Lack of means to cross major rivers potentially game breaking

[Winston Wolf]

Just started the Rhin et Danube scenario. As part of the previous conference I upgraded every HQ apart from the US 7th with river crossing/attack abilities.
There doesnt appear to be anyway for the US 7th army to cross the river without this ability. Also, I am unclear/unable to restart the conference part of this scenario in order to re-allocate prestige points to the US 7th.
It seems like I have no choice but to the start the game again from the very first scenario?
Any suggestions?
thanks

[Winston Wolf]

Just found the ability to restart from last conference, so all is not lost.
It would be nice to have some warning about the importance of upgrading HQs for the purpose of crossing major rivers. It looks as though some missions are completely dependent on this ability.
It will be frustrating if I upgrade the US 7th and the French HQ now and then find a few scenarios down the line that a different HQ requires an upgrade that I didnt prioritise...

[Winston Wolf]

Scrub that, the game does warn you, I must of skipped past the message. All good!

[Daniel_efc]

This part of our design was not ideal, which is why we introduced that warning.

In future content (which is landing very soon) we have been more careful to avoid frustrating fail states like this.

Cheers!

[TheLastSterling]

I feel you. After playing the italian campaign and not really ever having to really use a river assault even on "Road from Rimini" I got a very false sense of security until "Battle for Bavaria".

Originally posted by Daniel_efc:

This part of our design was not ideal, which is why we introduced that warning.

In future content (which is landing very soon) we have been more careful to avoid frustrating fail states like this.

Cheers!

The issue I feel is that River Assaults as a level 3 is overpriced ability for the benefit it gives you. If anything Pontoon bridge is way underpriced on the otherhand. On the deployment up phase for a lot of battles I ended up spamming bridges negativing any river defense the map had set up. It actually bit me in the arse at one point when the AI used one to capture my supply hub and an objective.

It doesn't help that the ability is 1 point more than building a bridge. There usually isn't a good reason to send a division across a river over waiting a single turn to use a bridge. It's actually very risky. On the "Battle for Bavaria" scenario I managed to have a single hex not defended after boating a division over, the enemy just attack and I lost that division.

In short, the River Assault ability is too costly to unlock, too costly to use, and too risky to use.

As a suggestion to reorder the Engineering Ability:
US
1.Demolish Bridge/Repair Bridge/River Crossing
2.Entrenchment/River Assault
3.Pontoon Bridge

UK
1.Demolish Bridge/Repair Bridge/Entrenchment/
2.River Assault
3.Pontoon Bridge

[Daniel_efc]

Originally posted by TheLastSterling:

The issue I feel is that River Assaults as a level 3 is overpriced ability for the benefit it gives you. If anything Pontoon bridge is way underpriced on the otherhand. On the deployment up phase for a lot of battles I ended up spamming bridges negativing any river defense the map had set up. It actually bit me in the arse at one point when the AI used one to capture my supply hub and an objective.

It doesn't help that the ability is 1 point more than building a bridge. There usually isn't a good reason to send a division across a river over waiting a single turn to use a bridge. It's actually very risky. On the "Battle for Bavaria" scenario I managed to have a single hex not defended after boating a division over, the enemy just attack and I lost that division.

In short, the River Assault ability is too costly to unlock, too costly to use, and too risky to use.

As a suggestion to reorder the Engineering Ability:
US
1.Demolish Bridge/Repair Bridge/River Crossing
2.Entrenchment/River Assault
3.Pontoon Bridge

UK
1.Demolish Bridge/Repair Bridge/Entrenchment/
2.River Assault
3.Pontoon Bridge

Agree on all points. And you will be happy to hear that the river related actions in the HQs have been restructured in the DLC. Better yet: pretty much exactly along the lines you propose:

1. Repair/crossing
2. Demo/Assault
3. Pontoon

This is more fair in terms of cost/benefit and more importantly: no frustrating fail states.

As for retrofitting this into the base game - this is unlikely. We are very busy preparing the DLC and retrofits like this are both very time consuming and can be dangerous, as they can have large and unforeseen consequences.

Cheers!

[ammianus]

I remember this from the beta...

Imagine this in the real life scenario. It is early 1945, and the Allies are having a large army on the river embankment. Ready to cross the river... The last obstacle before Germany.

And then someone says...uh, sarge... well... it seems we forgot the boats...

It s hilarious...and in beta was also frustrating

[TheLastSterling]

Originally posted by ammianus:

I remember this from the beta...

Imagine this in the real life scenario. It is early 1945, and the Allies are having a large army on the river embankment. Ready to cross the river... The last obstacle before Germany.

And then someone says...uh, sarge... well... it seems we forgot the boats...

It s hilarious...and in beta was also frustrating

I find it hilarious that the engineering of pontoons comes before boats. It's like developing gunpower weapons before bows and arrows.

[charles_d_berger]

Well, the construction of pontoon bridges in non-combat conditions, versus conducting assault crossings under fire, are very different things.

Pontoon bridging was very standard practice for advanced WW2 armies, but even at the end of the war assault crossings were rudimentary and costly. Even at Nijmegen and Arnhem, we're talking guys going back and forth in rubber dinghies, with engines that often failed and absolutely no protection. It's less about the technical engineering capability, and more about development of doctrine, logistics, coordination and specific assault craft.

[The Gayncient Mariner]

There's a story in Omar Bradley's memoirs about a company of American engineers that spent two or three days trying to build a pontoon across the Moselle river, south of Metz. The first vehicle across was an M10 that got caught on a cable, which snapped, swinging the whole bridge downstream. According to Patton, who related the story to Bradley, every last engineer sat right down in the mud and wept.

Aptly demonstrates the difficulties of bridge-building even when not under fire.

[ammianus]

that s a nice little story. Thank you for it.

[TheLastSterling]

One funny thing I did with Pontoons was to bridge across the Strait of Messina which at minimum 3.1 km (1.9 mi).

Compared that to the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge which was open in 1963 with a length of 2,350m made easier by being on a lake instead of a sea.