Engineers, Bridges and Suicde....illogical

[HirooOnoda]

I can't begin to explain how illogical I find the inability of engineers who have built a bridge to abandon said project while under fire.

No matter how horrific the fire these engineers will stand their ground-at half defense?-and die while "undoing" their bridge. Usually they become disrupted and will die while attending their bridge.

I suggest that engineers should be able to abandon their bridge much like mechanized infantry can abandon their vehicles and go on foot.

Just a suggestion.

[FLG]

I can't begin to explain how illogical I find the inability of engineers who have built a bridge to abandon said project while under fire.

No matter how horrific the fire these engineers will stand their ground-at half defense?-and die while "undoing" their bridge. Usually they become disrupted and will die while attending their bridge.

I suggest that engineers should be able to abandon their bridge much like mechanized infantry can abandon their vehicles and go on foot.

Just a suggestion.

It's a funny old world, I was just logging in to post the exact same thing.

I was thinking they should be able to abandon their bridges, like motorised troops, but unlike motorised troops, they I don't think they should be allowed to regain there bridges by visiting a HQ. I just can't see your average HQ having mobile bridges lying around.

[Elxaime]

/agree

Few things are more maddening in PzC than watching a valuable engineer unit die because they are chained by the ankles to a bridge.

[Sgt Fury]

I share your pain!

A couple points to keep in mind -- not saying this fixes the situation, however. You can use breakdown to leave only 1 company with a bridge sometimes. You do not need to die necessarily, only break, and the bridge will magically vanish.

Fury

[Volcano Man]

[Glenn Saunders]

... I suggest that engineers should be able to abandon their bridge much like mechanized infantry can abandon their vehicles and go on foot.

Just a suggestion.

FWIW mechanized infantry DO NOT abandon their vehicles when they go ON FOOT. Their vehicles are deemed to travel on their own to the parent units HQ. And when the the units ON FOOT need them again they just return to the same hex with the HQ and the vehicles are reunited.

So you see, it isn't or wouldn't be the same for Bridges. If the Eng was to Abandon it, presumable in a spot where it was difficult, then the Bridge, unlike the trucks couldn't just drive off to the HQ like the vehicles with Motorized units.

The LOGIC is, that it should take about the same length of time to dismantal a Bridge as it does to build one and in thegame this is controled by the PDT and the Unit quality. There isn't a lot of data to go on with respects to engineers taking down bridges, but we did a fair bit of work in Bulge to ensure the time to build the bridge was pretty accurate erring on the side of making it a touch too fast.

Now if we just allowed players to abandon the bridge than the same eng could move to a new location and build a new bridge even though it lost\abandon its equipment.

The game does not track if a Eng has abandon its bridge or not. And doing so would be a bit of work. Furthermore it would be complicated by the Coys and combined Eng Btls. I am sure this would lead to some rather complex situations occurring.

But nothing is impossible - send it you BTL file showing the situation in progress in the game so it can be rated as how significate the situation is. If you have any reference material citing Engineers abandoning their Bridges, that might help too.

Finally you can bring your suggestion to the Tillercon - Greg Smith is going to be there with us too and he along with Tiller are the founders of this series. If you can make a case - who knows it might happen. But this has been around since Smolensk v1.0 and it was put there because it was logical as well as it prevented players from abandoing equipment that most Eng units would do EVERYTHING THEY COULD to save - something that if allowed would result in gamey ahistorical play.

Glenn

[Adam Parker]

I can cite 2 examples supporting the series as is:

1. Israeli engineers at the Suez Canal.
2. German engineers along the R. Sauer at the Bulge's southern flank.

And who can forget Eliott Gould's men in "A Bridge Too Far" ;-)

There is plenty of logic for a bridge building site to be a magnet for enemy fire especially in a critical scenario.

Hence the real issue should be, have you secured your bridge building site in the first place?!

[HirooOnoda]

Come on guys, do you actually think 150 German engineers are going to continue to dismantle the bridge when over 1000 Russians are shooting at them? They'll die right where they stand.

Fine, make it that they lose the future ability to construct bridges (un-flag?), but those are for keeping the status quo are really in the minority.

[Elxaime]

In some cases, you don't really have a choice. In Minsk 44', for example, an bridge engineer battalion from a German PzGr Division starts the scenario just behind the front maintaining a bridge. As the front begin to collapse and the other members of the German PzGr Division start to stage a fighting withdrawal, these engineers are stuck unless and until they can dismantle the bridge. They have no option to abandon the bridge. The German player has to hope he gets lucky and the bridge ops takes effect before the engineers are surrounded and wiped out.

This makes no sense, unless you want to assume bridge engineers operate under the same code of honor as captains of ships.

[Glenn Saunders]