T41/Ea42 Alt ZOC change.

[Mr Grumpy]

Some of you may have read this in your email from Volcano Man's site..

"Changed ZOC movement modifier value from 12% to 90% in desert _Alt scenarios. This was done to prevent the gamey behavior of armored cars being able to squeeze in between the cracks of units and isolate enemy armored cars even though they might start several hexes away. With the change, almost every unit will be required to start the turn adjacent to the enemy in order to pass through its ZOC. The result is that armored car screens can fall back one hex and still contain enemy armored cars instead of having to guess how many hexes they are required to fall back to prevent the enemy from infiltrating the line. Look for the change to be made to T41_Alt and E42_Alt soon."

The soft ZOC rule combined with the ability of A/C units with very high mp values (99 to 168) and a low ZOC mp modifier (12) has produced situations in T41/EA42 that many players don't like, specifically "isolation dances" where both players isolate each others units by moving through soft ZOC each turn in a endless effort to gain an advantage, as we know the ZOC rule was invented to prevent this happening in "you go, I go" type games.

While testing a updated version of the T41 Battleaxe Alt scenario VM & I decided to try a much higher ZOC modifier to see if that would help with just those sort of situations, so far we like the results and VM has decided to roll the idea out for all his desert Alt scenarios.

It should be noted that adjacent units can still move one hex through a ZOC to reflect the unique situation in the desert, i hope this change might persuade some players to try T41 out again as i think the title has real merit. :)