Profile of donofsandiego

It's not a failure of the commissar to maintain 227 because 227 doesn't apply to orderly retreats. You, a superior officer to both the soldiers AND the commissar, ordered the retreat and is in no way disorderly which is what 227 is intended to prevent. If it was anyone's failure, it would be you, the player and commanding officer, to be held accountable, but that is obviously out of the scope of the game.

Consider the alternative: Soviet troops are smart enough to rally around an officer without Order 227.

It's really that simple.

If there was a way to properly do justice to Order 227, it would be to ban blobbers who mass retreat upon seeing an MG but obviously it's not in Relic's best interest.

End of discussion.

You don't really seem to understand chain of command very well. Yes, you are superior to the comissar and the troops, but the troops report to the commissar. The soldiers do not answer directly to you, that is a construct of the video game. In real life, orders are disseminated from the top of the rank structure down to the bottom. The commanding general of an army is not going to tell a squad of infantrymen to retreat, that's the job of their squad leader.

You, as the commander, are effectively issuing an order to the commissar that he is not to allow a retreat past his position. Where he stands is the line drawn in the sand. It is his responsibility to make sure that his troops do not retreat past his position.

And yes, it is completely fine to give a commissar a forward retreat point with the idea that it is to represent order 227, because faction flavor has always been a thing.

Why do soviets have 6-7 man squads while OST has 4-5? Why do the americans use a literal ambulance to apparate soldiers out of thin air? Why do the British engineers build bofors with nothing but the rucks on their backs?

These things are gamey and not meant to be taken so seriously.

So to recap, orders are disseminated down from higher ranking officers to the lower, the commanding general does not give orders to soldiers, this is a construct of a video game. A forward retreat point for the comissar being explained as relating to Order 227 is fine because faction flavor has always been a thing. And I am hungry and I'm going to eat breakfast now. Good day.

Not disorderly. You, the player/officer, are explicitly ordering them to retreat. If you can't see the difference between a disorganized rout and soldiers following retreat orders then there is no point to this argument.

Ok, how about this: soldiers retreat, yes? Let's say soldiers were told to hold a town, and that it was the officer's job to hold it. Now, if you give the order to retreat, and the soldiers still go past the officer all the way over to the next town, that is a failure of the Officer's to maintain order 227, right?

Now, that officer is a commissar. And in order to prevent troops from retreating all the way back to base, he shows the troops where the line is drawn and they may not retreat further.

It's really that simple.

I do dislike it. I dislike it when people find excuses to use that as justification for something so basic as a rally point. Order 227 is something that people misunderstand all the time; sure, no shooting involved, but why give people the impression that the Soviet military relied on something like Order 227 in order to do something so basic as an forward rally point?

OKW, USF, UKF: FRP, because tactics
SOV: mUH oRDuR 227

Completely unnecessary. We can just agree to disagree at this point since we clearly aren't making any headway.

Because they're retreating. It's quite literally what button does. You press R and retreat.

+1

The key point of that link was that Order 227 is that it was directed towards officers, not enlisted men. The other key point was that orderly retreats are allowed, and since you order all retreats in the game (sans Sturm Officier, but there's no way to differentiate that with the game tools) none of the retreats in the game are disorderly retreats.

Justifying a retreat-stopping ability with Order 227 plays much more into the stereotype that no retreats were allowed. I'm not disagreeing that an FRP on commissar would be nice, but leave 227 out of the justification.

That's not even completely true. It was partially directed at officers, but who do you think was doing the retreating? The soldiers. So, using a commissar to halt a retreat all the way back to base does in fact fit with the spirit of Not One Step Back. Which, again, nobody had implied that the commissar would be shooting the troops, just that they would halt them from retreating further. And that, again, fits wholly within the verbage of the order.