Treeburst155

Two platoons vs one would make the results reasonable would it not? How can you justify 10 men ON THE ATTACK scattering 10 defenders of equal strength EVERY time? Forget support weapons and reinforcements for the defender. At 1:1 odds, the attacker should not win EVERY time. Heck, the attacker wins at 1:2 odds according to Glider's SMG test. BTW, I did play both sides in my test. I did change targets manually in one of them. As soon as I did this, the suppressed halfsquad resumed firing again. Treeburst155 out.

Hehe....case closed. GAMEY, GAMEY, GAMEY!!! Defenders of the wholesale splitting of squads are simply defending a VERY effective gamey tactic they have come to enjoy, and rely on. Treeburst155 out.

I can't even reproduce the FP reduction in the editor when splitting squads. I'm sure it happened when I made the test scenario, but I can't do it again. In any case, these so-called penalties for squad splitting are FUBAR, and likely not being applied. Treeburst155 out.

Mine does too! In the editor, where I split the squad, it showed a reduction in total FP. In game, no penalty. Very interesting. I need to look into this a bit more. We've found a bug. This of course makes the wholesale squad split doubly gamey. None of the penalties seem to be applied. Treeburst155 out.

I'll admit I was a little surprised at just how very effective splitting squads is. The only defense against wholesale squad splitting is to do it yourself. Notice my test was run with Regulars and no morale bonus. Vets with a morale bonus would be much more effective. I'm with you all the way, Glider. This is unbelievably gamey; especially when there is real doubt that the split squad penalties to firepower and morale are applied. Treeburst155 out.

So, there are some holes in the penalties for splitting squads. The global morale hit does not register as far as the player can tell; and, in some instances the FP of a squad is apparently not reduced. It's obvious to me that the wholesale squad split is extremely gamey. Look at my test results. How realistic is the outcome when squads are split? It's almost absurdly unrealistic. Treeburst155 out.

I just split a German company. No globale morale hit was evident. I was still at 100% a couple turns later. Hmmmm.... Treeburst155 out.

You may have found some minor bugs. What kind of squads did you use? I just ran my test again. This time the Russian squad lost 5 guys before breaking on turn 3. The Germans lost one guy, both split squads in good condition. Treeburst155 out.

I just made a test scenario. One Regular Russian Rifle '42 squad with FP 125 is defending in tall pines, no foxhole, in command (no bonuses) vs one Regular German 41 squad (FP 124) in tall pines, in command (no bonuses). The German squad is split. FP for the half-squads are 62 and 49 for 111 total. This means the German squad lost 13 FP by splitting. I spaced the Germans 20 meters apart and advanced them. One split squad came under Russian fire and went to ground pinned, the other was unmolested. By the third turn, the Russian squad was broken (no casualties) and crawling away. One German halfsquad was cautious (2 casualties from initial contact). The other was in perfect shape, ready to pursue the broken Russian squad. One attacking squad shattered one stationary defending squad simply by splitting. Everything else was equal. Fire from multiple directions is powerful, especially when it cannot be suppressed due to game limitations. It was effectively 2 to 1 against the Russians, even though they had twice the firepower of each attacking halfsquad. Treeburst155 out.

Split squads are not ALWAYS more effective than whole squads; but instances in which they ARE more effective are not rare. Veterans with a morale bonus make good candidates for splitting, especially if the squad is a high power one. The Tac AI of a full squad cannot deliver fire in more than one direction at a time. If two halfsquads attack from different points on the compass, even fairly close points, one halfsquad will receive absolutely no fire. No defending squad is going to IGNORE 5 guys at 2 o'clock completely so they can hammer the 5 guys at 10 o'clock (same range). The unsuppressed fire from 2 o'clock will keep them from delivering much effective fire to the 10'oclock enemy. This is a game limitation. Taking advantage of it is gamey. Treeburst155 out.

Large scale splitting of squads is GAMEY. I can't believe there is even a debate over this. Any supporting/suppressive role an element of a squad may have is handled abstractly when the WHOLE squad engages in combat. To manually control your supporting half-squad is to probably interfere with the abstract stuff. Even if not, One squad can fire at only one target. They cannot split fire to deal with a split squad unless they split themselves. This GAME LIMITATION forces everyone to split all squads in order to compete. This is not what the designers intended, obviously; or they would have given us split squads as the default. Mass squad splitting is gamey. Treeburst155 out.

Thanks for the clarification. It all sounds great to me. Treeburst155 out.

Grog Dorosh, I quit caring about people abandoning PBEM games after I did it myself. There's no excuse for it though. No matter how tough life gets, there's always time to dash off an email to your opponents. Hehe...if somebody quits on me now, I just call it Total Victory, and imagine him smashing his computer after watching the last movie. It's been my experience that games are usually abandoned by opponents when I'm winning. I haven't abandoned a PBEM in years now. I make sure I keep up a decent turnaround rate too, ESPECIALLY when I am losing. I really admire a guy who keeps cranking out the turns when he's taking a severe beating. Treeburst155 out.

Did I read something about time limits? I hope this feature is adjustable to suit the size of the battle being fought. If not, well, at least I already have my super-precision high dollar twitch-mouse complete with performance enhancing Mouseware. Treeburst155 out.

The best way to play is hotseat against yourself. Once you condition yourself to constantly question the motives for your orders, thereby insuring you aren't reacting to what you know from playing the other side, you can have some really great games. Skipping a day between orders phases for each side really helps with this. You tend to forget what you did with the other side. Solitaire hotseat is the best and fastest way to playtest scenarios IMO. It's also the best way to come to a thorough understanding of EFOW. What does the enemy see, and when does he see it? The solitaire hotseater knows these things. Having said that, I do 90% PBEM of scenarios, 10% hotseat against myself. Mikeman out.

Oh man, this CM2 is gonna be good.....BFC has declared war on The Borg. Hehe....and they don't even have a starship...or do they? Treeburst155 out.

I'm with Stikkypixie. The game was designed with the squad as the smallest human-controlled element (except support units). Split-squads are for a couple special purposes already mentioned in this thread. The problem is that the program only allows one unit to be fired on by any single opposing unit. If you split that ONE unit, you exploit a limitation in the game. You are making half the squad impervious to fire from a single enemy squad, which was never intended. The squad level abstractions Stikkypixie speaks of are at least partially circumvented. IOW, it's gamey to split an entire company into half-squads. If a unit is not acting as an OP/LP, assaulting a vehicle, or walking point (scouting), it should be an unsplit unit. EDIT: Splitting many squads in order to deceive your opponent as to your strength seems OK to me; but when they execute an attack, they should be whole squads again. Treeburst155 out. [ January 19, 2005, 08:22 PM: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]

There are several small FOW issues. No big deal really. The observant player just gets an intel break now and then. The fortunes of war, etc.. Treeburst155 out.

Single player command - minimize the negatives. You're on the right track IMO. I realize the limitations that must be accepted if single player command is the focus, which it should be IMO. Ever tried to organize and execute an 8-player Tacops battle? It's NOT something done without a great deal of prep before the big event. Treeburst155 out.

Yes, we could all split our squads to deal with the half-squad armies; but do we really want to DOUBLE the work of an orders phase? I guess we do, if we want to compete with the half-squad armies. I'm positive this large scale use of half-squads was not intended by the developers. Therefore, it takes advantage of the game engine. It's gamey. The counter is easy enough; but doubles the work of orders phases. For this reason, I would not play a person who splits a LARGE portion of his squads. Treeburst155 out.

The purpose of half-squads, according to the CMBB manual, is to be able to assault armor without risking entire squads, and to set up outposts. Any large scale division of squads into half-squads takes advantage of the "split" feature, and is therefore gamey IMO. Having said that, the manual also states that the combined firepower of two half-squads is a bit less than if the squad were whole. Also, the half-squads are more brittle. If these two drawbacks do not adequately offset the advantages of splitting squads, the tactic is doubly gamey IMO. Treeburst155 out.

Hmmm...I'll have to try this out. I can see how it would work well against units firing directly at specific units. Against area fire though, the half-squads would pin sooner. As stated above, arty is the answer. Other area fire would work too, as long as the firing units did not spot any specific unit. In which case, they would abandon their area fire orders. I think the tactic might be somewhat gamey; but I'd have to test it out to be sure. Then again, you have 10 guys split into two fire teams of 5 guys. One hits from the southwest, the other from the southeast....hmmm...the defending squad should be able to split its fire; but it can't. Therefore, it's gamey. Treeburst155 out.

66.93 works very well with Ti4200. Treeburst155 out.

66.93 works very well with Ti4200. Treeburst155 out.

Outstanding, Franko! It's going to be tough to put "August Bank Holiday" to shame though. Please send the scenario to mikeman@cablelynx.com. Thanks!! Treeburst155 out.