Marines and Amphibious Assaults

[GaryChildress]

Is it possible to create an infantry unit which can attack a land hex from onboard a cargo ship? Then if the infantry unit drives the enemy out of the land hex, it should be able to land where it just attacked. Or more realistically if the unit wins it automatically occupies the land hex it attacked.

Thanks.

[Ormand]

Interesting question. I thought about this some in an attempt to make marines. Not that I disliked the current concept, which is not bad, but that the amphibious penalty is set as a rulevar and is not unit dependent. Thus, I created the beach hex that marines could attack at a higher strength, and thus offset the amphibious attack penalty.

The amphibious attack pretty much works the way you describe. You essentially disembark a unit form a cargo ship to the destination hex. If it is occupied, combat ensues, and if the attacker wins, the defender is dislodged, and the attacker takes the hex. It is best to hit it with air and ship arty first. It is also limited to one attack, so ganging up and no converging hex bonus.

Maybe you can design a unit that acts like an LVT. Moves on the sea and land. This may be doable and is a transport unit. I would, however, create a new terrain type (I thought about doing this but it can't automatically be put into random maps) that is a coastal, or shallow sea. I would limit this unit to only being operable in shallow sea. I am not sure if it can be unloaded onto a sea hex though.

[Ormand]

I meant to say something about my attempt before, but since it didn't work I didn't get to it.

Anyway, I tried to model an LVT (landing vehicle, tracked). It sort of worked. But, in a fundamental way, it failed miserably. I made a unit that could go out onto sea hexes. This is easily doable. And works. Think of a halftrack that goes to sea. This works. Like a halftrack on land, it will carry troops and buzz around the map. What didn't seem to work was combat. When attacking a land hex, the unit just disappeared after the combat. It wasn't because the "halftracks" were destroyed and couldn't support the units.

One thing that could be tried, but won't work for a game is to create a shallow sea hex, and not make it a sea hex. Then, it would be the same as land terrain except only the LVT can go there. And ships. But, amphibious assaults wouldn't work well. You would have to drop the LVT right onto the shallow hex, and it would have to wait until next turn to move. Not very practical. In addition, I don't think normal amphibious assaults work either.

It isn't clear this would make sense to try.

[GaryChildress]

Thanks Ormand. I hope Vic will come out with a Platinum addition and add a few such capabilities to the game engine (especially to expand possibilities into modern warfare). The idea of a beach hex is actually a pretty good adaptation, although, admittedly not ideal. I think I have an idea of how to make helicopters and fire support bases work at least nominally in the game but I haven't tested it yet.

[ernieschwitz]

If any of you solve the problems involving helicopters and landings, I would gladly be the first to congratulate you In fact I'd want to know as soon as possible if it was solved.

[GaryChildress]

Just tested my idea for helicopters but I don't think it's going to work in the way I had hoped. I was trying to make it so that helicopters could at least land at a fire support base (location type) but nothing else could. I set the "air stack points" for the Fire Support Base low, thinking that it meant anything above the threshold would not be able to land there but now I realize the "stack points" are for "optimal" function and not a strict limit. So when I built a fire support base I could place pretty much any aircraft on it. Oh well. Back to the drawing board... [:(] 

[Ormand]

Amphibious assaults are pretty much stuck. The combat modifier is set via a rulevar and applies to all units. Unfortunately, one can't modify this based on the unit. Thus, I tried to get around this with the beach hex. Make only beach hexes and urban hexes invadable, and use the combat modifier for the terrain type to give an advantage to marines. The problem of course is that marines get an advantage attacking the hex while not invading as well.

For helicopters, I think this is nearly impossible. You need to use air movement in order to go "over" units to a specific hex. And there is no way around the movement limitations imposed by the engine. To tell the truth, things are not too far from what you get. I mean an attack helicopter would more or less act line a divebomber. A helicopter assault is fairly similar to a paradrop. You can't airlift units of any kind from base to base. This is more or less imposed since this type of activity was generally not done in WW2.

It would be a good idea to put in the other thread on what you like to see in the game, and specify exactly what you would like to see added.