Forum > Theater of Operations: World at War
Counterattack at Belle Fontaine
choppinlt:
--- Quote from: Christian Knudsen on June 20, 2017, 12:10:24 AM ---The bad news is that the Germans took 8 CVP in turn 1. This means that in order to not have to withdraw immediately, I have to make an impetus dr of 3 or less in order to raise my CVP limit to 10 CVP. I managed to do this, so the scenario will continue. Should I take another 2 CVP, I will have to decide whether to withdraw, or attempt to press the attack and raise my persistence level again.
Now one thing we are currently playing with is not including armour in the persistence equation. If we do this, the Germans drop to 45 CVP at start, and their cautious threshold drops to 2 CVP. The impetus roll still needs to be made either way in this case, because of the squad I lost to the KIA.
Thoughts? While this is to a degree realistic, and will stop units from evaporating very very quickly in TO, I'm not convinced that it makes for fun play in the tactical resolution. I think we might up the percentage levels - infantry casualties (in ASL) can be recovered in TO immediately after the battle, and TO can have vehicles come back pretty quickly depending on the maintenance level and capability of the units in question. We want the tactical battles to be fun and somewhat decisive, but we don't want them to be too decisive, and kill off whole units. Bit of a dialectic there that we need to explore further.
Let me know what you think.
--- End quote ---
CK, I agree with you 100% and for the exact same reasons you mentioned. Nothing more anti-climactic than a Turn 1 withdrawal! BTW, i like what you did by having the impetus roll! :thumbsup Anyway, the question becomes how should this be handled? I think there a number of satisfactory ways it could be accomplished, but the way I see it is that there are 3 basic choices:
#1) Leave it be... you could take how it plays out exactly. Keep in mind that there is no reason you couldn't continue to play a tactical battle out for a few more turns for pleasure, but the final results were determined on Turn 1 in this case;
#2) Allow exaggerated casualty thresholds for both sides to allow for a higher casualty tolerance. However the % of casualties sustained would be adjusted back when transitioning back to TO;
#3) Normalize results. If battle results fall within a certain range then no changes would be needed, otherwise results can be normalized to more acceptable parameters. The basic parameters being % casualties sustained for each side, distance of advance, and battle duration.
The way I see it, they rach have their pluses and minuses. Thoughts?
Christian Knudsen:
We have stopped halfway through the American turn 2, but will pick it back up again tomorrow or the next day. The American arty has been unbelievably lucky, and I've lost another StuG and 1.5 squads in this turn to American OBA.
So now my losses are at 17 CVP, or 15.6% - 2 AFV, and 2.5 squads. This is enough to force me to either withdraw or try to push it to determined persistence at the beginning of my turn 3. If I succeed, I could continue with another 3 CVP casualties, at which point I would have to roll for impetus every turn to keep going. Seems a bit much for a limited spoiling attack.
I am leaning toward adjusting the persistence percentages upward a bit for ASL (so your option #2), and then adding a modifier for a good ELR (an ASL morale mechanism, if you recall. This is rolled for at engagement start, and is influenced by unit morale and cohesion in TO). This is largely because I am including a lazarus mechanism in the reporting stage, whereby an ASL infantry casualty has about a 33% chance of not being a TO casualty, in order to deal with the squad level "resolution" of ASL, and the fact that "eliminated" in ASL terms does not necessarily mean MIA/WIA/KIA.
So I think in T3 I will have to withdraw, which should take 2-3 turns, and I will report it as it happened in terms of results.
We will see what we end up with, and next time I will see what happens if I up the persistence a bit. I am thinking of going from 4/9/18 for attackers to 6/12/24, with a bonus for ELR of 4 or 5, and a penalty for 0-2. This will end up with high losses, but the lazarus mechanism should correct it closer to the TO values, provided one does not lose too many vehicles.
I'm a little leery of "normalizing". Why play the scenario if you are just going to plug in results based, I assume, on some sort of "victory level"? Perhaps I am misunderstanding it, but it seems like it takes away the incentive for playing the engagement out.
The other option, which I think many will take, is to do away with the persistence mechanism altogether. This will have a big effect on TO, but that may be part of the game...
Asid:
This is great :popcorn
Cougar11:
Just a quick thought about the casualty treated for withdraw. I think this might warrant multiple battles, in order to weed out the extremes prior to adjusting. Even though the great American artillery should be massive lol, it probably will not occur like this every time. It would be interesting to see this battle played out a few times to get some metrics.
Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk
A Canadian Cat:
Great discussion. The way I see it there is a conflict between the way we play tactical level games (fight to the bitter end) and the way that operational and RL are frequently played (make sure casulties are minimized). Finding the balance is clearly going to be important. I think toning down the tactical battle player's first instinct to fight to the bitter end would be a good thing. We should be disengaging and withdrawing much more then we do. On the other hand what you just experienced regarding on turn one the Germans experience enough casualties to cause a withdrawal does not lead to a satisfactory experience. I'm am saying that guidelines should be in place for casualty limits.
On the one hand what you experienced - first turn forced withdrawal of the Germans - happened two or three times out of a campaign where there were 20 tactical battles that would be OK really. Another angle that could be considered is to have a feature built into TO that suggests when a battle would or would not be a good candidate for a tactical level game to be used for resolution. For example if there is a large attacking force and disorganized defenders the outcome is probably pretty clear and might not lead to an interesting tactical battle. Note I am not saying prevent a tactical game being used I'm saying TO could be programmed to recognize which engagements are more likely to lead to interesting tactical game resolutions.
I have a question: earlier you said "Persistence is an optional mechanic that we are trying out" is that an actual ASL rule you are using?
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