ORIGINAL: gliz2
I totally agree Cabido. The ZOC are not even right for FITE.
The best approach I have seen in a hex game was in some old board game where the fight was conducted at the same hex or adjacent hexes depending on the hex types and unit size and type (so the chits of both sides occupied the same hex for a fight in case the defender was too weak). But it bet this would be a nightmare to implement in TAOW because of the time span.
Messing with the combat engine would be prohibitive, I think. But a "simple" solution would be to make ZOC effects scale to distance and unit size. Restriction to movement could be 0 or prohibitively high, so that a very small, disorganized unit would evaporate when trying to retreat adjacent to flanking strong units by the mere impossibility of movement and very strong units would walk through small, disorganized units without penalty.
I'll exaggerate in order to illustrate (notice that I don't mean the hierarchical type of unit, just the relative sizes):
D - division
P - platoon
...^...............^
__|_________|
D P D_____P D P
The platoon passing through 2 divisions should have a great chance of evaporating (almost impossible in the open); the division passing through two platoons would have very little delay to its movement. It's true that disengagement chances are scaled here, making it harder for the platoon sized unit, but if the unit goes through, it preserves its full effect on movement and supply.
Disorganized small units should have no effect on supply or movement at all.
The worst thing: multiple RBCs should cause evaporation more frequently. The way it is, we have to chase small, disorganized units all around in order to prevent supply/movement penalties and their ZOC remain untouched and we create a barrier of time stamps. It is too "counter based". The problem is whether there is a counter on your way or not, not how many men and weapon.
Encirclement - the game has lots of abstracted factors and one point that should be abstracted is this. Very large units would detach troops to block the way of a very small units without moving its bulk, so that the configuration below should be considered an encirclement, depending on density:
D - division size
B - battalion size
E - empty hex
_________E_________E
_______D___D_____D___E
_________B_________B
_______E___E_____E___D
_________D_________E
If the battalion size unit tries to move... evaporation. If it stays and is attacked, it can resist, depending on fortification level and terrain, but won't be able to leave position and retreat, unless three hexes are free, which means one free hex non adjacent to any enemy.
I think all of this could be dealt with by scaling the effects of ZOC accordingly, considering density (unit size/hex size) and unit's sizes relation. Also, terrain and the fact of being spotted or not should have an influence on movement penalties. An unspotted small unit in dense wood terrain would have a greater impact than a spotted one in the open. That would give recon a greater and interesting impact on the game; send this high recon unit to spot the enemy and allow a faster go through of your other troops if situation is favorable (i.e. the unit is very small in relation to your own and terrain is less suitable to ambush).
I know, all of this is just brainstorming. Developers have to deal with colateral effects and make a lot of tests, but I would be happy to see those ZOCs scaled, whatever the solution found. They have done it with digging in, allowing designers to set the rate of fortification level increase, which was way too fast in half-day/day turns. The problem is that ZOCs must scale according to relative size of units and it would have to adapt to game circumstances.
