Abort Order

[Omanidos]

hi,

I bought the game yesterday and I have a question: How do I abort an Attack Order?

Lets say that my units are attacking and I want them to retreat. The only way I found is to give them a Move or Retreat Order which will have them stop wherever they are, reorganize and then start moving, all this while being under fire.

Any help is welcome

 

[john connor]

What do you want to happen, Omanidos? If you want them to retreat then they will have to re-org first (after you give a Withdraw order), as in real life. If you want them to just stop executing the plan then you can cancel it by selecting the HQ unit (or lead unit in the group you have given the attack order to) then, once you can see its attack plan, select the arrow attack marker box (placed where you clicked on the map when you gave the order) and hit backspace. That will cancel it. They will revert to defend, I believe. You can step through all stages of an order like that, cancelling. But if the order has already gone down the line and the unit has already planned for it etc then there will be an orders delay and it will continue until they get the new orders (the order to cancel, I mean), even though the attack marker box will now show as greyed out (once you have cancelled it). There is a 'gamey' way to get the unit to just stop in place without orders delay - you give a direct fire order to the unit (or HQ for the group) with a duration of, say, one minute. Place the direct fire cross on the enemy, or in empty space somewhere safe. The unit will pretty much instantly abandon whatever plan it had and carry out the direct fire order. After that it will revert to defend I think. You then give it new orders. But the new orders will incur the normal orders delay, of course.

You can place a FUP for a Withdraw order, like any other order, I believe (I haven't tried this). So select Withdraw, hold down shift and click where you would like them to reorg for their withdrawal, then release shift and click where they will retreat to. That way they should flee to the re-org FUP first. If you also give them a facing that points them at the enemy (as if they were running backwards) and select 'safest' then that might increase their retreat chances under fire.

Peter

 

[Daz]

Hi Omanidos, and welcome to the forums.
As Peter says, a withdraw order is probably your best bet, but its hard to advise without an example.
Maybe if you can post a screenshot of the situation your men are in, with a short description of what you are trying to achieve, we might be able to help some more.
Units that are taking casualties will usually retreat back to some cover, when the unit task indicator (coloured square on the counter) turns orange.
If they are caught out in the open and under extremely heavy fire, they may have become pinned and unable to move.
This is an extract from the manual, hope it helps.


I must say that since the retreat code was changed a long time back the Withdraw and Delay orders have not been working very well.
If the units take to much damage they go into a very long retreat recovery period where they become totally unresponsive to orders for many hours.
This code was changed to slow the attrition of units during attacks, but unfortunately it has had an undesirable effect on the withdraw and Delay code as well.

 

[Dave 'Arjuna' O'Connor]

FUPs only exist for attack orders.

 

[john connor]

'FUPs only exist for attack orders.'

Scrap that part of the advice then!

 

[Omanidos]

thanks for the advice guys.

The reason I asked was because I came into a few situations where I wanted my units to fall back asap and all they did was reorganizing or recovering. I am trying to get used to the idea that once I commit units to a battle all I can do is watch events unfold.

 

[john connor]

As I said, Omanidos, the 'cheat' (direct fire order) works to immediately stop them. I do use this when I make a 'mistake' with my orders and need to just cancel them immediately (without delay) or when I see an AI controlled unit doing something really stupid (planning a route through the middle of the enemy FLOT to retreat acros a river, or whatever) that I need to immediately stop.

 

[Omanidos]

ok, I will try that out. Would that order also interrupt the retreat recovery?

 

[john connor]

Interupts everything, I think. Like I said, it's a bit of a cheat (used as a shortcut - it does have legitimate uses too, of course!)

 

[Daz]

thanks for the advice guys.

The reason I asked was because I came into a few situations where I wanted my units to fall back asap and all they did was reorganizing or recovering. I am trying to get used to the idea that once I commit units to a battle all I can do is watch events unfold.

If your men are conducting an attack and start taking excessive casualties they will try to retreat into the nearest cover.
If you have the extended force icon info checked in the game options, and you zoom into the action, you will see the top right icon on the extended counter has turned orange. It will either be an orange arrow, or an orange square, to indicate they are retreating or retreat recovering.
If they are stationary and retreat recovering, have no cohesion, and the suppression slider is red all the way to the right, this mans they are cowering/pinned and unable, or unwilling due to being in a good defensive position (fox hole) to move. They may also be in a very bad situation and taking so much incoming fire they can do nothing but lay on their bellies and pray, even in open terrain. This can happen if they are caught out in the open at first light in an enemy kill zone.
Something you as a player should try to create for the enemy when on the defence.

In this situation there is nothing you can do immediately to move them. Your immediate course of action should be to manually bombard the enemy units that are causing them the most problems, to suppress them, and in turn they will go into retreat or cower, thereby giving your man time to recover cohesion.
One of your options when you find yourself in this situation is to give your attacking force a defend in Situ order facing the enemy.
This will allow them to retreat under pressure to good defensive positions that they find themselves when they retreat, then stay there until you can either recover them with a withdraw order or move them out individually using the safest route.
You may even have to wait until nightfall to extract them.

You may also decide to leave them in place as a fixing force, while you outflank the position with another.
There are lots of variations as to what to do that are very situational depending on a huge amount of variables which include things like weather, quality of your force, availability of indirect support, enemy firepower and mobility, uncommitted reserves, time of day, terrain, command delay, and lots of others I'm sure.

 

[Daz]

One of the problems that has been introduced with the retreat recovery code, that was put in place primarily to bring down the unrealistic casualty figures during attacks, as they now have to wait quite a while to recover before they can attack again, is that its unrealistically hard to withdraw a force now.
If they take excessive casualties, say 25%, then they go into retreat recovery for hours. This is fine to simulate the units reluctance to get back into the attack, but not to withdraw them from the front line.
I may put in a future feature request to allow units with a withdraw or a delay order to ignore retreat recovery, but to instead use cohesion to determine if they can move or not.