Request to BFC for simple C2 Fix

[Cpl Steiner]

As many are aware, it is possible to include Battalion and Company level assets such as sniper teams, FOs and FACs in battles in which their commander is not present by assigning the commander to a reinforcement that never arrives. This allows scenario makers to create small platoon level actions with attached units from HQ such as spotters and sniper teams. One drawback of this, however, is that the attached unit is often out of command.

From my investigations today, however, it seems that this is only the case if the unit has no way of communicating with the off-map HQ. If the unit has a radio, it will be in command even though the HQ will never appear on the map. I'm not sure what that PDA-thing is called but presumably this would work like the radio and keep the unit in command with its off-map HQ.

I don't know if this is a new feature added for v1.10 but it opens up some interesting possibilities. If BFC ensured that units with HQs set to arrive as reinforcements always had either a radio or a PDA, we would never have to worry about such units being out of command again. Is this not a reasonable thing to expect anyway? If an HQ has sent one of its subordinate units into an area far from where the HQ is, I would have thought they would have to be provided with a radio or PDA if they didn't have one already.

This would be a boon for scenario makers and would seem pretty easy to implement to me. If BFC were also to have an option for the arrival time of reinforcements to be "Never" then we could also have attached units without HQs for battles longer than 55mins. These two things together would effectively fix the problem of the TO&E restricting what units can be added to a force as attachments.

[birdstrike]

Sounds good.

You'd have the undeletable HQ units as some sort of "virtual" HQ unit. The unit itself is off map, but considered on map as far as its C2 capabilites are concerned.

[Battlefront.com]

All Blue units have either a radio and/or PDA, so the problem isn't that. Coming in as a Reinforcement doesn't mean a thing since equipment is allocated based on hard coded information, not dynamic situations. This sounds like a straight up bug to me, so I've made a note of it.

Steve

[Cpl Steiner]

All Blue units have either a radio and/or PDA, so the problem isn't that. Coming in as a Reinforcement doesn't mean a thing since equipment is allocated based on hard coded information, not dynamic situations. This sounds like a straight up bug to me, so I've made a note of it.

Steve

Steve,

It might actually have been a Red unit I was mucking around with. I think I had some Syrian Battalion-level AT units on map with the Battalion commander set as a non-arriving reinforcement. As the unit consists of two sections, an A and a B, I think only the A section was in command because the B one didn't have a radio.

There are obviously a lot of issues involved in this. The whole C2 approach needs a fresh look in my opinion, to allow for the proper attachment of units higher up the chain of command, for both Red and Blue forces. For a scenario I'm working on at the moment, I'm having to use a Syrian Special Forces AT platoon to fill in for a Syrian Airborne AT platoon because the Airborne one is at Battalion level and I want the battle to last longer than 55 minutes (the limit for non-arriving Battalion HQs).

[Battlefront.com]

Ah, that would make more sense. Red units more likely than not need their immediate HQs physically nearby because they usually lack radios (and never have PDAs).

It was always the plan to have the Order of Battle allow for cross attachments. We simply didn't have time to implement it. Personally, I'm surprised at how few problems there are without this feature. I thought it would be much more of a problem before play testing really got underway. So it got pushed down the ToDo List. Trust me though, it's still on it.

Steve