IronDuke_slith
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From: Manchester, UK
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ORIGINAL: IronDuke
But they were mixed because the Germans never really tried to defend the Seine. They blew bridges (ones not already bombed anyway) blocked crossing points with hasty rear guards, fought a few delaying actions but they essentially mingled because the Germans were not actually emplaced behind the river in anything like the required strength to defend it. We would have been able to count the mingling that occured without direct combat rather easily had they been entrenched behind it for it would have been zero unless the Allies had attacked.
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ORIGINAL: Curtis LemayI also listed every river from Normandy to the Rhine. And let's add every river after the Rhine up to the linkup with the Soviets. Even the Rhine only counts on a technicality, since the Germans didn't fall back to it - they fell back to the Westwall, well to the west of the Rhine. And, let's go double or nothing on WWI: Check a map of the Western Front over most of the war - you won't find any river defense lines.
Again you completely and probably wilfully miss the point. If a river is not defended, attacking units can waltz across it without requiring anything in the way of mingling in both real life and in TOAW. The Allies drove across France because the Germans didn't defend any of the rivers, they simply ran after the defeat at Falaise, pausing to merely obstruct or fight rearguards to buy time. Under the mindless logic and uncontexted stuff being put about here, rivers are easy to cross because not a single guy from 11th Armoured got wounded or killed when they crossed the Thames on manouevres in 1943  .
You surely see that arguing about how contested river crossings should work by using uncontested river crossings as examples is doomed to fail?
You're just not getting the fact that context is everything, otherwise the rules you write based on Anzio won't work at Omaha. when I raised this point initially, you correctly pointed out Omaha and Tarawa were defended. Therefore, context is everything, absolutely everything, and nothing less than everything. Why use examples that are out of context?
In current TOAW you can cross an uncontested river by simply driving across. If it is contested, why do we need to simulate intermingling?
As for WWI, show me operational breakthroughs that forced the front to fracture and retreat meaning river defence lines were necessary. They stopped where the manouver ended and until 1918 didn't move very far at all after that.
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Yes, but try the above scenario without rivers and you can see how willfully complicating you're attempting to make it in order to apologise for the current rules.
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I'm not making anything any more complicated than necessary for you to see my point about intermingling. It's been a monumental chore. But, from your reply above (the "Yes"), Perhaps we've finally made some progress.
It has been a bigger chore for myself trying to impose battlefield reality on the discussion. Rivers weren't important, I'm told, rivers were often easily crossed (without context) rivers were not significnant etc etc etc. I've never served and don't need to be told this is not correct, a little reading and understanding is enough.
As a concept intermingling makes sense, but it makes sense in all phases of the battle. Nowhere do we take account of it, therefore it clearly isn't why rivers are as they are, and is a bad reason when stacked up against the downsides.
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Lets take something most people will be familiar with like the Somme. Now, if memory serves, you could get the entire encounter inside one 25Km hex. Now, in any game scale above or around that, the entire British force in TOAW III is going to move as one from its home hex into the German defended hex.
However, in real life, advances as much as a mile or more were made in places, whereas in other parts, the troops didn't get ten yards from their own trenchline.
Now, we don't take account of this within the game one bit. The German defences are a barrier in a hex and you either take the whole hex or none at all. You advance everywhere at a uniform pace or nowhere. The game engine doesn't recognise intermingling in those terrain features (flat dry ground and urban) where it would occur most at any and all scenario hex sizes.
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EXACTLY!! At 25km/hex the Somme offensive is greatly abstracted. The game doesn't specify exactly where in the advance-hex the advancing force is. (Sometimes, it fails to advance, while expelling the defenders, or some of them - representing a partial success that didn't equate to full capture of the hex.)
No, it's not exactly (!!), because within that 25km, there would have been intermingling as some battalions got a mile or two forward and some didn't leave the trenchline. There is absolutely zero intermingling in the game because the game mechanics cannot cope with it. You are using the intermingling argument to apologise for errors in the river crossing mechanism and rules. We can't simulate what you want to simulate because you're either in one hex or another, period.
In other words, you have intermingling in real life in standard terrain which we don't cater for. Why are we catering for it in river hexes to the detriment of so much else.
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you want to interpret the current river rules to suggest it happens automatically in any and all river settings. It isn't consistent and it is't necessary.
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No. That's never been what I've been saying. This entire sub-thread can be traced back to my statement that real world forces wouldn't usually be neatly lined up - each on their own side of the river hexside, at operational scales. You claimed they would be. You seem to have finally gotten it.
They are lined up until one side decides to cross, you must surely see this. If they don't decide to cross, then theres no intermingling, period. Why would I be intermingling with forces on the other bank if I haven't attempted to get across. Why would I be intermingling if the other bank is securely held? It simply makes no sense.
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In contrast, river hexes don't specify where in the hex the occupiers are, exactly. It can represent partial crossing (they have, after all, paid the MP cost to enter the hex). Full crossing of the river isn't modeled until the force moves on beyond the river hex (paying the combat penalty as it does so).
 It just gets worse when you try and explain it. It's a two part affair. you pay a movement penalty entering the hex to simulate getting across the river, but then pay a combat penalty completely separtely trying to get off it. So, you cross, we save up the violence that must have occurred at this point and make you pay it later on. It's a nonsense. If you simply dig in on the river hex, you are classed as having got across as any counterattack gets no defensive benefits.
You're answer. Don't across, no one is forcing you to, which means at the higher levels a whole series of empty 50km wide hexes, and reduced recon capability.
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The death of your current position is the farce that had the British tried to launch the assault across a river into the face of the machine guns and barbed wire at the Somme, your apology for the River game rules would have seen them have some success, because sat on the river hex trying to charge through the withering fire and barbed wire, they would have been treated as if they had intermingled as they did in real life and got into the German defences.
But because they chose to launch it across dry land, they get penalised when the Germans rebuff their assault because nowhere do they make any territorial gains within the hex being attacked. It's bizarre. they start and end in their own hex, not an inch across the 25km front having been deemed to have been taken, unless they cross one of Curtis's super river hexsides first (as if the defences on the Somme weren't bad enough) because doing this sees them classed as having intermingled, got across the river in places and actually had the success they had in real life.
Under this interpretation, every hex should be a river hex because it is the only way to simulate the intermingling of land combat without rivers as well.
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Wow, are you confused!
You seem to have that effect on people
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If the 25km hex the British were attacking out of had been a river hex, then they would have paid the river penalty for the attack. It's that simple. If they advanced, then the river would have been considered fully crossed.
But that wasn't the point and you know it. The point was that in a dry land attack, none of their efforts get rewarded because there is no mingling within the mechanics when they attack. Had they entered a river hex to make the whole thing doubly difficult, they would have been classed as having intermingled under the Lemay riverine warfare mod currently being apologised for. It's a nonsense.
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TOAW deals in absolutes, rather like chess. You're in this hex or that one.
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But exactly where in that hex is not specified.
So? Lets try this one more time.
If you enter a river hex, two separate rules apply.
If you are attacked, you are classed as having got across.
If you attack, you are classed as not having got across.
The same unit, nothing different save the next action. This applies nowhere else in the mechanics and is merely an apology for the mechanics not an explanation.
What do you gain from this assumption of mingling, given you still have to pay a combat penalty to get across if the river is contested. If it isn't contested, then why have any need for intermingling since you can just waltz across as you please.
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Nowehere does it attempt to model intermingling save during combat, but at the end of that combat the two sides are very firmly in separate hexes whatever the result. It is an unwarranted anomaly to graft on this intermingling explanation to river rules in this way.
It simply isn't consistent. You're placing a layer of rules on the river crossings to explain the situation that have no equivalent in other equally needy areas of the game. Rules can't be different like this, right or wrong, they must be consistent. Consistency is everything.
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Again, you're misunderstanding my point. The real world has intermingling, including river crossings. River hexes allow the interpretation of a partial crossing of the river. River hexsides do not. You appear to be writting a book on this issue when, as I've said, it traces back to the simple statement that I bolded above. If you can now, finally, agree to that statement, we can move on.
Absolutely not because you're avoiding the point. The real world does indeed have intermingling, but it is more likely to be in other types of terrain than river hexes, yet we don't do anything about this do we? Try taking a city that occupies an entire hex, you either take it all or don't get so much as a foothold. There is no intention here to simulate mingling in any way.
Finally, in those very historical examples where the two sides were separated by a river (or the (numerous) "exceptions" as you refer to them), your rules fall flat on their backside, period, because no one is getting across without a deliberate river crossing (except in the lemay riverine warfare mod). River hex sides remove this issue by asking Commanders a simple question when they reach a river hex side. Do you want to cross? If you do, you attack, if you don't then you don't.
If you attack across the hexside, you get exactly the same sort of intermingling the game allows with urban and forest hexes (which is zero). If you want to simulate a lightly held opposite bank, you have the RBC rules.
Besides, how can rules "interpret" anything? Rules are black and white, what they simulate is fairly standard. Your "interpretation" is simulating one way when other ways may actually be more prevalent. Interpreting in things like this is a nonsense. River hex sides remove the interpretation because a quick glance at the map tells you which side you are on and what rules apply to you in any and all circumstances.
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Yes, but it is across the river, as I keep stating, without having to even attack.
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No. It is not considered fully across the river until it moves beyond the river hex - paying the river combat penalty.
But why is it paying the combat penalty after it is "interpreted" to have got across?
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The unit is paying the river combat penalty after actually attacking, but getting no defensive bonus even if the attack hasn't taken place. How can this be right? Also, in your model, intermingling is still only going to occur in real life where there is intent to attack across the river. Movement in to the river hex is being deemed as intent regardless of whether it actually is or not, and the whole intermingling edifice essentially falls down when you consider that "intermingling" assumes some people are across and some not, but when counterattacked the programme in your model decides everyone has got across because even those who have not "intermingled sufficiently" to get across the bank end up getting shot at, grenaded and bayoneted as if they had.
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That's pretty incomprehensible. But it seems to be your usual complaint about tactical issues related to crossing the river. I'll just repeat what I've stated before, that neither method addresses all tactical issues. Rivers have both boundary and area properties. River hexsides will not model the area properties.
This is the key point.
Why are those area properties actually required? What on earth do they add to the game?? Having arrived at the river, entered the river hex and been interpreted as across it (in an intermingly fashion), the attacking unit still has to attack across it to get off it. Therefore, why are we considering the unit across the river in places when it doesn't actually get them any benefit or change the game mechanics of crossing in any other way?
All this does is make the unit more vulnerable to counterattack, a clearly unwarranted vulnerability given they may not have attempted to get across in real life at all, and even if they had intermingled they wouldn't have all gotten across, but all are shot at for combat purposes.
So, what does this rule add or even simulate, given however much interminging you want to interpret, the unit is considered whole and on one side or the other of the river barrier in all other circumstances?
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Now, if I've got my names right from the bio refs you gave earlier in this thread, then I appreciate I'm not going to get much of a look in here having just scanned the notes on the database editor in the docs folder and seen who wrote it, but do we really think that the ability to accurately model the (unlikely and unhistorical) success of the Yamato's last mission is more important than getting the rules right about combat river crossings in a game almost exclusively concerned with land combat in a world criss crossed with rivers?????
Did we really suspend work on formations and the supply model so we could instead model the limited availabilty of HVAP amongst American Sherman crews in North West Europe in 1944-45?
I don't want a fight about this, but Database editors are just "nice", what do they really add to the game? To coin your argument before, they add absolutely nothing to existing scenarios and are surely unproven in their ability to change anything overall because the overwhelmingly vast majority of possible equipment was already modelled and in the game beforehand.
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The equipment editor was probably the most heavily demanded item in any wishlist.
Leaving aside "probably" which indicates you don't actually know, was it higher than supply and formation changes (which was the real quesiton - not whether there was any demand for an editor)? I can only repeat, did we really think it was more important to be able to beach the Yamato then switch divisions between Corp HQs and have a vaguely realistic supply model?
Where is the poll? Shall we start one?
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And you are incorrect about not affecting existing scenarios. There were a huge number of ACOW scenarios in existence that already used BioEd modified equipment.
I don't doubt they affected, I just doubt whether they made much effect and certainly doubt whether they made more of an effect than supply and formation amendments would have done. I also wonder at the logic of diluting the core values of the game. As I said, I've seen enough threads where people who lacked reading and evidence never-the-less waxed lyrical about euipment, deployment and doctrine. The equipment editor would not have been denied them.
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Implementing the equipment editor feature immediately made all those scenarios (some of them among the best) available for TOAW III.
Arguable because I don't know that the "best" scenarios have ever been agreed upon. Mine would include work by Burns, McBride and the FITE crew.
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You're wrong about its impact as well. It's a very powerful tool with almost unlimited uses. For example, CFNA benefited greatly via adding recon to lots of equipment.
But why did you need to add lots of recon ability to units which presumably were not deemed to have required it in any other scenarios? This is using equipment amendments to (I would hazard) cover for other rule change requirements. Fix the problem, don't compensate for the effect.
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Ultimately, this is irrelevant anyway. You're arguing on grounds of area intermingling and such like. This argument about importance you can deploy if you accept the area intermingling stuff is not a good enough argument, but if you're going to spend posts arguing about area intermingling, I'm surely going to respond.
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My argument from the start (and you can check) has been that it is not cut-and-dried which way works better - hexside rivers or river hexes. Neither models all the features of rivers perfectly, but, the larger the scale, the better river hexes do, and the worse river hexsides do. There is no assurance that rivers will be better modeled as hexsides. You want to focus on one single tactical consideration and ignore all others.
I disagree, as stated above, at higher levels, a player's not wanting to pay unfair defensive penalties leaves hundreds of square kilometres empty. Where is this historical?
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On the other hand, we can be assured that coding hexside rivers will be a huge task. We can also be assured that no existing scenario's map has river hexsides. The benefits will be vanishingly small.
the benefits will be to model river warfare correctly in a simulation about land warfare, where rivers are one of the most important geographical considerations. If this is vanishingly small, then it proves that we don't share a common definition of "small" (or vanishingly) for that matter.
We are, however, able to render the American Pacific fleet blind and impotent by beaching the Yamato...
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