Beta release of Bolt out of the Blue V10.0.

[Elxaime]

Welcome back! Completely understood RL comes first. In the spirit of your request for feedback on 10.0 Bolt, here are some thoughts:

1. Attack Helicopters. They seem to have some issues in that, despite being attached to various formations, if you recon an enemy HQ spotted via ECM, then every available friendly helicopter can hit them, regardless of where they are on the map. Not sure if the game engine is adaptive enough to model helicopters in this new way. It makes me wonder if one step forward has turned into two steps back here and the old original FOB concept needs looking at again. I think the idea is you want helicopters to be somewhat tethered, both as doctrine and to prevent gaminess. Maybe the old FOB, with attack helicopters as on-map units, worked best?

2. Recon units. This is an ancient issue, but it still seems weird that recon units are so vulnerable. The recon spotting helps somewhat. I'd consider tweaking them a bit more, perhaps turning them into "hybrid" units that were soft targets, with but decent soft and hard defense factors, and adjusting their movement rates to allow them to spot even better using the distant spotting ability.

3. Border units. In the playthrough I had, my NATO opponent had some reasonable complaints about the ability of Pact border guards, once they had unfixed, to spread out across the map to cover the front line. On the other hand, the border units seem like a good idea - I always felt it was strange to have each sides' rear area so "naked" that it allowed enemy special forces to roam freely. You may want to consider having each sides' border units start to withdraw after the first two days (random percentage and by unit), then have rear area security forces trickle in afterwards in friendly cities to represent the mobilization of rear area security units (again, via random percentage and by unit). This would perform two functions: hinder the use of border troops, beyond the first two days, to perform unrealistic assault functions; b) the trickling in of rear area troops would "harden" those areas against enemy special forces while creating some "emergency" forces to use in extreme situations. I would also suggest reducing the border troops movement and making the arriving rear area security forces fixed for the first week of the campaign, to reflect that they are arriving to protect cities and key infrastructure.

4. VP hexes and levels. As noted in my comment above, it is unlikely the Warsaw Pact will get very far into enemy territory, all other things being equal. You may want to make use of the new timed VP hex function to create a potential "sudden death" victory threshold for both sides. I would also stage the NATO VP more closely to the frontier, to reflect their "forward defense" doctrine, which had a heavy political dimension. This would encourage the Pact to be more aggressive early on, even at the risk of high losses, while encouraging NATO to fight for every inch of territory and not just sit back and await their reserves so they can crush the Pact. This would turn the game into more of a turn-by-turn nailbiter, as either side, by advancing deeply into enemy territory, can cause a sudden death victory.

Just my two cents. Others may have ideas.

J.