Joy Of Hex:Movement Orders

Movement Orders


The movement command buttons are shown and described in the following table:

Covert Movement - only commandos have this option, if they use this method of movement then the enemy side recieves no information about this unit and it is as if it doesn't exist to the enemy. Of course, once the covertly moving unit launches an attack or an enemy unit tries to occupy a hex with such a unit then the existance of the unit will be revealed. Covert movement orders are displayed on the hex map as dotted outline, green arrows.
Walking - this is a slow, careful form of movement. It is good to use this form of motion whenever one is approaching or moving away from an enemy unit as this will avoid the moving unit from being ambushed. Walking orders are displayed on the hex map as a green arrow.
Running - this is a fast but careless form of movement. This is a good form of movement to use behind the front line where there is no chance of running into an enemy unit. If you do happen to run into an enemy unit, then the running unit will be ambushed and experiance casualities. You also should keep in mind that you can't "run" from a hex that has an enemy as a neighbour - to move away from an enemy unit you must give a walking order. Running movement orders appear as blue arrow on the hex map.
Autoplan - sometimes stringing together a series of orders for movement can be rather tedious, so an automated method has been provided. You should keep in mind that the movement order that will be given will be all running orders, so if the computer decides that a unit cannot be moved with absolutely safety then you will be told that no movement orders could be given. Also notice that when you use this option that you have the new path calculated from the last hex that one's movement orders reached - this means that you can string a whole series of movement orders together without starting from the hex in which the active unit lies.
Autoplan For HQ - this order is only available to head-quarter units. This is like Autoplan above, but it will send the head-quarter and all the units attached to that head-quarter to the destination that you click on. What follows might seem might seem crazy, but you can string these orders together like Autoplan in order to have a head-quarter and it's units navigate a complex path.

If you give a movement order that you don't want to give, make certain that one of the movement order buttons is selected and just press the delete key once for every movement order that you want to delete. If you have a lot of movement order that you want deleted then try the cancel button, although this will delete all of your orders and may not be what you want.

If a movement order is not used during an execution phase then that order will be left over until the next execution phase. Only if an unit is savaged in an attack or ambushed will the movement orders be deleted.


To make the above clearer, let's play about with these orders and string a few together to give a complex series of movement orders to a unit.

In this example we shall be giving orders to an artillery unit. The first step before giving any orders to an unit is to first select that unit, thereby making it the active unit. To select an unit you merely click on it in the hex map - if the unit that you want is in a stack of units then you must repeatedly click on the stack until the unit that you wish to give orders to comes to the top of the stack. In the image to the left we can see what the hex map looks like immediately after selecting an unit.
We then need to move the cursor up into the toolbar and click on the button corresponding to the movement order that we wish to give. In this case we want to give a walking order so we move the cursor over the button with three arrows as is shown in the image to the left.
When we click the mouse, the walking order button changes to the down position, which tells us that the game is ready to recieve orders for that unit. Notice that if we had tried to move a non-artillery unit, that the walking movement button would already be in the down position - this is because for artillery barrage attacks are the default order while for the rest of the unit types the default order is walking.
You then move the cursor down to the hex map and over a hex adjacent to the active unit that you selected earlier. An example of such an act is pictured in the image to the left.
You then press down and hold the Apple Command key (this is the key that - on my keyboard at any rate - lies either side of the space bar, and which I sometimes refer to as Cmd). This will cause the cursor to change into the same image as we saw on the movement order button that we chose above, only this time the image is now rotated to point in the direction that we wish to give an order for movement.
While holding down the Cmd key, we click with the mouse which will cause a green arrow (corresponding to a walking order) to appear on the hex map, while the cursor will then drop back to the familar arrow form. Notice that in order for the movement command to be set you must both hold the Cmd key down and click with the mouse - doing one or the other without both won't cause a movement order to be given.
While holding the Cmd key down, we can move the cursor to a hex that is adjacent to the hex that we just gave a movement order to enter before. Notice how the cursor changes to the three arrow form, which tells us that we can give another movement order for the unit to enter this hex. Take particular care to notice which hexes we are allowed to give orders to: no longer are we able to give movement orders to any of the hexes that are neighbours to the hex containing the unit to which we are giving movement orders; instead we can only give orders from the last hex to which we have a movement order.
If we then decide to Cmd-click while the cursor is in the position as in the above image, we will create a new movement order, as is shown in the picture to the left. A new green arrow has appeared showing that there is a new movement order for the unit to attempt during the execution phase. Notice that it is now this new hex about which we can move and not any other hex - this is always the case, that is only new movement orders can be added to where old movement orders have reached.
Walking orders are not the only movement orders that we can give. If we move the cursor back into the toolbar and over the running movement order button, you should then end up with something like what is in the picture to the left. Notice that the walking order button is still in the down position after all of this time.
Clicking on the running movement order button will cause it to switch to the down position as is shown in the picture to the left. Notice how the walking order button has popped to the up position.
As with the walking order earlier, we now move the cursor back over the hex map and over a hex adjacent to the hex in which we gave our last movement order, as is shown in the image to the left.
Pressing down the Cmd key will now change the cursor into the image that we see on the running movement order button, only rotated to point in the direction that the movement order would be given if we were to click the mouse at this point. Notice that we don't necessarily have to have the cursor over an adjacent hex to a previous movement order in order to to press the Cmd key down - you can hold the Cmd key down whenever the cursor is over the hex map and doing so will reveal which hexes you can then give a movement order to enter.
Clicking the mouse will result in a running movement order being added to the end of our previous sequence of movement orders. Notice in the picture to the left, how the running order is distinguished from the walking order by being a blue arrow pointing in the direction of requested movement.
If we decide that we don't like the movement order that we have just given we can press the delete key in order to undo one movement order. Notice that if you were to go off and look at some other units before returning to the unit that you wished to delete some movement orders from, in order for the delete to do what you expect you must tell the game that it is deleteing movement orders by selecting at least one of the movement button orders. It doesn't matter which movement order button that you switch to the down position, you only need one to be selected for the delete key to be able to delete the last movement order.
Sometimes clicking once for every movement order can be rather tedious, so one can use the autoplan button to help speed things up. To use this option, you first need to go to the toolbar and place your cursor over the autoplan button as is pictured to the left.
Clicking the mouse will result in the autoplan button being selected. Notice how the previous movement order button that we had been using is now no longer selected.
We then move the cursor down to the hex map and press the Cmd key. This will result in a little "A" appearing alongside the cursor, telling us that the game is ready to attempt to figure out a movement path. This is pictured to the left.
Clicking the mouse will result in the application having a little think and then plotting the movement orders to the screen. Notice several things: the cursor is still set to autoplan; the movement orders are all running orders; the new movement orders were added to the last orders that we had previously.

Sometimes autoplanning doesn't work. This could be for many reasons, like: you could have tried to run from an adjacent enemy (remember autoplan is always running orders and you need to walk away from an enemy); the unit is a static unit and can't move; you could have tried to send a unit to a hex requiring it to cross a terrain type that it can't cross; or you could have sent a unit too close to an enemy owned hex. On failure to complete an attempt to autoplan a series of movement orders will result in the following alert appearing:

You can autoplan for a single unit, or you can group autoplan for a head-quarter and all the units attached to that head-quarter. Sometimes not all of the units can complete the autoplanning, so an alert will appear telling you of this situation - this is not to mean that no units recieved any movement orders: if a unit could be given an order then it shall be given an order.


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