Units not moving

[EdJaws]

I started to play Patton's Favourite and was going to take my time. Unfortunately my unit want to take their time too.

I issued orders to the 3 HQs. The 10th to assault Burnon immediately in a vee formation. The 8th to delay 1 hour then assault up the hill southwest of Chaumont in an arrowhead formation with 1 waypoint, and CCB to defend Burnon in an all around formation.

The 10th completed it's assignment as I expected but the 8th failed to move at my desired time as did CCB.

I let the game run for the hell of it and it's now 5:45. CCB still has its orders but hasn't moved and the 8th is not showing its orders at all.

Not sure if this is a known problem but I searched and didn't see it mentioned. I'm not sure if it's repeatable but I do remember it happening previously. I'd be hard pressed to get it to happen again, sorry. I included a save.

 

[*budd*]

I've seen this too just haven't captured a good save yet. Question: there's no order delay for reinforcements just arriving on map is there?

 

[simovitch]

Tough to get things going on a wintery night. try maxing out aggro and setting rest to min or none.

 

[EdJaws]

That doesn't explain why the 8th "lost" it's orders. I've seen this happen in the Beda Fomm scenario I played a half dozen times and reissuing order would get the units to move, but after the normal delay. If I try your recommendation I'll be issuing new order which will bypass the problem. I intend to restart it to see if I can get it to happen again with a few different saves along the way.

EDIT: This is the start of the scenario and all unit have basically zero fatigue <- This is wrong, I checked fatigue after the rest time CCB goes through, sorry.

there's no order delay for reinforcements just arriving on map is there?

I don't believe so but I've been wrong many, many times before.

 

[Dave 'Arjuna' O'Connor]

No orders delay as such but para unit arriving by paradrop do so with a big cohesion hit and often have to reorg before they can start moving.

 

[EdJaws]

I restarted the game and set conditions like I did before.

10th in an attack vee formation.
8th in an attack arrowhead formation with 3 way points delayed 1 hour.
CCB to defend in an all around formation.

This time I set all messages which I didn't have on before. As I could now see:
At D2, 04:25 8th tank failed to complete its attack mission for some reason.
At D2, 06:29 CCB completed its rest task. This one's not that big a deal but I had no idea it was going to delay its orders until it finished resting.

I included 5 saves in the zip file leading up to 07:00.

 

[Dave 'Arjuna' O'Connor]

I will look into this after I get this next build out. In the meantime can you check on something for me. Normally an attack will be slipped if it's running behind schedule. I wonder if it's a case of the reassessment to slip the time failing and the time running out. Could you please review the save and let me know if that s the case. Just keep a watch on the end time. It will be updated if slipped.

 

[EdJaws]

Replaying the previous save the 8th never slipped. End time stayed put to what it was when I first started the scenario.

I restarted the scenario multiple times and almost all slipped the start and end time with various start times and waypoints. I quite possibly confused myself though with all the experimenting I did. I'm afraid I'm not very good at testing.

I included in this post another new restart and save, P_F_007, where I set the 10th to attack immediately, the 8th with 1 waypoint and a 1 hour delay and CCB to defend with a 1 hour delay. The end time never slipped again.

I do believe it might have something to do with setting waypoints and/or order delays.

I couple of questions are floating around in my noggin:

Normally an attack will be slipped if it's running behind schedule.

Why do orders get slipped when nothing is hindering them to do so?

All the units in this scenario have about 30% fatigue. In testing, the units that did slip the start and end time seemed to do so to rest but I could be wrong. Yet the 10th carried out it's orders right away with an equal amount of fatigue.

Is there a minimum fatigue that you can give orders where units will not slip if my assumption is right?

If we want our units to always carry out our orders immediately must we set rest to none?

If we delay a units start time, should we also move the end time farther back?

I hope some of what I wrote makes sense and hope it helps.

Ed

PS. No problem on getting to this Dave. I can work around it and you've got plenty on your plate now.

 

[Dave 'Arjuna' O'Connor]

Orders get slipped when there is insufficient time remaining to finish the task. It may not be because of the task subject but one of its subordinates who might be held up because they were forced to retreat, bypass or reorg and can no longer get to their assigned objective on time.

 

[EdJaws]

I guess I pretty much knew that would be the response in other cases where you're in mid-battle. I assumed when you're at the start of a scenario, with 100% cohesion or near to it, that the units would be able to respond at once to your orders. Not wanting to make myself look like an ass any further, I'll defer all other question.

 

[Dave 'Arjuna' O'Connor]

I guess I pretty much knew that would be the response in other cases where you're in mid-battle. I assumed when you're at the start of a scenario, with 100% cohesion or near to it, that the units would be able to respond at once to your orders. Not wanting to make myself look like an ass any further, I'll defer all other question.

Hey I don't want to be the only ass here OK.

The scenario designer sets the amount of initial orders delay for a scenario. This can be quite significant.

 

[Daz]

Ed, as a rule of thumb, you have to set no rest for all orders you expect to overrun into the night, or that start at night.
Night time is the most efficient period for the units to recover fatigue so there is a rest period built into the game by default.
This was put in a long time ago because people were forgetting to rest their units, then wondering why they wouldn't respond to orders the next morning, not realising they were all exhausted.

New for CO2 is an option, in the 'Options Dialogue', that will allow you to turn of this default rest behaviour.
This is for more experienced players as its still important to rest your troops, so you will need to decide when best to do it and spend more time monitoring there fatigue levels.

The reason some of your orders expired is because the rest period is relatively long, and by the time they woke up the end time for the order was long past. Setting 'NO Rest' would have prevented this in your examples above.

See my St Vith AAR page 22 for more about it.

http://forums.lnlpublishing.com/thr...r-those-playing-as-axis.1196/page-3#post-6891

To be on the safe side, for orders that you definitely don't want to expire, increment the end time in the Edit Tasks Dialogue. The easiest way is just to increment the End day as its just one click of the mouse and will give your units an extra 24hours to complete it before it expires.

If you don't want to monitor the order (especially for a move), then its best to leave the end time on default. If the unit runs into trouble, it won't continue to run back into that trouble again and again, as the order will expire (white info box on extended counters) and they will go into all round defence to await new orders from you.

 

[EdJaws]

Thanks Daz, good answer!

I suspected your explaination was the case but didn't want to trouble Dave any more than necessary with concerns other than bugs. The man's got enough on his plate . We're all lucky to have your knowledge and dedication helping out.

Ed