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The suppress idea applies to the first round SB only. What is going on is the defenders position is ruined and the hard points of his defense have been neutralized. The way to simulate this is to reduce his effectiveness and not add attack value to the attacker.
but in the end both land artillery and naval artillery (shore bombardment) does the same thing
neutralize the hard points, soften the target
no they destroy units. This is wrong. Its impossible to destroy an army from a Battleship, but the unit can be reduced in effectiveness and i feel this is a good model. And since the BB can effect units defending in a range of 1-4, while cruisers its 1-3. This gives the BB a new advantage as well.
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So we reduce him to one and to overcome the fact that the defender will always choose infantry as his loss, we assign the roll of SB to determine which unit is suppressed, so now the defender has the decision if he thinks the battle will not go well be will allocate the reduced unit as a combat loss.
why would defender allocate the reduced unit (instead of infantry) as combat loss?
unless the suppressed unit is suppressed for 2nd, 3rd, 4th…eycles
Because the invasion may be very close to winning and the defender might want to take out the suppressed unit as combat loss in order to inflict maximum loses and deny losing the battle. The choice is tough, because the unit suppressed may be a tank and these cost more than infantry.
in the end I feel the suppression rule is a little complex and not entirely realistic
did you play it? Its as simple as any rule from OOB.
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Id also add a new idea: For invasions we could bring back the old “co-exist rule” Which in this case simulates a bridgehead for the invasion.
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Play this out and note how it looks more like D-Day and how that went.
probably more suited to a different level of abstraction
like, would it make sense for the timeline of 6 months per turn?
yes thats right, but just looking at the problem with some territories that are very large like france. The rule could solve the idea that the allies keep taking the money, then get pushed off when its Germany’s turn, and then they keep coming back. Play it out. This may solve the constant invasion problem. Id like the allies to come ashore and really mean business and hold france, rather than get pushed off each turn and basically be regulated to nuisance raids.
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ok well how bout the Jeff rule from his world war two game?
Partial retreat allowed, if attacker rolls up and the remaining defenders are not sufficient, then additional hit allocations go against retreated units…
I wasn’t talking about adding penalty to defender retreat
my question is the worthiness of a partial retreat rule
This goes back to the idea of allowing either side to protect its better units from counterattack. for the defender the trade off is they may face retreating fire.
is there a need for it?
what situation would you want to perform a partial retreat?
The defender may have 5 tanks and 2 infantry and the attacker has 6 infantry and 4 tanks. The defender retreats his tanks and the attacker only gets 3 hits on the first round. That saves most of the tanks and its realistic.
If we only allow full retreats the defender gets to fire for free with all his units and retreat, because retreat allocations are announced at the end of battles.
I propose they are announced at the start of the round and retreating units allocated for retreat do not fire. Play it out and see.