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Patch Suggestion-Operational Movement


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TO: Design Team. I understand the necessity of operational movement for game play but I have always found the ability to opt from for example France to Urals in one turn with little penalty to be very unrealistic. Would it be possible to create a delay feature similar to a paratroop preparing prior to movement? Thank you for consideration.

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Hi Clausewitz

The thing about Operational Movement is that it is taking account of the elapsed time of a turn. Thus in the standard AOD 1939 scenario there is 4 weeks of elapsed time between a player's turns.

There is a notional charge for using it and I guess this is intended to represent some sort of capacity limit on the railroad system. The old Gary Grigsby War in Russia game had a nice feature where Russian capacity to move troops "operationally" was temporarily restricted in 1941 whilst the trains were being used to transport factories and workers to the East.

In my view the idea of operational movement is OK as it is and you might only think of some extra restriction if you were creating a game of this scale but for example using just 1 elapsed week per turn.

Just as an example the LAH SS Panzer Division was withdrawn from the Battle of Kursk about the 12th July 43, it was re-equipped and deployed in Italy by the 8th August 43.

Regards

Mike

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Mike: Thank you for your thoughts. However I continue to believe that the game would be improved with more difficult force deployment decisions. My suggestion is far from perfect but currently if a country has available MPPs it can move multiple panzers, armies etc. plus an entire air force from Urals to France. Effectively the time frame is two weeks because they are in position for defensive purposes on Allied turn. Air fly interceptions etc.

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As far as Land operational movement goes, I don't see major problems, Supply rules handle it very well, see for yourself in Russia when you try to move Axis units around, no cake walk here in AOD. It is quite another story for Air op Mov. When I used to play the AI with Gold, I would set my Air Op Mov to Home Country only except for USA/Canada. It is rather strange to have German fighters suddenly showing up in Persia or Madagascar. While it seems to penalize the Axis specialy for remote African, Middle East Campaigns - and to a larger extent in Asia for Japan, it is not that bad since any Axis sound strategy won't have air units scattered all over the world but it is a necessity for the Allies. The UK have to buy Minor Countries air units instead of rushing British ones here and there and it gives Allied players a much trickier long term planning as well as a better challenge.

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Hi Clausewitz

You make a reasonable point in saying that an operated unit is available to defend after "two weeks" rather than four but two weeks is still not unreasonable to complete even a long journey by rail. It is a similar situation to allowing reinforcements to be purchased for a unit and for them to be ready to defend in the next opponent's turn. In the LAH example I quoted the division actually left their tanks in Russia and picked up new ones for their deployment in Italy so it was quite similar to the ability in SC for units to be reinforced. Conceptually you can consider that reinforcement equipment is either newly purchased from a factory somewhere in the home country and transported to the front or that spare equipment and men have been kept near the front line on a sort of delayed purchase payment basis.

I think in SC you have to accept a degree of abstraction to achieve simplicity of game play and I would not want to see "operating" made more complex.

Regards

Mike

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Hi Clausewitz,

It's an interesting idea but I have to second Mike's (mcaryf1) thoughts. I think operation movement as it is currently handled is pretty nicely done.

If the allies want to stop Germans from moving troops from the east to defend against something like a dday event, strategic bombing Paris & Lille cuts the rail links in those places & gives the allied player the space that they need to land & not have to face immediate German reinforcements.

If you really want to make a dday defense pretty futile, hit Amsterdam, Cologne, Kassel, Frankfurt, & Stuttgart with some naval units (Amsterdam) & strategic bombers. It won't even cause a huge outlay of MPPs to prepare for such an offensive if you give yourself 2 turns to cut the rail links to France in these locations (unless I'm missing some shortcut into France that also needs to be bombed). If you do this maneuver, German reinforcements will have to make the long trek into France from Berlin or Nuremberg. To get to Normandy from those locations will take the German player 3 turns (1 turn to operational move & 2 turns for normal movement over land).

The ability to halt operational movement by partisans & paratroops zones of control or strategic bombing seems like a fair counter to operational movement. This type of rocks/paper/scissors simplicity is what I feel makes the Strategic Command series so elegant & fun to play.

Cheers,

Brian

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