Musings on Normandy

[CheerfullyInsane]

Well you beat me to it. I've spent more time doodling with my map than I have playing. Here's the map. I'll add proper comments tomorrow. The X is supposed to mark the spot which I think Vasili says is the weak point?

If it's any consolation, your map looks far better.
And yes, that solitary trench is the weakest spot. There are two pillboxes with lessened defensive values as well, one right next to the trench hex, and one at the western edge of the beach at Vierville. These are the only three hexes where there isn't an escarpment, and thus the only three hexes where you can get the needed armor-support through.

We do not need a 4th fire category; pillboxes should have a facing for all units and if assaulted from the side/rear should have seriously reduced assault strength.

We have all read something from Normandy, literally within an hour of landing there were fire teams moving around bunkers and then using charges to blow back doors, grenades in the vision slit , or my favorite, sten gun hosing the vision slit.

Wrong scale for that sort of detail. If you instituted facing-rules (like for some of the coastal artillery units), you'd still end up with the bunkers facing every possible assault. Even if you restricted the bunkers to only be able to fire directly forward, it wouldn't help since the only assaults possible are through the gaps in the escarpments which are directly facing the bunkers.

One way to do it was to enable an assault with engineers to negate some of the defensive benefits of bunkers.
Something like the Combined Arms penalty in reverse, so that if 10% of the assaulting force is combat engineers, bunkers are no longer Hard targets. Although that would still require the engine to differentiate between fortifications and other Hard targets, otherwise the engineers turn into tank-hunters.
But again, this would require hard-code changes, so I'm just thinking out loud here. :)

Suffice it to say that with the Alt. Assault OR bunkers are a b*tch, even when you have room to maneuver.
One of the weirder side-effects of the Alt. Assault OR is that you're actually better off sending armor in against a bunker complex without infantry support.
Granted, they'll take Combined Arms penalty so they only attack at half-strength, but that's still six times better than infantry. And since they're Hard targets, you've just cut the defensive fire in half, more if there are no AT-guns in there.
Not really relevant to the invasion, since you can't get the infantry out of the way, but something to keep in mind for e.g. Kursk.