revised Meeting Engagement

[enric]

Good job GL88 you added all transports and new Tanks for allied, this will give a new approach to this scenario.

But I would like to give my opinion about modify this or any other scenario, or a more generic consideration about scenarios.

I began to modify this scenario somedays ago, maybe weeks, with the same purpose, add mobility, more transports, but I dropped down for several reason.

- A FS scenario can not use deployment, so units appear where they were placed by design, so, any one would easily know where you start and probably where you are the second/third turn, as the scenarios have off board artillery and air support this is an annoying feature in that situation. Maybe an agreement to not use (don't assign) until turn three? but this is complicated because when you open a challenge you could not made any agreement with someone who you don't know yet. This problem is also in the original scenario also.

- Units appear where they were placed, and as designer you have no way of provide that a unit, that need a transport, will have one nearby when game starts. I experimented this in the scenario we are playing, a bought 6 half-tracks and a mortar, I got all six half-tracks near the mortar but three o more turn away of the nearest infantry, so they are useless to transport quickly the infantry.

Recently I provided a new scenario "City River", where one side use a mix of fixed and FS units, and the other side gets all units fixed. The problem is that as no deployment to both sides is possible, when you start, you can blind fire/bombard where you know the enemy is placed. This was a constant in the original scenarios offered by Slith, after played several times you know where the enemy starts, where would be on the second turn, this drops a lot of interest to these scenarios.

As a conclusion, I'll try to design scenarios only where none of the above situation happens, probably a random placement will help, and also don't offering off board support on the first turn. I think these things are possible using scripting... need to study. Free deployment, I think is in the Pip hands only.

What's your opinion men?

[GottaLove88s]

Thanks Enric, Glad you like the little update so far. You've raised a great idea... and another point that's actually not too hard to implement...

(1) Great idea - Ban setting airstrikes and artillery until after turn 3... You're absolutely right that anyone who's looked at the map in the Editor, or who's played it too much, knows exactly where everything starts and has a reasonably good idea where their opponent will be by the end of turn 1 and turn 2... I've just been fighter-bombed by somebody, in the same place in two different games, end of first turn, lost a Wespe outright and a scout is down to 1/3... There's no way that they can see where I am; they just know it from experience... It's annoying but it's gaming... PIP, IS THERE ANY WAY TO PREVENT USE OF AIRSTRIKES OR ARTILLERY UNTIL AFTER SAY TURN 3? That will stop "shooting by knowing rather than seeing". After turn 3, we just have to be unpredictable.

(2) Simple fix - I confess I assigned the transports close to the AT guns and mortars, but you're right, infantry start places were left exactly as they were for Meeting Engagement, ie. coming in from all over the place. That's a pain if we want to pick up the grunts and take them somewhere fast. Of course, the best solution is to add a unit deployment phase after force selection, but I get the impression that's hard to do. Once a few of us have played this version, I'm going to revise all of the start positions, so that infantry, AT guns, mortars and transports will begin much closer. It won't solve the problem in (1) above, but if Pip can ban airstrikes/artillery for the first few turns, it will get games off to a faster start with a cleaner fight.

See you in the village! I see your scout...