Its one of the weaknesses of the SP game engine, in that facing changes cost nil MP (not even fractions of an MP).
Also, loading and unloading
originally had no MP impact, and you could load from an adjacent hex. That lead to the relay cheat whereby a squad could load onto one vehicle at the far end of a chain and then offload, jump onto the next and so on to the head of the chain. Or a relay of moving APC could do similar to move a squad crazy distances from the rear and then drop it off beside a stunned enemy and finish him off.
We nixed the loading and unloading relay cheat by charging points for the transport and passenger to load and offload. And you have to be in the APCs hex to load as well, unless loading to a barge (which would be in water too deep to go into, usually).
It
may be a good idea (tm) to charge for a hull position change if not actually moving the vehicle, say 1 MP?.
Turret moving (by left clicking) is probably too difficult to do as it would require fractions off, and the game works on integers (wole numbers), not floating point. However -
One thing that I think
may (also?) be a good antidote to taking a free "hull shuffle" or turning the turret or a squad to face a new direction, might be to treat that as
a "trigger" for opportunity fires?.
So - proposition:
A) A manual turn to face a new hex side needs 1 MP. (Vehicles which have no MP remaining thus would be stuck in the current orientation).
A.1) A manual turn to face will also be a low-order trigger for opportunity fires.
A.2) Might require 2 MP for a pinned/buttoned unit to voluntarily turn. (A vehicle, as pinned infantry cant turn until rallied).
B) A manual turret traverse (or squad to face new hexside) costs no MP as before, but can trigger an opfire event as in A.1
C) None of the above will affect any turning done by a request to fire at something, which happens as normal. (Code too difficult to change there methinks!).
- Nor does it affect units reacting to fire by an enemy - that has its own chance to occur, and takes speed and suppression into effect already.
- Nor does it affect turns done as part of regular movement of 1 or more hexes. Again, too difficult to incorporate into the existing code.
The simplest change of course is just to treat a turret, or hull turn to face done manually as an opfire trigger as in proposition A.1 above - that alone should stop players spinning units like tops when in front of the enemy
!
Let's see what thoughts the above provokes.
(It may be the best thing since sliced bread to some of you - or it may be that I haven't had enough coffee to think of the unfortunate consequences as yet
)