Recon by Death

Ivan Rapkinov

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Don Maddox said:
There are different types of Air Cav units in service with the US Army. In past times the most common unit consisted of three troops of attack or scout aircraft and one troop of transport aircraft. These units are now largely a thing of the past due to the ARI (Aircraft Restructuring Initiative). What ARI did was basically make all aviation units into "pure" organizations. In other words no unit has more than one type of aircraft. An attack unit has only Apaches. An assault unit has only Blackhawks.
thanks for that explanation Don :)

though I must admit my plans for my cav units have chnaged a bit now - last time I used them to scout they found one of John's Mech BDEs and 70% of them didn't make it home :(
 

Dr Zaius

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Ivan Rapkinov said:
though I must admit my plans for my cav units have changed a bit now - last time I used them to scout they found one of John's Mech BDEs and 70% of them didn't make it home
Yes, I have found that rotary wing scout elements seem to be exceptionally prone to being shot to pieces. Now these units certainly are vulnerable in real life, but they also have abilities and techniques available to them to help level the playing field and allow them to do their jobs. I find that within DA they are just a tad too vulnerable in most situations. Their job is to go and scout for the enemy when his exact location and composition is not known. Yet when they do finally encounter an enemy, they are almost always devastated and suffer heavily in the process. I'm not suggesting that air cav units should be invulnerable in any way, but I do think they are currently so fragile as to make them a questionable asset.

A lot of this is due to the way the DA interface works. Right now the only way to control these units is to plot a waypoint to the general vicinity you want scouted. The cav units then simply fly directly on the path you plotted. If they discover an entire mech brigade with ADA support along the way, what do they do? Do they send in a SITREP and shadow the enemy? No, they attempt to continue flying right across the enemy unit's footprint, usually getting themselves annihilated in the deal. The only way to avoid this is to plot their waypoints right up to the edge of any enemy unit, being cautious not to cross the footprint itslef. But since the primary function of air cav units is to scout for the unknown, this process simply does not work well within the limits of the current interface.

What is needed here is one of two things. Choice A would be to have AI intelligent enough to adjust the unit's orders when it finally encounters an enemy unit. The player is acting as the division or TF commander and shouldn't be burdened with micromanaging the tactical details of every small unit, so that's certainly not what I'm suggesting. That being said, the player is dependant on his subordinate leaders (fictional entities simulated by the AI) having enough sense to carry out their assigned mission in an intelligent manner and adjust when the enemy is encountered. Instead, the player is saddled with a group of simulated subordinates who interpret every order literally and never adjust in the face of the enemy no matter what. This is what leads to the extremely bloody nature of the battles in DA. The subordinate commanders do not act like real commanders who have been given a mission, they unquestioningly march right into oblivion and there is little the player can do about it even if he does attempt to micromanage the situation. Choice B would be to implement a system similar to the SOP system that TacOps has, only geared toward combat at the division level. In other words, a scout unit could be ordered to recon a particular area, but if a powerful enemy unit was discovered along the way, the scout would then back off and simply shadow the enemy or whatever else the SOP dictated.

The same problem plagues ground units as well, although you don't notice it quite as much as they aren't prone to being destroyed in a single turn like aviation units. Time and again I have seen one side or the other throw out cavalry elements in front of the primary maneuver units. The mission of these units is to scout the enemy and screen friendly forces from the prying eyes of the enemy. But since the notional subordinate commanders are dumb as dirt, they simply stay in place and are largely obliterated by advancing enemy tank brigades. In real life these units would either send in a detailed SITREP and then withdraw to a pre-designated position, or they would use delaying tactics to slow the enemy until friendly forces are in position to deal with the situation. Instead, they nearly always suffer from the dreaded "recon by death" syndrome.

The player does have the ability to set a percentage loss via the orders menu that will tell the unit how many losses it can sustain before retreating, but this is a poor substitute for an SOP system. If the enemy has powerful ADA or artillery support on hand, even a unit set to 1% retreat can be devastated before it has an opportunity to withdraw. Although that may be realistic in some situations, it virtually guarantees that friendly forces will bring on a general engagement if faced by the enemy. The player has no option to even attempt to scout without being drawn into a major battle. Ground units can usually survive some pounding so you don't notice this shortcoming as much, but aviation units are simply slaughtered in the recon role most of the time.
 

Ivan Rapkinov

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Brilliant post Don - I need to give it some thought before responding properly :)

plus the other half is nagging me to come to bed...
 

Ivan Rapkinov

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For Choice A: the disadvantage is that the player is basically reduced to ordering units "go here do this", which while being accurate, isn't an exciting game. It also would likely mean a rewrite of the AI code which I'm assuming is no small task.

For Choice B: perhaps what is needed is a new "Mission" type for scouting units - say "Scouting" where like security or Hasty Defence their footprint is increased, but instead of engaging in combat, they automatically attempt to withdraw from an enemy unit's footprint - thus giving a location, but not engaging the unit itself.

The only down side to this would be the fact that it could be abused by giving large comabt formations the Scouting mission and just using it to mass troops, but perhaps a unit type "scout" would allow for extra options as with Engineers or Arty.
 

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It's a problem for all recon units, but we can probably live with the situation on the ground. Where this problem is particularly noticeable is for air units. Air units, while they remain fragile, are a massive force multiplier for any commander who is lucky enough to have them. Their combination of speed and agility is unmatched by any other unit on the battlefield. Air cavalry units can appear from nowhere and wreck havoc on ground units, and this is represented in DA with a reasonable level of abstraction. I don't have many complaints about the way attack helicopters function. They can be deadly when they strike at the right time and place. Rotary wing recon elements are the problem in my view. They simply aren't that useful because they get wiped out more often than not.
 
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