Slitherine

I want to bring here three possible changes in order to give more realism to naval transport and amphibious rules:

1. A land unit transported in a naval unit would lose effectiveness for every single turn that is at sea unless the destination hex is a friendly port and not an enemy hex suitable for a landing. We would avoid the unrealistic situation in which the naval transports are at sea for turns and turns (searching for a good enemy hex to land) without any effect in the effectiveness of the troops transported in those ships. Let´s remember how the soldiers in D-Day were affected whilst being transported to the landing beaches for finally deciding to implement a change in this.

2. A improved fog of war in amphibious rules: the enemy should not be able to see if a transport is carrying an amphibious on it until the unit make an amphibious attack from the ship. Right now the enemy is able to see if a transport is carriying an amphibious unit and strictly speaking there´s no way the enemy can know about this. This will also allow a way to simulate feint landing operations that also happened in real war.

3. The americans and any other power should not pay two times for transporting the unit from USA to UK and from UK to a landing operation in Europe; in other words, transporting operations from two friendly port hexes should not cost 16 pp´s but 8 PP´s) We would allow the allied player to firstly send his american land units to England and then to embark them to a possible landing. No more direct D-Day operations from USA to France.

1. I think the first one is possible to make if we do e. g. the following.

At the end of the turn then we check all friendly units on-board transports. You then lose efficiency if it's above 60 (or another number we agree upon). The efficiency lost can be 10 per turn, but you won't fall below 60. It also costs efficiency to land so you might end up with 40-50 efficiency after landing if you remain at sea for a long time.

We should not let efficiency to drop every turn or some transports will end up with the units arriving at 0. That's not historical at all. What you lose is is the well preparedness you got from being in a land hex near a leader. So in order to maintain the best efficiency you need to have a short trip onboard the transport. So you land with higher efficiency if you sail from Britain to France than from USA.

2. I'm not sure if this is a big deal. Usually it's hard to cover the entire coast line and garrison can land in empty hexes. You can't what kind of land unit is onboard a transport except you know if it's an amph capable unit or not. Late in the war corps, mech and armor are all amph capable so it will only be air and garrison units you will understand aren't amph capable.

It's probably easy to change the graphics so only you can see the image for amphs. The opponent will only see the transport image. Do we really need this?

3. The biggest issue I have with transports is that the players use long range transports a lot instead of sailing units to the closest friendly land area and then wait for the invasion time. Long range invasions actually took place (Torch for example) so we should allow it. It will also be necessary if Sealion succeeds. British reinforcements to Egypt is also an example of long range transport.

One reason we get this problem is that the time per turn is 20 days and the transports only move 17 hexes. You can easily sail from USA to Britain within a turn, but the game engine doesn't allow that.

We have to ask ourselves WHY do people sail the transports directly to the invasion area instead of landing them in e. g. England before Overlord? The answer is simple. It costs 8 PP's per transport and you don't want to play it twice. If you do it with enough units you lose a lot of PP's. So it's better to stay at sea.

This can be solved in a very easy way and I want you to consider that solution. I therefore propose the following.

You continue to pay 8 PP's for each unit you put on a transport. The overuse cost is the same as well.
The change is that if you unload the transport from a friendly port you get the 8 PP's back. You have to be inside the port and not adjacent to it. If you land into a friendly land hex not from a port you're in a way doing a military landing and not disembarking at port where you can reuse the transports.

If we add this rule it means that USA can e. g. start sending transports to Britain quite early and end up in a port so they can disembark to get the PP's back. That means you will be a much more accurate build-up to Overlord. The Allied player will be interested in getting units in Britain so they can place e. g. Eisenhower there to increase the efficiency before the actual invasion.

This also means that friendly port to friendly port movement will be free. That will help e. g. Italy and Germany in Libya. If you want fast landing of units in Libya you land from not port hexes, but then the 8 PP's paid is lost. If you sail to Benghazi or Tobruk then you save the PP's. You may even sail to Tripoli and walk the distance to save PP's too. Germany can send units to Finnish or Norwegian ports and not lose PP's as well.

So I therefore don't think such a change will alter the game balance. It will mean that long range invasions will not become the norm (except Torch and other areas when you don't have any friendly bases nearby). What do you think?

In order to ensure that the port is usable we can add to the rule that you only get PP's back if the port is not bombarded down to red (strength 0 or 1). If the port is unusable then it would have been hard to disembark directly from the port. Instead you would have had to land the unit on the shore.

I like the change so the countries will be only effectively paying PP´s for a possible landing operation the same way that PP´s are paid for launching an airborne operation. This way, naval transport between friendly ports would be considered as a strategical redeployment by sea, the same way that it is possible to make strategical redeployments by land using the rail network. Germans won´t see so expensive to garrison Norway, the americans will be able to send HQ´s for their air units stationed in UK and aproppriate commanders for D-Day and the italians and germans won´t see their campaigns in North Africa so expensive. I vote yes.

good idea...yes

Should we also lower the efficiency of units being transports down to a threshold value of about 60? If yes then how much efficiency should be lost per turn while at sea? 5? 10?

I think they should lose some but not much each turn and down to a limit. Maybe if you disembark in a friendly port you get some of it back? You guys would be better able to set the limit but it shouldn't be too low. Setting it at 5 per turn sounds right. To go to 10 is a bit much.

I think this is a good direction to go, but we shouldn't have efficiency drop too far.

Whilst think its to complex to implement - its certainly true that some troops would lose efficiency at a far lower rate than others.

I would vote for 5 per turn and a minimum of 60. I do like this idea as now the Americans could deploy free to Britain and use a leader to max out it's efficiency before conducting Overlord. In terms of getting the 8 PP's back when you land in a friendly port, what if you got back a percentage equal to the strength of the port. That is, ceil(8 PP's x strength/10-steps). In effect, port damage would scale down what you got back.

And while we're at it I think amphibious units at sea attacking enemy units should pack more punch. Maybe even their full attack. What do you think?

rkr1958 wrote:I would vote for 5 per turn and a minimum of 60. I do like this idea as now the Americans could deploy free to Britain and use a leader to max out it's efficiency before conducting Overlord. In terms of getting the 8 PP's back when you land in a friendly port, what if you got back a percentage equal to the strength of the port. That is, ceil(8 PP's x strength/10-steps). In effect, port damage would scale down what you got back.

Good idea. I will implement that.

rkr1958 wrote:And while we're at it I think amphibious units at sea attacking enemy units should pack more punch. Maybe even their full attack. What do you think?

I'm not sure having full strength is a good idea. E. g. armor units at the beaches weren't very effective. Having full strength amphs means that it can become a bit too easy to get ashore in force. Most wargames have a serious modifier for amph attacks like dividing the attack strength by 2 or even 3. Amph attacks rarely succeeded without serious air support.

Could you look into the current values and propose updates to the values in general.txt to get decent attack values:
/* ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- */
/* Amphibious units rules */
/* ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- */
/* Determines whether the unit type can invade enemy occupied coastal hexes. 1 = yes. 0 = no */
AMPH_CAPABLE_CORPS 1
AMPH_CAPABLE_MECH 1
AMPH_CAPABLE_ARMOR 1
/* Determines which year the units become amph capable */
AMPH_CAPABLE_CORPS_YEAR 1939
AMPH_CAPABLE_MECH_YEAR 1942
AMPH_CAPABLE_ARMOR_YEAR 1943
/* Amphibious invasion coefficients, val + (A*techSurfaceShips + B) / C */
AMPH_GROUND_ATTACK_A 1
AMPH_GROUND_ATTACK_B 1
AMPH_GROUND_ATTACK_C 2
AMPH_QUALITY_A 1
AMPH_QUALITY_B 0
AMPH_QUALITY_C 4
AMPH_SHOCK_ATTACK_A 1
AMPH_SHOCK_ATTACK_B 3
AMPH_SHOCK_ATTACK_C 4
/* Amphibious invasion coefficients (Flak), val + (A*techRadar + B) / C */
AMPH_FLAK_A 1
AMPH_FLAK_B -4
AMPH_FLAK_C 1

One change I propose is that the amph shock values are altered to increase the chance of forcing the defender to retreat.

We could e. g. do a simple rule like this.

val for amph shock: land unit shock value / 2 (rounded down)

In 1944 the Allied shock values are: Corps: 1, mech: 4 and armor: 6. That means a modifier to amph shock like this: corps: 0, mech: 2, armor: 3. The unmodified shock value is 2. So the armor amphs will punch with a shock value of 5 and that seems more right.

This means that an armor unit making an amphibious landing will create a shock punch that will drop the efficiency quite a bit. The mech units will also create some kind of shock effect. Since mechs are only amph capable in 1942 and armor in 1943 it means that it will be for major invasions like Husky and Overlord you can use this effect.

I think that the major contribution you had from armored vehicles at the beaches was some kind of protection for the ground troops and to bombard enemy strongpoints (MG nests etc.) so the marines could advance. It was only after you got inland you could use the full firepower of the armored units.

I don't think the amphs should have a very high ground attack because they didn't do a lot of damage on the turn they landed. The amphs need to get ashore. THEN the land units can start working. In 1944 the Allied amphs all have ground attack of 3 and do an average of 2 damage.

You can still bombard the coastal units and against garrisons you can easily get ashore, but against corps or mech units you need a better shock punch to force them to retreat.

We have to make sure the amphs don't get too powerful, but we also want them to have a fair chance getting ashore.

What do you think?

The mech units invading is more like marines combined with some heavy weapons. Armor units invading are also marines with some armored vehicles. E. g. the Allies created armor units that could be used at the beaches. They could float in the water and some were good against fortifications with assault guns, flame etc. One example is the British Churchill tank.

Also like Ronnie´s suggestion about returning PP´s depending on the destination port being intact or damaged.

Also vote for 5 effectiveness reduction with a minimum of 60.

But I´m rather reluctant to increase the strength of the amphibious units. Right now the allies usually have a rather wide air superiority at the time they launch their amphibious operations so the allied bombers can easily overwhelm the axis units thus weakening them and making it easy for the amphibious units to force a retreat.

What I think it would really help the allies in their amphibious operations is the possibility of launching feint landings so that´s why my suggestion of making all the naval transport the same graphic unit and to only switch to naval transport with the amphibious symbol if the unit has attacked a beach hex from sea so this amphibious attack would betray the naval transport as an amphibious unit. The allies surely would waste some PP´s in exceeded naval transport capacity but the shock effect in the germans would be significant, so they would not be able to know where is the main threat (as it happens in several landing operations during WW2).

I'm not sure feint landings is needed in 1944. By that time only garrisons won't be amph capable (unless you put air units on the transports). So most transports you will se ashore will be able to amph. The Allies have enough corps, mech and armor units so they don't really have to put garrisons onboard transports.

I tested the 1944 scenario and when the Germans sent corps and mech units to the coast line it was hard to dislodge them. One turn with 2 tac bomber attacks is not enough to create a retreat from an amphibious landing. You need to bombard the unit down to at least orange efficiency to force a retreat.

In 1944 then good units like armor and mech have high survivability so you won't inflict a lot of damage upon them from bombardment. That even applies to shock attack.

It's possible to let the bonus to the shock factor for transports be land unit shock / 3 (rounded down). That means the corps will get: 0, mech: 1 and armor: 2 in 1944. Before then maybe only armor units will get a shock bonus and these units aren't amph capable until 1943.

We have to take into consideration that a skilled Axis player will place corps units in the coast line and garrisons in inland cities in France to reduce the risk of the amphs to get ashore. That is rather hard for the Allies to deal with.

I think the best way for the Axis to deal with an invasion should be to use the reserves to hit the units getting ashore.

I think this is easy to test because we can alter the divisor for the shock bonus to amphs in general.txt. We can start with 2 and try 3 using the 1944 scenario. Then we can see the effect of the different shock values and pick the one giving the result we want.

I also wanted to comment that it's not easy for the Axis to reshuffle coastal units at the French coast to compensate for where the amphs are. The Allies will usually bombard the units in the invasion area so they will either be repaired or moved. If they move they can be bombarded again and maybe destroyed in the invasion.

So the Axis player will have to commit units to being on the coast line and just repair losses. The air spotting range is so big so you can't rely upon having reserves that can move in from the inland to replace the depleted coastal unit.

If I see a transport on the French coast I have to deal with that regardless of whether it's an amph or a garrison. Germany can usually not fill any hex with units so you're hard pressed trying to find something to block the invasion area with. Sometimes you need to use air units at the coast line to block. Those can quickly be worn down.

So I again ask myself if we're trying to fix something that's not broken (hiding the amphs so all transports look the same).