Guille's PzCorps Support Base - Multipurpose Icons and more.

[cw58]

But when we press "E" for disembark:

amphib 2.jpg (114.94 KiB) Viewed 2608 times

All the available hexes light up.

Choosing one near the beach, that ends Turn 1.

amphib 3.jpg (110.81 KiB) Viewed 2608 times

[cw58]

And then in Turn 2, the marines are ready to go!

amphib 4.jpg (162.44 KiB) Viewed 2607 times

[cw58]

I will do some more testing but right now I think the best solution is using the vanilla landing craft and an infantry unit that has amphibious movement. If we want a motorized infantry unit, then I think a 2-switch unit (marines→truck) should work. I'll have to adjust my equip file so I can test that. I will also test out the combat abilities of units attacking from a water hex and compare to the same unit attacking from a land hex.

As for a supporting-fire craft, that would be easy to do. Simply give, let's say a destroyer, a class 4 switch and sail up behind our marine's landing craft. Or maybe someone, having more historical knowledge than I, could suggest a boat or ship that was actually used in that capacity.

I'll post again after I do some more testing.

[cw58]

I just tested organic transports with the marines.
Marines (amphib move) with organic transport (with standard movement) cannot disembark on a water hex.
However, marines (amphib move) with organic transport (with amphibious movement) can disembark on a water hex.

So organic transport is an option, as long as it has amphibious movement. I'm not sure Germany had much equipment that would fit that requirement?

Also tested some combat results using the marines below. The units on the sea hex and the clear hex had identical results: -1casualty/-5kills. The unit on the river: -1/-3. So the penalty for attacking from a river hex does not apply to attacking from an ocean hex.

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It may be possible to handicap attacks from ocean hexes by capping initiative in the terrain file but I don't know how that would effect naval combat or ship-to-shore combat.

[cw58]

Last test, last post; then I'm finished spamming your thread, Guille.

Finally, I tried using marines (amphib move) with a switched transport (non-organic and ground move only). The marines can disembark on a water hex, as expected. But then they must move onto ground before they are able to switch to their truck on the next turn.

Turn 1 Marines (w/ truck switch) on Landing Craft

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Turn 2 Marines diembarked and ready to storm the beaches

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Turn 3 Marines switch to truck and are ready to drive off into the sunset

amphib 8.jpg (175.38 KiB) Viewed 2565 times

So there are several options if you want to disembark on a sea hex:
(and all can be used with a vanilla landing craft)
1. use infantry (w/ amphib move) & an organic transport (w/ amphib move)
2. use infantry (w/ amphib move) & a switched transport (w/ amphib move)
3. use infantry (w/ amphib move) & a switched transport (any type of ground move)

It's just a matter of choosing one which suits your sense of "reality" in the game. Thanks for letting me ramble.

[cw58]

Sorry ( ), I forgot one important caveat (and it's a big one!) because it was not a part of my test and I just now remembered. From my experiences, if you are playing a campaign and you are deploying units that are amphibious onto water hexes, the game will not automatically place them in a landing craft; it will place them as is. They can be loaded onto LC at a port during the scenario or placed that way by the scenario creator for the start of the scenario but not during the deployment phase. Maybe there's a work-around waiting to be discovered but that could be a deal-breaker for some.

[captainjack]

This is very interesting as I had been thinking of a British mod which started off OK but once I got to looking at late 41 and 42 I needed marine/amphiobious troops for commando raid scenarios and got stuck. It sounds like you are very close to havng developed what I was after.

In case it's interesting, here's my rough ideas:
WIth the deployment, I was thinking of marines or commandos having a default form as a boat of some sort - kayak for commandoes, buffalo for US marines etc (though I used a river boat to test it out). This switches to an amphibious infantry (beyond my skills to make it work but that was the idea) and then to normal infantry. I was planning to give the commando units the same stats as paras once on land, but couldn't get things to work properly.

I was torn between not allowing them to revert back to amphibious so they could head back to an offshore point to get a DV (where meeting the objective would get them MV) or maybe converting one or two designated hexes as ports after achiieveing some of teh objectives so they could catch a naval transport back home.

[cw58]

Yeah, it works very well for a stand-alone scenario but it's a no-go for campaigns.

In my personal mod, I use a marine-type unit similar to what you describe but with only 2 switches. It starts out as a landing craft, then switches to amphibious infantry and then can switch back if on a water hex. A 3rd switch to a land-based infantry complicates things because you would have to be in a port to switch back to the landing craft. Again, that's fine for a scenario but problematic in campaigns because when you deploy in the next scenario, you end up with a normal infantry unit stuck in a normal landing craft. With just 2 switches (LC→marine), it's not a problem to deploy in the next scenario. Drop the marine on a water hex and switch to LC. Back in business!

I continued working on Guille's idea (LC/marine/truck) after my posts and I believe a 2-switch unit (LC/marine) with an organic truck is the best solution for campaigns. That way, you end the scenario with a marine unit that, in the next scenario, you can deploy on water hexes that can then be switched to LC. But problems still persist: the truck has to be amphibious or the LC won't move at all and it needs to be able to move the same amount as the LC. That means a special movement type just for that amphibious truck. And then hope your boat icon doesn't switch to a truck icon in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean!

It's a great idea but for me, it's not worth all the effort to get it to work. I'm content with my simple, 2-switch marines that have to walk everywhere

[cw58]

But problems still persist: the truck has to be amphibious or the LC won't move at all and it needs to be able to move the same amount as the LC.

To clarify, this is what I've tested (using my own amphibious movement rate):
marine(amphib) + organic tranport(not amphib) = LC will not move
marine(amphib) + organic transport(amphib) = LC can move one hex

Disclaimer!!: I did not test whether the LC would move its normal distance if the organic transport has a special amphib movement rate. That is an assumption on my part.

[guille1434]

Hello Cw!

It is always a good thing to reactivate the "Panzer Corps Switching Lab" Also, thanks CaptainJack for joining the conversation...

I delayed my comments because I was carefully reading the results of the testing and thinking about what would be the best compromise to achieve the desired results. So, here it comes a long comment and no few rumblings about this "marine infantry" type unit.

First of all, my original concept was about a two switch unit (Landing Craft --> Infantry) with (eventually) a sea going organic transport type unit associated to it. The idea behind this was to have a larger ship unit with deep sea movement to carry the landing craft to the shallow coastal water hexes. The organic transport unit could be "upgraded" to a regular truck in any "flagged" hex once the marines have disembarked and finished their beach storming mission. But the subject of a "deep sea ship classed as a land transport type unit" can be left for later.

As I was saying, my original idea was about a unit with shallow sea movement capability (the Landing Craft) that when positioned in an hex adjacent to a coastal (land) hex, it would switch into an infantry type unit, ready to make an attack on an enemy held hex in that very same turn (not having to wait until the following turn to attack/move). The problem is that unless the landing craft can climb to a land coastal hex (or the infantry unit can get their feet wet by standing on a sea hex) the landing craft unit would not switch. So, at least one of the units has to be given an "amphibious" movement type. Besides, from the visual aspect of the subject, I don't like very much to see an infantry type unit standing on a water surface...

I would be inclined to give the landing craft unit the amphibious movement type (and we will see landing barges going overland, but we can somewhat put a limit to that).

So, the provisional solution to the subject would be a Landing Craft unit with a special "custom" amphibious movement type: shallow sea/lake/strait/major river moderate movement capability (say, two hexes speed) combined with a one hex speed only movement over certain land hexes (after all, not every coast in the world is suitable for amphibious landing operations) like clear/countryside/port/city/desert, where the Landing Craft unit could make its switching into a marine infantry unit with a regular infantry type movement.

Optimally, it would be very useful to add a new terrain type into the game (called "beach", of course) in order to limit the landing craft movement capability just to coastal waters and beaches avoiding giving those units the possibility to crawl over any clear inland hex present in the map. I remember to have read somewhere that the game program did not accept new terrain types (but in the terrain table file one can read that "It is recommended to add new entries to the end of the list"). Alternatively, the "Countryside" terrain type could be reused as "Beach" terrain, given that that terrain type looks like it is somewhat redundant with the "Clear" terrain type. Of course, the implementation of such a change would imply the modification of a lot of maps already done, by changing all the suitable coastal hexes into "beach" (former countryside) hexes and any inland "Countryside" hex into "Clear" type ones. No small task, I would say.

From the "iconography" point of view, I can say that I already reworked the Kriegsmarine Infantry icon into a one which looks much more vanilla style than the old one, I made the big units for them also (previously there were no big portraits for such units). But seeing the screen captures uploaded by Cw58, I had the idea to make alternate icons for the KM Infantry, adding a small landing craft in the background (a design concept similar to the new cavalry unit types icons introduced by McGuba in his latest version of the Battlefield Europe mod).

Well, that is all for the time being... Forgive me for the extensive posting, but feedback and ideas continue to come up!
I hope you like some of the ideas to help make marine infantry type units with distinctive abilities an in-game workable idea!

[guille1434]

Yeah, it works very well for a stand-alone scenario but it's a no-go for campaigns.

I continued working on Guille's idea (LC/marine/truck) after my posts and I believe a 2-switch unit (LC/marine) with an organic truck is the best solution for campaigns. That way, you end the scenario with a marine unit that, in the next scenario, you can deploy on water hexes that can then be switched to LC.

This is an important aspect of the problem... It is of no importance that you designate in the equipment table the Landing Craft unit as "primary", in the following scenario of a campaign, the unit will appear "switched" into an infantry unit that could not be deployed into a sea hex. It would be necessary to deploy it in a port hex and then switch it back to its original Landing Craft form. But I think this could possibly be avoided by making the Landing Craft (and the Marine Inf unit as well, just in case) to be able to be transported by a sea transport type unit (in this case we would need to ditch the idea of a "sea moving land transport type unit"). So, the player would be able to deploy the unit in any suitable sea hex on the map on board its sea transport unit, and can "disembark" from it, in Landing craft format when on a shallow sea hex (would the silly AI allow to disembark the unit just in its Landing Craft switch or will it block the "disembark on sea" action because it would try to disembark a land moving unit (the infantry one) on a sea hex? I think that needs to be tested.

If the above mentioned "system" is unworkable, we would need to revert to the original Cw58 idea of having a sea going Landing Craft, switching into an amphibious moving infantry unit. This would imply that the Marines would be able to make landings on any shore, eliminating the interesting tactical "condiment" of just making amphibious landings possible only on some coastal hexes, which is something more close to reality, in my opinion.

Thinking about it, and supposing that the AI somehow will screw-up all this fine tuned system, may be the last mentioned option (the one tested by Cw58: sea moving Landing Craft coupled to marine infantry with custom amphibious move type) may be the safest bet, which can be made more visually "pleasant" by introducing the modified Marine Infantry type icons (the design with the small landing craft in the background of the troop figures).

[cw58]

First of all, my original concept was about a two switch unit (Landing Craft --> Infantry) with (eventually) a sea going organic transport type unit associated to it. The idea behind this was to have a larger ship unit with deep sea movement to carry the landing craft to the shallow coastal water hexes. The organic transport unit could be "upgraded" to a regular truck in any "flagged" hex once the marines have disembarked and finished their beach storming mission. But the subject of a "deep sea ship classed as a land transport type unit" can be left for later.

As I was saying, my original idea was about a unit with shallow sea movement capability (the Landing Craft) that when positioned in an hex adjacent to a coastal (land) hex, it would switch into an infantry type unit, ready to make an attack on an enemy held hex in that very same turn (not having to wait until the following turn to attack/move). The problem is that unless the landing craft can climb to a land coastal hex (or the infantry unit can get their feet wet by standing on a sea hex) the landing craft unit would not switch. So, at least one of the units has to be given an "amphibious" movement type. Besides, from the visual aspect of the subject, I don't like very much to see an infantry type unit standing on a water surface...

Ok, I can see that I did not completely understand your concept and so got a little off-track. I had not considered that the organic transport would be a water craft rather than a truck, at least at first.

I see you've posted again while I'm writing this post but I want to reply with the ideas I have in my head from your 1st post before I read your 2nd post and lose my train of thought.

More testing will be required but let's say we start with a land unit (marine) that is loaded on a LC (class 16, supplied by scenario design) and that marine has a smaller LC (sea-going & class 14, of course) for organic transport. In theory, if the marine is not amphibious then the larger LC should be able to deploy the smaller LC (organic transport) on a water hex. If that smaller LC was combat-capable, then it could carry out attacks against coastal defenses. No infantry icons walking on water! When a land hex is opened up, the marine should be able to walk onto land. When the battle is finished, this unit would then be able to deploy again on a class 16 transport at sea in the next scenario. So there appears to be no dead-end
here for use in campaigns.

It seems there would be a problem if the marine upgrades to a truck. But you could always upgrade back to a small LC during the deployment phase. Create 2 unique units (small LC/truck) with 0 cost and you've essentially worked around the 3-switch problem for deployments in future scenarios. If this all works; more testing!

Sorry if I've just re-stated your 2nd post but I wanted to get that idea down while it was fresh in my mind. Now onto your 2nd post!

[cw58]

Lol, there's a lot to unpack in your 2nd post so I'll have to think on it awhile. I think a new icon would be great but it might depend on what the solution is in the end; LC with MGs blazing or Marines w/ LC in the background?

I will probably try testing the theory from my previous post. It seems to be the closest to your original idea which was brilliant, by the way.

Oh, just remembered you said something about new terrains in one of those 2 posts. I saw the same comment about adding new terrains but it's a little unclear what is meant by "at the end of the list". Is it after this?: IDS_TRN_RIVER
Or after this?:
# Terrain features
# Name
Major River
River
Railroad
Road

I recently tried adding a new terrain at the very bottom and then again after "IDS_TRN_RIVER". The first attempt did nothing but I had some success in the 2nd attempt. I was able to use it in the editor and apply traits but it messed up some of the other terrains. For example, suddenly my wheeled-movement units could only travel 1 hex.... in clear terrain. So there's something definitely wrong there or with my modding.

[cw58]

I did some more testing and found that a strategic LC (class 16) will not disembark an organic transport (OT) in any hex; it will only disembark the primary. It doesn't matter if the primary is only land-based & the OT is amphibious; it will not disembark the OT on a water hex. So no organic landing craft. OTs cannot be used in this way for campaigns; they only seem to work as I described earlier, in a stand-lone or multi-player scenario.

Another thing: a strategic LC can load up just about any class of unit if you manipulate the eq file correctly. So the idea of large LC disembarking a small LC (class doesn't matter) that will switch to an infantry unit is viable but it would only be necessary if you differentiated between shallow and deep waters. If that's the case, the infantry would need to be amphibious to be able to deploy in campaigns. And you'd need appropriate movement types for the infantry and small LC units (no deep water move and some sort of amphibious move).

I'll be away next week but I might continue looking into this idea. There might a better work-around for campaigns by upgrading during deployment phase and/or the use of a dead-end switch.

[bondjamesbond]

Gentlemen, your Marines are now stronger than all special forces such as SAS, NKVD Border Guards, Brandenburg 800 and American Rangers

[Messmann]

I would like to know if you could provide us with the following icon:

SdKfz 251/23 2 cm Anti-Tank

There is a high probability that I will include these icons in my mod.

Thank you for your work!

[Birgeria]

I would like to know if you could provide us with the following icon:

SdKfz 251/23 2 cm Anti-Tank

There is a high probability that I will include these icons in my mod.

Thank you for your work!

Hi Messmann
I have this Sd.kfz.251/23 Ausf.D icon. I don't remember where I got this from this forum. Probably from the unit folder in Amulet mod. Hope its helpful.

Regard,

Birgeria

[Messmann]

I'll be away next week but I might continue looking into this idea. There might a better work-around for campaigns by upgrading during deployment phase and/or the use of a dead-end switch.

Keep up your interesting work. I was trying around in this field as well, and ended up by creating a unit which can move on water and switch to boats (Sturmpioniere).

[guille1434]

Hello and a happy New Year to all the productive and good mannered members of this small but friendly community!

About the Marine Infantry "system", yes, I will continue trying to find the best way of implement it, but I think the best possible way would have to be something similar to the way Messman implemented for his Sturmpioniere units, may be a little more fine-tuned...

On the other hand, the Jagd Sturmtiger conversion is just rolling out from the conversion depot, and ready for active duty!!

[cw58]

Thanks for the new icons, Guille, they look great! Can't wait to get them plugged in to the game. Nice work, my friend!