Matrix Games Forums

Tell me - are there no bridges to blow up, repair or build?

not at this scale

Aren't bridges important at any scale?

At a 200-mile scale, bridges certainly would not be worth modeling. 10 miles is a closer call, but even that is a pretty big swath of territory. The rules already punish you if you attack across a river.

They are accounted for by high costs to move over rivers, higher costs when in zocs. Also, rail usage is tracked in hexes and railyards can be bombed so there are many ways to degrade movement via rails. But no, we don't specifically have bridges in these hexes that are bombed and need to be rebuilt. We didn't feel with 1 week turns that adding bridges was necessary. Try moving across a river in a zoc though and you will see it is very slow (also attacking over rivers.

I still think bridges should be included. As somebody already said, they were important at any scale and they add interest both strategically and tactically.
In my opinion anywhere that a rail line crosses a river should be considered a bridge with no penalty for supply or movement if the bridge is intact and out of ZOC. Reduced penalty if in ZOC.

Have you tried crossing a RR bridge in a combat unit? Neither have I but from my understanding (and playing a lot of ASL [:D]) it is not something to be done if there is any enemy around. It is far better to cross anywhere else other than the bridge, even if it takes longer.

I just assume that if there is supposed to be a bridge in a hex, it is destroyed until the hex is repaired. In addition, we have weekly turns here. A bridge (or lack of one) is only going to have a minor impact on movement. So by having movement cost a little more crossing rivers seems the right choice. Versus modeling bridges everywhere. And would you model concrete bridges, 2 lane or 1 lane? How about wooden? Some major bridges were just wood.

The increased costs over rivers without being contested could just be attributed to the traffic jams they caused.

Plus having the extra coding to handle bridges would take time away from other areas that imho thing would be far more important. If you added bridges, then there would be people wanting to blow them up [:)] And repair them, etc. So I think leaving them out was definitely the right call.

If you want a game with bridges I would suggest Panzer Command or similar games that have a smaller scale.

Allow me to put that right.....

I think bridges should be important for supply/movement via rail. I read even some small bridges over minor rivers could block a rail line for several days. Especially when engineers were busy with other things.

ORIGINAL: Numdydar
Have you tried crossing a RR bridge in a combat unit?

Things at this level have to be abstracted. There are actually no roads in the game at all so I could as easily say "Have you tried driving a truck hundreds of miles across muddy fields?"
Most rail crossing points also have major road bridges nearby so using rail crossing points as universal crossings is not unrealistic.

So in fact there are bridges, they are just represented in abstract numbers when crossing rivers or combat values when someone are attacking crossing rivers? Maybe no one understand this, but I hope so [:)]