(And it's nice to practice my English from time to time )
So back to "25Dijon": I've tried out the modifications as shown in the screenshot.
Nothing very interesting. Mainly just like all of the official maps are designed: Every town and most of the marked locations were assigned supply. Most of the time I just used the default "10". My consideration was, that the AI may not retreat or guard a "3" supply hex with a tank. After all, I've never understood your quite scarce supply management. If not designed as such, e.g. a defensive scenario, what's wrong with "over-supplying" the player or the AI? This doesn't impede encirclements and the use of strat. bombers. A "10" supply works quite nicely with an encircled fortified position (usually consisting of a few units) to reduce their efficiency but leaving them still capable of moderate defense (as should be). Some bigger positions around VPs may require more supply, of course.
My observations:
- picking the Dijon map to test the annoying behaviour I mentioned was a bad idea. It didn't show that much
- this scenario just needs more turns IMO. I played it twice with different approaches and I still needed exactly 19 turns both times. Granted, I could've used paratroopers to capture the southern most VP, but this being the only feasible approach cannot be what the designer had in mind, right? So I'd recommend adding about 3-4 turns for first time players
Still, by removing the border-supply-hexes (BSH from now on ), some unwanted behaviour, like infantry, AA or even arty leaving its post to "guard" a nearby BSH, vanished. If you allow this question, why the heck did you put the BSH into the scenarios in the first place?
My observation was about just the opposite, to be honest. Because of the lack of supply these units don't retreat to towns but to the BSH instead. Thus I have to divert units from my main drive to hunt them down some road to the map's edges to destroy them. And this can become quite tiresome and more imortantly time consuming when you have to divert at least two units to kill some stray infantry that keeps repairing themselves all the time on a well covered forest hex. But I have to, because, as said before, otherwise they'll recover and come back to seize supply and victory hexes in the far back. This wouldn't happen without BSH, or at least not that explicit, as I could encircle them to zero supply and thus zero repair. I'd rather they stayed in the towns where the whole of my army is.Erik2 wrote: I have already removed the 3 supply points on towns to make it easier to surround and kill un-supplied enemy units.
Adding to that, the BSH leave my frontline with many holes (e.g. below screenshot, which is not the best example, but you get my point why I'd wish the "5" supply on the top border weren't there ) and thus quite vulnerable to these "stray" units.
In conclusion I'm inclined to say, that the BSH's may not be an overall problem per se, but within many scenarios I've played so far, this can cause quite the frustration and delays - and the tight turn limits don't allow much reasonable latitude that way.
My final recommendations would be:
- remove the BSH altogether, or at least in the "back" and flanks of the players main drive. For example: in "25Dijon" the main drive is constantly southwards, beginning north. So you could remove the BSH in the north completely and most of them at the east and west edges (but this may involve quite some work, I'd imagine, so I don't know)
but more importantly:
- add a few turns to the sceanrio turn limit. On some tough scenarios, at least. And don't forget the new arty and train mechanic! If I'd paid more attention to this issue before, I could help with previous missions, but I don't remember them exactly, sorry. But I 'm going to, from now on
- one would have to test this, but it could work as wellErik2 wrote: It would be nice to reduce this income by 1 RP for each (enemy and friendly?) unit killed.
I have to ask a grown-up if this is feasible.
So far from me, I hope I could give you some pointers from my point of view on some issues and help to improve this great campaign further and for other players still to come...