,,,,
WheelLeft,DEL,wheelleft:22.5,,,,,
run,PGUP,run,,,,,
WheelRight,PGDN,wheelright:22.5,,,,,
movefwd:300:0,HOME,movefwd:300:0,,,,,

With this you can use the 6 buttons above your arrows to move your avater to the left/right/advance 300 yards/gallop/stop/center view(=Go To Me).
I find this really helpful in HITS mode when riding through difficult terrain or when close to the enemy. It also prevents you from selecting one of your units when you want to move your avatar.

[Grotius]

Thanks, Leffe7. So "stop" is the command to stop whatever unit is selected? Also, when you added the command for movefwd:300, did you have to remove the shortcut that's bound by default to the number keypad? The numpad is a non-starter for my laptop, so I really do need to bind those keys elsewhere. Incidentally: is there a movebkwd:300:0 command?

MarchingThruGeorgia: Thanks; I have OOB and Me working great now. And with head-rotate set to 75, I can now look around nice and fast! I played my second HITS scenario, this time scenario 6, the corps-level engagement north of Gettysburg. Again my score was negative, but I felt like I did better. I more or less achieved my objective in my sector; unfortunately, my colleague to my right, the 11th Corps, had more trouble (which was partly my fault because I was slow in deploying to their left). I lost about as many casualties as I inflicted. And this time I had no trouble arranging my men in a line. Mostly I let my division commanders do that for me. It was interesting to watch them hold a brigade in reserve and then, eventually, release the reserve.

To both of you guys (or anyone else): is there a way to mod the default cursor (a rifle) so that it's bigger? At high resolution, I often have trouble finding it on the screen. That's one reason I'm so keen on keyboard shortcuts.

[kkomisarcik]

Glad to hear you are getting the hang of things. The Iron Brigade scenario is a good one for HITS play at the brigade level. The Jackson, what-if, scenario is a good one for corps play. They allow good opportunities to practice commanding from the saddle, but are not so fast paced that you are likely to lose control of the battle.

The cursor can be found in the \Base\Graphics\Misc folder. You could modify or replace the original as you like.

[Leffe7]

I assume you would have to delete other lines for the same button. Or just pick a key that isn't used yet.

[Redmarkus5]

ORIGINAL: MarchingThruGeorgia

This is of the conga line or snake movement of troops. Much of this behavior is due to players bunching their troops too close together.

Not in my experience. As illustrated in this thread (tm.asp?m=3185202&mpage=3&key=) the conga line was a problem even for units with no friendly units immediately adjacent to them/to their intended destination, or overlapping them.

It always annoyed me that this issue was blamed on the players when it was so obviously a bug - a common theme in many a game forum. Now it's fixed (kind of proving that it was indeed a bug), but still we the players are held to be responsible for all that went before. There simply should never have been a conga line problem in the first place, no matter how bad we are at marching our sprites. It was a large and obvious issue that should have been corrected as a top priority a long time ago.

[RebBugler]

To be clear, and I'm assuming, the conga line issue had to do with units reforming their lines after taking casualties. This was addressed with the last patch as now units in line won't reform while engaged. They will still reform, conga line effect, when they are out of harms way.

MTG was referring more to pathing I do believe. Units will path better when not bunched up, placing the blame more on the player's shoulders. Still, the AI tends to bunch up at times making the pathing rather disjunctive, and then this behavior reflects a game issue.

[Grotius]

What's the command for leader-only-run? I need that more often than I need to order an entire unit to run.

I took my second crack at the Iron Brigade scenario, on Historical difficulty again, and it went pretty well. I took the victory location at Herbst Woods without opposition, and indeed almost captured Gen. Heth himself. (How does one capture enemy generals, exactly? Just march a regiment over them?) But I positioned the rest of my Brigade south of there, missing the other objective, and almost most of the fight. I guess I aimed too far south when giving my orders to move out. The result was still a defeat, but at least this time I had 400 points. Will try it again tonight or tomorrow!

[Grotius]

I tried once again, this time inflicting about the same number of casualties as I took, but this time failing to hold the objective in Herbst Woods. I'm not quite sure how to win this scenario. The units on my right flank, at McPherson's farm, are outnumbered -- should I be going there, even though my orders are to stay south of the road?

Also, I'm still having trouble spacing my 4 lead regiments (keeping one in reserve). If I use brigade-level orders, maybe that will help -- but is there a way to give an order to the entire brigade minus one (reserve) regiment? Or do I just give the brigade-level order, then give a separate order to the reserve unit, and hope the front-line brigades fill the gap correctly?

[kkomisarcik]

Yes, if you want to leave one regiment as a reserve and move/change formations with the others, you need to detach it.

If you want to accumulate the points necessary, you need to place one regiment and yourself on the objective as quickly as possible and never move until the game is over. That's why I advise to ignore the scoring system. It's artificial. It should be fairly easy to clear the woods and the field next to it, which is your mission. If you want to do more, you can first clear the woods, leave a couple of regiments there to defend it, then take the rest of the brigade to the farm to help out. Note, that you will not accumulate the points needed by doing this, but you will be fighting a great 19th century battle.