Engineers, Bridges and Suicde....illogical

[Adam Parker]

I've got a few questions regarding this issue if people could help me out, because I'm trying to see the pros and cons of the proposed change:

1. By voluntarily sending a unit into "Broken" status a player loses control of that unit's movement and also the situational control of that unit's LOS/ZOC. Therefore, in terms of now knowing what the enemy has at the river and being able to target arty which requires a spotting unit to the enemy, won't the player now be putting himself at a disadvantage? Is by-product of saving a bridging unit intended?

2. If a player subsequently moves combat units up to prevent the enemy's own bridging attempt and/or to gain intel on the enemy forces in the now vacated vicinity, why doesn't the player simply reinforce his bridging site earlier and assist in the protection of his bridging assets whilst bridges are dismantled? Isn't that what the current rules intend ie: the inherent risk of putting a bridging unit on the front line/rear-guard?

3. It takes time to dismantle a bridge and have a bridging unit move away to attempt re-bridging on a later turn. By allowing these units to artificially break and therefore - with luck - regain fatigue and normal status so to operate afresh - isn't this entire delay equivalent in the first place, to the possibility of losing these units at the rivers edge (ie: destruction in this case, actually implying not the loss of the unit in physcial terms but the rendering inoperable of the unit in logisitcal terms for the remainder of the scenario)? IOW why the need for a new rule?

4. Lastly, won't this voluntary breaking ability put the human at an advantage vs the AI? Will the AI know that it possesses this option too?

These are just some of my thoughts but personally, I see the employment of bridging assets as a risk with great reward coupled with the frustrating possibilities of failure - failure to build/failure to survive contact with the enemy.

Can't we simply change the bridge building/deployment PDT rate in scenarios where a bridging unit is to represent a rear-guard for a particular side?

(For chrome if a new rule feature is possible, then make the durability of such bridges less than perfect - ie: such bridges may collapse at any time causing loss to a crossing unit, representing the less than perfect concentration/time available to rear-guard bridging units to maintain their assets in optimal condition! That's what I'd call chrome :) )

Cheers lads,
Adam.