REMOTE DEMOLITIONS

[sonar]

I'd like to see remote demoltions incorporated into the game.It would provide new tactical possibilities for scenarios e.g.Hold bridge till pioneers lay/remove charges,25 turns.As last resort blow bridge/railway line/station/supply depot.These type of actions were of tactical and sometimes strategic importance and were employed on enough occasions to warrant them to be a vallid addition to the game.I'd also like pioneers to be a bit more useful in the bunker assault/obsatcle clearing type role than they are now.They used smoke candles for example to cover wire clearing etc.and I think they are underepresented in their historoical worth /attributes.What about rubber boats/lay wire/mines?in short make them the valueable flexible asset they were instead of infantry with a few satchel charges.Ouch!!meeow!

[Philippe]

My favorite military conundrum is what to do about a bridge wired for demolition. This situation is a real nail-biter and has been a problem ever since gunpowder was used to blow up bridges. My favorite instance of the scenario gone haywire was at the battle of Leipzig in 1813: Napoleon was retreating from the field across the Elster and the officer in charge of blowing/not blowing the only bridge panicked when attacked by Prussian skirmishers. The aftermath of the premature explosion converted a defeat into a catastrophe, and guaranteed the fall of France in the next campaign.

On a more modern note, this was an issue the Western Allies faced repeatedly as they fought their way to Germany: would that critical bridge over the Seine/Meuse/Mosel/Rhine blow up in their face when they tried to cross it? There's one delightful scenario in CMBB that tries to cover this situation, but it is slightly marred by clumsy game mechanics.

This is not an obscure situation, like some exotic German machine gun that no one has heard of. I think they used to teach courses (or parts of courses) on this, because sooner or later a non-engineering officer will come up against it. Engineers, on the other hand, have to deal with it all the time.

So even if we don't have fully modeled engineering capabilities in CMx2 (do you really want to wait around for three hundred turns while your pioneers set up pontoon bridges across that river?), remote demolition of terrain features is an important addition to CMx2.

[Brent Pollock]

Go over to the 5 x 5 wish list thread at the top of the forum and throw it into your "please change this" list.

[Panzer_M]

in CMBB and CMAK, I have made battles around the wooden bridges over an un-forded river/canal. The attacker has to cross/take the bridge and hold it againt arty strikes or lose the bridge with what ever got across stranded on the far bank.

totally non-historical, but they have been fun time to time.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

I'm all in favour of remote detonation(1). Could be used in many intruiging ways. Campbeltown at St.Nazaire, anyone? Demolisions were usually an operational or stategic matter, not tactical but some great scenarios could be made.

(1) Provided the blast has a shockwave.

[Zalgiris 1410]

I'm in favour of remote detonations as well, for example Operation Market Garden etc.

I agree that demolisions were largely operative / strategic but I have sources of examples for when they occurred for tactical reasons. (eg, the blowing up of a smoke chimney tower so that it fell longways down on top of an enemy occupied factory!) :cool:

[JonS]

Originally posted by Philippe:

On a more modern note, this was an issue the Western Allies faced repeatedly as they fought their way to Germany: would that critical bridge over the Seine/Meuse/Mosel/Rhine blow up in their face when they tried to cross it?

Just to note: on the Operational/Strategic level the Western Allies pretty much expected that they'd have to bridge any and all rivers they came across from their own resources, and provided engr resources and material accordingly. Heck - they boxed themsleves into Normandy by blowing all the bridges across the Seine and the ... meh, what's that river to the south, the ?Loire?. There's no way they'd have done that if capturing bridges intact were all that important. You see the same thing again and again and again, throughout the campaign in NWE (and Italy too, for that matter).

OTOH, on the tactical level capturing bridges was always nice, but mainly because it allowed immediate followup and exploitation, and especially immediate support by heavy weapons and tanks (since infantry can usually get across any river by one means or another).

Jon