Feature requests

[Dog Soldier]

Wiggum,

I pushed this issue hard when I first started testing Normandy.  Not being able to identify the units in the landing craft until they are deployed on the map was bothering me too.  What the scenario designers told me is this was a "confusion" feature of the landings.  It works as intended.

I did not like it.  At first.  Then I played more with it and came around to their way of thinking.

They did have a point that it is not a game breaker.  You can get your units organized in the water with a lot of right clicking  to see who is in what landing craft (kind of like the memory game with playing cards children play) or you can just rush the landing craft to the nearest beach or shallow water hex, unload them and organize from there.  This is the historical approach.

Organizing in the deep water while loaded on the landing craft is time consuming and can result in extra losses from defensive fire from the beaches.

Organizing after landing feels more historical.  It adds some extra fun to the game to deal with this low level of confusion.  It existed on D-day far more for the historical commanders who did not have all units reporting their status to them as game players have such excellent intelligence about the exact state of their own units in the game.  BTW, IIRC, the scatter of the landing craft for the different beach scenarios was adjusted by the scenario designers to simulate the level of D-day confusion when units landed in the wrong places.
Or I just dreamed that since at some point I was testing so much I was seeing beach landings in my sleep.  

Was it the house cat pouncing on my feet as I slept?

In all the scenarios not having a beach landing, checking the release and reinforcement dialogs as in PzC becomes pretty easy with practice to get a handle on your force allocation for any scenario.

If you really want a detailed force head count, just open a scenario in manual control for both sides.  Then simply click through the turns bringing on all the reinforcements until they are all on the board sorting them out as you go.  Easy to do if one really cannot feel comfortable obtaining that information through the release and reinforcement dialogs during a game.

Dog Soldier