territory & operations

[Vinci]

I've played a couple of operation scenarios and noticed that the way start up territory is allocated following each battle seems to be a bit odd.

Sometimes you get whole stretches of ground added where you have never been. Other times you've just slugged yourself to death to capture a couple of blocks of houses and find your frontline way back.

Can anyone explain the logic being used to me?

[kipanderson]

Hi,

I agree. I have seen the AI award large amounts of territory to the attacker that would be difficult for a "human referee" to justify. However, I think Charles has done a great job. I can understand why coding the logic for the "hand of God" in operations must be very difficult, if it is to deal with all possible situations.

All the best,

Kip.

[This message has been edited by kipanderson (edited 01-21-2001).]

[Jaws]

Yes I can explain it,

It's because of the operation setup in the editor.

There is an option under parameters you can set no man's land. If it is set for example to 200 meters than you will drop back at least 100 meters from your last battle position in the next game.

You can change this if you edit the mission from 0 to 400 meters under parameters.

Good hunting.

Jaws

[Lordfluffers]

Surely the best way to work out frontlines would be to base them on the positions of where troops were last fighting. For instance, if side A pushed deep into side B's defences in the centre, the following battle would show a large salient in the middle. Thearea of no-mans land here would be quite small because of the close proximity of each sides troops at the end of the battle. If the flanks were open fields and not much activity had occurred there, then no-mans land should be much wider. This way pockets could also develop where an attacker has simply bypassed the defender.

The current system is too rigid, and creates an urealistic frontline, Ive had strongpoints bypassed simply because one enemy squad has penetrated a few meters deeper elsewhere on the battlefield and Ive been forced to retreat and defend in much weaker terrain when it would have been more prudent to hold onto the village, bridge, road etc.

[Vinci]

Thanks for the tip on changing parameters, I'll see how it works.

As an old ASL hand, I have played with the campaign rules of ASL. These provide an interesting system to generate "next battle setup areas". The basic principle is that there a number of key locations (mostly buildings, fortifications, objective hexes). At the end of battle these locations (and its immediate surrounding area -ZOC) are controlled by the last side who passed through it or occupies it. Then there is a redrawing of the map into areas controlled by either side. In this process key locations (with touching ZOC's) can be linked to each other to create larger areas (and only troops actualy occupying these areas can set up again inside that area). This will sometimes create pockets of troops cut off from the rest. If control of a key location is disputed, it becomes controlled by neither side - in effect no mans land.

I am no computer programmer, but how could this be translatted into game mechanics for CM?