voluntary disbandment

[cik]

before we start, yes i read the manual.

perhaps this is already a feature, but if not perhaps it could be added?

the problem sort of existed in operation star, however it was not so bad there for a few reasons

-maps were smaller (mostly) and less cluttered by forces because you just had less available

-battle sizes were smaller and thus a bunch of low-morale low-ammo soldiers could meaningfully contribute something to the fray

-you could disband squads and integrate their members into other squads, such that if you had a fragged group of panzergrenadiers you could maybe get one decently sized squad back together which was good enough

-unit movement was not disabled when they were heavily damaged, so you could still move them to the rear and continue fighting with new, fresher and better-equipped units.

consider a recent occurrence in my stepanovka campaign:

on my left north flank there is a lot of soviet armor, so i move the command group of tank group sander (equipped with several pz. III and panzergrenadiers) to the front lines to hopefully halt the walls of USSR t-34 constantly slamming into me there. however in the fighting the group gets shredded; it loses the majority of it's panzergrenadiers (and what is left is out of ammo and morale shocked) and all of it's tanks. at this point it is taking up one of the 3 "front line slots" on that front, however it is essentially useless to me; due to it's now non-existent combat strength and complete inability to be exchanged for fresh forces(!) unfortunately it basically ruins that front for me because i can't get more tanks/marders forward to support my infantry and guns along that front because sander is blocking that 'slot' resulting in my forces there being almost completely destroyed by the tide of T-34s. once the T-34s were able to destroy what was left they ran into a solid wall of newly-arrived panzers and were pushed back, but the whole situation is a little silly.

this could all be avoided if disbanding of shredded forces was available; i could have moved newly arrived panzergroups from tank group sander up to the front and held nicely.

sure, i could purposefully walk them into machine gun fire so they are defeated but uh.. well.. it just seems meanspirited.

thoughts?

[Juswick]

I have found that if I leave some spaces free just behind the lines on the operation map then I can usually retreat my depleted companies into these spaces. At first I was putting my companys into all the positions available at the front and leaving no open lines of retreat.

Now I am making sure to leave some spaces open for retreat and it works fine.  

There are still some unrealistic situation though. I just played a battle where I had some recon armoured cars and infantry  with no anti tank capability and was attacked by tank formation. Just one square behind the battle I had a heavy antitank gun company that was not put into the battle which was annoying as I put it there for this exact reason and I couldn't pull my rece cars back . They had no course of action but to sit and get killed..

This is totally unrealistic I feel and they could have withdrawn behind the cover of the AT guns.

Anyway try leaving some spaces open for retreating units. It generally works.