Operation Bluecoat (no OJW)

[ComradeP]

When it comes to non-combat related mechanics, the way bridging works will have a big impact on this scenario.

Though I can understand the theory behind the assault and vehicle/gun/aircraft system even if I feel the results in-game are not what they should be, the way bridging works puzzles me both in theory and in its practical application.

Some engineer units can build bridges. They can't technically repair bridges, they just build a new bridge over the old one. The first problem, in series where units can abandon bridges, is that they have to stay in place to maintain their bridge for the rest of the game. If you move them away, to prevent the destruction of the unit for example, they can never build a bridge again. This isn't possible in Panzer Battles, so units have to pack up their bridge before they can move away.

In PzC where a campaign game can last months, where it is very strange that a bridging engineer unit can never recover its bridging equipment, in a system where there are no limits (in terms of there being a certain finite pool) for something like replacements.

This is the only wargame I've played where bridging engineer assets are restricted in that manner. As a side generally has only a handful of bridging engineer units, blowing up several bridges across major rivers is likely to stop an advance all by itself. There is literally nothing the attacker can do after his bridging assets are “used up” by maintaining bridges elsewhere.

Bridging is also a slow process, 15% per unit/per turn base percentage chance of building a bridge for company sized units of at least 100 men in Panzer Battles: Battles of Normandy. Platoons have 1/3 that value, and the value is proportionally reduced for units with less than 100 men. As the Allies have mostly bridging platoons or 3 vehicle (30 men) bridgelayer units, their percentage change of building a bridge is about 1.5-2.5 ( roughly ((15/3)/2) or roughly ((15/3)/3.3) )

The US forces in this scenario don't have any bridging engineer assets at all as far as I can tell, so they'd simply be screwed if I start blowing bridges across major rivers in the central part of the map.

The defender is likely to target the units building the bridge, which can quickly make bridging a nightmare.

Due to how problematic the way bridging works is in practice, it is common in PzC for scenarios to use the wired bridges feature, where bridges can be set to being wired and no bridges can be blown up manually. Usually, large bridges along major roads or railroads are wired and have a small chance of blowing up in PzC and the other bridges are not wired.

That feature isn't active in Battles of Normandy at the moment, and I'm hoping it will be activated in the patch as there are somes scenarios where the Germans blowing the right bridges nearly guarantees victory.

House rule:

As a self-imposed house rule, I'll only blow up bridges across streams (which only increases the cost of moving along a road in T-mode due to the units having to cross the stream using normal movement costs) and along the major rivers along the Y-axis of the map in the upper part of the map (seperating the US and UK forces).

The major rivers along the X-axis, which give significant defensive benefits, will keep their bridges.