Warplan is a World War 2 simulation engine. It is a balance of realism and playability incorporating the best from 50 years of World War 2 board wargaming.
Pratically at the same time, beach defense is impossible because ground units are in 'coastal hexes' and thus can be bombed into oblivion though?
Translating - don't do Atlantic Wall or your troops dies horribly (Exactly as it is in Strategic Command, even if it works differently: anything on the beaches gets screwed over by insane amphibious land units that can attack from the transports without getting fired back...)
Not true. Do the Atlantic Wall on land hexes not beach hexes. I took the 1944 scenario and highlighted in red all the beach hexes. Beach hexes get hammered by air. The units are on the beach defenseless. Other hexes they do not.
Thanks for the clarification there. Now it fits well and at the same time allows the Allies to always be able to invade then.
Beach hexes work well (in similar way to the 'beacheads' I proposed above).
Is there any penalty to attack from a Beach Hex inland? (ie a column shift, like a 2:1 drops down to 1:1 or 3:2 depending on how columns are arranged)
Aha! That screenshot alone cleared up a lot of questions I had. I see what your doing there and at a glance, I like it.
I am really looking forward to this title (more so than any other game in recent years) and I too have a lot of questions, most of which I think will be answered as soon as I play a few turns.
Can Coastal Defense Support Units be built only on full land hexes or coastal hexes and not on the beach hexes themselves? The rules seem to imply this.
"The fruit of too much liberty is slavery", Cicero
Beach/Coastal hex - As you can see from the screen shot it is any hex that has more water than land and isn't all water.
Invasion on beach or land - If you land on a beach you take damage depending on the weather and surrounding enemy units. Not much. Armor can invade but takes more of this damage. You also land with 50% of your operation points which means you can attack and move inland.
Attacking out from beach - no penalty.
Coastal Defense support build - Only on land hexes. They add defense vs any units attacking from a beach.
Allied air force - Yes. It is like it was. Massive Allied air superiority striking Axis units reducing supply and movement. Oh yes there is movement interdiction in this game from air strikes. But The Axis units won't get wiped off the map..... well unless they decide to occupy the beaches and sunbath. Then yes they will be obliterated.
I am going to see how this invasion rule set plays out. But the Naval support rule is still worrying me. It seems on the face of it naval units are going to unduly influence battles inland that they could not historically. I would rather they could only support combat in an actual coastal or beach hex. Not the next hex inland.
I would argue that it is difficult to say how much impact significant naval assets have beyond the obvious naval gunfire support, which I agree would be of limited value so far inland. And to be honest, practically all of the grand strategy ww2 have similar issues (mostly due to scale).
But consider the impact of the presence of the fleet alone---supply ships, hospital ships, radio relays, naval gunfire, massive amounts of AA covering a fair amount of real estate, the list goes on and on, let alone if they have a carrier or two. Normandy is a prime example. The OKW would have probably argued that that the fleets influence (not just naval gunfire) actually extended well into the hexes beyond the beaches and perhaps throughout most of the peninsula. It was a major concern for many reasons. They spent considerable effort worrying about it, and I think it's within the realm of our games (which are abstract anyhow) to allow for such rules, provided they result in a reasonable outcome of course.
Conversely, think of it this way: can you imagine landing in Normandy with NO fleet behind you....just transports? We all know there are a ton of games out there that would allow this.
Either way, as before Michael T brings up good points to consider. I'm actually keeping a list of specific mechanics that I want to look at in detail once I'm able to play. I'll add to this to it. Perhaps once the game is released I'll put out my impressions.
The allied air will not obliterate everything, each air gets 2 attacks and while strength is lost not all is and sometimes no strength is lost, but efficiency is lost, this games mechanics are easy to learn but this game has a depth that still surprises me after many months of play testing.
Beta Tester for: War in the East 1 & 2, WarPlan & WarPlan Pacific, Valor & Victory, Flashpoint Campaigns: Sudden Storm, Computer War In Europe 2 SPWW2 & SPMBT scenario creator Tester for WDS games
naval groups only support units that they share the same hex with.
Yes, but the rules say they will support attacks made by units they are stacked with. So the Naval Units will help attack units far inland. Or perhaps I misunderstand this rule.
As an aside, and not sure if this has been raised before, but from the sceenie Alvaro provided it looks like there is no difference in icons for minor and major ports.
I think a different icon to easily distinguish between the two would be very helpful.
As an aside, and not sure if this has been raised before, but from the sceenie Alvaro provided it looks like there is no difference in icons for minor and major ports.
I think a different icon to easily distinguish between the two would be very helpful.
Agreed!
"The fruit of too much liberty is slavery", Cicero
It works good. When I first started playing i also thought it was kinda weird but after getting used to it, it is actually an ingenious system that works well, I have never had an issue having somewhere to invade
