Comms 
Hi all!
Well, I promised a small bone for you since it's been a while since I've tossed out a significant one. So let's talk about bridges!
Since Combat Mission: Normandy is set in France, rather than the arid environment of Syria, bridges are a rather common tactical challenge for many historical battles set in that area of operations. The bridges that are in CM may look like placeholder artwork at the moment, but they do function quite nicely. Not nice enough to show you right now, but nice enough to talk about
Sure, sure... you're probably saying to yourself "bridges are nice, and I want them, but I know what a bridge is. So what's there to talk about?" Well, that would be a good question to ask if you assume I'm here to describe the same sort of rudimentary bridges found in CMx1 games. Fortunately that's not the case. Like so many things in CMx2, the bridges are a major advance in functionality over CMx1.
The first thing you'll find out about bridges is that they come in different types of building materials, appearances, lengths, and aesthetics. This alone is a pretty good enhancement over the bridges in past CM games. The atmosphere of scenarios will definitely benefit from all of these options. Better still, these different bridges provide actual, tangible tactical differences in terms of how units interact with them.
That's right folks, different bridges allow/prohibit certain classes of units from crossing! At long last CM has the ability to simulate the real life problems commanders faced when they came to a water obstacle and found the bridging to be inadequate in some way. As of right now there are four types of weight classifications for bridges:
• Infantry only
• Infantry, wheeled, and light tracked vehicles
• Everybody allowed except heavy tanks
• Everybody allowed
Just picture yourself as Hauptman Johan Kleinbeeren, commander of an elite German Kampfgruppe. You come upon a river and the only way to cross it is a flimsy, wooden foot bridge. Your über crunchies (infantry) can cross easily enough, but your sexy kitties (Tiger tanks) have to stay on your side of the river. Well, now what? Complain to Oberst Jaja that you can't take Hill Nr. 254 as ordered because you're out of bright ideas? Probably not a good idea Therefore, you'd
have to survey the terrain and figure out where, on your side of the river, your Tigers could be positioned to offer some sort of support for your assaulting infantry. Or perhaps there is a better bridge that's out of the way and you decide a long, exposed flank assault may be worth the risk. Whatever the case may be, weight restrictions on bridges presents new, realistic dilemmas for you the player.
Another brand new feature to CM: Normandy is the ability to move units under bridges, provided the bridges crosses some land of course (there are no boats or swimming in CM). The tactical possibilities for this are pretty big. Raised roads are some rather tricky tactical obstacles in the real war, for example. Imagine your pixel GIs climbing the embankment and setting up firing positions while your M3A1s burst through to the other side under a bridge. Or advancing northerly along a raised road and being able to shift your flanking forces east and west without the road keeping them cut off from each other.
So there you have it... a bone. We hope you liked it.
Steve
P.S. Oh yeah, and a couple of screenshots too. Not that you guys asked for any or anything like that...
