Military Engineering in PzC

[SGT Rice]

I'm currently spending a lot of time with B'45. The Konrad campaign scenario is basically the month of January 1945, with a good chunk of Hungary and Czechoslovakia as a battlefield with hills, forests, plains, a major river (the Danube), hundreds of smaller rivers/streams and a heavily mined, fortified and rubbled major city (Budapest) in the middle of it all.

Both sides have significant armored and cavalry forces with opportunities for rapid and far-ranging offensive action; this fascinating scenario creates marvelous scope for both operational maneuver and siege warfare supported by military engineering. Each player is confronted with a broad range of potential military engineering projects, including full-hex (pontoon) bridges, hexside bridges, rubble clearing, mine laying/clearing, entrenching, etc., with an assortment of engineer units of all sizes and morale levels.

But the mechanisms in the PzC UI for conducting military engineering have limitations which imho frequently reduce a player from the role of a commanding general to that of a lottery contestant, making it difficult/impossible to incorporate military engineering into your operational planning. I would like to propose an enhancement of the PzC UI that would address this problem, thereby improving the realism (and hopefully a player's enjoyment) of the PzC series.

Currently all PzC engineering projects except mine clearing are carried out based on a % chance of completing a particular project on any given turn, with the percentages derived from base values specified in the scenario parameter data. For example, a German player in B'45 attempting to build a hexside bridge using a 67-man, F morale bridging company has a 2.5% chance of completing the bridge each turn based on the following parameters:

Axis Bridge Value = 45%
Company-sized unit = x1/3
Less than 100 men (67/100) = x2/3
F morale = 25%
45% x 1/3 x 2/3 x 25% = 2.5%
(if I've missed any variables in this calculation, someone please correct me)

There are several elements of this implementation of military engineering in PzC that greatly detract from my enjoyment of the game in scenarios where engineering is important:

1) The wide variability of potential results … a player can 'win the lottery' and get a bridge in one turn or he can leave a unit at work for days with nothing to show for it.

2) The 'black box' nature of what's happening at the bridge site ... at no point in time does the player have any forecast of when the bridge will be completed; as if his engineers had put up a curtain around the hex with a 'do not disturb' sign on display. I strongly believe that players should have visibility on the likely duration of any engineering project once the work is initiated.

3) The same sort of 'dice luck' and opacity applies to rubble clearing, mine laying and entrenching based on each side's digging-in percentage. These highly variable outcomes stand in stark contrast to other engineering operations such as mine clearing and river crossings. Barring disruption, any engineer unit at any morale level will clear a level 3 minefield in six hours, every time. Why is mine clearing so predictable that it only fails due to enemy intervention, while mine laying is so unpredictable that its rarely (if ever) employed?

4) Many of the tactical options available to historical commanders are not represented, for example:
(a) Repairing damaged bridges (vice erecting new ones that require permanent 'maintenance' crews).
(b) Building foot/light vehicle bridges vice heavy vehicle bridges based on mission requirements.
© Allowing a bridge engineer to abandon a constructed bridge if they have an urgent mission elsewhere or are facing annihilation.
(d) Constructing/repairing pillboxes/bunkers/obstacles and laying multi-level minefields; these seem well within the scope of a month-long campaign game.
(e) Employing non-engineer units to perform non-technical military engineering such as building their own bunkers, digging AT ditches or clearing rubble.
(f) Placing hasty minefields and roadblocks (i.e., felling trees across a forest road); these tactics could have important effects at the operational level, for example if employed against a pursuing enemy moving in travel mode along a road.
(g) Clearing lanes through obstacles/minefields (vice clearing the entire hex); an experienced infantry unit could perform this function for itself without engineers (albeit with more difficulty). Lane clearing should be much easier than actually removing a minefield; I would suggest that what currently happens in PzC games (i.e., a 40 man, E morale engineer platoon clearing a 3 level minefield in six hours) actually represents clearing lanes and marking the minefield, not clearing the entire minefield. Most of the mines are still there; if the friendly units leave the area and all those little MINEN! signs disappear then the minefield is once again a lethal hazard to movement.

5) These problems have a cumulative effect; they prevent players from actually integrating military engineering into their operational plans; i.e., developing schemes of maneuver in coordination with multiple military engineering projects during the course of a scenario.

For example, a player may have a major reinforcement, say a panzer corps, due to arrive on the map edge on day 10 of a 30 day campaign. He wants the unit available for a counteroffensive two days later about 100 klicks from its entry point, but there are half a dozen rubbled road junctions and damaged bridges obstructing the route. Given two weeks lead time, a real-life commander could send a survey team to recon the obstructions and estimate the amount of work required, then dispatch sufficient engineer/other assets to complete the work ahead of time. If the situation changed on day 4 such that he needed to move units along a segment of the corridor on day 7, the commander could reallocate his engineers to drop some projects and finish others more quickly. This sort of planning is virtually impossible under the current probabilistic-completion method of engineering projects in PzC because completing projects is such a crapshoot; if you spend three days trying (and failing) to complete a low-probability project, you're no closer to completion than when you started, with no options besides giving up or continuing to try and roll snake eyes.

A second example: you're fighting in a forested region cut by numerous streams and small rivers. You would like to launch a surprise attack three days from now with a veteran infantry division that is currently in reserve in fixed positions within LOS of the enemy. The location for the attack is 10 klicks away across the rugged terrain. This would be possible IF you could split the division's engineer battalion into companies and deploy them to prepare a series of foot bridges along a concealed route of march that the infantry division could traverse in a single night. But again, the current implementation of field engineering in PzC precludes this type of planning; you can't 'dial-in' the minimum level of bridging you need, nor protect yourself from that 5% or 10% chance bridge completion results that stubbornly refuses to 'hit'.

A final example from an actual game. OJW and I are on day 4 of the main campaign in B45 (01a_Konrad; the 395 turn monster). I have five engineer companies from my panzer divisions 'maintaining' bridges across a small river that constituted the line of departure for the Axis offensive to relieve Budapest. I only need to maintain two of the bridges; the other engineers are urgently needed elsewhere. So three of the engineer companies have been engaged in bridge ops for the past four days (game time) trying to release themselves so they can catch up with IVSS Pz Korps and get back in the fight. So far no luck. Historically these bridges were built in a very short period of time - the Konrad offensive begins with a surprise night assault across the bridges. But the engineers who built them are unable to disassemble them; they've been chained to the bridges for four days now while the fighting has moved 20-30 klicks to the west. I'm no closer to removing the bridges than when I started and have no idea when it may happen; meanwhile three tactically valuable units are simply removed from my plans until an essentially random event frees them. I understand that elements of uncertainty and lack of control belong in war games, but the above situation goes much too far in that direction imho.

I would propose that the current system of bridge values/digging-in percentages be replaced with a point system that requires the accumulation of "labor points" for completion of various military engineering projects, that the menu of engineering options be expanded, and the list of special engineer capabilities (mine/bridge/has boats) be expanded to allow other specialized missions. To track the progress of engineering projects would require that they be represented with on-map icons before they're completed so players can survey all their on-map projects and monitor how many labor points have been expended on each project.

The baseline number of labor points required for various projects might look as follows. These labor point numbers are off the top of my head; some hypothetical engineering project types currently not in the game are included. Some new designated engineer capabilities (construction engineer/rail engineer/has pontoon train/has tank bridge/has vehicle bridge) have been added.


CATEGORY 1 (can only be performed by engineer units with indicated capability)
Repair full hex bridge - 80000 (construction eng)
Create pillbox - 20000 (construction eng)
Create obstacles - 8000 (construction eng)
Build pontoon bridge - 16000 (bridge eng & has pontoon train)
Build heavy bridge - 4000 (bridge eng & has tank bridge)
Build medium bridge - 2000 (bridge eng & has vehicle bridge)
Repair heavy bridge - 8000 (construction eng)
Repair medium bridge - 4000 (construction eng)
Repair rail bridge - 20000 (rail eng & construction eng)
Repair rail - 10000 (rail eng)
Create minefield level - 2000 (mine eng)
Clear minefield level - 4000 (mine eng)

CATEGORY 2 (can only be performed by engineer units)

Repair light bridge - 800
Build light bridge - 1000
Wire full hex bridge - 4000
Wire rail bridge - 1000
Wire heavy bridge - 1000
Wire medium bridge - 600
Wire light bridge - 200
Wire forest road hex - 400

CATEGORY 3 (requires engineer unit or non-vehicle unit with A/B morale)

Create bunker - 8000
Create roadblock - 1000
Damage rail - 2000
Damage AT ditch - 2000
Damage ferry - 2000
Create hasty minefield - 200
Clear minefield lanes - 500 per minefield level
Clear hasty minefield - 200

CATEGORY 4 (any unit)

Create entrenchment - 250
Create trench - 750
Create AT ditch - 16000
Clear city/industrial rubble - 4000
Clear town rubble - 3000
Clear village rubble - 2000
Clear obstacle hexes - 1000
Clear obstacle lanes - 400
Clear forest road hex - 500

The indicated labor point requirements are baseline numbers. Some or all of them could be modified due to weather, scenario specific terrain, etc. Further variability could be introduced: for each individual hex where a project is initiated, the required labor points could randomly vary from minus 25% to plus 50-100% of the baseline value due to local (i.e., within-the-hex) conditions which are unknown until a unit actually begins the work. When a bridge is damaged or when rubble is created during a scenario (or when specified at scenario start) the number of labor points could be assigned (as a random deviation from the baseline); this value would be invisible to a player until an engineer unit ended its turn in the hex.

When an engineering project is initiated (i.e., selected from the engineer pull-down menu) an on-map icon could be created - something like the current IP/TRENCH markers but with a white or hollow center. In the center would be a numeric display of the labor points required to complete the project. At the start of each turn this number could be decreased based on progress made by the player's units during the previous turn (assuming no disruption due to enemy action). Hexside bridges/obstacles would require either a hexside icon or a pointer icon to indicate which hexside the work is taking place in. Engineering projects/details could also be displayed in the hex info area; this might be very desirable if multiple projects were allowed in a single hex.

A second table is needed to indicate how labor points would be generated to perform engineering projects.

Engineers - 0.5 point per man
Other units - 0.25 point per man
Engineer battalion - 200 points (in addition to manpower)
Engineer company - 50 points (" ")
Infantry battalion - 10 points (" ")

Like the labor point requirements listed above, the labor point 'outputs' could be varied due to scenario-specific equipment availability, etc.; random variation (say +/- 25%) from the baseline could also be factored in to add back some uncertainty concerning the completion time of engineering projects. I would further suggest that A/B morale units should get steeper experience bonuses for things like entrenching.

Many variations on the above suggestions are possible. Rubble could become a much more variable phenomenon; city/industrial hexes could be harder to rubble than village hexes, generating larger labor point requirements when they do so. Rather than the stock labor point outputs assigned to units above (i.e., 200 point for an engineer battalion) representing bulldozers and other specialized equipment/vehicles, a unit attribute for engineering equipment could be created - presumably American engineer units would be equipped on a lavish scale while Japanese units (if we ever see any) would have little heavy equipment. Motorized/vehicular units could have enhanced capabilities to clear rubble.

A system along these lines would allow for more sophisticated tactics and allow players to fully incorporate military engineering into their operational plans, especially in large campaign games. I tried to brainstorm and throw out a lot of food for thought; I don't expect that every item I've listed above is a good idea or will find favor with others. It wouldn't surprise me if similar concepts had been thought of and rejected by the designer. But perhaps at this time the PzC series continued evolution would be well served by a more literal representation of military engineering. Does anyone else care to weigh in on this topic?