Bridge Building tricks

[jonnymacbrown]

I'm playing a neet F40 Campaign scenario, but I was having some problems building bridges. I'd have bridge battalions, c. 400 men size, taking a long time, too long, to build bridges. Finally, after repeated failures, I broke the battions down into 3 c. 100 men companies. Yep, one of them built a bridge right away! This stroke of genius came after a reading the rules told me that size doesn't matter.[u] Too bad though, as I wasted a lot of time. But apparently, the key is to get as many company sized units building bridges as possible, as one 100 man company has as good a chance of building a bridge as a 450 man battalion. Good hunting, Prinz von Egan

[Tortue Agile]

The more bridges you have to cross the Meuse (at different places) the better you will be. It will permit you to confuse your enemy and give you more option for your strategy. The only down side will be that your pioners will be more sensitive to fatigue.

[FM WarB]

I see no reference to size in the game manual's Engineer section. I do see: "Placing two or more Bridge Engineers will give you a higher chance of successfully completing the bridge." So three companies split from a batalion, all trying to build bridge on same hex get three rolls of the dice instead of just one. (You also have two companies left Over after the bridge is built.)
I like to think of this as like those Brits on the river Kwai becoming more efficient after Col. Nichols has properly divided their labours :-)

[Dog Soldier]

To use this tactic of companies, be sure the enemy can not blast away at them. Three companies in a single hex can be decimated by fire easier than a battalion.

Dog Soldier

[Glenn Saunders]

Thanks for the input.

The overal design concept for the game is such that there really shouldn't be any benefit when a Btln performs a function less effectively than the 3x Coy units.

So I discussed this with John and we'll make a change in subsequent updates so that coys will have 1/3rd the chance of building the bridge. It will be up to you then if for example you want one chance @ say 30% or 3x chances at 10%.

Glenn

[Huib Versloot]

Thanks for the input.

The overal design concept for the game is such that there really shouldn't be any benefit when a Btln performs a function less effectively than the 3x Coy units.

So I discussed this with John and we'll make a change in subsequent updates so that coys will have 1/3rd the chance of building the bridge. It will be up to you then if for example you want one chance @ say 30% or 3x chances at 10%.

Glenn

A few remarks.
In reality the only advantage of a Bn over a company when bridge building is endurance when building a larger bridge. A Bn could form teams working subsequently, with teams working and other teams resting. To a degree companies however could also form teams. There is no way 600 men would work on a single bridge at the same time. At least not in the Ardennes. It would be better if fatigue was attached to bridgebuilding, where smaller units would fatigue faster. In the German bridgebuilding efforts it was usual that only a portion of the Bn was engaged in bridgebuilding: the 5th FJ Pionier Bn had some working on the bridge at Roth, others where helping to cross StuGs to cross the Our on a weir and finally some where in combat near the Vianden castle. Another example: the Pioniers of the 352 VGD constructed 3 bridges near Gentingen: 2 footbridges and 1 heavier bridge for crossing armor and heavy equipment. Other members of the Pionier Bn where ferrying the assault companies over the Our in rubber boats.
Conclusion: don't implement the change. The unwise tactic of not using companies when building bridges should not be rewarded.
The system is fine as it is now.

Huib

[Glenn Saunders]

In the official release of the Bulge game, the Eng are all in Btln units which can't subdivide and we tested and tested and retested until we were happy that the time it takes to build a bridge, given the various quality of the Eng was close to historical as we could get it. If anything it may seem long but often it is quicker to get those bridges up than was historically the case. If players are using a Mod where these Eng are in Coy and the result is that the chance is increased three times, than that would be a problem.

The original post was concerning F40 where the German Bridge percentage is 30%. You can subdivide a Btln in three Coys and just about make the bridge in one turn every time.

Conclusion - that is a problem and one that could be corrected by changing the PDT to 10% or making the change that will be implemented. If players want to undo the effect of the new change that can be done by tripling the Bridge value in the PDT.

In France 40, I was torn between making a single Bridge Coy for each Div which would be more accurate but would increase the stacking density beyond what I wanted to do and make the Bridge unit suspectible to added BF. Also, because the way the game works and the Bridge can't be left unattneded, having all coys with bridge ability allows players to move forward without leaving their entire Bridge capablity in the rear - just leaving a single coy with the bridge and the others move forward. So it works nicely - or so I thought.

Anyway - dividing an Eng into three Coys to triple the chance of building a bridge is a gamey tactic and the part in the manual about "Placing two or more Bridge Engineers will give you a higher chance of successfully completing the bridge." was not writen to give players a clue haw to do gamey things. It was likely added when the change we made to have the bridge chance modified by the quality and when Greg Smith was thinking in terms of BTLNs as Bulge was game five of the Series and I don't think we had figured out all these little rules loop holes players have found over time.

Glenn

[Mike Abberton]

As an alternative to reducing a company's bridge building chance, could you change the code to only allow one bridge building check per hex per turn?

That would allow a Bn to split up and build 3 bridges at one time in different hexes (which seems reasonable), similar to Huib's Ardennes example, while removing the probably gamey split companies in one hex building bridges too quickly.

I'll be honest that I am not familiar enough with the bridge building rules to know if my suggestion would have other unintended consequences, but it is a possible alternative fix.

[Glenn Saunders]

As an alternative to reducing a company's bridge building chance, could you change the code to only allow one bridge building check per hex per turn?

Actually - I proposed a number of things to John with regards to correcting this - and One check per hex was one of those. But in the larger picture, when we previously wrote the comment in the docs, ...

> "Placing two or more Bridge Engineers will give you a higher chance of successfully completing the bridge."

...that was indeed part of the design or the original idea - but it was done thinking about Btlns only as this was PzC #5 after all with Smolensk (btlns), normandy (all kinds of small units), Kharkov (Coy Eng but Bridging not really critcal) and Tobruk where there is not much to to bridge really).

So we inadventantly created this loop hole and John felt it was better to continue with the design intent but just close the Gamey trick. As Tiller is fond of saying - "we can't anticipant every thing players will figure out to do to overcome the design of the engine, but where we can or where we see it happening, we will make changes. In the big picture, this change is similar to the increased protection value on German Reinforcement in MG 44 to stop the Allies from waiting at the edge of the map to pounce on new troops or stopping stopping players from using HQ units as rear area trench builders. While different in their nature, they were not part of what we were thinking when we created, tested, and released the game.

And if players don't like this FIX we are implementing they can triple the Bridge Building value in the PDT but 30% seems reasonable to me too but if someone wants it to be 90%, they can make it so. In fact the new releases even ship with a new PCPARM.exe program to make doing those PDT edits a snap.

Glenn

[FM WarB]

Setting appropriate bridge building capability is the scenario designer's job. It can be attempted with appropriate information regarding the armies' bridge building capacity in the time frame in play.
Splitting engineer batalions into companies exacerbates the issue that all engineers capable of building bridges cannot build Heavy bridges in reality. There are Bucko Js (heavy) and Brucko B's (medium). Treadway bridges come in different sizes. While almost all engineers can build or repair light bridges, only some can build or repair medium bridges and few can build heavy bridges.
How about addressing this issue in future updates by giving engineers light or medium or heavy bridge building capabilities? This would allow scenario designers to make more accurate oobs which could take care of the batalion splitting into companies issue.
(I almost forgot; it's Christmas wishlist season. There's mine.)