A comment on Hex side bridge building in Scheldt '44

[HMCS Rosthern]

I recently played a team game of the large Market Garden Scheldt '44 scenario on the Allied side #0917_02a_Market_Garden "It Never Snows in September". Bridge building is slow, especially if one is using a D engineer unit. The bridge building percentage is "Allied Bridge Value: 30%", times .75 for D units = 22.5% . If the unit suffers losses to less than 100 men the percentage goes down proportionally. Splitting engineers into companies further reduces the odds by a third (15%).

I used Engineers to move on-foot infantry units across the river, to establish a bridge head, so that I could shield the engineers building the bridges (2 hexes with 1 engineer building a bridge to double my chances). My reasoning was that if there is no shield the Germans would immediately get adjacent and focus their fire on the engineers(s) building the bridges to disrupt them. Typically it is easy for the Germans to do this. In the game, the Germans concentrated their forces in a central location, so that once they detected the bridgehead units they launched a counter attack presuming that behind them bridge building was going on. Only bridgehead units adjacent to an engineer across the river can be in supply, but only if the engineer is not doing anything like building bridges! I did not plan for this. In the game the German's counter attacked slowly decimated the unsupplied bridgehead units, while I waited for the bridges to be built. I added extra engineers to supply the adjacent units accross the river.

Meanwhile as the game advanced, I was able to build a bridge in 1 turn (lucky die roll) in an relatively unimportant area of the game. So frustrating.

In the end it was not until the about 20 turns before a bridge was built just in time to have most of a brigade wiped out. The Germans then retreated after feasting on the bridge head units.

In retrospect, I think the better approach would have been to stack as many units in a hex along multiple engineer units building bridges, so any attempt to disrupt the engineers would be met by a wall of fire. Multiple engineer units building bridges means they have less of chance of stopping the bridge building.

My comment is that the hex-side bridge building mechanics produce likely unrealistic results. I can wait for days for a bridge to be built while another is built in 2 hours. Perhaps military life is like that. In the gradually wetter conditions historically around that game's time frame, it probably should take a minimum number of turns before a bridge has a chance of being built, (unstable river banks, difficulty manouvering bridging equipment). Having said that, I guess it's possible that a bridging unit gets lucky and can build a bridge in 2 hours. 

Perhaps the WDS team could consider a code change where hex side bridges follow the same logic as pontoon bridges. (quoting, "However, after the bridge operation is initiated, the number of turns specified by the Pontoon Bridge Parameter Data value for that side must elapse before the completion of the operation is possible."). A separate "hex side bridge parameter wait time" parameter would be required to distinguish between pontoon bridges.  If the scenario does not need the pontoon logic, the "hex side bridge parameter wait time" variable could be set to 0.

But on the other hand, maybe the end result of the hex-side bridge rules as they stand today is historical.

[ComradeP]

It depends on percentage chance, it's basically a roll of the dice. The results of bridge building are random, but in my opinion usually not too random, as the bridge value is decent in the campaigns I'm playing.

Pontoon construction still depends on the same mechanic. The pontoon value is just the base number of turns that a pontoon needs to be under construction before rolls are made to check if it can be completed using the bridge value % and its modifiers.

Allied engineer units can be broken down, so you can always have 2 units companies building a bridge whilst the other company keeps the units on the other side supplied.

I've had a company clear RUBBLE in 1 turn whilst it takes stacks of 3 engineer battalions days to do so, the same goes for bunker construction. It's random.