Bridge Rules Ideas

[Fhil]

While playing Panzer Campaigns, I get some ideas from time to time. First thing I want you to know while reading this if you´re someone from the development team or something like that, is that these are only ideas produced by my crazy Panzer Campaigns maniac brain

I´m not a type of fan that will cry for these or something like that, don´t be afraid, I LOVE these games and I thank you for you hard work so much.:)

Many of these idead I forgot, so I decided I will write them down from now on. Today I was thinking about one aspect of the game - the bridges. And I got two ideas in my head. I think that the new Forced Bridge Crossing rule is something that these games lacked, it adds some nice piece of realism, so thank you for that. I also think that the new Delayed Disruption Reporting rule was the biggest missing piece to make these games more perfect.

So, let´s get to my ideas. I would suggest two things, or rules if you wish, maybe sometime in the far future they will be possible.

Number 1 idea: AIR UNITS BRIDGE ATTACK.

The idea is to have the air units, especially the dive bombers like Stukas and such (except the Carpet Bombers due to their low accuracy) able to attack the bridges. Probably only Heavy and Medium ones, or maybe only Heavy Bridges. During the war, the Stukas for example were executing such missions from time to time, maybe often. Yes, one would suggest that the only think one player would do with those numbers of Stukas would be to attack every bridge on the map that could be used by enemy to move the reserves to the front. But I think that the player would have to think twice before doing so, because later he will probably need those bridges. It also could be set in the scenario parameter data, I mean the possibility of this attack, like the wired bridges rule. Or, only those bridges would be able to be attacked that will be in the Line-of-Sight. Or only those that will meet the requirements of my second suggestion

Number 2 idea: BRIGDES CONDITION/STATE FOG OF WAR

This second idea will be probably impossible to programme to the game engine, at least I think, but I can´t see into this problematics much so other will tell. Ok so the point is, that like before the Delayed Disruption Reporting rule introduction, the attacker had just too much information on the enemy and his status. I think that the same applies to the bridges in the enemy territory. Many times during the war, German troops ran for the certain bridge as fast as possible only to find it destroyed. Or the Soviet troops or the Allied and so on. They had no chance to know anything about the actual state of the bridge until they arrived to it or until the Recon Air units checked it. The status of the bridge will be shown as undestroyed for the opposing player until he ´sees´ him.
The defending player could buy some time with this rule. For example, Soviet engineers are waiting in the village just few kilometres from the Dnepr and the local bridge. German Air Recon units are spotted scouting for the bridge and finding it operational. Meanwhile after the airplanes leave, during his next turns the engineers run to the brigde to blow it up, so the coming German infantry finds it destroyed.
The German player will need to check out the important bridges status from time to time, while the Soviet engineers would need to wait with the bridge´s destroying otherwise they will alarm the enemy to bring the bridge engineers into the area or to find another bridge too soon and thus won´t buy any time. The Air Unit´s ability to attack the bridge would be also possible only after the bridge was being spotted either by the ground units or by the Air Recon.

These two are only my ideas that came from my head, nothing more and nothing less :smoke:

Feel free to comment or ask anything guys!
Best Regards,

[Liebchen]

I have often wondered why I should know the status of every bridge on the map. I assumed that it was implied air recon, just to make it stop bothering me.

There are map statistics that are not visible unless in LOS, such as special counters (trenches, etc.) I wonder why bridges were not designed that way, sort of like engineer bridges were.

Oh, well. I won't stop playing because of that. :-P

[Dog Soldier]

#1 Bridges are map items in the program and not counters that can be attacked. That is the short answer to both of these two points. Changing them to counters would be a huge rewrite of the PzC game engine. There is an exception for engineers assaulting a bridge to destroy it. I do not think it is easy to extend that to air units. I could be wrong though about what is easy to program and what is not.

This has been discussed several times in the past. The conclusion is that in the scope of the campaigns simulated by the game titles, there is no record of a single bridge destroyed by air attack during the battle. Especially a bridge destruction that impacted the historical outcome for one side or the other.
While some people have pointed out that bridges were damaged from the air in interdiction raids (Remagen on the Rhine by the Allies) when these bridges were far behind the actual front lines, that is not within the scope of the operational games.
Another example is the huge effort by the western Allies in 1940 to destroy the German engineer bridges from the air (something you can do in PzC) at Sedan. After two days of intense raids by Allied bombers, the bridges were not even hit once to the loss of many brave Allied air crews. Manstein even recalls in his memoirs about standing on the bridge at Sedan during an Allied air raid. His aids could not persuade him to get off the bridge. That is how he viewed the risk. He was quite correct.

A final note. Bridges, especially along a primary re-supply route would have inherent AA needed to represent the owning force's commitment to its defense. This would then become a problem as players would want to adjust the designers level of defense. All bridges defended equally? Some better than others? The micro management evokes the phrase "the juice is not worth the squeeze".

#2 This idea is nice in that there is too much information given a commander without the need to recon the ground. I think the answer to why all bridges can be seen as good or blown is tied to the answer above about bridges being map items and not counters like mines which disappear when out of LOS. Could your troops be a few km off when they reach the river and not find the bridge until next turn? Sure that could happen historically. So could units not necessarily be in the exact location you sent them to or be the actual strength you think they are. I guess all this FOW is a judgment call by JT when enough is enough. I would like to see more FOW. Then there is the business consideration that players (customers) will complain that the FOW which makes things unreliable as in real combat, is just a bug.
Who wants that kind of headache?

Dog Soldier

[Strela]

I must agree with DS here also.

There are more than enough ways to destroy bridges currently, probably to a point that it's ahistorical.

I have been involved in a discussion over the last week were wholesale bridge destruction was having the unintended effect of stopping all virtual supply truck supply on map. Thus the best defense the defender had was to pull back behind a river, destroy the bridges and be confident his opponent would be out of supply if he tried any form of river crossing. This essentially made a campaign game unplayable. As a designer this had never been considered and was shown up only by a range of players trying the scenario.

The best solution we could come up with was to use the wired bridge function with a moderate chance of success which provided the appropriate randomness without the defender having complete confidence he could destroy any bridge with sufficient time.

So personally, I think players already have too much opportunity to bring bridges down and fortunately PzC has enough different mechanisms to handle this.

David

[jonnymacbrown]

I have often wondered why I should know the status of every bridge on the map. I assumed that it was implied air recon, just to make it stop bothering me.

There are map statistics that are not visible unless in LOS, such as special counters (trenches, etc.) I wonder why bridges were not designed that way, sort of like engineer bridges were.

Oh, well. I won't stop playing because of that. :-P

The extreme 100% accuracy of the maps is the main reason why the offensive is so powerful in PzC IMHO. jonny:smoke:

[Fhil]

Wow, I felt like being under heavy MG fire for a while

Thank you guys for your replies, I think I understand now why such things were not included;) Dog soldier´s and Strela´s comments were right about those things.:smoke:

I have three more things in my head which I was thinking about while playing my current game, but I will post them tomorrow. Time to go to bed now.

Thank you once again guys,
Filip

[raizer]

as to strelas comments,bridges over small streams can have huge effects as well...if there are only a few primary roads on the entire map, running W-E, you blow the stream bridges along the primary road network and VST/Explicit becomes impossible.

BTW:
"Hey, did you lose my aerial photographs?"