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Leader Replacement in Campaigns


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I am running v1.10.

Just finished the 4th mission in Courage and Fortitude. My battlion CO was KIA. (Freak accident...sitting in his jeep 20 yards in front of a Sherman. Sherman gets knocked out and he gets KIA due to the blast or something...)

Of the 3 member Battalion CO team, only the radio operator survives the scenario. In the next scenario, the Battalion CO team consists of only the radio operator. No replacement leader.

Per the patch fix list:

In campaigns, units won't go into the next battle without a leader due to a previous casualty.

Does the above only apply to platoon / company level leaders?

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My understanding of this is that it's only the unit which gets a leader replacement/promotion from within. Your single survivor from the HQ team is now that team's leader.

I have been playing Die Letzte Hoffnung, and my higher echelons have suffered terribly. 1Coy's CO was killed when his Kubelwagen was hit by a 57mm AP round that had missed an Armoured Car (which was 200m further uprange, and the other side of a Bocage) and the Bttn CO was killed in the last few turns by a mine that wasn't where I might have thought it would be... 1Coy is also missing 2 Leutnants now, in the closing stages of the (probably) penultimate battle. They don't even die when I do something "heroic"; the last one was killed by a mortar in spite of running away and hiding when the spotting rounds came in.

Depending on the timescale of a campaign, the lack of replacements could be "realistic" or a bit of a shambles. I'm hoping BFC will put some work in on the campaign interface for Bulge.

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My understanding of this is that it's only the unit which gets a leader replacement/promotion from within. Your single survivor from the HQ team is now that team's leader.

That is what I am thinking, even though I doubt the radio operator has leadership training / skills.

I was wondering though, the Operations Team, (whatever it is they do) survived, wouldn't they sort of be the replacement unit for the CO Team? Under battle situations, IRL, doesn't the chain of command / next in command take place immediately, ie.; the next highest ranking guy fills in for the KIA. An actual replacement can occur later, but as far as the leadership role, I would think that occurs ASAP, therefore rolling over into the next scenario...

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That is what I am thinking, even though I doubt the radio operator has leadership training / skills.

I was wondering though, the Operations Team, (whatever it is they do) survived, wouldn't they sort of be the replacement unit for the CO Team? Under battle situations, IRL, doesn't the chain of command / next in command take place immediately, ie.; the next highest ranking guy fills in for the KIA. An actual replacement can occur later, but as far as the leadership role, I would think that occurs ASAP, therefore rolling over into the next scenario...

You'd've thought so, yes. But unfortunately the Campaign continuity stuff can't handle that sort of situation. People's experience with XOs taking over from their dead "actual" is patchy. I've generally, with Americans, seen it work okay in a specific scenario, but the XO certainly doesn't continue to substitute in later scenarios of a campaign.

My current campaign is my first one with Germans, and the Bttn XO carked it soon after the Bttn CO did (from a 57mm ricochet which went off over 40m away), so he never got the chance, and 1Coy's XO never picked up the reins.

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I just checked the scenario. Even with only the radio operator, the C2 is still functioning. All platoons have a green dot.

Bttn (or whatever the top level is) CO in successive scenarios is a bit of a special case. Because there's no CO, it seems to treat all the Bttn units as "orphan" units (like the attached units from outside the Bttn) so C2 with Bttn is automatic/assumed/irrelevant.

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I had both the CO and XO of a platoon injured in a scenario, leaving only the radio operator. Next battle I had a new CO and radio operator (no replacements for any other units)

If the unit had a chance of receiving replacements between battles, then you got lucky (or unlucky, if all the other units had a chance too...). It seems to me that verisimilitude would be best served while designing a campaign by considering first whether it's likely someone would be shoved in "at the top" given the gap between particular battles. I know short Colonels don't grow on trees, but wouldn't doctrine have someone bumped into the hot seat for most armies, even on a pro tem (brevet?) basis?

Also, I have a suspicion, gained from who knows where, that if your WIAs don't convert to KIAs at the end of the battle, there's a chance they'll return for future campaign battles.

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