Depot flight of fancy

[Tazak]

As we know tanks/AFV and other pieces of equipment were/are produced in limited quantities on both sides, but in FP:RS you can lose an entire tank battalion destroyed only to have it replaced (within current depot limits) with the same tanks. Would we have seen these type of like for like replacement, I think we would have seen more of “here’s all we have available” replacement.

As a flight of fancy I envisage being able to set the type and quantity of replacements available during the course of a campaign so that during the campaign the players force actually reduces in combat power.
i.e. Player has a M1A1 tank battalion at the start, in the depot the scenario designer allocates the following replacements as being available:
10 M1A1
20 M1IP
40 M1

During the first battle the player loses 12 tanks, in the depot phase he is allocated the 10 M1A1 and 2 M1IP as replacements, leaving 18 M1IP and 40 M1 and so on. After the replacements are gone then tough luck…..the game engine would need some way to ending a campgin early if all replacments are used and the players force drops below a certain % of active ‘runners’

The end effect would be that after a number of battles/losses the player has gone from a M1A1 equipped battalion to a reduced strength M1 battalion with a small number of M1A1/M1IP tanks dispersed amongst the battalion.

Infantry/small arms units should be excluded as each rifleman would carry his own weapon while being allocated as a replacement.

[CapnDarwin]

Very cool idea. I'll make sure to pass this along to Rob for consideration in 2.1x.

[Tazak]

Thanks CD, not even sure if this is possible (hence the flight of fancy). It would IMO be a better system than using VPs for replacements and would give the player a choice of "to reinforce or not to reinforce" and save those precious spare vehicles for after later battles while installing a sense of force preservation onto players.

Ofc it should only cover destroyed vehicles while fallen are 'recovered' as normal.

[Mad Russian]

There is a bit of this included in the Wolves Campaign. Not for the West German core force in the campaign but for Soviet follow on forces. They have started to scrape the sides of the barrel. They are not down to sending T-34's so not quite to the bottom but you should expect to meet everything short of T-34's.

Good Hunting.

MR