Slitherine

I really miss the opportunity to make amphibious assault from naval transport (off course with a heavy penalty). If you are defending a coast, all you have to do is to place units close to the coast (not necessarily adjacent). When the transport moves to shore you simple move forward to the cost and attack, the transporting unit has no way to return fire and cannot attack or move on to land in the next turn.
Both naval and arial bombardment can be very effective on land units, but only if the bombardment is followed up by an land attack (as it should be).
Is there an reason to why is it only possible to MOVE to shore from naval transport and not ATTACK? Surely it cannot be an historical reason.

Btw, it is not a problem in single player, as the AI does not defend coastline very effectively, but against an human opponent it is another deal.

It is very real.

The defender always gets the first shot when someone attacks the beach.

If your worried about MP, it's up to the person to design the balance correctly.

Well, there's definately some deficiencies.

I'm not sure if I was the only one deeply disappointed in the D-Day scenario that shipped with the game - especially in the campaign.
In scenario play, there are at least a few forces relatively close to the shore, but in the campaign, the allies can essentially land unopposed while the player has to move his army from way inland to the shore - that ain't no D-Day, what happened to the Atlantikwall?

What should be possible, mechanics-wise, is for a unit to "unload" while on an ocean-tile next to land occupied by an enemy unit, and then attack this unit from the sea. Naturally, it should be HEAVILY penalized, and this maneuver should only be available to infantry in the first place. This would mean it would first be necessary to supress the defender with heavy naval artillery fire or using bombers - which is quite realistic, or so I feel.

Of course, the AI would need to be taught to use artillery attacks before even trying to land.
But while we're at it, the AI should also be taught how to use Paratroopers - it's a joke this hasn't been implemented in the first place.
Also, switching (like for the Flak88<->AT88).
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rezaf

rezaf wrote:Well, there's definately some deficiencies.

I'm not sure if I was the only one deeply disappointed in the D-Day scenario that shipped with the game - especially in the campaign.
In scenario play, there are at least a few forces relatively close to the shore, but in the campaign, the allies can essentially land unopposed while the player has to move his army from way inland to the shore - that ain't no D-Day, what happened to the Atlantikwall?

Well to be honest, it's not Operation Overlord/D-Day, but more like Operation Cobra by the time you get your troops close enough to counter-attack.
Although, if you rush with Strat-Bombers you can still easily sink a very large part of the allied landing force, thus crippling the invasion.
Especially with 14-55 Overstrength ones that sink a transport/per turn.

rezaf wrote: What should be possible, mechanics-wise, is for a unit to "unload" while on an ocean-tile next to land occupied by an enemy unit, and then attack this unit from the sea. Naturally, it should be HEAVILY penalized, and this maneuver should only be available to infantry in the first place. This would mean it would first be necessary to supress the defender with heavy naval artillery fire or using bombers - which is quite realistic, or so I feel.

Perhaps if you allow Infantry to "unload" on coastal hexes and then attack "from the sea" with a -5 or -10 penalty to Initiative.

rezaf wrote: Of course, the AI would need to be taught to use artillery attacks before even trying to land.
But while we're at it, the AI should also be taught how to use Paratroopers - it's a joke this hasn't been implemented in the first place.
Also, switching (like for the Flak88<->AT88).
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rezaf

I'm not sure the current AI is capable of that.
From what I've seen all it does is attack targets based on their weakness (exploitable to say the least in scenarios with expendable aux troops).

Fimconte wrote:I'm not sure the current AI is capable of that.

Oh, it definately is not, that's why I wrote it needs to be taught.

And of course you're right, the single-mindedness of the AI - especially it's obsessive compulsion to attack units mounted in their transports - is easy to exploit. The AI will happily leave it's highly entrenched, secure position in an objective location if it get's a chance to fire away at some Opel Blitz'es - even if that means the objective is now undefended and those nearby Tiger2's don't bode well for the future of said unit...
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rezaf

Razz1 wrote:It is very real.

The defender always gets the first shot when someone attacks the beach.

If your worried about MP, it's up to the person to design the balance correctly.

Sorry, Razz, but I don't understand your answer. What is "very real"? Why do you say the defender gets first shot, when attacks from sea aren't possible at all?

But never mind - the question was, "Is there an reason to why is it only possible to MOVE to shore from naval transport and not ATTACK?"

Or in other words, will future patches of Panzer Corps (or subsequent games) allow amphibious assaults?


Kind regards,
Molve

PS. Perhaps what is needed is a special kind of infantry unit (marines?) that allows water movement as well as land movement. (Perhaps treating the ocean as "frozen"). Of course, the penalties for attacking from ocean should be at least equal to those attacking from a river hex.

For what it's worth, I would add paratroops, too - they should be able to attack on the turn they drop, albeit at a penalty.

Thanks for joining the discussion everyone and thanks for pinpointing my title question, as I do not feel it was responded to.
Razz, I´m sorry, but I don´t think it has anything to do with scenario balance. No mather how many point an attacking force has, it still cannot land (or attack) on shore if the costal hex is defended. Perhaps you misunderstood the question? As Molven commented, there is no ”first shot”, as you don´t get to shoot at all!

I´m pretty sure it´s intentionally from the developers, that it is impossible to make amphibious assault, I simple don´t understand why?

- Surely historical you where able to attack with infantry from the sea.
- Although i´m not big in programming, I do not suspect it would be overly complex to incorporate into the game?
- No doubt the game play would benefit from having the amphibious assault option (you could actually do a real D-day scenario and also a fantastic multiplayer Sea Lion scenario…. and I fail to see where the game play would suffer from having the option?

How it was incorporated into the game play is another discussion, and not all that important for me right now. I would just love to have at least a small fighting chance in amphibious assault instead of downright impossible.

Hope I don´t sound to grumpy, that´s not the case. I love the game, just argumenting for where things could be just a little better!

I'll take a stab:
1 you couldnt do it in Panzer General, Allied general, Pac General, PG Two, Star General lol, etc etc
2 perhaps the concept of the "..." General Titles have never presumed to explicitely model complex combats, especially things like detailed amphibious ops. after all, air craft float around as if they were hover craft.
3 the core game, ie Werhmacht , really has few actual scenerios that you would need to model this in any great detail, and likly with limited resources, they didnt code it as un-necasary.

That being said, down the road it might be cool to see. I would envision it as a horribly risky proposition : A) only infantry could attack from a boat xport, B) they would have serious penalties , and C) it would be a one shot deal ie if they dont destroy/supress and thus force a retreat of the coast defender, the entire attacking amphibian is DESTROYED
So much safer to row into an unnoccupied coastal area .

In my mind, the issue is with scale. All the maps featuring landings have hexes representing large amounts of area.

Perhaps on a 1hex = 50-100m scale you could simulate beaches and add tanktraps, barbed wire, bunkers 4-5 hexes away firing on the landing troops.
And in this case, you could consider the landing "turn" as the time it takes to disembark, and thus giving the defender time to fire upon the attackers.

However this would mean a step from a strategic level down to a tactical level and a whole different game.

A terrain type 'beach' could be added. Designers would leave them clear of units, they can only be entered from adjacent sea hexes, they can only be exited into adjacent ground hexes, they incur a penalty to attack *from* and a bonus to an attacker, they look like beaches with tank traps etc. but don't fill the whole hex so they fit with the existing scale. That way designers would determine where amphibious invasions could occur and they can't be prevented entirely - just made difficult, as they should be. 2 cents.

Fimconte wrote:In my mind, the issue is with scale. All the maps featuring landings have hexes representing large amounts of area.

Perhaps on a 1hex = 50-100m scale you could simulate beaches and add tanktraps, barbed wire, bunkers 4-5 hexes away firing on the landing troops.
And in this case, you could consider the landing "turn" as the time it takes to disembark, and thus giving the defender time to fire upon the attackers.

However this would mean a step from a strategic level down to a tactical level and a whole different game.

I don't really get where you're going with this post. Sure, PzC hexes represent a rather large area, but that's actually a point FOR allowing amphibious invasions. Noone was asking for beaches (Well, except Condoro in the post after yours), tanktraps, barbed wire etc.
The beach should be considered part of the ocean tile - hence invasion troops (with a transport) being able to "disembark" on this tile, and attack an adjacent unit from it. Beach defenses would be abstracted by the entrenchment value of the adjacent unit. Also, they'd play a role in the heavy penalty the disembarking unit'd get for attacking from the beach.
Surviving attackers should be thought of as transports that didn't drop their troops off because it was figured the attack was doomed to fail.
Maybe the "attack broken up" feature could be made use of, though I'm not sure it's actually present in PzC.

I agree with the notion that it should not be too complicated to implement, but it's true that this was not in the original PG and that the current AI will be unable to cope with it - maybe a later expansion, for example about the US' island hopping campaign vs. Japan, would be a good time to introduce it?
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rezaf

rezaf wrote: I don't really get where you're going with this post. Sure, PzC hexes represent a rather large area, but that's actually a point FOR allowing amphibious invasions. Noone was asking for beaches (Well, except Condoro in the post after yours), tanktraps, barbed wire etc.
The beach should be considered part of the ocean tile - hence invasion troops (with a transport) being able to "disembark" on this tile, and attack an adjacent unit from it. Beach defenses would be abstracted by the entrenchment value of the adjacent unit. Also, they'd play a role in the heavy penalty the disembarking unit'd get for attacking from the beach.
Surviving attackers should be thought of as transports that didn't drop their troops off because it was figured the attack was doomed to fail.
Maybe the "attack broken up" feature could be made use of, though I'm not sure it's actually present in PzC.

I agree with the notion that it should not be too complicated to implement, but it's true that this was not in the original PG and that the current AI will be unable to cope with it - maybe a later expansion, for example about the US' island hopping campaign vs. Japan, would be a good time to introduce it?
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rezaf

Well I was pointing out that it's not easy to model amphibious assault on the current scale.
And as I mentioned above, the easiest solution is to allow "disembarking" on the ocean hex for units with perhaps a new trait (amphibious assault) trait?

Fimconte wrote:Well I was pointing out that it's not easy to model amphibious assault on the current scale.

You're missing his point.

He is making a wish that the game would support amphibious assaults, full stop.

The "problems" related to scale can then be left up to the scenario designer, meaning that it does not have to come into the picture at all as regards the game supporting the basic mechanism.

There is a way to fudge amphibious landings:

'Draw' the coast as normal with clear hexes for coastline.
Generate tiles at the end as normal.
Then click river along the coast line.
*Do not* re-generate tiles or you will lose the coastline!

Landing craft can then land on what looks like coast and suffer a combat result like being on a river hex.

Problems:

• The defender is not prevented entering the 'beach' hexes, although they will suffer the river penalty.

If nothing else, this shows how easy it would be for the devs to add this terrain type, so we can hope for it in the future without having to fudge it.

Of course, this does not address the original question about being able to land and attack in the same turn as in PG2 et al. Perhaps a new trait (amphib?) or just allow it for all units like PG2 does.

El_Condoro wrote: Perhaps a new trait (amphib?) or just allow it for all units like PG2 does.

Good point.
I think if a change would be made it should be a trait that is added. I can understand infantry units (or at least certain ones) could land and shoot, but anything else you have in landing craft really shouldn’t. Like arty or tanks perhaps would not have this trait. To make a change that anything coming off of a landing craft is allowed to shoot might be a bit too much of a blanket fix.

Come to think of it PG2 doesn't let ART attack on a landing, either. There was an interesting bug associated with a tank landing on a beach - if it overran a unit it got movement equal to its fuel that turn - could travel across the map in some cases (unless it ran into an enemy!). Anyway, back to the point...

Sorry for repeating myselft, but the question still stands!

I´ve no doubt, that there is a bunch of possible ways that amphibious assault could be implementet somehow in the gameplay. I thought of three possible solutions to this myself (and I see you guys also have some of the same ideas to this), but I´m pretty sure the game developers are better than me at that anyhow, I mean that is was they do!

But I´m still argumenting that the game would be better, more fun and more realistic if amphibious assault was possible, one way or the other. And I still don´t believe it should be overly complex to mod (as long I don´t have to)… so why is´t possible?

The ”Sealion” scenario are without any doubt the most important ”What if” scenario…. and it is not possible to play (read ”win” as German player) in MP. And a truly D-day scenario cannot be composed as a realistic ”beach attack” scenario in MP, as unit cannot attack from sea.

All respect to the single player version of the game, but a large number of WW2 games exist out there with a nice single player version… It is the PBEM version of Pz Corps that makes it stand out compared to ALL the other games over a prolonged period of time... and that´s also why I love the game!

I´m still open for arguments that would tell me I´m way wrong in this… but if Pz General did´t have that feature (sorry, I can´t remember if it did), that is a factual information, is not an argument!

Just my opinion

I don't think anyone disagrees with you. The problem is only the devs can correct this satisfactorily. If they do, how they do, and when they do is up to them. In the meantime we just have to try to work within the confines of the game we have.

Well El Condoro... I´m pretty sure someone will disagree with me, after all it is a gamers forum
But hopefully the devs will look into this sometime and consider... (although they don´t respond now).
But as I stated somewhere else in the forum, the most importing thing now is that they get the PBEM bugs fixed... and then we´ll see about the rest of our small "complaints"