Annoying timing when marking mines

[rocketman]

Doing some testing with "Mark Mines" for a scenario I'm researching. One thing that struck me is that usually during a turn, your team spots mines. So, next turn you give them the "Mark Mines" command, and wait for a couple of minutes. What is annoying, and happens a lot (always?), is that the sign turns yellow seconds after starting a new turn, essentially wasting that whole turn with the team just sitting there instead of getting a new order.

 

This might be a minor thing, but is actually quite crucial in this particular situation, in which time is of the essence.

 

Would it be possible to subtract just a few second off the time it takes to mark mines, so that the sign turns yellow just before a turn ends instead?

[A Canadian Cat]

LOL or add 30s more so @rocketman feels better.

Edited January 20, 2015 by IanL

[rocketman]

I would sure feel fine, but my pixeltruppen might not 

[Muzzleflash1990]

Can you not give them their next order (waypoint) before they are finished? Then, when they are done marking mid-turn, they move on.

[rocketman]

Haven't tried adding waypoints after "Mark Mines". For some reason I didn't think it was possible. Will try that. Thanks.

[womble]

Yeah, give them a Pause in the minute you anticipate they'll finish, long enough to cover that annoying few seconds. Better hope it's a consistent time though, or you'll be restarting, once they go to ground in the field they hadn't finished clearing but tried to cross anyway.

As is often the case, though, if your plan requires that they don't waste 50s somewhere, you're timing it too tight.

[Michael Emrys]

As is often the case, though, if your plan requires that they don't waste 50s somewhere, you're timing it too tight.

 

This. ^^^

 

WW II was really hardly ever a split-second affair, especially where ground fighting was concerned. Look up 'Friction' sometime. Soldiers spent a lot of time just waiting for somebody else to do something. And that was on top of transmitting orders, going from location A to location B, taking a leak, etc. I play the game too, you know, so I know how strongly I want to get on with things and finish in less than half an hour of game time. But in the real war, the situation being unfolded on your screen might have taken all bloody afternoon. If the scenario designer didn't assign enough turns, go into the editor and add a few.

 

Michael

[rocketman]

I'm well aware of that and agree. However, certain events were different. The scenario I intend to do is the para attack on the Merville Battery in the morning of D-Day. The battery was surrounded by a minefield 100 yards deep. Two paths were marked by a recon party hours before the paras arrived, in the cover of darkness. One idea I had was to make it a two part campaign on the same map, but since marked mines do not carry over it wouldn't work. The second option is to mark mines with the recon party before the paras arrive, but what fun is fast forwarding a couple of hours of game time in between? It would also enable the recon party to mark far more mines than in real life. The third option (which propted this thread) is to have the recon party and the paras arrive at the same time and force them to mark mines and cross the minefield at the same time while being under fire. That is why I wanted to make a new order instead of "wasting a turn" because of a couple of seconds. I haven't given up on this yet - still some testing to do. The final option is to have the paths marked on the map from the start and skip the recon part. But that would limit the tactical options for the player and make it less fun to play.

 

In real life, the paras had about 30 minutes to carry out their mission, mainly due to a botched drop. At a certain time the HMS Arethusa would shell the battery if a signal that it had been taken out wasn't received. So time is of the essence in this setting, minute by minute, if I want it to be as close to as possible to historical events. It is not easy to make it true to real life, fun to play and challenging. Somewhat of a compromise needs to be made.

[womble]

Well, you've outlined your options as the designer. One thing to consider is whether the "100 yards deep" minefield was actually 12AS-deep contiguous mines sown as dense as CM will let you. But something else you have to consider if you're planning on having the mines marked while under fire is that they probably won't be. And they certainly won't be marked in a consistent timescale. That's because the engineers doing the marking will be stopping and restarting their marking as they experience suppression. My opinion is that the best option is to have marked gaps on the map beforehand. The assaulting airborne didn't have any option as to where their colleagues had marked the paths in the real action, after all; when they arrived at the perimeter, late, they had to deal with the situation the sappers handed over to them. Consider also, that finding a way through a 12 AS deep field is going to take pretty much all of that half an hour, so you'll have to change that time parameter anyway if you elect to have the field cleared "on screen". It's also worth noting that a Marked AS is still potentially dangerous, just much less so than an unmarked one, and follow-up troops will need to be slow crossing, or, almost inevitably, given the number of AS they need to cross, suffer the calamities of landmine detonations.

[Michael Emrys]

Rocketman,

 

I wish you the best of luck with this as it sounds like a potentially interesting and challenging problem. But it might just be that the CM system is not yet up to accurately portraying this particular situation. Your call whether or not to persevere with it, but either way...best of luck.

 

Michael

[rocketman]

@Michael: thanks for the encouragement. I struggle with the limits of the system, but take it as a learning experience. Something will come out of this, even if it is not historically accurate to the point.

 

@womble: I'm starting to consider this solution as well. Noted, though, is that preliminary testing show that the amount of Sten guns that the paras have might be enough suppressive to let the sappers do the marking. But having the paths pre-set makes for a more straight-forward scenario and probably less random in its outcome. In real life the paths were marked by "digging their heals into the ground", as all their mine marking equipment got lost. So, when the paras advanced through the minefield, they set several mines off causing several casualties. 

 

If it in the end proves to be a broken scenario I can alway hope for Commandos to be included in CMBN as they attacked the battery on June 7th, as the Germans had taken it back.