Wishlist: Buying Defensive Features for Meeting Engagements

[Cross]

Currently, only the defender can purchase defensive features if the battle is an Assault/Defend battle.

During force selection – in Assault Defend battles - the defender can purchase:

• Fortifications
• Bunkers

the defender can also purchase points for:

• Mines
• Trenches
• Barbed Wire
• Dragons teeth

which are spent during the deploy phase to place these features on the defenders side of the map.

Also during the deploy phase (of an assault/defend battle) the defender may choose to:

• Entrench All Units

Why not allow both players to purchase these features for Meeting Engagements?

I think it would sometimes be fun – and realistic - to have to equally sized forces facing one another over a no-mans-land, where both sides have some mines, barbed wire and other defensive features, and they need to try to attack and capture objectives.

This would be particularly interesting for PBEM campaigns, where encouraging a little stagnation in the front lines would be healthy.

I’m not suggesting you have no limit to defensive feature purchasing. Every PBEM battle has pre-game agreements, and defensive feature purchases would obviously just be a part of that agreement.

Personally, I would keep the purchase of defensive features in a PBEM Meeting Engagement to far less points than I would accept in an Assault/Defend battle. I may choose to allow very limited mines and barbed wire, but not allow the ‘Entrench All’ button to be used. It would be nice to have to worry about mines in a meeting engagement, once in while.

No one would be forced to agree to allow the purchase of defensive features. But having the option would give the choice to those who are interested.

There could even be a preferences button could even turn this ability off or on, for playing against the AI.

Any thoughts?


cheers,
Cross

[Skirmisher]

My initial thought is a whole new game would have to be made, it's just not the way the current game works.

[Cross]

Originally Posted by Skirmisher

My initial thought is a whole new game would have to be made, it's just not the way the current game works.

I have to be honest, that I don't know how difficult it would be to implement this.

But let's pretend that it's not a ridculous amount of coding, and Andy thinks it's worth while

Would you use it?


Cross

[hoplitis]

You can do it when designing a scenario. I do think you can do it in a "battle" set-up.

[Imp]

Possible workaround

If you pregenerate the maps you can place
• Trenches
• Barbed Wire
• Dragons teeth
then save it.
These will be present when reload admitedly at no cost, if have CD can use remove damage function or whatever to clear them if need be.

As an idea at start of the campaign once chosen opponents both players generate say 3 maps & pass to opponent for approval.
You could use them say every other battle, decide order at start or allow a certain amount of "timeouts"
Loser of previous battle only is allowed to call & select the next map.
Could also be allowed to place XXX points of fortifications on it or trust them to not spend that many support points.
Use as a balancing aid to keep the campaign going if one side got beat up.

A second note on campaign balancing
Either dont allow expanding core or restrict to XXX points per game.
Reason the winner is already in better shape & gets more R&R anyway so unbalances.
The other player is still in big trouble if happens a few games in a row the winning player has a nice pool of points. Never occured to me to do vs AI but go for the crushing blow & convert them all to support points if he wont concede.
First time did this had a lot of air available so I bought an airforce for a laugh about 30 planes, caused some surprise judging from the return email which I could note quote here.

[Cross]

Interesting suggestions, but for this to work like I imagined, you would need to deploy these features during the deployment phase.



Cross

[Skirmisher]

Originally Posted by Cross

I have to be honest, that I don't know how difficult it would be to implement this.

But let's pretend that it's not a ridculous amount of coding

Why would you pretend that? My thinking is anything new and exciting would require hidious amounts of fresh coding.


But I wouldn't be against deploying some mines in a meeting. Even just something like claymore charges.

[Skirmisher]

Originally Posted by hoplitis

You can do it when designing a scenario. I do think you can do it in a "battle" set-up.

Yes scenario's are the way to go on this, you can basically do anything you want across the board.

I tried just now doing it in battle mode, but it doesn't work,
hardcoding auto sets 0 build points, and of course removes all the stuff from the buy menu's.

[Cross]

Originally Posted by Skirmisher

But I wouldn't be against deploying some mines in a meeting. Even just something like claymore charges.

Claymores are cool

But this suggestion isn't only about making temporary or quick and easy defensive features available for Meeting Engagements.

I was thinking about any WWII front line position that's been static for a couple of days, soon has a no-mans-land with all sorts of defensive positions built on BOTH sides of the no-mans-land. Barbed wire, trenches, mine fields, bunkers, etc. The longer the stalemate, the more sophisticated these defenses could become.

Both sides - often evenly matched - would try to attack/counter-attack and gain ground from the other side.

'Meeting engagements' didn't only take place in a mine/trench free environment.

In other words, I think defensive features could realistically be made available for both sides, and the forces could be evenly matched.



Cross

[Cross]

One thing I just thought of, is the start lines.

Currently, start lines are too far apart - especially in Meeting engagements - to take full advantage of the placement of defensive features.

Unless you wanted a huge no-mans-land, start lines would have to be adjusted, or be made adjustable.

On a 100 wide map, ME start lines are 29 from the edge. It would be cool if you could go as close as 45 from the map edge, or a no-mans-land of 500yards.

In fact, even if it wasn't possible to buy defensive features for MEs, it would still be great to have adjustable start lines.


Cross