[Airborne Rifles]

Thanks for the feedback SaS TrooP! I agree on the weakness of the Chinese assault. I had a lot of trouble trying to set up their force mix so that they could overrun the first line of trenches and then mount a determined attack against the second line. I think in a PBEM game a human opponent could make it very difficult for the Russian defender, but with such a long scenario the only way I could see to make the the Chinese attack tougher was to give them LOTS of MBTs, and I didn't want to do that.

****SPOILERS FOLLOW****

What I was trying to do was force the Russian player to have to choose to commit their reserves to three crisis areas: the second line of trenches under attack by mechanized forces after the Chinese infantry overrun the first line, the attack across the DeFriis bridge, and later the reservoir pumping station, hopefully with the USMC company coming in at the most desperate moment of the battle. I was at least glad to hear about the drama at the reservoir at the end of your game so at least that played as designed. Maybe if I take away the T-90 reinforcements and the Marine's tanks and air support? It seems the platoon of T-72s I've given the Russians make their defense too strong for the Chines AI player, so maybe I should have those come in as reinforcements later in place of the T-90s? I think a human opponent would probably do a much better job of consolidating after capturing the first line of trenches and then launching a strong coordinated attack on the second, and I didn't want to make the Chinese too strong for a PBEM match, but I could have the balance wrong for that as well.

Thanks for the encouragement! I have several more scenarios for this series in the pipeline (without Americans!) though the Americans will make more appearances later (along with some other Pacific Rim forces). My justification is that they are already at war with China over Taiwan on the one hand and trying to keep the Russian from going nuclear against China on the other. I enjoy the process, especially the map making since I'm a geographer by education.