Battle of Lonato, Part Three

Let us restart our game by launching the command vlbgui, load Lonato.xml and look at our command chain.

We are now able to check whether Brigade Pigeon has new orders. If we click on Show Command Chain and on Pigeon we get the following dialog window:

So yes the order has been recorded, we may go on with initial orders.
Please note that time offsets along these example may appear, due to the fact that I sometimes restart from the beginning of the battle and I “rethrow dice”. For example the austrian orders should start to be sent at 01:10, while in the following lines they are issued at 00:50.We don’t care since these are all initial orders.

Let us assign orders to the austrians.

Let us assume Quosdanovich issues a general order to Ockskay. The order should propagate to lower command levels.

We click on Send a Message button and we fill the window widgets with a move order, initial formation column and final formation line. We check the Propagate orders box.

Let us now go to the Event Handler window to check which orders will arrive and when. Usually a combination of orders will be traveling while the combat is ongoing.

Here we do things serially for teaching purposes, but in a real battle orders and messages will be mingled with combat, and many more events will be processed at the same time.

So let us click on Process Next Event button until no more events become available.

By looking at the battle clock we may notice that it took about one hour to issue and propagate orders to brigades 10 km away from the column commander.

Let us now assign orders to Massena brigades and have a look at the movements window. Since we have given orders to Austrians before the French, we will have Austrian movements while orders to Massena’s brigade arrive.

Here are the windows appearing after event processing:
Since it took 36 minutes to propagate all orders to the french brigades, movements are calculated accordingly

Moves are the maximum movement that each unit may have. The generals are faster than the troops, so in this case their movement is reduced accordingly on the table.

Let us now move to artillery fire and combat, the austrian columns are coming close to Brigade Pigeon!

On Part Four we will discuss about verbal orders and fire. Please click here.