Platoon ZOC rule

[Volcano Man]

Cpt Cav,

I am familiar with how cavalry and reconnaissance works. As you should know, the US Army states:

Minimum mission planning ratio / economy of force:

Attack (deliberate) 3:1
Attack (hasty) 2.5:1
Defend (deliberate) 1:3
Defend (hasty) 1:2.5
*Delay 1:6*

In this situation (recon platoon), this means that a platoon could very well be expected to delay two companies. But this is not the point. The point is as Dirk Gross says, this is a game of turns and abstractions and we cant proper model what would happen; the recon platoon would fall back and conduct delaying action in the face of the enemy. The only way to model this is with ZOC. The way it is now it cannot occur, the enemy just simply drives around it. This is true even if the enemy is a single company!

With platoon recon units one of two things WILL happen (in game): the ZOC stops the enemy and if the small recon unit does not move away then it easily overrun on the following turn, or the recon platoon falls back far enough that the advancing enemy does not have enough MPs to assault it in the next turn. Either way, ground is gained by the attack and the recon units must perpetually fall back. Sounds like a delay to me.

The other aspect is, and the most important of all, is that NO CHANGE is good if it breaks another game in the PzC series. Now I know very well that some people do not care for Tobruk 41, but with this change as it is then it takes it right back to the way it originally was as an uplayable mess. From what you are telling me in your original post tells me that you have not played Tobruk 41. The game has very small units and you cannot combine your units because you need to cover vast stretches of open desert. Also, enemy units in Tobruk 41 consist of mostly company sized units so it would make no sense to prevent a platoon recon unit from delaying a force of only 3:1 ratio in size.

I also don't see what the problem is. There is probably very few PzC titles that even have platoon sized recon units anyway (Normandy 44 and Tobruk 41 are probably the only ones actually). And it is not like these platoon sized units are good for anything else other than for screening. In other words, it is not like the platoon size recon units cannot be easily delt with if the enemy decides to hold ground with them.