Task organizing units: not a thing

[blahmaster6k]

To add to Fulmen's thoughts on the subject, the only way I'd think it would work to implement corps and army level assets would be to have something akin to "support companies" except at the Field Marshal or General level.

You could have slots for your 24 division groups and for your 5 army groups. You could tell the game to add, say, a battalion of TDs or whatever to one of these special slots. These TDs would provide some kind of either command ability or army wide buff to all those divisions.

I don't know if it would be very fun, and I'm sure that AI would screw it up. But it would let you simulate higher level assets.

This sounds a lot like the ability "Siege Artillery" in theme and description. Pulling army-level siege artillery to use for a few days as you're attacking the Maginot line or some other fortified position. Same for "Makeshift Bridges," "Glider Planes," etc. Actually, aside from the three generic command abilities all of them seem like they would be representations of some form of higher level asset.

 

[Secret Master]

This sounds a lot like the ability "Siege Artillery" in theme and description. Pulling army-level siege artillery to use for a few days as you're attacking the Maginot line or some other fortified position. Same for "Makeshift Bridges," "Glider Planes," etc. Actually, aside from the three generic command abilities all of them seem like they would be representations of some form of higher level asset.

They do.

In fact, given how some command abilities rely less on the commander and more on the assets available in real life, I'd be okay with some command abilities taken away from traits and instead tied to higher level assets. You'd have to make the gliders, pool the engineers, and create the siege artillery.

 

[Harin]

To add to Fulmen's thoughts on the subject, the only way I'd think it would work to implement corps and army level assets would be to have something akin to "support companies" except at the Field Marshal or General level.

You could have slots for your 24 division groups and for your 5 army groups. You could tell the game to add, say, a battalion of TDs or whatever to one of these special slots. These TDs would provide some kind of either command ability or army wide buff to all those divisions.

I don't know if it would be very fun, and I'm sure that AI would screw it up. But it would let you simulate higher level assets.

Maybe this is to much, but throwing it out there.

Armies and Army Groups were real things. The HQ, the communications net work (or lack there of), the organic support units; all of it was real and took time to man and equip. Without putting army headquarters on the map, maybe armies should be made, like divisions. They do NOT show up on the map, but building an army first, then assigning divisions to it would be realistic.

The army unit could have the support units you mentioned. Since the combat system unrealistically penalizes small units, like TDs, helping out in a fight, these units would probably have to give some ability or buff like you described. Building up logistics, artillery, AT, AA, engineering, fort breaching, it could all be something to add to army capabilities. It could make armies feel a little more special, teach the AI to use them better, and add some depth to current unit and equipment builds.

Edit: This could also address the point of the OP. Making ad hoc or special combat formations would be at the army level with this idea. The army is the unit. It has army level sized support units and divisions swapped out for the operation at hand. Flexible to change at will, without losing experience or causing combat debuffs.

 

[GrandVezir]

They do.

In fact, given how some command abilities rely less on the commander and more on the assets available in real life, I'd be okay with some command abilities taken away from traits and instead tied to higher level assets. You'd have to make the gliders, pool the engineers, and create the siege artillery.

While we're redesigning things, "logistics companies" should be less a division-level and more of an army/group/theatre-level asset.

Related tangent: how frustrating is it that the logistics-wizard field marshal "Extra Supplies" button is 1. only for units already out of supply, and 2. essentially unusable for any army group worth the name?

 

[Sbrubbles]

Um, no? You just edit the existing template. No one actually creates new templates for every little upgrade to a template unless they're diverging to create two different end-goal divisions. Even if you did create a new template, you can delete the old one so this is a non-issue.

I'm describing a situation in which I want to give AA to some but not all my divisions of a certain template. If you want to call that "create two different end-goal divisions", sure, but that doesn't change anything I said. You need a new template for every different "end-goal divisions".

I'm suggesting a solution in which support companies (and only support companies) could be changed on the fly without leaving the main map mode, going to the designer and creating new "end-goal divisions".

 

[GrandVezir]

I'm describing a situation in which I want to give AA to some but not all my divisions of a certain template. If you want to call that "create two different end-goal divisions", sure, but that doesn't change anything I said. You need a new template for every different "end-goal divisions".

I'm suggesting a solution in which support companies (and only support companies) could be changed on the fly without leaving the main map mode, going to the designer and creating new "end-goal divisions".

Being able to assign AA support on the fly seems iffy. It would allow ground forces to react to air attack much faster than the actual flight time of the airplanes, as represented in game.

 

[Sbrubbles]

Being able to assign AA support on the fly seems iffy. It would allow ground forces to react to air attack much faster than the actual flight time of the airplanes, as represented in game.

That's easy to solve: it could use the standard rules for reinforcement. If you have template B, and template C is just template B + a support AA, then when you change your division from B to C it takes some days to reinforce.

I'm not suggesting anything that can't be done with the current system. I'm just suggesting something that would make life easier. Oh, the divisions you used to naval invade Arkhangelsk are suffering from low supply? Instead of going into the designer, recreating the same template but with a logistic company, then changing your division to the new type, just click a button and wait some days for it to reinforce.

 

[Secret Master]

2. essentially unusable for any army group worth the name?

With micro, it is perfectly usable. You just have to pause, remove all divisions from the FM that you don't want to use the ability on, fire the ability, then reassign all division groups back to the FM.

Yes, it's silly, but it works well. The same thing works with Last Stand. I sometimes have an entire army and general set to its own theater that's set aside as the "Last Stand" army. I move divisions that need last standing there, fire it, then move them back to their normal army.

 

[GrandVezir]

With micro, it is perfectly usable.

You and I have very different ideas of "usable."

 

[GrandVezir]

Jokes aside, there would need to be some degree of structural change to make this concept workable (side note: my day job has not been programming or even database admin in a very long time).

Currently, you could describe on-map land units/formations as a series of containers:

• Divisions contain up to 25 line battalions and/or up to 5 support companies.
• Armies contain a theoretically unlimited* number of divisions and up to 1 leader.
• Army groups contain a theoretically unlimited* number of armies and up to 1 field marshal.
• Theatres contain an unlimited number of armies/army groups.
• Battalions and companies can only exist inside of a division, but are themselves containers for the actual equipment and personnel.

Right now, certain abilities (like shooting at airplanes) are limited to battalions or companies that have the right equipment for it, and others (like siege artillery) are handled by the traits of the leader in charge of the army/group. To implement Secret Master's idea:

To add to Fulmen's thoughts on the subject, the only way I'd think it would work to implement corps and army level assets would be to have something akin to "support companies" except at the Field Marshal or General level.

...you would need to change the structure of the "army" (or "army group") container to allow something other than divisions (or armies) to live there. Then you would also need to add code so that armies/groups could actually use the darn things once assigned. And ideally make it so the AI would use them as well.

*The leader takes penalties if you exceed their command limits, but (for example) an unled army can hold as many divisions as you can build, since there is no leader to penalize.

 

[CrasherZZ]

From Wikipedia, Kampfgruppe
"The Kampfgruppe was an ad hoc combined arms formation, usually employing a combination of tanks, infantry, and artillery (including anti-tank) elements, generally organised for a particular task or operation.[1]

A Kampfgruppe could range in size from a company to a corps , but the most common was an Abteilung (battalion)-sized formation. Kampfgruppen were generally referred to by either their commanding officer's name or the parent division.[2]"

From Wikipedia, Regimental Combat Team
"World War II RCTs were generally of two types:

1. Temporary organizations configured for the accomplishment of a specific mission or series of missions,
2. Semi-permanent organizations designed to be deployed as a unit throughout a combat theater of operations."

I think it would be reasonable to be able to make ad-hoc modifications of a single divisions in exchange for XP. The German Army will always be maxed out on XP so they would be able to make lots of ad-hoc changes, as they did in real life.

In terms of game mechanics, the AI will be handicapped since it probably wouldn't be able to take advantage of the feature, and shouldn't be allowed to if it's going to slow down the computer with extra AI processing. That said, how much fun should be denied to the human player just because the AI can't keep up? The AI will never be able to match a human player no matter what.

One of my favorite features of HOI3 was being able construct and deconstruct divisions on the fly. That's why I was initially horrified by the XP needed for the division designer. in HOI4. I'm used it to now but that's the one thing from HOI3 that I miss the most.

 

[CrasherZZ]

Independent Mixed Brigades, IJA
From Wikipedia:
"Between 1937 and 1945 the Japanese Imperial Army formed 126 Independent Mixed Brigades (numbered 1–136 with some gaps), typically composed of various units detached from other formations. Some were composed of separate, independent assets (usually Independent Infantry Battalions). These brigades were task organized under unified command and were normally used in support roles, as security, force protection, POW and internment camp guards and labor in occupied territories. An Independent Mixed Brigade had between 5,000 and 11,000 troops.[1] "

In HOI4, Japan wouldn''t have near enough XP to do that.

 

[Secret Master]

...you would need to change the structure of the "army" (or "army group") container to allow something other than divisions (or armies) to live there.

Yep. It's also why I'm not demanding it with any anger or rancor at the moment. Such a change would be pretty big in terms of both mechanics and interface.

 

[Zauberelefant]

With micro, it is perfectly usable. You just have to pause, remove all divisions from the FM that you don't want to use the ability on, fire the ability, then reassign all division groups back to the FM.

Yes, it's silly, but it works well. The same thing works with Last Stand. I sometimes have an entire army and general set to its own theater that's set aside as the "Last Stand" army. I move divisions that need last standing there, fire it, then move them back to their normal army.

Sounds like a workaround to a missing QoL improvement. How about changing Status quo to have only selected Divisions (Default:all) affected?

 

[Secret Master]

Sounds like a workaround to a missing QoL improvement. How about changing Status quo to have only selected Divisions (Default:all) affected?

I don't disagree with you.

Personally, I'd like to apply command abilities to divisions on a particular tile as the default action. But I can see how that wouldn't work with command abilities that require general or field marshal traits.

(Which takes us back to my idea of removing some of them from traits and instead tying them to building things like siege guns, gliders, and makeshift bridges/pooling engineers in a single battalion.)

 

[billcorr]

Task organizing IS a thing in HoI4 (this is a change from the title of this thread).

Given how many divisions there are in a typical game as Germany or the Soviets, I like to think that my Task Organizing Units are, in fact, the shells generals command which contain divisions.

Sure. That makes sense.

Players can task organize Armies and Army Groups.

As the comments point out, the game sort-of, but sort-of-doesn't portray the upper echelon independent assets pushed to subordinate units for special missions.

The glider, supply, and fortress-busting artillery special abilities of field marshals give the flavor of Army-Group-level commands helping out lower level commands.
Nice feature.

As Secret Master and Fulmen point out,

To add to Fulmen's thoughts on the subject, the only way I'd think it would work to implement corps and army level assets would be to have something akin to "support companies" except at the Field Marshal or General level.

You could have slots for your 24 division groups and for your 5 army groups. You could tell the game to add, say, a battalion of TDs or whatever to one of these special slots. These TDs would provide some kind of either command ability or army wide buff to all those divisions.

I don't know if it would be very fun, and I'm sure that AI would screw it up. But it would let you simulate higher level assets.

If this was an essay for publication, this would be a good place to give 3 historical examples.

Corps level artillery supporting a divison's breakthrough.
Army level transportation units moving a corps
Station hospitals caring for an Army Group.

But, instead, we'll let the division level assets identified in the OP stand-in for all possible examples.
These RAJ and UK division level units supported the subordinate brigade-sized units in their 1935 operation.

This pattern is repeated at each echelon (for most nations, that is...the post-purge USSR had a different organizational structure that diminished command-and-control*)

• Brigade commanders push out (detach) brigade assets to help battalions/regiments
• Division commanders push out (detach) division assets to help brigades
• Corps commanders push out (detach) corps assets to help divisions
• Army commanders push out (detach) army assets to help corps
• Army Group commanders push out (detach) army group assets to help armies.
  
  And so it goes.
  
  *USSR did away with its corps after the purge. For some reason, the Soviet Union did not have enough officers to staff all the headquarters. By removing an entire echelon from its formation, the USSR was able to spread out its remaining officers more thinly over the Soviet Army. This resulted in Army commanders exceeding their span of control.
  
  (nice game design feature...in HoI4, commanders' abilities diminish when they command too many subordinate units. A span of control is typically 3 to 5 line units.)

 

[Secret Master]

If this was an essay for publication, this would be a good place to give 3 historical examples.

Here's another example of higher level assets being put at the division level temporarily.

1st Infantry Division - Order of Battle of the United States Army - WWII - ETO | U.S. Army Center of Military History

history.army.mil

Scroll down to the tank destroyer section:

The TDs weren't integral to the division at this point in the war, but they were periodically assigned to the division on an "as needed" basis. In some cases, TD battalions were assigned for only days at a time.

 

[Gyrvendal]

Things like TDs, heavy artillery, railway artillery, rocket art, commandos, specialized river crossing or mountain battalions could indeed be attached to an army and used on demand. That would add a very cool element of variety to the game IMO.
Could be a way to further specialize your armies if you have say, 3 slots for such specialists per army.

IMO they would ideally work like the "task force" mission in naval battles. They are summoned to a single battle under certain conditions and support the units there. Alternatively you could spend some command power to summon them to a battle manually.

 

[mursolini]

Mechanically, it isn't super complicated to create "corps" or "army" level accets.

Create a sort of "HQ template". Have it operate similar to current off-map resistance suppression templates. Then, then assign specific accet icon for specific division, like you assign commanders, with some travel time. Mechanically, it would function like
adding a zero width batallion to your division.

Game should also track expirince level of such formations.