Question: Rallying

[Warmonger]

A few questions related to rallying:

1. What does the rally factor represent? Is it a success probability? That is, does a value of 60 mean 60% probability of a successful rally?

2. Are there other factors affecting rallying? I notice that units routing/retreating in company of other units doing the same are more difficult to rally.

3. What governs whether a unit will retreat/rout? I've seen units with suppression in the 90's sit while others with suppression in the 40's run. The oddest case I've seen so far is a unit which sat for four turns with a rout status while the battle moved past it then suddenly take off and run. It caught up to the battle and got shot to pieces.

[Imp]

Okay I am sure we touched on this before in a thread you started about suppresion or some such. If you stop thinking of it as a game & think of what its trying to model you could answer this yourself.

What do you think might effect a units morale, rout rally status?

I am pretty sure they are going tio say its all interlinked & many diffrent things can effect the outcome. Nearly everything in the game is like this & worrying about it does not make you a better player. All you have to do is think of the situation in real terms to decide if its a good or bad idea. Its what makes the game generaly units behave in a realistic maner.

So thought yet what could effect rout rally?
Just a couple
No one in sight or being encircled
Being fired on recently or not.
Cover, building or trench vs open.
Seeing your buddies perform well or getting decimated.
etc etc.

As normal with this game you can only guess at how they will perform on occasion odd things happen. You can normaly explain these away by thinking of the situation & just what happened.
Example of a at first looks strange rally situation, a unit inexplicably recovers from rout & indeed so do other routing units acompanying it.
That would be some fool being all heroic then & saying what the hell, now if he actually killed someone the other runners who witness this suddenly get behind him.
In this case one man made a diffrence & created a stand.

[gila]

I have to trust in the fact,that cohesive formations rally much better than "out of contact" units will.
straying units out of shout range or radio contact tend to stay in rout or retreat status,longer than others which have contact to thier leaders,on that same thinking,cohesive units should also rally faster.

I would assume,as i play ,but maybe i'm wrong.

[Imp]

A typical example gila of units acting as you would expect if you put yourself in that position. Much happier with the support of your buddies than going it alone in general.
Of course there are exceptions if you just watched half your buddies get wiped out the guy on his own who is unaware of this is probably the happier one.

[gila]

I've played this game for ages it seems,and i still don't completely understand the mystery of rally.

You only have a set number of rally pt.s to distribute if able.
Experince and morale does help as a modifier,

But also there is alot to do with a random die roll also,could be good or bad,,, or something in between.

All i'm fairly sure of is to keep the chain of command as cohesive as possible.
And dont lose your HQ's

[Warmonger]

I had a unit take a hit and get 99 suppression. I wasn't able to rally it. At the start of the next turn it had a suppression of 95. Normal rallying, if successful, halves the suppression. So it appears auto-rally must work differently, so how does it work to result in a 95 suppression? Once again I failed to rally the unit.

The following turn the unit disappeared. I saw no message related to the unit. The unit was sitting on a road hex among buildings. It was near enemy units and friendly units. The other odd thing was that with that kind of suppression it didn't rout; it sat for a turn and then disappeared. Any ideas?

[gila]

Originally Posted by Warmonger

I had a unit take a hit and get 99 suppression. I wasn't able to rally it. At the start of the next turn it had a suppression of 95. Normal rallying, if successful, halves the suppression. So it appears auto-rally must work differently, so how does it work to result in a 95 suppression? Once again I failed to rally the unit.

The following turn the unit disappeared. I saw no message related to the unit. The unit was sitting on a road hex among buildings. It was near enemy units and friendly units. The other odd thing was that with that kind of suppression it didn't rout; it sat for a turn and then disappeared. Any ideas?

And this is your result and did not go well ,so you think something must be wrong seems typical with you by now.

Edit} learn from your mistakes,, as we all have,if you don't have the the CD or otherwise just don't get it yet.

Try the i need help sub forum.

don't be so quick to blame the game as you seem to be doing.

[Mobhack]

1) 99 is the maximum suppression level.

2) At the admin phase, suppression may be adjusted due to various factors, that is not under your control. e.g. it may be increased due to say being in a fire hex, or being depleted, or reduced due to a nearby commanders presence, or it may have fired and killed a unit itself (or friends may have done so) perhaps in reaction fire (which can delete a few S points).

3) Units with high suppression can be in rout status, but routers do not always retreat especially if in trenches, or cover, and are not aware of nearby enemy, or are Japanese, or just simply because they decide not to retreat if they thought there was no clear path to do so. Such routers are effectively "neutralised" - too stunned to do anything but cower.

4) If a unit is below dispersion level and then it retreats then it may auto-disperse, or not, as the dice are thrown by the internal routines. If it is not known to the enemy then you may not see a message. (Messages giving "free info" to the enemy on e.g. retreating crews not in LOS - were removed in the DOS versions >5 years ago). SP messages are available to all players. Or several messages arrived simultaneously, and all you see is the last one (e.g. with fast arty on).

Basically - the games are deliberately not chess-like. A+B+C usually gives C as a result, but it depends on the various random chance throws. So D and E (and others) are always possible outcomes. Especially when it comes to reaction results.

Cheers
Andy

[Warmonger]

Originally Posted by Mobhack

2) At the admin phase, suppression may be adjusted due to various factors, that is not under your control. e.g. it may be increased due to say being in a fire hex, or being depleted, or reduced due to a nearby commanders presence, or it may have fired and killed a unit itself (or friends may have done so) perhaps in reaction fire (which can delete a few S points).

4) If a unit is below dispersion level and then it retreats then it may auto-disperse, or not, as the dice are thrown by the internal routines. If it is not known to the enemy then you may not see a message. (Messages giving "free info" to the enemy on e.g. retreating crews not in LOS - were removed in the DOS versions >5 years ago). SP messages are available to all players. Or several messages arrived simultaneously, and all you see is the last one (e.g. with fast arty on).

Andy

From what you say in point 2 I gather that there is no auto-rally in the sense of a normal manual rally attempt, just an adjustment in suppression due to various factors. Is this correct?

Re: item 4 - this unit was a Polish squad. It started with a strength of 19 and was at 14 at the time this occurred. I wouldn't think this would be below dispersion level. From observation these units dispersed when their strength went down to the vicinity of 5. That's why I was surprised when the unit wasn't there at the start of the next turn.

[Mobhack]

re 2) - is the admin phase - it has no human input.

re 4) - It should only disperse around its dispersal %age. It could have surrendered to a nearby enemy of course. Without a repeatable save game, it is difficult to tell.

Andy