Commentary

Asterix wrote on Jun 30, 2011:

Generally speaking, when a subordinate units gets a kill, it counts as experience for the commander/sensor as well (experimental testing shows this statement to be slightly inaccurate, but not enough to bother tracking the exceptions).

Commanders have two main drawbacks:

First, you cannot give specific orders to a single unit in the stack (if you do, the unit disengages from the commander, losing the bonuses and forcing you to keep track of it separately). This is a problem in many cases: you want a fast unit to go on and scout, while keeping its commander defense bonuses? Sorry, no can do. Wanna move those 20 mortars a little closer to your main battle group? You'll have to unassign them first. Wanna direct your repair trucks to seek out a specific unit, let's say the one that is under attack right now? Same thing.

Second, and this may be a bug, since they are not supposed to, retreating units will occasionally (but not always) disengage from their commanding unit's stack, again losing the bonuses and forcing you to keep track of them, and reassign them once repaired. This is particularly aggravating when a low-health unit starts to retreat and disengages, which removes its commander-granted "damage taken" bonus, effectively further cutting its HP (that is up to a 46% loss for Green units with a Hero commander, often resulting in an immediate kill on the next hit).

Also, the AI in general is somewhat bugged, or at the very least quirky, so keep an eye out for the following:

- Indirect-fire units usually only move when the commander is a certain distance away; that includes following auto-retreat orders: they will usually NOT automatically retreat when damaged.

- Direct-fire units will occasionally ignore your retreat settings and act in a do-or-die fashion. That happens even to units with both a personal "retreat at medium" and a commander "retreat at medium" set: even when they are already well in the red, they will just keep attacking.

- Repair tanks in the stack may or may not repair your damaged units (this mostly happens when the stack is engaged: repair tanks may either try to draw enemy fire from your frontline units, or simply stand there in the middle of your stack waiting for who knows what); if you need them active RIGHT NOW, you will have to un-stack them and order them around manually

- Units occasionally ignore your go-to orders, especially when you have a number of them in a single command group; when that happens, they will wait for your commander to lead them before following. This is especially true for the units who are in your commander's way and are blocked by other ones: these latter units will usually wait for your commander to get through before moving out of the way. How that can be accomplished is left as an exercise for the reader...

- Go-for-repairs does not work nearly as well as you would think: for one, indirect-fire units typically ignore it entirely, and end up being left alone in the front lines; for another, when you have a large number of units they will get in each other's way A LOT, especially at the repair facilities.

Bottom line: commanders are great assets, but don't think for a second they require less management than non-stacked units. In fact, they require more. Be prepared to unassign your units a lot and order them around one by one.

A final quirk to brighten your day: apparently, you cannot order a repair tank to repair a commander: trying to do so will simply assign the repair unit to the stack. This may or may not result in the repair tank going up to the commander and repairing it. The most reliable workaround is to order the repair unit NEXT to the commander: usually the repair AI will figure it out by itself. At that point you can assign the repair unit, and it will usually keep repairing your commander - as long as it does not move.

Anonymous wrote on Jul 4, 2011:

> apparently, you cannot order a repair tank to repair a commander: trying to do so will simply assign the repair unit to the stack.
Try alt+click then. Actually, you can.

Anonymous wrote on Jul 10, 2011:

Experience preservation is not working in 2.3.8. Experience is preserved only in extant units between missions, and this includes between transport sequences. Experience is lost for any unit that is not extant, even if in production, when a mission ends, or when the transport sequence is activated in away missions. When the unit is recycled into a truck or repair vehicle that does not use experience (though why I cannot say) it will lose its experience.

Anonymous wrote on Jul 13, 2011:

Does Warzone 2100 Beta have cheats capability?

Anonymous wrote on Aug 16, 2011:

The best way to manage the commander AI is to assign your artillery units to a group number before assigning them to a sensor or commander. That way, all you have to do is hit the corresponding # key and move them to unassign.

Here is what I find works best. First, stage your units outside the enemy target you're about to take down. Second, build a sensor tower within your staging area. Third, assign your artillery units to the sensor tower/turret; they will hopefully begin bombarding the enemy base (though it's not a big deal if they don't). Assigning them to a tower will "lock" your artillery into place so they don't wind up on the front lines by mistake. Fourth, move the commander and his direct-fire units into the base. THEN hit the group # key for your artillery and re-assign them to the commander. They will lay down a withering barrage of support fire from a safe distance. Lastly, if one of your direct-fire units gets damaged, either hit "control-H" followed by "R" or just right-click him and hit "R". Never use the auto-retreat as I find it plugs up your attack formation at the worst possible moments (like when your fresh troops are just beginning to arrive).

Anonymous wrote on Oct 11, 2011:

To sweep for enemy's artillery, I used to attach an artillery tank to a CB tank then attach the CB to a commander and tell them to fire-at-will. So the CB will follow wherever commander goes, and when enemy's artillery detect and strike the team, the CB will assign the artillery to retaliate the attacker. In such case, did my artillery get experience/accuracy/hp bonus from commander, or CB, or no bonus? And who else gets the kill-experience besides the artillery?

Anonymous wrote on Oct 11, 2011:

Other than for a commander (so all unit under its command gets higher experience), a super high experience point (above other unit's average) is also useful for a decoy/cannon fodder unit. In some campaign level, enemy often assign a deadly force (if used against a normal unit) to destroy a specific unit, while ignoring other unit until that specific unit is killed. Such behavior can be used to lure enemy's force to strike a difficult-to-kill experienced unit and keep repairing/hide it behind wall/anything, while striking enemy's base using main force, or lay trap around the decoy ;)

A rookie decoy unit may enjoy heroic bonus if attached to a heroic commander that already have accumulate 1024 exp point, but A heroic decoy unit that only have accumulate 512 exp point may enjoy heroic+1 bonus if attached to a rookie commander ;)

meriton wrote on Dec 24, 2011:

The experience bonuses to chance to hit are relative to the unmodifed value. That is:

modified_chance_to_hit = base_chance_to_hit * (1 + 0.05 * attacker_level - 0.05 * defender_level)

So if a professional unit is shooting a trained one, and the base chance to hit is 50%, the modified chance to hit is 50% * (1 + 0.2 - 0.1) = 55%, not 50% + 20% - 10% = 60%.

(Source: combFire in combat.cpp)

It would be nice if somebody could add this info to the actual wiki article.

Anonymous wrote on Jan 12:

If you want lots of experience for your units in multiplayer against the AI wait for the AI to start making vtols and instead of putting AA emplacements in their path put tanks with AA turrets. This will give them lots of experience that you can use in other units once you recycle them.

Anonymous wrote on Jan 17:

Asterix wrote on Jun 30, 2011:
"- Direct-fire units will occasionally ignore your retreat settings and act in a do-or-die fashion. That happens even to units with both a personal "retreat at medium" and a commander "retreat at medium" set: even when they are already well in the red, they will just keep attacking.

- Repair tanks in the stack may or may not repair your damaged units (this mostly happens when the stack is engaged: repair tanks may either try to draw enemy fire from your frontline units, or simply stand there in the middle of your stack waiting for who knows what); if you need them active RIGHT NOW, you will have to un-stack them and order them around manually"

Probably depends on your Pursue/Guard Position/Hold Position setting.
Make sure you have at least one, preferably two Repair turrets. If the are NOT on Hold Position, they will repair any damaged unit they see, assigned or unassigned.