C2, attached units

[Erik Springelkamp]

A question that bothers me for years already is about the C2 link between different commands on the same side.

So I made a little test scenario:

The XXX are a hill, so left and right cannot see each other

The left '+' is the HQ of an attached engineer unit.

The right '+' is the HQ of an infantry unit.

The right '|' is an infantry section belonging to the right HQ.

Left and right are enemy targets that can only be seen from left or right.

---- + ------- XXXXXX ---- + -- | -----

In this set up, the unit left never gets information about the enemy right (or about the friendlies on the right) and vice versa.

Now I have place the infantry section next to the engineer HQ on the left. It has radio contact with it's own HQ on the right.

---- + | ----- XXXXXX ---- + ----------

In this case, both sides know from the start about friendly units on the other side (as a general marker).

And the location about the enemy units is communicated quite fast from one side to the other.

So the infantry on the left in in voice communication with the Engineer HQ on the left, and in radio communication with it's own HQ on the right, and they communicate all information with each other.

So there is good news and bad news about attached units like engineers:

- the good news is that they communicate when in direct contact.

- the bad news is that they don't communicate over the radio via the not represented, but abstracted overall commander

There was a small surprise in the first situation (I did this in Iron mode):

The infantry section and it's HQ didn't even see a generic marker of each other's position, although they were in shouting distance (but two buildings away from each other).

While in the second situation, separated by a hill, and only in radio contact, they saw generic friendly markers of each other's position, and even the engineer HQ knew about the position of the infantry HQ through voice contact with the infantry section.

I think this can be regarded as a small bug, because it is inconsistent.

And I think attached units should at least have a (slow) C2 contact if they both are in contact with the abstract off-board commander.

I realise that this has been fixed in CM:BN, by allowing forces to be formally attached in the construction of the OOB, but some form of generic fix in CMSF would be nice.

In the mean time it seems to be a good thing to send a representative of the main unit with the attached unit when they operate separately, just to establish C2. Maybe a nice job for an otherwise useless XO?