Help understanding digging in

[nhill40]

Umm...yeah...this helps a ton! Thank you for taking the time to read and correct my understanding!

I just re-read the manual blurb - I think it does a good job conveying some corner cases but, in my experience at least, failed to convey the general gameplay mechanic.

Let me lay out what I think is a halfway realistic sequence of events to check my understanding:

- An engineer unit is stacked together with another unit. The engineer unit hasn't fired/moved this turn, and it get set to "digging in".

- If this hex is subsequently attacked while the engineer unit is still "digging in", the engineer unit fights back at half strength, but the other unit is not affected.

- Let's say the engineer unit's "digging in" succeeds. Now, both the units in that hex enjoy the full defensive benefit of that operation.

- The engineer unit subsequently vacates the hex, but the other unit remains. This other unit still enjoys the full defensive benefit of being dug in.

- The other unit now also vacates the hex, leaving the hex completely empty. The fortification is now considered vacated.

- Any units that subsequently move into this same hex on a later turn will receive a reduced benefit from that hex previously being fortified (unless one of these newly arrived units also successfully performs a "digging in" operation. The fact that the hex was previously fortified has no bearing on whether these new units succeeds in their "digging in" operation).

Essentially, once a hex is successfully fortified via a "digging in" operation, as long as that hex is continuously occupied, it's a full defensive benefit for any unit occupying that hex.

Sorry, hopefully I'm not belaboring the point, but it seems to me these are the sort of details that could be the difference between victory and defeat (especially in a defensively-oriented scenario).