EUBanana
Posts: 4552
Joined: 9/30/2003
From: Little England
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quote:
ORIGINAL: erstad
I think you might think the combat result is the cause for the retreat, I don't think that's exactly right. The retreat occurred during an unloading phase that followed the combat phase.
The problem I have with that is, if I didnt order the attack, they wouldn't have reloaded onto the boats, I'm pretty certain.
I think my attacking tripped some sort of 'run away' code - failed attack, disruption high, to the boats! no attack, no run away roll.
I've never seen anything this bad though and I've botched some atoll invasions horribly. I've had a regiment and support land on an atoll outnumbered, suffer 50% casualties in day 1, cling on by a fingernail for a week or two, and then somehow manage to win after relentless bombing/Japs running out of supply/reinforcements. That was a bad situation, alright, but the commander didnt kill his own men at least. 
Maybe if the APs had stuck around and given him the chance to do so he would have.
quote:
Where the combat may have played in is that the 240AV you had unloaded already had a fatigue of 42 (high) and disruption of 99 (very high). These guys were already well on their way to being combat ineffective. Fatigue would have been higher yet after the attack.
Sure, but thats no reason to kill half your own men in a rout when the Japanese are in just the same state.
quote:
Had some of the troops rested a few days (in reserve mode) before trying to attack in their incapable state, results might have been different. Fatigue and disruption are huge factors.
Right, which is why a rout - from what? The Japanese hiding in their bunkers? - makes even less sense. If the Japs came out and inflicted some damage on me then I could understand. The Japs havnt done anything except exist and hide in their bunkers.
quote:
And note it's not really a 1:2. Even with the shock you had only about 1/3 the adjusted AV of the Japanese. And if you figure the shock attack is perhaps a doubling, then you started with 1/6.
Right, because I had disruption 99. So a regiment held off a division for a day despite being badly disrupted themselves. Well done Japs. Why that should result in a precipitious retreat, ordered by the Allied commander on the ground, which killed half their men, is beyond me. The Japs did not force that, the commander decided that.
It is a commander decision, michael already said that the Japanese commanders are stouter than the Allied ones so tend to give up less easily. It's not a combat thing - they've not been driven into the sea - its some sort of dice roll involving aggressiveness and state of troops after a fight presumably. Presumably the code went, ok, they are on a beach partially unloaded, they attacked, and they lost. The commander make a chicken liver roll, failed it, and decided to emergency evac onto the boats. Unfortunately an emergency evac means killing 6000 men. Nothing to do with the Japs driving them into the sea. It was an Allied attack. It's not an atoll, so its not a compulsory attack, they could sit tight. Sit tight or get massacred in an emergency evac? That this is presumably due to the Allies valuing the lives of their men and not wanting to press on against the odds is just more ironic, I mean, the commander has killed far, FAR more people than the Japanese could manage with that poor decision. This decision should be made to save lives, no? Not cause self-annihilation literally against the odds. This situation was not Dunkirk. There were not panzers bearing down on them and men paddling away on planks of wood to get away. Neither is it Tarawa, where is no space for the men at all and if they dont take ground they are stuck in the water. They landed. 24 hours passed with them unmolested. They attacked some bunkers, they were pushed back to the start line. Thats it.
The dude needs firing. I will fire him. In fairness his stats were poor and I should've replaced him in advance. He's a Stopford. Okay, numpties do exist in war. I'll put it down to that. In pixellated war land some time after the war he'll be shot dead by a crazed survivor who'se been wondering why, why, why.
I know weird things happen in AE but a division self immolating itself because its commander is apparently a wuss is one of the best I've seen yet.
As an additional irony I bet if I had ordered the boats to leave with the 41sts heavy equipment and simply not bothered even attempting to unload it, those 6000 men would still be alive and have gone on to take the island, as the numpty commander wouldn't have had the option of running away in the first place. Those 240 AV of infantry were already ashore, not in the process of unloading. It was the guns that were still unloading, thus putting the 41st presumably into the "shock attack happened while still unloading from the beachhead" category, and mayhem then ensued.
< Message edited by EUBanana -- 5/9/2011 5:15:23 PM >
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Ghost Division - 
.. i thought i saw a troops re-embark message at Port Blair... when i reran the cbt replay i got a slightly different version of events....
And presumably because of the Allied 'chicken rule', as apparently the Japanese don't go in for this sort of panicked kill everybody rout order like the Allies do. 
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