cleaning rubble in Normandy 44

[ComradeP]

The rubble mechanic is, in my opinion, perhaps too punishing as the rubble fire value can quite low (1000 in Scheldt '44 and other new titles) and RUBBLE more or less blocks road traffic through a hex.

Though there's a need for some sort of mechanic limiting movement through heavily damaged urban areas, one issue is that there's no difference between T-mode or regular movement costs when moving into a RUBBLE hex. It is unlikely that, say, an infantry battalion would face similar difficulties when moving past a pile of rubble or debris here and there than wheeled vehicles.

I'd also argue that in the average village or even town, there might not be enough "material" around to create rubble. Collapsed houses after an aerial bombardment tend to be the result of an internal explosion (that is: a bomb goes off inside the house) or structural weakness through damage leading to collapse. A house collapsing because direct fire blew away some of the walls shouldn't normally result in enough debris or rubble on the adjacent road to block it.

Cities with a road plan that was redesigned in the 1800's-early 1900's might also feature wide avenues after medieval-early modern fortifications (if any) were taken down. For instance: Arnhem had and has a wide avenue roughly where the city walls used to be. Though damage to the buildings next to the road bridge across the Rhine was severe, it would take a lot more than that to completely block the road.

I understand that there's a need to keep things simply, something like different Rubble fire values for village, town and city/industrial hexes would be nice. In a game like Scheldt '44, a single 24 gun salvo might reduce a village to RUBBLE. That's not right in my opinion.