Enforcement of attack delays for planned orders in 1.1

[peryskop]

It most of the time stops my offensive to stand still when you got tank spear head stooped by single HQ (it was retreating in first place) by simply attacking you for short while
And you can stop your opponent from moving just attack them with any thing (single division or HQ will do) and break of your attack they will be stuck for hours

three points [/COLOR]
1 Length of delay should be affected by the size of fighting forces
2 Planed attack shouldn't be delayed longer than couple of hours
3 Organization loses while moving

 

[Tharkun]

I don't understand...in my only game so far with Germany, my war in Poland was normal, I planed the whole operation myself and my panzers did not stop when they met Polish reserve divisions. They just continued their attack province after province, exactly as I had ordered them to do.

However, I wholeheartedly agree with Lordban and Fiendix. If what they say is true, then it's a MAJOR mistake from PI. This is WWII not WWI afterall. Well, I don't want to repeat what Lordban said in the OP, if anyone wants to know the operational consequences in realism he only has to read the OP.

Very disappointing, if true.

 

[unmerged(141861)]

Would increasing the penalty for moving into/taking over enemy terrain, WHILE removing or reducing the attack delay penalty prevent some of these exploits? A unit moving to reinforce a defense in its own country should be faster than an attacker? In my opinion there was no reason in HOI2 for supportr defense to move faster than just move,a nd 2x as fast? I used this all the time, I would move only 1 unit forward to take a province, all the others waited for this unit and then were ready with support defense to min org loss while moving. As soon as the first unit moved and took the province, it was usually attacked, I retreated the the rest moved in at 2x speed. If you know the V for vistory series it is the difference between tactical movement and stretegic movement. NOT SR as HOI, still either truck, foot or hoof, but cautious land conquering movement versus quickly to your comrades defense movement.

 

[unmerged(113253)]

They should change the post attack delay into a pre-attack delay. A lot of planning has to occur to conduct an attack setting up the logistics and whatnot and it would help more agile armies get inside the OODA loop of less agile ones. Though 160 hours is way too long.

 

[unmerged(85298)]

The Big Problem with this atack delay is you cannot atack provinces there is no defender. why waiting to organize to atack a province undefended bull shit !

 

[unmerged(12303)]

The Big Problem with this atack delay is you cannot atack provinces there is no defender. why waiting to organize to atack a province undefended bull shit !

a delay in the attack itself would simultate units getting ready to move and the distribution of orders - still I am not for this in the game. the delay after the attack and org loss dureing move are good enough to slow the game down.

 

[Lordban]

A delay before the attack raises problems of its own.

For starters, you have to teach the AI to be aware of the exact date when the Diplomatic AI will DoW, so that it gives attack orders in advance.

Then you have to implement the possibility to give attack orders without a DoW.

Then you have to teach the AI to give them without knowing if a DoW is coming, whether it is because you as the human controller choose when to DoW or because another nation might DoW it.

 

[Praetori]

In my opinion this whole feature are unnecessary as pointed out by some in this thread. A mechanic that involve a minimum required ORG to initiate an attack would solve things much nicer. I would also like to see a greater ORG loss from moving into enemy owned provinces. These penalties could be modified by technology. Then we would not need to have any hard coded delay times. Once a division is below a certain amount of its starting org it must rest until it regain enough ORG to attack again.

Agreed. But ORG loss would need a whole lot of tweaking and additional features would also be needed (like units with high turnaround in reinforcements or upgrades should loose ORG, or units landing on beaches, paras, and so forth).
Army/Corps HQs should also be affected (as well as affect their subordinates).

 

[Laurwin]

Well, what can I say, an excellent, well written and spot on article. I really have nothing to add to this, you "stole the words out of my mouth" as it were.


With the historical context in mind, the exploitation of the offensives would seem to hinge on few key factors, a stream of reinforcements in men and material to support the blitzing forces, if you have no spare parts, fuel, or ammunition coming in either as a steady stream, or simply just stacked on trucks, it's going to be very difficult to get large mobile formations moving, attacking and pushing forward again.

The American 2nd Armored Division "Hell on Wheels" literally just stacked up lots of fuel, supplies and ammunition with them during the Battle of Normandy, they just stacked all halftracks and trucks full of fuel and supplies, and the infantry had to ride on top of the sherman tanks. Worked good enough for the most part. Trucks were also important in purely supplying role, the red ball express for instance.

Traffic jams and geographical obstacles also played a part, but mostly in very specific scenarios with large mobile formations being funneled into specific river crossings, bridges or roads etc...

 

[Badbonez]

I don't understand...in my only game so far with Germany, my war in Poland was normal, I planed the whole operation myself and my panzers did not stop when they met Polish reserve divisions. They just continued their attack province after province, exactly as I had ordered them to do.

However, I wholeheartedly agree with Lordban and Fiendix. If what they say is true, then it's a MAJOR mistake from PI. This is WWII not WWI afterall. Well, I don't want to repeat what Lordban said in the OP, if anyone wants to know the operational consequences in realism he only has to read the OP.

Very disappointing, if true.

Are you using 1.1? It was a change they made in that version.

As for me, I've been keeping mobile reserves in the ready to exploit holes that my inf (with arty brigades) blow open. It works until you run out of mobile reserves. BUt with enough, by the time you have stopped your lead units, the following units can be ready for the next attack. Plus, I always research that tech that reduces delays by 24 hours. I'm down to 24 hour delays only.

 

[Laurwin]

its annoying as hell though, basically you could do exactly what lordban originally said about reserve forces in a second line. basically a single militia brigade will stop even the biggest armoured spearhead for roughly 2-5 days (the delay), even when the militia are easily routed and they flee!

The inability to even blitz an empty province after an initial battle at the border province is pretty weird.

 

[unmerged(73411)]

i agree completely with OP. this single feature breaks the game for me, more than any of the other numerous faults

 

[ElVince]

can't agree more with you that delay is totally incoherent... I hope to see it fixed.

 

[humancalculator]

I totally agree with the OP.

 

[Sid Meier]

combat_leader_impact = 0.05,
combat_movement_speed = 0.33,
combat_pushback_damage = 0.05,
combat_pushback_chance_for_damage = 10, -- 10 = 10%
unit_attack_delay = 168,
unit_attack_delay_modify = 10,
unit_digin_cap = 10,
bomb_strategic_resources = 0.25,
bomb_strategic_production = 0.01,
bomb_strategic_buildings = 0.01,

That right there can give a temp fix, though it brings down wait time for all attacks and seems to make the AI super aggressive when fighting XD.

Which file?

 

[Lordban]

The file is common\defines.lua

Be wary, the attack delay then goes down for the AI too, and it starts blitzing as well

 

[Sid Meier]

The file is common\defines.lua

Be wary, the attack delay then goes down for the AI too, and it starts blitzing as well

Thats my intention

 

[Sid Meier]

Okay the file is already 168 what should I reduce it to?

 

[Lordban]

Whatever value suits you. That number is the baseline delay in hours between attacks, before you do any research.

Just remember to edit " operational_level_organization " in the technologies\Land Doctrines.txt file, so that the bonuses it gives are appropriate. The string to change here is " attack_delay = 24 " - each level of research decreases delay by this many hours. Assume it can be researched a maximum of seven times.

 

[Domaru]

Very nice post indeed.

Would it be possible to link the attack delay to the length of the last combat the unit participated in? That way if it had fought a long grind it wouldn't be able to go for a walk in the enemy rear as if nothing had happened, but if the combat was just one of these "I ran over a retreating HQ" 1 hour annoyances it wouldn't stop the advancing panzer hordes dead in their tracks.