Quote:
Originally Posted by HeatDeath
Time would explain it, especially if they got caught by surprise, and possibly lost a significant amount of manufacturing capability before they could organize a proper continental defense.
Even without human beings, a large enough industrial complex combined with enough time lets you put at least a disabled HVY in every hex on the GEV map. (Recall that disabled units are conceptualized to be tanks under the command of non-Ogre AIs - they have no initiative, and will not perform or participate in cross-country maneuvers, but are perfectly capable of local sector defense, including counterattacking during overruns.) I wouldn't want to have to drive an Ogre, or even a small force of Ogres, across a field of tanks like that. I mean, yeah, I could blow myself a path using my MBs, but it'd be slow going, especially if the AI HVYs have just enough smarts to move into hexes I've cleared.
Though of course the fix for that is a dozen or two cruise missiles (which might explain why the orange map looks the way it does).
Though of course the fix for that is a cluster of 3 laser towers, separated by 2-3 hexes from each other, every 60-100 miles, covering the entire continent. Certainly the entire civilian population will be living under laser umbrellas like these. We would expect even more concentration along the coasts and over large/prestige cities and factories. [To my mind, a Combine armor force advancing on a tower complex like this would be /the/ typical engagement of the ground war.]
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Even the published background implies that the war stalemated very quickly because of "hard" fixed defenses; instead of the trenches of WWI, the Last War has laser defense networks and jamscreens. The Paneuros must not have
had much of a mobile defense force, and have had to roll the equipment they made off the fab pad right into the defensive meatgrinder, while the Combine is logistically limited to whatever they can transport across the Atlantic/Channel.
The PE lack of mobile forces is prescient as anything, given that in the late 70's the NATO local armies were still assumed to be capable of holding back the Red Menace. Now, of course, the NATO militaries are considered to be much less impressive, since they've drawn down quite a bit after the end of the Cold War. I can easily see that the Combine coming down like a bolt from the blue on an essentially-undefended continental Europe results in the PE primarily devoting their limited military-grade fab capacity to reinforcing the homeland laser defense network, extending that network to "freeze" the front while they feverishly build up a mobile capability to throw back the invaders, and never get a chance to build up the "Heavy Tank in Every Hex" force.