Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: Silvanski

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: jmlima

Drop me your email by PM and I'll send you pdf version.

You're able to convert Word to PDF? If so, your services may be required - for King & Country (for King, read Ralph; for Country, read TOAW).

FYI The word program in the free Open Office can also create PDF's

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

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ORIGINAL: jmlima

Nothing received though...

First time I sent it to your 'e-mail.' This time I used the actual 'pm' button.

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ORIGINAL: Silvanski
FYI The word program in the free Open Office can also create PDF's

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: jmlima

Drop me your email by PM and I'll send you pdf version.

You're able to convert Word to PDF? If so, your services may be required - for King & Country (for King, read Ralph; for Country, read TOAW).

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ORIGINAL: Panama

"5.2.5 And if Ratio < 0.1, then further chance the attack will be treated as no more than a bombardment – with no artillery bonus, no defender supply cost, and counterbattery fire enabled. In this case, if the assault was supported, then the ground assault doesn’t even take place."

Reading this it seems to say it will be possible for the defender to fire artillery without using ammo? Is this correct or am I misunderstanding something?

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: Panama

"5.2.5 And if Ratio < 0.1, then further chance the attack will be treated as no more than a bombardment – with no artillery bonus, no defender supply cost, and counterbattery fire enabled. In this case, if the assault was supported, then the ground assault doesn’t even take place."

Reading this it seems to say it will be possible for the defender to fire artillery without using ammo? Is this correct or am I misunderstanding something?

The attack would be converted into a bombardment and would function just like a bombardment works now: There would be no ground assault - rather, the attacker's directly assigned supporting artillery would just bombard the defender. The defender would not pay supply unless it was a ranged unit - then it may fire counterbattery at the bombarding attackers. If so, it would pay the same 10 supply as counterbattery costs now.

Now, if the attack didn't have any directly assigned supporting artillery, it can't be converted into a bombardment, so it gets treated a little differently. The assault still takes place but, because it is so small and weak, the defender still pays no supply costs.

Remember, the purpose of this feature is to make the use of ant unit assaults useless.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay


Now, if the attack didn't have any directly assigned supporting artillery, it can't be converted into a bombardment

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ORIGINAL: Sekadegas

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay


Now, if the attack didn't have any directly assigned supporting artillery, it can't be converted into a bombardment

What about range 1 artillery? Usually it shouldn't be used in direct support.

Or most probably I'm not getting what you meant at all...

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: Sekadegas

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay


Now, if the attack didn't have any directly assigned supporting artillery, it can't be converted into a bombardment

What about range 1 artillery? Usually it shouldn't be used in direct support.

Or most probably I'm not getting what you meant at all...

Range 1 artillery now bombards instead of assaults (assuming it really consists of mostly artillery). So, it figures into the above the same as artillery directly assigned at other ranges.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: Sekadegas

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay


Now, if the attack didn't have any directly assigned supporting artillery, it can't be converted into a bombardment

What about range 1 artillery? Usually it shouldn't be used in direct support.

Or most probably I'm not getting what you meant at all...

Range 1 artillery now bombards instead of assaults (assuming it really consists of mostly artillery). So, it figures into the above the same as artillery directly assigned at other ranges.

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

What happens if you use range two (or longer) artillery to attack an adjacent unit?

The situation was admittedly unusual, but in the account of the 1942 Phillippine campaign I read, the heavily-American officered artillery often not only bombarded, but literally led counterattacks. It was the only way to get the less heavily-American officered Filipino infantry to go.

Point is, the artillery is definitely attacking, not bombarding.

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ORIGINAL: golden delicious

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

What happens if you use range two (or longer) artillery to attack an adjacent unit?

The situation was admittedly unusual, but in the account of the 1942 Phillippine campaign I read, the heavily-American officered artillery often not only bombarded, but literally led counterattacks. It was the only way to get the less heavily-American officered Filipino infantry to go.

Point is, the artillery is definitely attacking, not bombarding.

I would suggest in this case, the unit should have a generous helping of light rifle squads. This should "stiffen" the unit in a realistic fashion- and hopefully avoid triggering the automatic bombard in the case you're describing.

Anyway, definitely better than not having the rule. As it is, my Russians can't paste the enemy with masses of artillery before an offensive if the map scale is 20km/hex.

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

What happens if you use range two (or longer) artillery to attack an adjacent unit?

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The situation was admittedly unusual, but in the account of the 1942 Phillippine campaign I read, the heavily-American officered artillery often not only bombarded, but literally led counterattacks. It was the only way to get the less heavily-American officered Filipino infantry to go.

Point is, the artillery is definitely attacking, not bombarding.

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

Maybe there's something here I haven't considered, but...

I was mapping Eastern Anatolia, and getting mildly annoyed because, on the one hand, rivers cost movement points in OPART, but on the other hand, in reality, river valleys are usually the main avenues of movement -- even when there aren't roads.

Of course, generally, what costs movement isn't moving along the river, but crossing the river.

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Wouldn't it work better overall if the movement penalty was charged for exiting the river hex rather than entering it?  Pros, cons, and special cases of course, but it seems to me that this would still exact the cost for crossing the river without exacting a penalty for moving along it.

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

And while I'm on the subject...

How about treating wadi and river in a similar way? They do, after all, pose similar military problems -- yet one benefits from being on the wadi if one is the defender, while in the case of rivers, one benefits if the attacker is on the river.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

Maybe there's something here I haven't considered, but...

I was mapping Eastern Anatolia, and getting mildly annoyed because, on the one hand, rivers cost movement points in OPART, but on the other hand, in reality, river valleys are usually the main avenues of movement -- even when there aren't roads.

Of course, generally, what costs movement isn't moving along the river, but crossing the river.

I don't see how moving along a river should be as cost free as moving along an open, flat plain. The river meanders, it has side tributaries, it cuts out gorges that may even need tunneling, etc. Think of the difficulty of putting in a road through a mountain gorge vs. through Kansas. The real reason the river is the avenue of movement in those cases isn't because it's so easy to move along the valley, but because it's so difficult or impossible to move by any other path. That needs to be effected by judicious use of alpine, escarpments, etc.

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Wouldn't it work better overall if the movement penalty was charged for exiting the river hex rather than entering it?  Pros, cons, and special cases of course, but it seems to me that this would still exact the cost for crossing the river without exacting a penalty for moving along it.

That, in and of itself, wouldn't accomplish anything. The cost of moving along the valley would be the same. Only if the game handled all the permutations of how the river hexes could be configured and associated together could what you want be effected. And that would be a huge task. It would even have to consider which side of the river the unit was moving on - the side with the branch or the side without.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

And while I'm on the subject...

How about treating wadi and river in a similar way? They do, after all, pose similar military problems -- yet one benefits from being on the wadi if one is the defender, while in the case of rivers, one benefits if the attacker is on the river.

The wadi functions like a trench. The river functions like a barrier. Nevertheless, see item 2.2 in the Wishlist.

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

The thing is, the comparison usually isn't with Kansas. The fact remains: while the route of travel in real life is more often right along the river than not, in OPART that river constitutes an added barrier at every hex.

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I didn't make it clear what I was proposing. There wouldn't be any cost for entering a river hex, or for leaving a river hex for another river hex; only for leaving the river hex for a non-river hex. It seems to me that this still imposes a cost for crossing the river without imposing one for moving along it.

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...however, yeah, the branches do pose a problem. In fact, that's actually a pretty good counterargument.

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

The wadi functions like a trench. The river functions like a barrier. Nevertheless, see item 2.2 in the Wishlist.

This merely restates my point. Either treatment would be valid; using both at once creates incongruities.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

The wadi functions like a trench. The river functions like a barrier. Nevertheless, see item 2.2 in the Wishlist.

This merely restates my point. Either treatment would be valid; using both at once creates incongruities.

Maybe I wasn't clear. I meant that in real life, the wadi functions like a trench.

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So it should be modeled like a trench for defense. The river doesn't function like a trench in real life (unless you have a unit of frogmen). It functions like a barrier in real life. So it needs to be modeled differently - depending upon where the unit is supposed to be within the river hex. What I suggested in item 2.2 was that we might infer the unit's position from the context of how it got there.

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ORIGINAL: Abnormalmind

Don't shoot the messenger

Perhaps, sometime in the future, rivers could be moved to the spine of the hex instead of running through the hex. I know, major code change. The game could query the type of map to apply one set of functions and calls, and different functions and calls if a new spine-river map is used.

I don't think that spine-rivers and hex-rivers should be comingled, rather just one or the other.

I'm sure there are many pros and cons to hex-rivers, but I've always thought that spine-rivers were the way to go. Perhaps, just tossing out coding ideas, spine rivers could be an overlay.

Time to duck and run like a ninja.

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ORIGINAL: ralphtrick

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ORIGINAL: Abnormalmind

Don't shoot the messenger

Perhaps, sometime in the future, rivers could be moved to the spine of the hex instead of running through the hex. I know, major code change. The game could query the type of map to apply one set of functions and calls, and different functions and calls if a new spine-river map is used.

I don't think that spine-rivers and hex-rivers should be comingled, rather just one or the other.

I'm sure there are many pros and cons to hex-rivers, but I've always thought that spine-rivers were the way to go. Perhaps, just tossing out coding ideas, spine rivers could be an overlay.

Time to duck and run like a ninja.

Ninjas don't run, they attack!

There's code in there for hex-side features like escarpments, so I don't think that it's an extreme effort to add in spine-rivers too into the main code. I'm not sure whether it needs to be an either or or whether they could co-exist but couldn't touch each other without adding a lot more graphics and code than it's probably worth. Riverine units probably couldn't travel on spine rivers initially.

The major problem would be modifying the editor. The editor is more complicated than it should be, and I've tried very hard not to modify it, so I have no idea how long adding it into the editor would take.

Ralph

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

One could tell the computer that the 'river' is a double-sided escarpement and add tiles. Obviously, designers would run into problems if they attempted to include both old-style and new-style rivers in a scenario...but they can just control themselves if they want the hex-side rivers.

In fact, and sometimes, I already do use double-sided escarpments to represent mountain streams. Visually, it sucks, but otherwise, it's often the best available way to represent the situation.

However, this does little to address the phenomenon that I noticed -- that in real life, the river valley tends to provide the best route, but in OPART-land, one wants to stay at lest 2.5-50 km away from that water...not at all the same thing.

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ORIGINAL: Panama

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

One could tell the computer that the 'river' is a double-sided escarpement and add tiles. Obviously, designers would run into problems if they attempted to include both old-style and new-style rivers in a scenario...but they can just control themselves if they want the hex-side rivers.

In fact, and sometimes, I already do use double-sided escarpments to represent mountain streams. Visually, it sucks, but otherwise, it's often the best available way to represent the situation.

However, this does little to address the phenomenon that I noticed -- that in real life, the river valley tends to provide the best route, but in OPART-land, one wants to stay at lest 2.5-50 km away from that water...not at all the same thing.

There are alot of rivers that could use escarpments on either or both sides. They don't need to be in mountains for that. The Missouri where I live has tall bluffs on either side of a wide valley. Escarpments could model that easily. No way anything but infantry could get up either side without a cut or road. No one seems to do it though.