Had what I think must have been my best game on Luttich a few minutes ago.. granted, the Germans did park at their home base and top gunners on all sides sat there without a driver, even once on the M10, but it flowed
Battles took place in the lower bocage connecting the church to Mortain East and Mortain West with the farm. Tanks fired at tanks and infantry in the hedgrow, mg42 bipod gunners proned at range and covered assaults, real greandes were thrown half as much as smoke and the AT guns changed hands several times with infantry using shreks, zooks and nades to neutralise the gunner....
Once i capped all bases as Germans, I was curious to see what happens next. Will the Allies sit in their tanks' top gun position and stand around like the Germans did in that situation? Or will they launch weak counter-attacks?
In the end, I decided to switch to Yanks to see for myself and I was quite impressed. Tanks with infantry and APC in tow, fanned out in a pincer move to cap the entire town of Mortain, while a few dashed through the kill zone right in the middle (the open field) - Kill zone, because most of the defending Germans had that area in range. I was follwing an M10 across the open field when it engaged a target somewhere behind the hedgrow at the end of the field. It fired... and missed, quickly being transformed into a hull of burning wreck by a direct hit from an unseen panzer, which only revealed itself by its muzzle blast. On seeing my squad behind the tank, it begun moving from cover - and it revealed itself - A Panzer V Panther, moving in, cannon firing and mg atop blazing away as it went. and it dawned on me...
Perhaps what could make the battle all the more interesting is to include one or a number of capture point at the edge of the enemy-out-of-bounds area on both sides (And covering each of the three entries into Mortain i.e the 3 fields on either side for both sides of the battlefield)... It doesn't have to have a flag. Just a capture point (It needs to be cap-pable otherwise the entire force will amass at one point and lock the enemy at their home base). Once the town and surrounding areas are capped, they will push on to that cap-point and once capped will stop recieving attack/defend commands.
What this does is to have them move away from the town across the wide open space between them and the enemy base (allied or axis, depending) and defend all sides from there... The enemy would thus cap have to cap the 3 bases at its side of the battlefield, funneling their attack at first and then fanning out in such a way that it doesn't seem like a solo individual capping any single already-exsiting flag (especially the church and farm) - And also, it increases the effective attack strength since they have to wait at the flags to cap them, adding to their numbers, making any initial attack or counnter-attack seem that more agressive, instead of a few scattered infantry moving in as is now.
Whaddya think?