[Discussion] How to improve urban combat in PzC/MC

[Hans Boersma]

If I understand correctly the problem is that in a built-up area armoured units cannot deploy and bring their guns to bear like they can in open terrain. This is less so for a coy sized unit, as ±15 tanks probably could find a decent firing position on a 1 mile frontage (though I can imagine this would come with command & control problems). But since a player can stack multiple coy sized counters in the same hex this doesn't really matter.

VM's solution seems sound to me, apart form the fact that the defensive value of a unit in T-mode drops significantly, whereas they arguably would find more cover in the built-up area: less guns to bear also means less targets for the enemy. Another possibility might be to make armour type units automatically disrupt in city and town hexes, as this halves their combat potential. Unfortunately this comes with morale penalties that seem undesirable here. So there'd have to be a new status: disrupted without the morale penalty, called "disordered" or something. (As another candidate for this the forest terrain type comes to mind, but perhaps that is too restrictive.)

I wouldn't even mind having city (and perhaps town) hexes impassable altogether for armour type units. This would force them to fight in the open where they'd want to be anyway. In the PDT editor there is a slot for "armor" but alas changing the values there has no noticeable effect (wonder what it's there for; another game?).

Cheers,

Hans