House Rule Suggestions

[Harbinger]

Before I dive in and offer myself up as fodder for PBEM opponents, I would like to hear suggestions about House Rules and the reasoning behind them. Obviously the use of F11 is of a high priority, but I'm interested in others as well.

All comments welcome.

Thank you in advance.

[gwgardner]

Take a look at the intro post to my historical Axis warplans AAR. I list some house rules there that we are going to incorporate into a 5-way PBEM soon.

[Tomokatu]

Here's the set we've been using. VERY largely derived from gwgardner's first set.

[WarHunter]

A few words must be exchanged to decide if the Soviet player is going to be given a free hand to declare war on any nation anytime or a more limited scope along historical lines or event driven.
This should be a flexible house rule, on a game by game basis. 

[Harbinger]

Uxbridge ETO PBEM House Rule

4. Each first week of January, April, July and October, the Game Master opens all major countries PP-pools via F11. If the amount of PP’s is less than 300, he does nothing. If the amount is higher than 300, the Game Master should reduce that excess with 50 %. This is to prevent players from unreasonable savings.

So the PP's in excess of 300 are halved? Just want to be clear.

[Uxbridge]

Yes, that's correct.

The slightly altered rule now reads:

4. Each first week of January, April, July and October, the Game Master opens all major countries PP-pools via F11. If the amount of PP’s is less than 300, he does nothing. If the amount is higher than 300, the Game Master should reduce that excess with 50 %. This is to prevent players from unreasonable savings.

Four times a year the PP amount in excess of 300 is halved. I don't want players to sit on their PP-pools in anticipation of events to unfold, saving everything until a suitable occasion happens to pop by.

As a member of Group Green, Harbinger, you can see the current rules at HQ here: ETO rules

As I, Game Master of Group Blue, don't interfere in Group Green's game, someone else have to affect this, however.

Let's discuss this further at HQ, not here. [8D]

[Manalishi]

Some new House Rule suggestions.

Isolated Units
- A unit that is isolated (cannot trace a line of supply to a supply source) cannot be disbanded.

Isolated Leaders
- leaders attached to a unit that is isolated may not be recalled to HQ until the unit is either destroyed or has been resupplied. 

Air Bases
- Air units may only base in City hexes, or those hexes adjacent to a City hex.

Air Research
- at the start of the game, player should set their Visibility to whatever their current Air Research level is. Subsequent advances in Air Research allow the player to increase the Visiblity by one hex for each new level, to a maximum of five.




  <M>

[Plainian]

I like all of these. Is visibility now country specific? In RTV it applied to all countries and was fixed? Can it be changed by events?

ORIGINAL: Manalishi
Some new House Rule suggestions.
Isolated Units
- A unit that is isolated (cannot trace a line of supply to a supply source) cannot be disbanded.
Isolated Leaders
- leaders attached to a unit that is isolated may not be recalled to HQ until the unit is either destroyed or has been resupplied. 
Air Bases
- Air units may only base in City hexes, or those hexes adjacent to a City hex.
Air Research
- at the start of the game, player should set their Visibility to whatever their current Air Research level is. Subsequent advances in Air Research allow the player to increase the Visiblity by one hex for each new level, to a maximum of five.
  <M>

[Harbinger]

Is visibility now country specific?

No. The visibility for all units is set locally in the players Preferences. If a player controls more than one nation, the preference setting for visibility must be changed manually at the beginning of each nations turn according to their Air Tech level.

Somewhat clunky, but not significantly more so than many HR's previously discussed.

[Harbinger]

I have noticed the trend of HR's being suggested to accomodate certain situations only. If regards to the larger picture have been contemplated, they are many times absent from the suggestion.

Also, the use of terms such as historical accuracy, realism and common sense as arguments either pro or con are useless since they are undefined. The use of such arguments to support a a HR designed to facilitate or negate certain specific situations is a dangerous business if not applied across the entire spectrum of the game.

...the ability to form a new Corps unit on the frontline at a critical point simply because one has the PP to do so has been declared "historically inaccurate"....yet by viewing many AAR's one will see the Germans using Trafalgar and/or Red Square as a parking lot...is this not "historically inaccurate" as well? Enter the term "realism". Realistically this was certainly a possibility. As is the "realistic" possibility to scramble a Corps into the breach at a critical point in the front line..."Common sense" demands only that one has the resources to accomplish these goals, not what those resources must be...

I agree that there are many systems in the game that could be improved upon. However, I also feel that the arguments supporting these changes not be rooted in generic, undefined terminology. The debate of a definitive canon resource for historical reference pertaining to this period in history has been argued for over 60 years. It has a very good chance of remaining unresolved here.

Having said this, I wish to point out that I have no desire to require scores of lines of text in posts/replies of historical reference to support or deny claims of changes to game systems. Only to point out these arguments are ambigious at best and subject to many interpretations.

[Tomokatu]

Isolated Units
- A unit that is isolated (cannot trace a line of supply to a supply source) cannot be disbanded.

I can see the rationale behind this suggestion, because it relates to the retrieval of (some of) the unit's PPs.
Supported

- leaders attached to a unit that is isolated may not be recalled to HQ until the unit is either destroyed or has been resupplied.

Records exist of leaders being withdrawn from surrounded/isolated units or evadiing through personal efforts and being re-assigned. I suggest that the offer to von Paulus to be evacuated from Stalingrad, of Leese being called out of the Admin Box, of Hanna Reitsch flying into Berlin to attempt evacuation of Hitler, of Gordon Bennet escaping from Singapore, of Urquhart hiding in a cupboard for three days to rejoin his troops set enough precedent to allow withdrawal from even the worst of circumstances. After all, even in the most severe instance in the game, the destruction of a whole corps, the leader is automatically withdrawn and made available at HQ.
Not supported

- Air units may only base in City hexes, or those hexes adjacent to a City hex.

There's already a supply and therefore an effectiveness penalty which is automatically imposed by the game mechanics on air units based too far (and this varies with the intervening terrain) from a city supply centre. Why do you feel that extra penalties should be applied in a house rule?
Further discussion

...player should set their Visibility to whatever their current Air Research level is...

[Tomokatu]

Whoops, posted before I finished - ths continues from above.
As I understand the existing game mechanics, the Visibility rating applies specifically to ground units. Air units already have recon abilities which increase in range as air research increases. I think that the IMP (Inherent Military Probability) of ground units being able to reconnoitre behind the enemy front lines further than 40km - 25 miles (which is one game hex) is very constrained. Even the British Army Air units (AOPs) used in Normandy didn't operate much past that distance, if at all. For the sake of realism, I think that Visibility for ground units should be set at one hex and that any further sightings can only be carried out by air units using recon abilities. This also requires greater planning and risk assessmnt by the player as commander.
Not Supported.