Purchasing Recon in future CMs

[olandt]

CM is meant to represent the battle after preperatory barrages and other "pre-battle" activities have occerued. One of those activities that directly effect the actually battle is the amount of recon gather on an opponent before the battle actually takes place. I find having to spend time in a battle doing recon that should have been done "pre-battle" annoying at times. Therefor, I would like to suggest the following for QBs.

As part of the setup point purchse, allow a player to buy so many points of recon. Buying this recon would result in certain features of the opponents setup being revealed. Units symbols would appear on your screen during setup similar to the lost contact symbols currently seen in the game. Sound contacts might also be shown. Of course inaccurate info would be possible as well. The problem, the opponent needs to have setup something in the first place, so only the second player will benefit. This can be solved one of 2 ways. The simple way is to only allow recon on probe/attack/assaults for the attacker and have the defender setup first. The second, more complicated way is to have 2 stages of setup. The first setup phase will be normal. The second phase for each player will include the recon gleaned from the first phase. However, fortifications and entrenchments will be locked down. Meaning you can move that squad of inf, but their foxhole stays where it was dug. Certain guns such as the Flak88 will also not be allowed to move. One may wish to limit the number of units that are moved as well.

Thoughts, comments?

[CrapGame]

I look at it like this: If my recon sources have found out what they are up against, then my enemy certainly has an idea as to what they're going to be up against in terms of units, etc. If their observation post sees some guys wearing a shoulder patch of the 3rd Armored division, they certainly would expect to see some Shermans etc., coming their way. Unless, of course, the recon units are from Hollywood, in which case they arrive undetected, gather perfect intel, and make it back to base in an incredibly short period of time.

That much detailed recon has a lot of potential to be abused in a gamey manner, through the purchase of maximum recon info and artillery power. Who cares if you have shelled a few false targets, when the chances are good that you have gotten a few real ones as well.