Split Battalions

[Marching Thru Georgia]

Is there a way to prevent the AI from splitting a battalion into two groups? Not all units were capable of forming independent groups of skirmishers, landwehr and militia for instance.

[Holdit]

I've been taking a look at the Gettysburg SDK today, just to get a flavour of what's in store, and from what I've seen, I think that would be possible. There's a CSV file that defines the formations, and each formation has a unit attribute value against it for close order drill (if I remember correctly) and a formation is only available a unit if it meets the level defined in the formation's definition.

That might be less than clear: each unit has a formation score. If the units formation score matches the score in the formations definition, it can use it, otherwise not. This is assuming I've understood it correctly, of course.

The Gettysburg SDK is very impressive. There seems to be an awful lot that can be done with this game. I think I've already spotted the answer to a couple of questions I had. I'm looking forward to getting to grips with it. If you've ever played around with the editable files from the Tiller HPS Napoleonic Games, then imagine those. On steroids. Buckets of steroids...

Paul

[mitra76]

No, the detach of skirmishers is stance related (some stances use them others no); like the numbers of flanks companies and the use or not of third line as skirmishers were information logically related to the OOB csv, but this last had to be the first thing to be completed before start AI and the scenario creation. Additional columns here will have required at least 1-2 months of testing\correction in the code and time was the only thing we could not permit to lost. So we have moved it to a successive patches upgrades.

Also because, if it is true that landwehr and dutch militia units cannot furnish the best skirmshers, at least formally just at the start of June 1 between the battalions of every landwehr regiments has been named named Fusilier battalion of regiment and the dutch militia have the flanks companies like the regulars.

It is like the discussion militia\landwehr able to form squares or no: I saw historical forum where people scream like crazies about this without reaching agreement. So at the end my idea that not set blocks for now, and permit the max possible customizion later, is always the better solution.

[Saddletank]

Thanks Mitra. Where is the Stance moddable again please? Or is it in the units orders?

I think I'm okay with every battalion being able to detach a company, but it would only be a company. I'm less happy with the percentage options of 25%, 50% and 100% of the unit.

I think skirmishers were deployed only this way:

1) The light company of every battalion when it had one
2) The 3rd rank of Prussian Fusilier battalions
3) Any and/or all the men in a designated light/jager/leger battalion

Except for #3 each of these values is fixed and a battalion commander would not be able to vary the number of men deployed since the army drill manuals would specify how many to deploy and where.

Its a pity that the game detaches a skirmish sub unit from its parent brigade - I can understand that time constraints must have applied here - but really the skirmishers of a brigade should really work together as a combined unit (unless one battalion is detached elsewhere) and said skirmishers would deploy to a certain distance in front and fall back to a certain location on the brigade flanks when pressed. Giving separate units to the player to put where he wants doesn't seem to be in keeping with the design of the game or the command problems of division/corps commanders.

[mitra76]

Thanks Mitra. Where is the Stance moddable again please? Or is it in the units orders?

Yes they are in the AI code, it is difficult to explain how they work now, it will be more clear in the SDK document.

[Marching Thru Georgia]

The simplest solution would be to leave the skirmish formation blank in unitglobal for certain classes. Then the AI would know not to detach the 2nd unit. However, the AI doesn't know this and tries to detach a unit anyway with a bad formation. A simple check to see if there is an entry in that cell is all that is needed.

[mitra76]

No the files csv are read in the hardcoded part as part of classes initialization, you could order to use a formation selecting the possible value of unitglobal columns from a eNum but don't know if what are filled or not:

example base.ICommand(eComFormType,eFTSkirmish) if to a eFTSkirmish correspond a clear value the game crashes because of a NULL formation is ordered.

Of course a solution is to place in unitglobal in the skirmish column the same value of march or fighting formation and check with base.FormTypeIndex() if the skirmishers formation return is equal to the linear one and avoid the split in this case, but is a good workaround solution for modding not for the release version (in the Ai code there's a example of a similar code for eventually manage the full skirmishers specialized battalions but at the end I freezed it for the reasons below):

first because many more unit classes will have created a lot of more of work and possible errors for the guys which worked with sprites and oob (they will have killed me)
second I think at the moment we will approach the problem it should be seen all around and in the more complete and flexible mode with the various cases. Probably it would be necessary a single dedicated patch, but done 1 time well, done forever.

As additional info: Split is done (at least for the AI) before in the stance controlled code and the skirmish formation ordered after this so that the same change is done automatically both for the AI and the players splits

[Marching Thru Georgia]

Of course a solution is to place in unitglobal in the skirmish column the same value of march or fighting formation and check with base.FormTypeIndex() if the skirmishers formation return is equal to the linear one and avoid the split in this case

Yes this is a good solution too so long as it is clear which index number is for skirmishers. That almost requires the skirmish formation to have a fixed index number in drills. That's not a big deal as it could always be the 1st one.

I guess that since I've created nearly 600 classes for the KS mod, I don't find it to be an obstacle to doing this. I think you are being too soft on the other team members. It's time to crack the whip. :laugh:

[mitra76]

Yes this is a good solution too so long as it is clear which index number is for skirmishers.

No is not necessary know the index, if you do "if (base.FormTypeIndex(eFTSkirmish)==base.FormTypeIndex(eFTFighting))" the check does it alone.

[Marching Thru Georgia]

Maybe walking formation would be better. We give some battalions the skirmish formation for their fighting formation. As Saddletank said earlier this works better at the brigade level. If the individual skirmish companies from each battalion could be detached and then joined into one skirmish battalion to screen the brigade, that would be even better than what we do now.

Is there program logic which tells the AI when it is a good time to use skirmishers or is it based completely on the commander's stance?