St. Vith Tutorial

[Rake]

I'd really like to figure out what I am doing (or not) to get the 51st moving as in Daz's tutorial. I have been playing and replaying and restarting, ad infinitum, well... since yesterday morning and I've spent at least 12 hours fooling with this and I have yet to finish the Steinebrück assault.

I give the Rest orders to A Coy 24 Arm Engineers and the assault gun platoon I then give 51st Armored Inf. Battalion the orders shown here (Daz's orders shown for comparison):


For some reason, I was unable to set the Depth at 400 meters; I only had option for 300 & 500 - this cleared during later runs and I was able to set the Depth to 400; but this was only a minor issue

I started the game, let it run five (game) minutes and took the next two screenshots:





Note that the start time has changed to 1139. This has happened over and over and over. I have saved the games at the start and checked my start time orders. I have started a game, let it run for one minute before giving any orders. I have started at least five new games to see if this would clear, but this continues to happen. Of course, when the Start time changes, the 51st doesn't move until the 0830 Assault time... sometimes it continues through and finishes the assault... at least once, it stopped at the reorg point.

During one of the new starts, the 51st actually moved out at 0605 to the reorg point; but this happened only once and during that run, the 318th Infantry's Start time changed after I gave it its Move order for the flanking movement; the 318th's Move order started at 10 something, a little late to coordinate an attack with the 51st

As I said in my earlier post, I'm fairly new at this, and I haven't been through many of the Support posts to see if others are having this issue. I must say I'm getting quite frustrated...

 

[Rake]

Okay, after several more attempts, starting new games until it worked, I finally got both the 51st and the 318th to move out when they were ordered. Of course, the Germans fought tooth and nail for Steinebruck, and caught the 318th before they could finish crossing the stream. Half the battalion held up until the 51st arrived to take the pressure off as Jerry kept reinforcing the ville. 1030, and the town is nearly secure. No way Lommersweiler falls by noon even though I don't think much can be there after all of the traffic I saw coming toward the Steinebruck crossing.

The game's fun when I can get it to do what I expect.

 

[Dave 'Arjuna' O'Connor]

Just taking a look at this now.

First thing. Re Frontage and Depth. When you uncheck the auto box the frontage and depth will revert to the default for the selected force. Left click the Frontage to add to it and right click to subtract. Keep clicking till you reach the limit and then it will cycle around again.

 

[Dave 'Arjuna' O'Connor]

OK glad to see you got things going.

One thing you need to keep in mind. This game is not scripted. The enemy AI and the friendly one foir that matter is dynamic. It changes from one run through of a scenario to the next. So things will rarely pan out exactly the same. There are too many variables at play for that. I setup the tutorial with the attacks for the 1.318th and 51st Bns as Daz set oput in his tutorial. I didn't issue any other orders and on this run through I noticed that the German's throw in most of their force from Lommersweiler to Steinebruck. This holds up the progress of the 51st towards the bridge and thus leaves the poor ol' 1.318th on its pat Malone to fend off the German infantry in the woods.

As a plan the old right hook is often a good one. But as in this instance it is prone to problems if the enemy has reserves and can employ them without impunity. This happened in this instance because there was no effective fire being directed at the German force coming down from Lommersweiler. In the old BFTB Tutorial Movie my strategy was to put some tanks and my flak on the knoll south of Steinebruck and use these to fire at the enemy in Lommersweiler. The trouble is that when you take the 51st away to form up behind the wodds SSE of Steinebruck they no longer can engage the enemy moving between the two villages. Another option is to bombard the enemy in Lommersweiler while you form up.

 

[Daz]

Not had time to do any testing of this issue in the latest build yet, but the start time problems sound like the issue I reported here:

http://forums.lnlpublishing.com/threads/fixed-5-1-25-start-timings-bug.2318/

Which version of the game are you playing on Rake?
You can see the version number in the lower right corner of the map.

 

[Daz]

OK glad to see you got things going.

One thing you need to keep in mind. This game is not scripted. The enemy AI and the friendly one foir that matter is dynamic. It changes from one run through of a scenario to the next. So things will rarely pan out exactly the same. There are too many variables at play for that. I setup the tutorial with the attacks for the 1.318th and 51st Bns as Daz set oput in his tutorial. I didn't issue any other orders and on this run through I noticed that the German's throw in most of their force from Lommersweiler to Steinebruck. This holds up the progress of the 51st towards the bridge and thus leaves the poor ol' 1.318th on its pat Malone to fend off the German infantry in the woods.

As a plan the old right hook is often a good one. But as in this instance it is prone to problems if the enemy has reserves and can employ them without impunity. This happened in this instance because there was no effective fire being directed at the German force coming down from Lommersweiler. In the old BFTB Tutorial Movie my strategy was to put some tanks and my flak on the knoll south of Steinebruck and use these to fire at the enemy in Lommersweiler. The trouble is that when you take the 51st away to form up behind the wodds SSE of Steinebruck they no longer can engage the enemy moving between the two villages. Another option is to bombard the enemy in Lommersweiler while you form up.

Did A and B Coy 35 Tank Bn's assault at first light in order to take up positions in the woods on the knoll south of Steinebruck, not interdict units trying to reinforce from Lommersweiler? I think the B Bty 489 AAA Bn also contributed to suppressing the slope south of Lommersweiler on my play through, even though they were well hidden in the woods on the left flank.
These three units were also useful for spotting for the artillery, a lot of which I micro managed myself.

 

[Rake]

Just taking a look at this now.

First thing. Re Frontage and Depth. When you uncheck the auto box the frontage and depth will revert to the default for the selected force..

Dave... Yes, I haven't had any issues figuring out how the frontage/depth works, and once again, I have no idea what was happening. As I clicked thru the depths, 400 meters was not an option; the depth jumped from 300 to 500. This later "disappeared" and 400 became an option. I even checked to make sure that I had the right formation selected, as I've seen that frontages/depths allowed change depending upon the selected.

OK glad to see you got things going.

One thing you need to keep in mind. This game is not scripted. The enemy AI and the friendly one foir that matter is dynamic. It changes from one run through of a scenario to the next. So things will rarely pan out exactly the same. There are too many variables at play for that. I setup the tutorial with the attacks for the 1.318th and 51st Bns as Daz set oput in his tutorial. I didn't issue any other orders and on this run through I noticed that the German's throw in most of their force from Lommersweiler to Steinebruck. This holds up the progress of the 51st towards the bridge and thus leaves the poor ol' 1.318th on its pat Malone to fend off the German infantry in the woods.

What you're describing is pretty much what happened the one time that the times for the 318th & 51st remained as I had set them in the orders. Indeed, the 318th was held up by quite a bit and I was only able to send two companies against Steinebruck as the Bn HQ took losses, retreated and holed up south of the stream crossing.

Believe me, I've started and restarted the game so many times that I've seen that the game isn't scripted (Nice job btw )

But, this is not the issue I was having. The start times that I ordered were changing from what I had set when I originally gave the orders. This usually happened with the 51st, but on at least two occasions (the rare times when the 51st retained the correct order times) the start times for the 318th changed and they didn't even move from their "bivouac" until 0930 or so (I don't recall the exact time that the order switched to).

Not had time to do any testing of this issue in the latest build yet, but the start time problems sound like the issue I reported here:

http://forums.lnlpublishing.com/threads/fixed-5-1-25-start-timings-bug.2318/

Which version of the game are you playing on Rake?
You can see the version number in the lower right corner of the map.

I'm playing 5.1.27.

From what I understand from your linked post, the issues sound very similar. I'm not certain, but it seems like I recall that sometimes the timings would survive a save and sometimes not. In any event, if I started right away without saving, the start times would switch just around the time that the sub-units were receiving their orders, i.e., from 3 to 5 minutes after starting the game.

Did A and B Coy 35 Tank Bn's assault at first light in order to take up positions in the woods on the knoll south of Steinebruck, not interdict units trying to reinforce from Lommersweiler? I think the B Bty 489 AAA Bn also contributed to suppressing the slope south of Lommersweiler on my play through, even though they were well hidden in the woods on the left flank.
These three units were also useful for spotting for the artillery, a lot of which I micro managed myself.

Daz, Yes, A & B Coy's (and D & B Bty 489th) all performed as ordered. They did help interdict, but it seemed like a lot of troops were pushing down from Lommersweiler. Additionally, the Stug Co. took up residence at the edge of the woods to the NE of the crossing and pasted 318th as they came around the corner before they were able to get to the stream. The Stug's were out of sight from A Coy. I finally moved A Coy up a bit, but most of the hurt to the Stug's came when the lead company of the 51st got to within bazooka range. That and both Arty Bty's is what finally drove the Stug's off.

I can't swear that all the help came from Lommersweiler; I didn't see all of them moving. Some could have come down from the north. There were just a lot more Germans in Steinebruck than I'd seen in previous plays.

If this is a bug, I hope I can help track it down. Once the plan finally worked, it was great fun. The AI did plenty to mess things up, exactly what I'd expect from a good AI.

 

[Daz]

The randomness of the enemy units is what makes the game great, so that is not a bug.

My original plan was to attack with whatever of the 318th Inf had managed to make it across the river in time to support the 51st Arm Inf attack, even if it was just one Coy at a time piecemeal. I was lucky that I got 2 Coys and the HQ across in time.
It wasn't all luck mind, as I was giving the artillery priority (after any enemy AT units engaging the 35th Tanks) to any targets that might have had LOS on the river crossing of the 318th, which I cross referenced a lot with the area LOS tool.

In my play through the StuG Platoon was about 1000m away up the north road and managed to take out one of my Sherman's,
There was an intel bug at the beginning of my AAR that later got fixed, so the early intel on enemy armour units was way out, but I suspected it was an armoured unit at the time, because of the range that the red tracer (indicates AT ammunition being fired) was originating from and I knew from experience that there was a StuG platoon in this scenario.

I think the timings problem is a bug however. It may be an unwanted artefact from the fixing of the start timings bug I reported, that Dave worked on. A bit like whacking a mole and another popping up 2 feet away lol
I've not been playing the game for a while and as I was always one off the biggest thorn in Daves side when it come to bug reporting, it may have gone unnoticed, or at least unreported for a while.

Edit: Just noticed in your image above that the game has set a start time 3 hours after the Assault at time, so its almost certainly a bug.

 

[Rake]

Please forgive me for asking a question which has undoubtedly been asked before; I just haven't found the answer yet. I finally got through this scenario (work gets in the way of far too much fun). As I was going through the AAR, I noticed that several of the German panzer kompanies had a large number of personnel listed in the Force Dialog relative to the number of tanks remaining.

This picture shows that, with 4 king Tigers remaining, there are still 126 men left in 3rd Ko. Given that there are 5 crew members in each tank, that leaves about 106 guys, without weapons< walking around with the tanks...



Anyhow, I love this game. I don't think I kept up with orders as I should have the times I played CO1. I fared much better with this after reading through the AAR. I feel like I had to micromanage the arty, but for the most part (order glitches aside) I think the Tac AI did well... both for the Americans and on the defensive. I tried leaving 2 of the arty batteries attached to their HQ's, but it seemed slow to respond to calls (at least when I thought there should have been calls ).

A few nailbiting times, too, like when I didn't push CCB forward immediately upon their entry... I should have sent most of the command to Grufflingen pronto; instead, I waited a bit for recon along the roads and moved much too slowly as I was concerned with ambushes. When KG Peiper first entered, I was a tad worried that I didn't have enough in St. Vith and CCB might be a bit late to the rescue

 

[Daz]

Not sure why there are so many men left in the Coy?
I think that surviving crew members and manpower from disbanded units gets absorbed into the other units.
Maybe this is not working right? That's just a wild guess!

Different people like to handle arty differently and Dave has had to adjust the arty in all sorts of directions due to player pressure.
I think the arty should be tied to the availability of the bases supply stocks.
Most units at this scale of command have the ability to bring in arty fire one way or another. Its response to calls should be based partly on the country. For example the Brits were very fast to respond but not so accurate, the Americans were slower but very accurate.
The most overriding factor of all though, is the availability of ammunition. If the guns have good supply on hand and in the base then they should be firing at everything they spot. Especially on the offensive (attack order) or FPF (final protective fire).
Maybe it can be done by cross referencing a percentage of current base stock levels and expected resupply for the next day?

Just another five minutes of coding for Dave I'm sure

Put a screen shot up of your AAR and the map. Would be very interested to see how things ended up for you

 

[Rake]

Put a screen shot up of your AAR and the map. Would be very interested to see how things ended up for you

Here ya go, Daz...

A "closeup" of St. Vith. 10th Armored Infantry was taking a pounding from KG Peiper before CCR arrived...

And, the situation at Breitfeld; nothing else was threatened when the German's surrendered.

I feel like I did ...okay. I should have pushed the recon element of CCR a little faster, but was a bit tentative at night. Had I moved more quickly with recon, I could have had the 35th Tank Batt. on Peiper's flank and rear sooner. Still trying to get a handle on fatigue during night movements.

 

[Daz]

Very good job!

Looks like you made them bleed trying to take St Vith. Lots of silver crosses there.

I usually split CCR in two and go for the German rear echelon (the base and artillery) severing the road in the north west with the larger portion, and clear along the west side of the river, up to the same northing as Brietfeld with the 318th Inf and a smaller portion of CCR.
There is no real need to go after the rear echelon, as the scenario ends soon, so it has virtually no effect on the battle at all, but from a role playing perspective it seems like the right thing to do.

The terrain is much more open in the north west, so I am always careful not to expose my armor to long range fire from the German big cats.
The final counter attack to finish them, is a two pronged attack that starts during the night, to allow the Allied armor to close to within penetration distance by first light.
This is launched from the west with the larger portion and the smaller portion of CCR from the south simultaneously.