02 Getting Started Utah Beach

[Nemo84]

I like the idea of disrupting them, that might be helpful especially for the tutorial scenario. But I would disrupt all bunker defenders, not just the southern ones. This would give a little more variation in which ones will still be disrupted by the time units get into assault positions. Disrupt only the southern ones and only 3-4 bunkers need to rally in 3-4 turns for the scenario to revert to the current one. Disrupt them all, and the odds are noticeably higher that at least some bunkers will remain disrupted long enough for an assault.

What might even be better is to give the player the necessary tools to disrupt these bunkers. As far as I know, historically the bomber wings all missed the invasion beaches themselves and dropped inland, so any disruption of the beach defenders was caused by naval bombardment. Omaha got a very poor naval bombardment in both accuracy and length, while Utah's was much more effective. What I've read also mentions that the infantry on Utah used naval fire support (no mention of ships or caliber) extensively in clearing the northern defenses, as it was much more effective against bunkers than the tanks. In the game however, both the LCT®s, the destroyers and the cruiser are absolutely useless against the beach bunker hexes, so it's a no-brainer to use them against the inland artillery. Up naval effectiveness against hard targets and the player now gets another interesting tactical choice: do I use my limited naval support against the bunkers or against the German artillery and support positions?

I do still think at least assault casualties should also be tweaked. Throwing 120 men against a defensive position for 30 minutes (1 turn) feels like it should result in more than a handful of casualties for both sides combined. Such low casualty figures should be amongst the possible outcomes, to represent an assault that quickly stalled, but outcomes where either attacker, defender or both suffer heavy losses (20-30 men each) should also be amongst the possibilities. Right now the variation in possible outcomes feels too small, and heavy losses only seem to occur if the defender gets displaced.

[Ricky B]

To boost the occasional assault result, basically stretching the range to a higher value of losses during the calculated results, you can try increasing the Attacker High Value, and possibly the Defender High Value, in the parameter file. That would give a chance of higher losses, although probably not too likely to reach the 30 man level unless there are a lot of men attacking (ignoring the 50% losses when a retreat is needed but no retreat path exists). Still that should help both disrupting defenders in bunkers and the chance of higher losses in general, while still keeping the low end.

Give it a try, let us know how it looks. Along with disrupting the beach defenses. You can try boosting naval HA factors too, not sure that will do much without a huge increase, which may mess up other things. But that may not, it is all experimental.

Rick