Slitherine

Just some questions:

How deadly are minefields? Really deadly, or just kind of annoying?
What is the best unit for clearing minefields? Infantry, pioneers, tanks, bombers...?

How insidious would it be to make minefields generate randomly every time a map is played, as opposed to mines always being at the same place every time?

With pioneered they are just an annoyance. They will destroy one every turn for one point of damage, so ammo is the only hindrance. Random minefield placement would give replay value but it would depend on how big the random deployment zone is as to how annoying it would become.

El_Condoro wrote:With pioneered they are just an annoyance. They will destroy one every turn for one point of damage, so ammo is the only hindrance. Random minefield placement would give replay value but it would depend on how big the random deployment zone is as to how annoying it would become.

I agree, they are an annoyance only if you have Pionieres. Random placement could be a benefit. But, it would need to be logical. I wouldn't want all minefields to wind up behind an objective. Hopefully, there will be randomness in the placement of other units as well (like the mobile radar unit).

I thought they were annoying.
A good add in the Gazala scenerio as that was true to life. Same with El Alemen.
Random?
I don't like the sounds of that.

There is a difference in randomizing individual mines and randomizing minefield lines. If one randomizes only individual mines trough zone or radius there is always possibility to have open corridor. Such corridor can be fond by just sending one unit straight trough. If it passes it passes if not you know where the mine is. Also there is an issue with randomization. If one unit takes certain hex and another one chooses that same hex it will not appear on the map. So out of 10 mines you could easily get only 3 of them on map. At least this is what my experiments showed, but that was long ago. Randomization could be better but taking global picture into account, maybe the mines are on the left side, maybe on the right side, maybe in the rear, and it would be better to have randomized lines of mines not scattered all over the place but this is also an option in some size limited area.

What if the Italians had a mine sweeper infantry unit that didn't take damage from the mines as all units seem to.
Might give players another incentive to carry some Italian infantry.