Hi everyone,
I've noticed that parachute units sometimes stop halfway in the middle of air movement. For example, in the screenshot below, the Italian parachute division has stopped halfway on its way to Newfoundland. Did it fail a morale check?
This overflying 'stacking issue' is a really serious problem in "A Bridge too Far".
If you don't get it right often times allied airborne units can't leave England and, perhaps worse because you can't plan for it, once the stacking limitation on the initial drop zones (DZs) and landing zones (LZs) are reached (as per the game house rules) a significant portion of the hexes are not available to land upon because the 'stack' blocks them off. Its not too great a problem for the DZ/LZ sites for the US 101 and 82 Airborne Divs - they have a fair amount of room available but the area allotted to the British 1 Airborne fills up rapidly and some units simply can't get in. The only way around the problem is to 'cheat' by either ignoring the house rule about moving units off the DZs/LZs before all following units are dropped or by dropping some units 2 hexes or more (as distinct to the adjacent hexes some of which can't be used for the reason explained above).
Even more bizarre (to my mind at least) is the fact that if there happens to be a 'full' hex on the route taken by the 52 Lowland Div to one of its allotted LZs, they simply stop in mid-air somewhere over Belgium or Holland to admire the view!
I guess (but since I can't see it so I can't exactly know) this 'overflying' a fully stacked hex might also have an affect on other air missions such combat support and interdiction where the route taken by the incoming aircraft involves passing over a full hex. Either way it seems to be a bit of a nonsense to suppose, that simply because units on the ground have filled-up a particular hex, that aircraft cannot overfly that hex.
This stacking 'block' certainly didn't apply in earlier versions of the game. Somehow, somewhere, someone, "flicked a switch" during one of the upgrades and made fully stacked hexes 'infinitely high' which is slightly silly, I think you'll agree?
