Do we have too much control over fire in PzC, what’s your opinion?

[Al]

WEGO - Both sides move at the same time

[Bacillus98]

A WEGO system is where both players plot their moves and attacks and then there is a single resolution phase for all movement and combat.

[Aaron]

I like playing with WEGOs. A WEGO system would be great but wouldnt happen without a new series, to much work. I also liked the idea of having some units showing up as disrupted on the map when they are not or the other way not disrupted when they are. Weather its PzC or MC theirs to much info given to the player, i actually think it would be better to do away with the on map disruption written on the counter all together except for your side, you should be the only one that knows whos disrupted or not. When it comes to alt fire i haven't played to much into my PzC games just haven't had time but for MC i can see in the 80s being able to pinpoint a unit so wouldn't use it but in WWII i can see it as being a viable option but as stated the scenario would have to be redesigned/designed with that in mind.

Aaron

[Ricky B]

A bir further thought, regarding disruption - I have always thought that having a specific state, either disrupted or not, is too black and white and hence why the defender is unable to hold as tough as historically, in many cases. What I would prefer is a disruption range, similar to fatigue, that impacts fire in some way - either it causes a chance of an impact on fire similar to disruption with the loss of half effectiveness or alternatively it reduces firepower effectiveness between full and half by the amount of disruption, and when in an assault as attacker or defender leads to a chance of "disrupting" for that assault.

So no specific disruption status, just a chance of it being implemented with the current disruption effects for each fire or assault, but only for that specific action that is being tested.

It would be recovered similar to fatigue - maybe the current fatigue could even be the measure for disruption status. And reach max disruption and the unit then has a chance to break as currently happens.

This would allow the worn but defiant units to hold their ground in an assault, or panic and give ground, but not nearly as certain as currently. Alternatively, I also like hiding disruption status from the enemy side.

A bit off the original thread but just as interesting I think.

Rick

[James Ward]

A bir further thought, regarding disruption - I have always thought that having a specific state, either disrupted or not, is too black and white and hence why the defender is unable to hold as tough as historically, in many cases. What I would prefer is a disruption range, similar to fatigue, that impacts fire in some way - either it causes a chance of an impact on fire similar to disruption with the loss of half effectiveness or alternatively it reduces firepower effectiveness between full and half by the amount of disruption, and when in an assault as attacker or defender leads to a chance of "disrupting" for that assault.

So no specific disruption status, just a chance of it being implemented with the current disruption effects for each fire or assault, but only for that specific action that is being tested.

It would be recovered similar to fatigue - maybe the current fatigue could even be the measure for disruption status. And reach max disruption and the unit then has a chance to break as currently happens.

This would allow the worn but defiant units to hold their ground in an assault, or panic and give ground, but not nearly as certain as currently. Alternatively, I also like hiding disruption status from the enemy side.

A bit off the original thread but just as interesting I think.

Rick

I'm not even sure Disruption is actually needed. The effects could probably be simulated in with fatigue.
One thing that might help the defender would be to have disruption status hidden under fog of war. I mean you can tell if the unit is disrupted but you can't tell if there are 101 or 999 men in the unit?

[Aaron]

I think theirs more to it than just the alt fire option, why cant you see just the Inf Bn and the tank company in the hex but the eng company and AT unit are still unspotted. Reconnaissance doesn't pick up every little thing, they will report back 300+ men and about 30+ tanks, being able to pick out every unit or every type of unit would be top notch but wouldnt happen to often. Ive mentioned in the past recon needs to be rethought and i think it ties into the alt fire rules because of spotting. Alot of this is to much for the series because you would have to go back through all the games and change it but i do believe the elimination of enemy being able to see your units that are disrupted is doable and a start. Well anyways

Aaron

[P.Ako]

Ok thanks for the answer to the WEGO system.

I don't think it's going to happen, at least in the PzC/MC series, too much work to do like TzAaron said.

About the disruption, i think that the fake disrupted status or vice versa, should be an optional rule, nothing more.

Now my only claim in the game are hotkeys for the OOB and scenario editors! Why i can't use ctrl+c/ctrl+v to copy paste an unit??

EDIT: About the info, don't you think that if you surround an enemy unit and you keep them surrounded for... one or two turns, you should be able to see not the exact numbers of men or vehicles, but at least an aproximated number?

[Mr Grumpy]

I have only tried the alt infantry and alt air rules briefly and really can't give much comment here. I did not particularly like the alt infantry fire rule but need to revisit it.

Actually there is not a massive amount of difference between this rule and the default fire rule, you can still target a unit which will defiantly take a portion of the losses/fatigue but the rest of the fire effects are also randomly spread amongst any other units in the hex, hence you cannot concentrate losses/fatigue on a single unit which taking into account the accuracy of WW2 weapons makes sense to me.

So just a subtle difference which should not affect losses anything like the Alt Arty rule might.

Of course another approach that would not affect victory conditions (by producing differing losses) is to keep the mechanics of the default firing rules BUT when you fire at a hex the game engine randomly selects a unit to be affected, in that way you lose the "god like" control (and an element of luck is introduced) but the losses that count towards victory would not be altered!

Win, win IMO.

---

A bir further thought, regarding disruption - I have always thought that having a specific state, either disrupted or not, is too black and white and hence why the defender is unable to hold as tough as historically, in many cases. What I would prefer is a disruption range, similar to fatigue, that impacts fire in some way - either it causes a chance of an impact on fire similar to disruption with the loss of half effectiveness or alternatively it reduces firepower effectiveness between full and half by the amount of disruption, and when in an assault as attacker or defender leads to a chance of "disrupting" for that assault.

So no specific disruption status, just a chance of it being implemented with the current disruption effects for each fire or assault, but only for that specific action that is being tested.

It would be recovered similar to fatigue - maybe the current fatigue could even be the measure for disruption status. And reach max disruption and the unit then has a chance to break as currently happens.

This would allow the worn but defiant units to hold their ground in an assault, or panic and give ground, but not nearly as certain as currently. Alternatively, I also like hiding disruption status from the enemy side.

A bit off the original thread but just as interesting I think.

Rick

Nice concept Rick, that could be the basis of a great way of handling the disruption issue and i also agree that an even more simple fix is to hide disruption with FOW or make the disruption tag appearance through FOW a random event? :chin:

Some great ideas coming forth here.........:bow:

[Dog Soldier]

Actually I would tie the status of the enemy under FOW to the condition of the friendly units in contact with them. An A quality would be able to detect disruption, but a D or lower quality unit might not get it right.
A recon, commando, special forces type unit might have a higher chance to detect the enemy status in a hex correctly than an other type of unit.

Something along these lines.

As for friendly units, they should not be such a well known factory either. Quality would play a big part in determining if a friendly unit status is what it says it is. I am reaching to simulate the situation where the commander at the the hex reports what he knows, but this is not always correct. War is confusing. Information gathering from someone who is hostile to you with a weapon is problematic. And sometimes, people do not report about themselves correctly for many reasons.

Instead of a war simulation what we really have is a complex chess game.

Dog Soldier

[Glenn Saunders]

I have long wondered if the rules covering direct fire, arty & airstrikes give us to much control over which unit can be targeted in a stack of multiple units and if the alternate fire rules actually represent a more realistic representation of WW2 combat?

Personally - I've long wondered myself if the system give WAY TOO much control over all aspects of combat - in particular, movement.

Unfortunatly the bulk of the players demand this absolute control. You need not look too far to find people complaining that they stepped in a friendly minefield (when in fact no minefield is friendly) because they accidently stumbled into it and it was no longer showing on the map.

Players believe that because as the SUPREME cmdr looking over the whole battle - it somehow preculdes a unit getting lost and going down the wrong road. or down a track thinking it was the right cleared path. Sh!t happens like this all the time. But this has been a huge player complaint.

I've lobbied a couple times for variable Movement rates so as you move forward sometimes you would lose MPs for no reason. Maybe A quality units might have extra MPs added. John wanted nothing to do with this idea because he said for a start, peopel would report these imprecise things as bugs.

I actually have a new game in test now with a new disruption rule which I've been asked to explain EXACTLY how it works when I don't know myself, nor do I feel players need to know the exact details on.

Players used to exercise too much control over air missions until we implimented a air strike limit on hexes which works something like stacking for Aircraft.

There are also examples where people want a hot key to SAVE MPs (there is a button for this BTW, but that isn't enough) so they can save MPs and hacve EXACTLY enough to move units out of T mode and deploy their guns for next turn. When in reality you don't know exactly how far a unit can move and set up in a given period on time.

Other people don't like how difficult broken units are to assault and clean up unless surrounded - but this rule is designed to simulate what is involved in taking and processing prisoners. Something they don't care about when their is limited time remaining in a Scn before final victory is measured.

I've asked for a S|O option type where the player doesn't get to select which option he wants - rather it would act liek a random event - but again - it is not within the pl;ayers comntrol and John doesn't think people would like it.

There are lot of examples of this - people have learned and demanded this control since the first boardgame when they could phyically add an extra unit to an attack and recalculate the odds to be 4-1 instead of 3-1 before rolling a 6 sided dice.

Anyway - I agree there is too much control on all aspect on pretty much all games - not just this series. But I am not sure this is much that could be done - that people would accept and John would build for us.

Glenn