bridges, supply and columnlenght

[soldier1200]

Hello,
I played a couple of scenarios. Notably 'mayhem on the meuse' as german. (Almost impossible to win...)
From this I derive a couple of 'requests' for the next version.
It would be nice if you could blow bridges right away. THat is, after the engineers have finished their demolishing task. Now I have to spend a company to guard the bridge, and only when the enemy arrives I am able to blow the bridge. Normaly you would only spend a platoon on guard-duty, not a company. ANd in the game you are forced to prevent the engineerunit being shot at, because otherwise it is hardly able to blow the bridge, and thus I am forced to set up a second unit closer behind the bridge as well. This is costing me a lot of troops that I could otherwise save for other tasks.
Would it be possible to blow bridges after an amount of time with an engineer unit?

Since this game is focussing on the operational aspects of war, apart from other things, logistics is becoming a crucial factor. 'Deep Operations' deep inside enemy territory should pay off. I doubt that this is currently the case. How could one achieve this? Maybe with a morale factor. Units in the neighborhood of others have a higher morale than on their own, especially when they belong to the same unit. And if a neighboring unit is retreating or even routing, 'panic' should spread. Also enemy units in the back should give concerns at the appropriate level.
More important is that supply lines are cut. THis is currently not really visible in the game. It would be nice to see the transport collums when you drive into them. It is also not very noticeble that a line has been cut, because the cut-off unit seems to get new supply from another location way to early. In reality this is a very cumbersome operation in staffprocedures and unwilling depot-officers. And the unit itself needs to find the other depots in the firstplace, which takes a while (when the procedure is to get it for your selve in the depot): besides that, units not always get their stuff in the nearest depot. Sometimes they need to go farther, especially with special ammunition types. (the same applies for maintainance!)
So; if you could cut supply-lines the game enters an other dimension, and the way AI-units are operating and maintaining cohesion to screen their supply lines would probably be different as well.

Third thing that I noticed was the lenght of colums. They should be much larger!~
If a unit moves in a single file in a tactical mode the amount of road-lenght they consume is amazing!~
Small calculation: an average company consists of 20 vehicles (and most of the times they also have a couple of logistical vehicles). Each vehicle can count for 10 meters. THat is 200 meters. The spacing in tactical mode would normaly be 50 meters in between. That is 1000 meters, in total 1200 meters for a single company!!
Now I see german regiments moving in a couple of kilometers where it should be at least twenty kilometers.

I hope to have indicated some other future improvements to this allready fantastic and very addictive game.

Cheers!

[Chief Rudiger]

ORIGINAL: soldier1200

Since this game is focussing on the operational aspects of war, apart from other things, logistics is becoming a crucial factor. 'Deep Operations' deep inside enemy territory should pay off. I doubt that this is currently the case. How could one achieve this? Maybe with a morale factor. Units in the neighborhood of others have a higher morale than on their own, especially when they belong to the same unit. And if a neighboring unit is retreating or even routing, 'panic' should spread. Also enemy units in the back should give concerns at the appropriate level.

Ever play Sid Meier's Gettysburg? A battalion in the middle of a line, with a second line behind it got extra "blocks" added to its moral, or fatigue, or whatever. As the unit takes moral damage the bar fills up. The pictured unit has 4 blocks of morale to begin with, plus two for being sandwiched, and one for being within commander range. This unit could get hit pretty hard without breaking but once one of the flank units routs and the leader runs off to rally them... the unit will loose two bonus block and maybe break under the pressure it had previously been handling. Obviously this makes turning and rolling up the enemies line an effective tactic, in-game.



The Napoleonic series of games developed from the same engine added a "cohesion" bar which fragmented as the unit moved or from being shot at or engaged in melee. You can see the pictured unit has a broken yellow bar, which will heal into a green bar the longer the unit is stationary.



These were some of the first wargames i player and i've always thought they were simple, effective mechanics. I'm sure something similar is already built into BFTB but i loved how obvious it was to the player in these games.