Ammo restocking

[Thore]

I currently trying to survive the 3rd tutorial mission.

My MGs are from the beginning very low on ammo, and i noticed theres a jeep full of ammo at the house.

How do I get the ammo distributed to the two mg teams?

Do I use the acquire order (whatever that is)

best regards

Thore

[womble]

The MG team has to get in the jeep. This may require that you dismount the driver, if one of the teams is a 6-man Section HQ team, to make room. Once in the jeep they can use the Acquire command, as you have surmised, to pick up phat lewt. Be very careful though, since Acquire occurs instantly, and there's no way to put back any rounds you picked up that you didn't want.

If you want the bullets evenly divided between your two teams, it's possible that there will have to be a bit of "Jeep hokey kokey" (you put your A team in, you put your A team out...) since the Acquire command only presents you with specific amounts that you can take, so if there are 500 bullets, you might be offerred the opportunity of taking 100, 200, 400 or 500. If you take 200 the other team might be offered the choice of 50, 100, 200 or 300. So you take 200, then do "Acquire" again, to be offered the choice of 10, 20, 50 or 100. Take 50 and then remount the B team to grab their last 50 (from the choice of 5, 10, 20 or 50).

This can be done during scenario setup, or during the course of the game. If you've got any trucks, or half tracks, they'll possibly have ammo too, which can be acquired in a similar fashion. Larger vehicles can hold more than one team, obviously, and they can all acquire in the same order pause.

[Baneman]

It's a good thing to do most of your ammo acquiring in the setup phase when you can move everything around to your heart's content.

Later it can take a fair bit of time, especially if you have to do something like dismount a driver to get the team in ( to a small vehicle ).

[A Canadian Cat]

It's a good thing to do most of your ammo acquiring in the setup phase when you can move everything around to your heart's content.

I agree that is definitely the ideal time to do aquiring.

Later it can take a fair bit of time, especially if you have to do something like dismount a driver to get the team in ( to a small vehicle ).

Another thing you can do with larger formations and small vehicles is split off a scout ream and acquire with them when they get back to their squad the amo is shared. I know that does not work for MG teams but helpful for squads getting amo from jeeps.

[sfhand]

... "Jeep hokey kokey" (you put your A team in, you put your A team out...) ...

I was absolutely certain you meant "hokey pokey"... Wikipedia to the rescue:

The hokey cokey (United Kingdom) or hokey pokey (United States, Canada, Ireland, and Australia), also known as the hokey tokey (New Zealand), okey cokey, or cokey cokey, is a participation dance with a distinctive accompanying tune and lyric structure. It is well known in English-speaking countries. It is of unclear origin, with two main traditions having evolved in different parts of the world.

children's song groggery...

[Erwin]

"It's a good thing to do most of your ammo acquiring in the setup phase when you can move everything around to your heart's content."

This was something we learned to do all the time in CMSF due to the high ammo burn rate with all those automatic weapons. But, it always bothered me that there was no discernible movement penalty for loading up troops to the max.

Even tho' I am more of a verisimilitude-oriented player than worried about actual "realism" it bothered me enuff that I now discipline myself to take on only what extra ammo seems reasonable, sometimes no extra at all. (And in WEGO it's often a real PITA to have to go back to a jeep and ACQUIRE as described above.)

[womble]

it always bothered me that there was no discernible movement penalty for loading up troops to the max.

I get the impression (and I've nothing but my gut to back this up) that heavily laden troops tire faster.

[mjkerner]

I was absolutely certain you meant "hokey pokey"... Wikipedia to the rescue:

The hokey cokey (United Kingdom) or hokey pokey (United States, Canada, Ireland, and Australia), also known as the hokey tokey (New Zealand), okey cokey, or cokey cokey, is a participation dance with a distinctive accompanying tune and lyric structure. It is well known in English-speaking countries. It is of unclear origin, with two main traditions having evolved in different parts of the world.

children's song groggery...

Question: What if the Hokey Pokey is what it's all about?

[Childress]

I get the impression (and I've nothing but my gut to back this up) that heavily laden troops tire faster.

They do. Just checked.

They also tire faster going uphill. Dunno about downhill.

Edit: Troops apparently never tire in the Move state. Under any circumstances. This dates back to CMSF. Not sure, but I believe they don't recuperate from fatigue while Moving either. They have to rest.

[Erwin]

Am pretty sure I have seen CMBN troops recover from tiring/tired during a long walk I gave them. The other issue is how much you make your guys run. Generally, I run em only for short periods with rest stops... They all run at the same speed regardless of load and my heavily laden guys never got tired either using this method.

[Boche]

Quick is ussualy the way to go, run or slow is ussualy for short spurts.

[Erwin]

FAST gets anyone tired quickly.

But, I think units tire a bit too quickly on SLOW. If you want them to SLOW move a distance I think they would should have a subroutine to rest themselves periodically, so they don't TIRED (or certainly not EXHAUSTED).

In WEGO it takes time to put enuff waypoints with pauses for the pure reason of rest.

I would love to have the default being "Units will move FAST/QUICK/MOVE/SLOW etc. until TIRING, then rest before moving further" with a second optional add-on command "Units will continue movement until exhaustion" for those times when you really, really need em to get to a location asap at all costs.

[sburke]

FAST gets anyone tired quickly.

But, I think units tire a bit too quickly on SLOW. If you want them to SLOW move a distance I think they would should have a subroutine to rest themselves periodically, so they don't TIRED (or certainly not EXHAUSTED).

In WEGO it takes time to put enuff waypoints with pauses for the pure reason of rest.

I would love to have the default being "Units will move FAST/QUICK/MOVE/SLOW etc. until TIRING, then rest before moving further" with a second optional add-on command "Units will continue movement until exhaustion" for those times when you really, really need em to get to a location asap at all costs.

I use slow for short and I mean very short distances only. Like sneaking out from behind a building to take position behind a wall. I can't see guys crawling along and hauling their equipment very far without getting pretty tired anyway. If you are asking them to crawl an extended distance I suspect you are having them move too far in an exposed position as it is. If the command gets altered to rest the trops while moving it should also mean making the movement even slower than it is, penalizing those who use it for what it is normally intended for.

I do pretty much the same with fast. It is for dashing across a street etc, sprinting. Not for racing down that hill across the valley and up the next hill to get into a reverse slope position and beat the enemy to it.

Overall that looks like a lot of AI requests to do what I can already do, but you want the TAC AI to do it for you. Personally I see that as a bad choice for programming time. I'd prefer to see that spent on doing things I CAN'T do right now - like peek around a building with a bazooka.

[Erwin]

Well yeah, peeking around corners would be great.

However, I do think that one of the aspects of CM2 that can get overwhelming are the number of separate clicks needed to have units do what you want them to do.

For example: Crawling "SLOW" quite a ways along a hedgerow/wall to stay hidden while outflanking an enemy position is quite common. Currently, it takes a lot of waypoints and pauses to enable that unit to do that without getting exhausted. If one could give one simple order and know that it's gonna take several turns for the unit to get into position, you could focus on other stuff in the meantime. Doing this for one unit may not be such a hardship. But, when you have to do similar dances with large numbers of units the frustration level rises exponentially.

CM2 is very flexible in that one can do so much. But, it takes a lot of time in large scenarios. Greater efficiency in the UI would be very helpful in aiding gameplay.

[womble]

CM2 is very flexible in that one can do so much. But, it takes a lot of time in large scenarios. Greater efficiency in the UI would be very helpful in aiding gameplay.

Unfortuntately that greater efficiency cuts both ways. How often do they pause? Do I really want that frequency of pausing, or don't I care whether they're exhausted? If I don't care, how do I turn off the pauses? What's the balance between the frequency of doing whatever-it-is to turn off the pauses when I don't want them and adding the pauses in manually when I do?

There really isn't any good answer to those questions, so better to not waste the dev resource trying to code it. If you're doing something delicate like sneaking along in the lee of a linear obstacle to pass a flank, you're probably going to want to check on them every order phase anyway, to make sure they respond if the enemy changes his disposition. Hitting "Pause" when you find them getting Tired isn't hard.