Retreating units affecting other units!

[Davinci]

All , this has been irritating me for quite a while but I haven’t posted anything about it, so here goes.

When an enemy unit breaks and start to retreat it will sometimes act as a sort of ping-pong-ball, and run back and forth between the battle-lines.

This will cause my units to retreat due to the close proximity of the enemy unit, sometimes it will cause several regiments of mine to retreat.

So, the question here is should an enemy unit that is retreating be allowed to disrupt multiple regiments due to the fact that the path of their retreat is blocked by their own troops?

Why not just allow them to retreat back through their own lines instead of bouncing back-and-forth between the lines?

A better suggestion would be to not allow for a retreating unit to have the power to disrupt units that are not retreating.

I’ll also add that I vaguely remember that this or a similar topic did come up several years ago, and the forum complained about units running through-each-other.

So, is this problem caused by fixing that problem?

What do you think?

davinci

[Saddletank]

This will cause my units to retreat due to the close proximity of the enemy unit, sometimes it will cause several regiments of mine to retreat.

I have never witnessed this behaviour. I very much doubt your units are retreating (why on earth would they, I can't see any morale mechanism in the game that would cause this?) but I suspect they are turning to get the optimum fire angle on an enemy unit (either the one retreating or another that has been revealed).

It may be possible that your AI commander is a cautious one or has been given cautious orders, in which case he is pulling his units back from close proximity to the enemy. If he's doing that then I suspect the enemy unit isn't retreating but advancing or manouvering and therefore, in game logic, withdrawing is perfectly reasonable - its just the visual way in which its conducted that is the problem.

Try giving your AI commanders 'hold' orders or 'attack' rather than 'delay' and 'probe'. That is all I can think of that may be causing this.

I'm a bit surprised that you have even seen enemy acting as "ping pong balls" among other units. In my experience a withdrawal or full-on retreat move ignores friendly units and bursts through them. Retreaters can turn aside and avoid enemy units though, unless they have reached 'rout' status when they'll keep going no matter what and sometimes surrender to units they collide with.

I find the turning in place feature of SoW's units to get a better shot one of the more annoying aspects of the game and find myself frequently TCing units to prevent this, only to un-TC them when the next major advance of the formation is needed.

It would not be so bad if NSD had coded infantry and cavalry units differently and they wheeled on one end, but this centre pivot point is a visual weakness of the game.

[Little Powell]

I have seen the rare case of a regiment getting stuck in an infinite retreat, bouncing between units, but again it's pretty rare. Usually there's some kind of path they can take.

Maybe the solution you propose of always letting units retreat through other units could remedy this.

If you can get a save game of it happening, let me know and I'll get a request in the system.

[Garnier]

This happens often when people retreat in our MP games, since one of the beta patches. If a change is made to allow retreating through friendly units, it would be good if that was made a flag in battledef.ini.

That way if it turns out to be a bigger problem than it solved, we can switch back. So there's no risk involved with the change.

[Davinci]

If you can get a save game of it happening, let me know and I'll get a request in the system.

Modded games can't be used as a Saved Game as far as I remember!

This happens often when people retreat in our MP games, since one of the beta patches. If a change is made to allow retreating through friendly units, it would be good if that was made a flag in battledef.ini.

Agree!

davinci

[Little Powell]

Modded games can't be used as a Saved Game as far as I remember!

Yeah, that's why it's best to turn off all mods if you are bug hunting and trying to produce a save. The only way Norb will even consider fixing anything code related is with a save.

[Jack ONeill]

Yes, this thing is still going on. I had a French Battalion, with a clear line of retreat back through my lines, AND with Confident Morale, that I needed to pull back. Did not have time to TC it a guide it, so I clicked Retreat. It BEGAN it's retreat TOWARDS the enemy, and continued bouncing around for a LONG time until...It stopped some 200 yards behind enemy lines. Whereupon I grabbed it and marched it off through a gap in the Austrian lines.

This has got to be fixed. Please....

Jack B)

Also, this still happens in ACW, too. With Mods On and Off.

[Little Powell]

And I'm sure the support mailbox now has an great, descriptive, save game correct?

[Davinci]

Yes, we are all aware of the butterfly-effect such as...fixing a problem that results in creating another problem.

But, a feature that would allow for the retreating units to move through the lines that can be set as an option would fix this problem.

This is not, a major-bug only what I like to call an irritating-bug that sort of screws up the battle-line.

davinci

[RebBugler]

I avoid 'retreat' like the plague, especially when scenario designers position 'safeplaces' miles from the action. :S

Better alternatives are 'getaway'- short retreat, and
'justrun'- retreat destination is selected, however, some bouncing around still can occur.

I think the best alternative though is 'fallback'/'run'. If your unit is engaged select fallback, check where the 'fallback to' arrow is, if appropriately located then hit run. Unit will run to arrow location, generally with stable, predictable results.

Tcommon and attackmarch are also better solutions to get your unit away from the action, unless in melee. In melee, the only recourse is the dreaded 'RETREAT'