Attacking a Full Bridge Hex by Air

[JonS1]

In that vein, here is a solution that can be implemented now (i.e., it requires nothing from HPS):

1) Open the scen, campaign, whatever, in the scen editor identify all the bridges you consider could be feasibly damaged within the time and space constraints of the scenario. As an example, you might select all full hex bridges, or all full hex and all heavy bridges over rivers/canals.
2) Destroy all those bridges in the editor, taking a count of how many you just killed.
3) Open up the OoB editor, and create a number of bridging engineer units, with zero (0) movement, zero (0) hard and soft attack, some AA value (maybe? See later), low strength (say, 20 or 30 guys. More for heavy robust bridges, less for flimsy bridges), and a reasonable defence value. Depending on how the scen starts you'll need to create some for the blue side and some for the red side (ie, in N44 they'd all be German. In FG85 you'd have a mix of NATO and WP).*
4) Go back to the scen editor, and place one of these new 'engineer' units at the site of each previously destroyed bridge.
5) Set the 'engineer' to have a bridge spanning the gap of the previously destroyed bridge.

Et voilà. You now have bridges that can be attacked by air units (and artillery, etc, of course). These bridges can be 'damaged' without falling down, and 'repaired, and the units you've created to do so don't really affect the balance of forces since they can't move or fire.

The downside is that you can now never capture an enemy bridge in a coup-de-main style action.

Also, to complete the picture, you'll probably want to edit the OoB to add in a bunch of missing air units (although ... if you do that you'll also want to reduce the PDT interdiction value) and AA units (if you do a full AA OrBat you probably won't want to give the bridges any inherent AA value in step3 above). Those two steps will probably take the longest to complete.

Regards
Jon

* To make this really funky, you could make use of a unit type not otherwise used in the scenario (eg, ski troops in N44, or bicycle troops in FG85), then edit the 2DSymbolsLg.bmp file so that the unit shows an icon for a bridge, and edit the unit portrait with a nice photo of a representative bridge.