Suggestion to recon units

[DeMeza]

Make them stop movement when spotting new, previously unseen, enemy units.

This would raise their survivability. It would also feel more realistic in my opinion. And it would make them a lot more valuable.

[McGuba]

I think it is a good idea. It would definitely help to improve the survival rate of those hapless recon units. If I had to choose which unit class to serve in as a soldier in PzC, recon class would certainly be the very last option. Actually, it just gave me an idea for a new topic, lol. Anybody wants to start it?

By the way, in the similar game Battle for Wesnoth, all units stop (without losing movement point) if they see a new unit in their spotting range on a map with fog of war. And it works nicely. So it may or may not apply to all units, not only to recons.

[Rudankort]

Make them stop movement when spotting new, previously unseen, enemy units.

This was the very first implementation I did, and it existed in early betas. Players did not like it at all. It allowed to use recons without much thought - just send them all the way into fog of war all the time. The current implementation involves a trade off. You can move very cautiously, hex by hex, but then you will travel less distance. Or you can move in bigger phases, up to the full speed of the unit. This way you travel further, but it is riskier.

[guille1434]

Besides, with this type of rules, you can forget to the "ambush!" case when you ordered one of your units to be placed in an already occupied hex by the enemy but not visible because of the fog of war. This is a "no go" for me...

[huckc]

Special deployment slots is the best way to fix recon units imo. Either as a derivative of the total number of slots or manually set by the scenario designer. An example of the former would be one free recon deployment per 7-8 deployment slots.

Recon should be a given, not optional.

[Yrfin]

Land Recon - expendable tools.
Its can be lose - it can be replaced new one.

[DeMeza]

Make them stop movement when spotting new, previously unseen, enemy units.

This was the very first implementation I did, and it existed in early betas. Players did not like it at all. It allowed to use recons without much thought - just send them all the way into fog of war all the time. The current implementation involves a trade off. You can move very cautiously, hex by hex, but then you will travel less distance. Or you can move in bigger phases, up to the full speed of the unit. This way you travel further, but it is riskier.

The problem with the current implementation is that it represents a very thoughtless and/or reckless use of recon units. Recon units should be able to perform reconnaissance and surveillance over quite large areas (instead of concentrating, they disperse - instead of fighting, they report). I am aware that certain nations have a much more aggressive doctrine for the use of recon, like the American, which can use certain recon forces as a spearhead for their main effort.

But with the current implemention of recon forces - and the quite numerous spotting heroes - recon units are quite weak at their main role and extremely vulnerable when discovered.

Another way of buffing them could be:
1. Give them more movement points.
2. Make them less vulnerable to enemy action, reflecting their dispersion and avoidance-of-combat tactics.
3. Give them larger spotting ranges.

I actually favour (1), as it seems the easiest to implement and would still allow the player to make mistakes, whereas (2) would be an automatic get-out-of-jail-key, when a mistake was made. (3) would probably make them way too easy to use.

[DeMeza]

Besides, with this type of rules, you can forget to the "ambush!" case when you ordered one of your units to be placed in an already occupied hex by the enemy but not visible because of the fog of war. This is a "no go" for me...

I’d like for very well entrenched units to be invisible until you actually stood beside them. The Russians were especially good at that.