HMSWarspite
Posts: 1401
Joined: 4/13/2002
From: Bristol, UK
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Moebius40
Not a step back! This meant, for both the Russians and the Germans, defending the position at any cost. Unfortunately it is not possible to issue such an order in WITE. It would be very useful to have the possibility to graduate the tenacity of the defense in this game, as in TOAOW. Implementing this option in WITE2 doesn't seem like a too complicated job to me. In my opinion it would add an important factor of realism to this wonderful game.
You need to consider that only a small proportion of "no retreat" decisions were actually followed when under actual assault. The difference between holding at any cost and falling back is only usually one of hours or a day at most, and the retreat is only 10 miles unless routed (negligible at this scale). Bastogne, for example was held by fully functional combat units that happened to be surrounded, not by broken units determined to die where they stood. 6th Army fought while it could but then surrendered. The decision not to try and break out is purely in the players hands. You can (as history) stay where you are and wait to die if you think tying up the besiegers is worth it (or the break out would be futile)
The majority of the bad decisions in RL about retreating that made a big difference were to shorten lines, avoid salients, abandon cities to avoid encirclement etc. All these are in the players hands. Thinking that the combat routines are where this would need to be enacted is very much only the tip of the iceberg. Bare in mind that a combat in WITE(2) is fighting on a 10 mile scale for several days. Whilst Hitler would intervene at such a scale even he couldn't be intervening in every regimental battle.
In this game, "no retreat" is what happens when a Front launches week one of an offensive and does a lot of damage but bounces off the prepared defences: as a player, by all means don't fall back. Wait for their reserves to attack next week, or choose to fall back on your supply lines a few hexes, giving a week of few attacks, lengthening their supply lines and shortening your own, at the expense of leaving the fortified hexes and giving up ground. "No retreat" is leaving the divisions in the city and putting them into the city fort rather than pulling back to avoid encirclement. It is responding to the partial penetration of your front by not evacuating the salient just formed, and instead attacking the shoulders of the breakthrough.
Units only fall back when beaten in game. In RL even the most fanatical Soviets or Germans couldn't hold when divisional HQ is hightailing it to avoid a roving tank column, or surrounded and dying in place. They could not hold when regiment has only 100 men left capable of action, the rest exhausted, scattered, hiding, out of ammo, leaderless (whatever "disrupted" represents)... In RL once you disrupt a division badly enough the units don't function anyway - its hard to arrange the resupply or unit move when cowering in a ditch avoiding incoming...
there is a degree of choice as to the level of casualties a unit commander is willing to tolerate before electing to give ground, that is out of the players hands and so it should be at this scale. You don't get to decide how much artillery ammo to use or whether to have your troops fall back from the front lines a few hundred meters to avoid the opening bombardment either (and that is at least as much of a feature about late war German behaviour as tactical No Retreat effects).
It has just occurred to me that, in game, armies in pockets do have a "no surrender" philosophy (i.e. hold till the end). They all have to be individually beaten. There would need to be a "contagious surrender" feature to make units not attacked surrender when things get bad enough, for there to be a shift from that. Not worth it but based on WitW/WITE (1) I would go for that before any manual adjustment of defender casualty tolerance.
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I have a cunning plan, My Lord
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