Rules preference

[Fhil]

Hello gentlemen,

Just would like to join some debate after a longer time, so why not to start one? I would like to ask you about your preferences with some of the rules used in Panzer Campaigns series.

Let´s start with the problematics of destroying and blowing-up the bridges.
Which way do you prefer to have it in the scenario - ability to blow the bridges with your engineers, or by the Wired Bridges rule? What do you think are the pros and cons of those two types, and which one do you think is more realistic?

I´m not sure myself about this one, I mean I mostly use it in the way the scenario was created, although it´s not a problem in the editor to delete the wired bridges rule from the scenario, as it´s just something like two mouse-clicks in the pdt datas. I see as well that in some scenarios the wired bridges rule is more balance-creating or let´s say neccesary to achieve more historical results - Minsk ´44, Stalingrad ´42 and so, I think that Market Garden´44 has this by default too, right?

As I´ve said, I´m not sure about my own preference regarding this one, but there are aspects I like on each of them.

Without Wired Bridges rule - here, you can simply decide which bridges to destroy and which not, taken you have enough time to destroy the bridge in advance of enemy units trying to take it, you can be more or less sure it´ll be destroyed in a few turns (it depends on the engineer unit´s strenght and the strenght of the given bridge). Thus you don´t have to wait ´til the enemy units arrive and see if this particular approach is ´´sealed´´ or not. So you can plan your defense a bit more ahead let´s say. On the other side, you mostly won´t have enough engineers to cover the whole area of bridges on a particular river, so some bridges won´t be destroyed for 100%. But you can again calculate it into your plan of defense. Ok, I must save some space for you as well, so I´ll continue later on this one.

With Wired Bridges rule - you don´t have to care about putting down the bridges at all, it´s done or not done automatically, you only have to guard it in case it won´t be destroyed and the enemy will start using it to cross the river, or if the particular bridge isn´t wired at all. I also like that you are never sure to the last moment if there will be a tough battle for the bridge that wasn´t destroyed, so there is a big uncertainty element in your defensive planning. What this rule portrays very well I think, is the situation where the attacking force comes to the bridge only to find it destroyed (blowing up in our case in Panzer Campaigns), so instead of seing enemy´s work at blowing the bridges in his rear without really having to have it in your line of sight, (we don´t speak about the air recon that in real life could see and report if the bridge is out or not), we have also the uncertain factor in our attack-advance that only after arriving to the bridge itself we can find out it´s state. In this case I consider this rule to be more realistic.

So what are your opinions guys? Feel free to comment, suggest etc., just don´t shoot me