Rally question
 

If a company commander tries to rally himself and fails and the AO rallys him can a platoon commander under the company commander be rallied later on?

Not by the company commander of course. The platoon commander can be rallied by A0 (if in range), or, if A0 fails, then by the platoon commander itself.

By the way, your given scenario is impossible. There's no way a company commander can be rallied by A0 if it's (company commander) already failed rallying itself. The correct order of rallying is from the highest command down to the squad itself, not the other way around.

A0's rallying of company commander only relieves him of the suppression, not to replenish his rally point. It'll have to wait next turn to have its rally point back.

Re: Rally question
 

Hi RD,
It is possible. If the A0 is out of range, the Coy commander will attempt to rally himself, after he fails you can move the A0 within range of the Coy Commander and the A0 will attempt the next rally.

You can do this as a deliberate tactic. Letting commanders try to rally, then if one in an important situation fails, move the A0 within range of that commander to attempt to rally him.
You've probably done it yourself, you just forgot :)

Cross

Re: Rally question
 

Ah, yes! You're perfectly right there Cross, forgot about it.
Move the A0 or any formation commander only if the squad has failed rallying itself to avoid wasting precious A0's rally point, handy tactic (and quite realistic I believe)

But don't you think it deviates from the normal rule of rallying in the game? In the game it goes from the upper command down, but using this it goes the other way. To be honest I don't quite grasp the normal concept of going top to bottom, isn't it the reverse in real life?

Using the normal tactic, there'll be lots of wasting because a single failed squad could drain battalion commander's rally point thus eliminating the chance of other squads to be rallied by A0. Isn't it the direct responsibility for a company commander to rally his subordinates before A0 should come in?

Re: Rally question
 

Quite frankly, it should be bottom-up for rallying. The way that SSI implemented it has always appeared counter to logic to me (IMHO!:).

It does mean that the platoon commander (and above) can get 'drained off' by subordinates even if needing some rally themselves (pinned etc). So a human user has to check for pinned or worse command elements before doing his rally rounds (I do anyway). The AI however....

(I have no idea how difficult it would be to reverse it so that the platoon commander's rally is only used after the section corporal runs out of steam, but will try to investigate that this winter.)

Andy

Re: Rally question
 

I have to agree with you here.

So that makes my opinion as humble as yours?

Re: Rally question
 

Another point of agreement. That would be exceedingly nice in a future patch

Re: Rally question
 

The real reason I started this thread was to receive an answer on how to effectively rally without sounding like the moron doesn't know how to effectively rally asking the question directly. In all my years of playing I have not figured it out and I have recently started playing scenarios of the difficulty that makes knowing how to rally of sufficient import to be of game losing/winning importance. Rather than providing the boiler plate directive to read the manual is there a possibility of pointing out a cliff notes version that I may partake of? I ask this because I was not able to locate a heading for "rally" under the manual TOC and I would rather not spend and evening reading the entire thing if I could avoid it. So gang, how about helping out an ignorant long time player?

Re: Rally question
 

I'd be happy to try and help but I am a little uncertain of what you are looking for.

Are you wanting to know how rallying works in game mechanics, or how to best use it as a player?

Thanks!

Re: Rally question
 

Once again,it's all about trail and error.

Play the game,

Then learn the hard way as others have,on which works best.

Should everything in this game,there will be a short cut:rolleyes:

Re: Rally question
 

Both of these points would be very useful.

I can understand where Kartoffel is coming from. The manual seems to assume that a lot of basic techniques are already well understood by the player which is not always the case.
And not just for noobs either.

Even though I have been playing the series off and on (more off, admittedly) since the first DOS version, I suspect that there are subtleties and techniques that I haven't cottoned on to or have forgotten, or have changed in different versions.

A clear explanation of the mechanics, and some killer ideas of how to use rallying to maximum effectiveness would be most welcome, thanks.

Re: Rally question
 

Yes I know how tiresome reading the Game Guide is. It was even more tiresome spending hours writing it knowing few people would actually read it

I had thought the answers given covered the question here's what the game guide says



Now...... does that help ? If no then we really need a more detailed question

Don

Re: Rally question
 

LOL! I painstakingly read the GG long before I touched any Steel Panthers scenario (WinSPWW2 at that time); to the point that I set the page as default every time my browser opened. Oh... how much I loved to finally have WinSPWW2 at that time; was very much thrilled with the complexities and realism it offers, and a myriad of pre-made scenarios! (just moved from shallow military games like Close Combat, Soldiers, FireFight, etc). I found the GG to be very much a helping hand in understanding the concept and mechanics (my favorite chapter was Game Play Notes back then). Many people think that SP doesn't have a steep learning curve to master, thus they don't really see the need to actually read the GG. :)

Anyway, thank you Mobhack for planning to review that rally code! :)

Re: Rally question
 

Steady there, Don. No need to get snarky or patronizing.

I totally feel your pain on the issue of 'effort put into manuals' VS. 'Number of users who actually read them' - I spent more than a decade in corporate training banging my head against exactly that wall.
The fact I soon discovered is that almost noone (outside perhaps of yourself and RightDeve) reads and memorizes a manual in its entirety before doing something. Most people when they get a new game (or anything cool)will start the thing up, see if they can figure it out, and if not then read the minimum they need to get started and having fun.
After that they will refer back to the manual whenever they have a question or need some more info.

In order to be successful a good manual must accurate, concise, and organized in a chronologically effective and user freindly-manner.
Your writing is very clear, concise and accurate, but to be honest the organization (at least in this instance) leaves a little to be desired. It took me nearly 30 minutes of going through the manual before I found the paragraph on Rallying you referenced (tucked in between 'Headquarters screen' and 'Waypoints'. That paragraph also doesn't note the range that rallying can be done, nor does it clarify the CHQ link issue.

The fact that manual as a whole isn't easily searchable (being broken into separate htm sections) also means that finding this type of information isn't always easy.
It seems to me that this sort of key information would best be included in the tutorial, which is the one part of a manual that most (though in no way all) users are likely to read.
If you ever decide to revise the manual, I might suggest covering all the key info (along with useful tips and techniques) in a few tutorials, and formatting the rest into a clearly organized and fully searchable quick reference guide.

Apart from the GG issue, I believe the original poster was equally, if not more concerned with the question of how to use rallying effectively, rather than just the cut and dry mechanics of it, e.g. the technique Cross suggested of keeping your A0 far enough and moving him up if necessary.