GS v4.0 paratrooper issues

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Peter Stauffenberg
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GS v4.0 paratrooper issues

Post by Peter Stauffenberg »

We've got some discussion regarding how we can use paratroopers in GS v4.00. One change in GS v4.0 is that the air ranges were extended. Since the paradrop range is the same as the fighter attack range is means you can now paradrop deeper into enemy territory. That works for Overlord, invasion of Crete etc.

However, you can paradrop into enemy cities or resources and that means you can easily capture enemy controlled hexes if they are not properly garrisoned. You also see paratrooper units being dropped adjacent to air units to finish these off.

We might not prevent this from happening completely without crippling the use of paratroopers, but maybe we could make some minor changes.

1. Should we maybe prohibit paratroopers from landing directly into any resource hex except airfields (paras the only units allowed to land into empty airfields)? That means paras have to land adjacent to cities, capitals, oilfields, mines, fortifications, fortresses and rail depots and the next turn move into the resource hex, if still kept empty?

This is a simple change that won't prevent the regular use of paras to cut-off enemy supplies to cities you want to capture with a seaborne invasion.

2. Should landing in a ZOC of enemy air units give extra losses to the paradropping unit? One would imagine that the enemy air unit would intercept the air units flying the paras when they get close to the airbase. Thus losses would be quite high trying to land near an enemy airbase.

3. Another way of dealing with para units is to lower the land spotting range for air units since you can only paradrop into spotted hexes. However, this might have other unforeseen effects so it shouldn't be altered lightly.

We have not concluded on any of these points so any input in welcome.
pk867
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Re: GS v4.0 paratrooper issues

Post by pk867 »

Also, the Attack ranges were increased, but the spotting ranges are the same as before. Which adds to the FOW.
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Re: GS v4.0 paratrooper issues

Post by GogTheMild »

I have never been happy with Paras being able to drop into cities for a number of reasons.

1. It is ahistorical. Any WW2 paratroop division attempting to do so would be committing suicide.
2. It is a way to stretch the spotting range. Have a FTR attack a city (or resource or rail junction or fort) and if it is empty it becomes a viable hex for a paradrop. Empty hexes cannot be similarly targeted.
3. It facilitates the "reinforce the ruins" strategy. I get fed up of cutting off, say, Palermo, grinding the garrison down to 1 or 2 steps, pounding the city into the red, only to have the garrison suicide and a fresh Para appear with no morale loss, no step losses and no need for supply. Again, imagining this in reality (a German paradrop into Cherbourg or Sevastopol on the eve of their fall) and one can only imagine a disaster.

I would support Stauffenberg's option 1.
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Re: GS v4.0 paratrooper issues

Post by Vokt »

Option 1 seem to be good. And, if easily to be implemented, I would definitely vote for it. Key point of this change would be to give the opponent a 1 turn notice that an airborne operation is going on near a capital, city or resource thus giving him the chance to react accordingly (which would usually imply to rail units to the threatened city). Right now he doesn't have that chance and he encounters the paratrooper unit already occupying the city or resource.

This way, enemy-controlled city hexes would become a banned type of terrain in which paratroopers can land the same way mountain terrain is. Not sure though, what we should do in case of a paratrooper landing executed within friendly territory. My opininon is that friendly cities shouldn't be banned as terrain suitable for a paratrooper dropping.

Option 2 might be necessary to implement either if we are to avoid excessive use of paratroopers as a way of depleting or destroying enemy air units. I have encountered some cases in my games in which me or my opponents have succeeded in destroying a full strength fighter unit due to the combination of direct air bases attacks and paratrooper jumpings. This possibility, honestly speaking, doesn't appear to be very fair. Main reason is the differences in PP's lost: an air unit costs 90 PP's or more whilst a paratrooper unit costs 25 PP's. That difference is so provided the paratrooper unit results killed in opponent's turn but that may not occur. So if we are to do this we just have to significantly increase the losses suffered by paratroopers dropped into hexes adjacent to enemy air units. That is, to seek for a value that doesn't make so profitable those moves by increasing the steps lost when landing which in turn will make the paratrooper unit to deliver less damage on the air unit. Ideal thing would be to make those droppings rather unworthy because of the scarce damage inflicted upon the air unit.

Option 3 is more complicated but not less attractive. Question here would be if by trying to fix the paratroopers issue, other aspects of the game get affected. My personal view has always been that air spotting ranges in CEAW are really large. By late game, in which the spotting ranges get doubled, you are allowed to see quite deep into enemy territory. Anyway, I'm not really so sure about this keeping in mind that CEAW is a strategic game. So in some way CEAW air spotting ranges could well be abstractly representing things like intelligence reports or military espionage which were really vital in WW2.
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Re: GS v4.0 paratrooper issues

Post by pk867 »

IMO Air units should not be able to base no closer than 2 hexes enemy territory. (i.e. front line) . Currently air units can occupy hexes at the front which in real life they would not.

There are other situations that will not follow this requirement (i.e. terrain, islands)

That's is my view.

I vote not change the spotting ranges. They are the same since vanilla version.

Paras have the range of FTRs, but can not land in unspotted resources, whereas air units may attack.
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Re: GS v4.0 paratrooper issues

Post by Cybvep »

2. Should landing in a ZOC of enemy air units give extra losses to the paradropping unit? One would imagine that the enemy air unit would intercept the air units flying the paras when they get close to the airbase. Thus losses would be quite high trying to land near an enemy airbase.
I support this, but only for air units which have at least 20 efficiency ("orange" status) and at least 4 steps. An air unit represents many planes. Some of them are bound to intercept the PARAs, as long as enough of them are operational.
2. It is a way to stretch the spotting range. Have a FTR attack a city (or resource or rail junction or fort) and if it is empty it becomes a viable hex for a paradrop. Empty hexes cannot be similarly targeted.
That doesn't sound right, so hopefully it can be changed.
3. It facilitates the "reinforce the ruins" strategy. I get fed up of cutting off, say, Palermo, grinding the garrison down to 1 or 2 steps, pounding the city into the red, only to have the garrison suicide and a fresh Para appear with no morale loss, no step losses and no need for supply. Again, imagining this in reality (a German paradrop into Cherbourg or Sevastopol on the eve of their fall) and one can only imagine a disaster.
Maybe PARAs should suffer some (halved?) step and efficiency loss when landing in a friendly hex neighbouring enemy hexes occupied by units? That should make this strategy less glaring and more realistic.

Anyway, I see no reason why PARAs shouldn't be able to capture *empty* cities, resources etc. After all, there no troops present to defend the hex, so PARAs should suffer attrition, but no magical force should prevent them from taking the hex. If the player leaves an important hex empty in range of enemy PARAs, then the player is to blame, not the game. Most of the time there is no problem with PARAs at all, because the players tend to guard important hexes at least with GARs.
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Re: GS v4.0 paratrooper issues

Post by Vokt »

We could consider the prohibition to land for paratroopers in capital, cities or resources in terms of another type of terrain not suitable for a paratrooper landing in the game, the same way that mountain terrain is not suitable either.

Being CEAW a strategic game and corps sized units one, we could consider that no matter a hex is emptied of units, this doesn't mean that the hex is completely emptied of any military unit. We could abstractly consider that smaller-than-corps units may be actually guarding the city. Guessing that any military unit larger than a regiment guarding a city or resorce would surely be able to deal with an airborne landing from a paratrooper division done so far away from the front line. Opposition from local militias, etc, would render almost suicidal any paratrooper dropping done directly into a major urban area and so far away from the main supply source.

That would be completely different from the case of a partisan unit spawning directly into an ungarrisoned occupied city since in this case it would be local population that takes control of the city just like it happened in the Warsaw Uprising. So yes, Axis player must deal with the partisan threat by effectively garrisoning occupied cities but he shouldn't care any more about garrisoning cities like Hamburg or Cologne for fear of paratrooper landing. I have strong doubts that cities like those were ever threatened by such menace.

Besides, in WW2, no paratrooper landing was done directly in major urban zones and surely that there was a reason. We could guess that one reason could be a nearly 100% chance of those droppings ending in disaster.

Airborne units were supposed to link with the infantry and mobile units participating in major offensives by land, so the further the droppings were made the bigger the risks for the airborne operation just like it happened in Market Garden.
pk867 wrote:IMO Air units should not be able to base no closer than 2 hexes enemy territory. (i.e. front line) . Currently air units can occupy hexes at the front which in real life they would not.
I like this. By setting this limitation, air spotting ranges would be virtually shortened, this meaning less enemy air bases being sighted. It would allow either to remove the rather gamey move of using air units to hold double defensive lines.
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Re: GS v4.0 paratrooper issues

Post by Cybvep »

BTW if PARAs are prohibited from landing in city and resource hexes, then I guess that they will still be able to take these hexes if they land in a nearby hex and destroy the unit garrisoning the city/resource hex? In such case it would be better NOT to garrison the hex than to garrison it and this is sth that should not ever happen. Just sth to consider.
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Re: GS v4.0 paratrooper issues

Post by duncanr »

I am not sure anything is actually broken - if people don't garrison with ground units then so be it

in reality airfields were a target for "special operations" which although they aren't represented at the games scale it certainly was an activity in WWII
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Re: GS v4.0 paratrooper issues

Post by AugustusTiberius »

The Brits dropped the 6th Airborne into Arnhem (at least according to game scale) and were destroyed by dispersal (the effect of dropping on a city) and the adjacent Ss panzerkorps counter attacking.

I agree with duncanr, I don't see anything broken.

As for the weird Palermo trick, the unit still should take a morale hit for dropping, and step hit for dropping. I see it as reflecting flying in via air transport an airborne unit. We have similar things when a unit suicides and the unit in the port (transport) land. The Allied player does this in Athens I have seen.

Garrison cities is the answer. Players take risks all the mite in the game and sometimes it works, and sometimes we get egg on our faces. Let it play out.

AT

As for landing beside a shredded air unit - that is exactly what it is. Counter air has suppressed the air unit (i.e. damaged it heavily), and airborne unit lands and take the airbase.
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Re: GS v4.0 paratrooper issues

Post by pk867 »

It comes down to knowing the situation at hand. You can always do air attacks on the para unit to ensure it can not make jump status

to have the opponent reinforce the city. The player was trying to resupply his own city with reinforcements.

So the para jump would simulate transporting by air to keep the city. Messina is harder with the ferry on the toe of Italy. You can ferry troops in.
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Re: GS v4.0 paratrooper issues

Post by Vokt »

A strategic game like CEAW should offer little room for representing SAS or commandos missions just because of that fact: it's a strategic game. We just intend with this change to make a little bit more realistic the paratrooper thing in the game.

Paratroopers NEVER landed directly into major urban areas. They landed in the vicinities of cities but never over the city itself. From the landing spots (in the country), they would advance to their objectives. So from my this point of view, it would make sense this rule of not allowing paratroopers to directly land over city hexes but over their adjacent hexes and then, (in very the next turn) to advance to their objective.

Besides, city hexes in CEAW represent cities itself not the surroundings of the city. I mean, terrain type is "city", not clear, forest or rough. City terrain along with mountain terrain would account as terrain not suitable for a paratrooper landing.

Another important thing to keep in mind regarding this matter is that paratroopers were usually tasked with seizing objectives like bridges, crossroads, depots, making stands to delay the ememy, etc, but never were tasked with seizing big urban centres. Here in CEAW, we are used to see paratroopers landing directly over big urban centres like Western Germany cities or Axis minors capitals but I honestly think that those operations simply weren't possible to be carried out in real war for many reasons.

British paratroopers in Arhem didn't land over the city itself but on its vicinity. I've heard that, in reality, they were dropped excessively far away from Arhem. That fact and the strong German opposition in the city would both account for the failure of the operation. Had the paratroopers landed directly into the city, outcome would probably haven been not only failure but disaster.

For all of those reasons is why I think paratrooper rules should be changed. Particularly I like options 1. and 2. suggested by Stauffenberg, complemented with the one proposed by pk867 regarding air bases near the front line.

Finally, shot showing landing spots of the US 101st in Market Garden. Seemingly, units just landed in the country and then, they just advanced to their objectives (seizure of bridges).
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101st landing spots
101st landing spots
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Re: GS v4.0 paratrooper issues

Post by AugustusTiberius »

The hexes are 20km wide and Arnhem was not a city that is 20 km wide (in fact, few cities are 20km wide and even if they are they are not often built up so that the density covers every bit). If a hex side is 15km for the sake of argument (20km is the absolute width, not a hex side) then the hex contains 584.57 sq km. but we can round that down to 530 sq km if I have overestimated the hex side length by a bit: (http://www.math-prof.com/AreaVolume/Hexagon.aspx)

That is a lot of terrain and not all of it is built up - especially as our cities cover Arnhem to Moscow. The hex is determined by the dominant terrain, not by the fact it is solidly one type of terrain.

No unit drops onto a city core but there is a lot of open and less dense turf in most city hexes (an argument could be made that portions of the Ruhr should not be droppable but if the Axis let an airborne drop happen there then it is their fault).

Now maybe you could change the rule to say no dropping on fortified capitals but why bother? The damage calculated is probably at least 50% (0:5) and those cities should be defended always if the enemy is that near.

The British 6th dropped a couple of km away from the bridge, close enough to be considered on the city (look at eh actual size of Arnhem, look at the hex being 20km and guess what, you can drop on the city hex). As well, dropping onto a city is a 0:4 and add adjacency to an enemy unit (in this case the IISS Pz XXX) and the damage done to the airborne unit is realistic and the chances of holding it in a counterattack situation are minimal at best. Sounds like our game reflects market garden pretty well.

Even in the map you provide, portions of the 101st landed within 5km of a town which given the hex size is realistic. Add in drift, night drops which are notorious for misplacement, etc. and dropping on a city with a chance of at least 40% losses is fine by me.

There are a couple of other issues to tend to that are more important then changing a rule because someone does not garrison a key city properly.

I vote for this to go away... the current rules are fine.

AT
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Re: GS v4.0 paratrooper issues

Post by Vokt »

Following that argument that the hex is determined by dominant terrain, units located inside city hexes shouldn't benefit from entrenchment and defensive bonus because the majority of the terrain is not covered with urban zone but with clear, rough or forest zones.

So from my point of view, in the game cities are, let's say, "city terrain" and the attributes of the city terrain type applies to all the hex no matter it's clear, rough or forest. This is why weather can be all year fair in cities located and surrounded by rough terrain type,( e.g. Heraklion in Crete ) even in bad weather. Here we have a good example that is the city terrain type what determines the weather and combat values of the units inside the city hex regardless of the terrain the city lies on. Keeping in mind this when in the game a paratrooper unit is landing over a city hex, theoretically it is landing over the city itself, so no need to mention here the issues for getting down the roofs all of those paratroopers or the vulnerability to enemy counterattacks of all of those that unluckily ended hanging on the top of the churches... (some irony here for expressing that such action would never have happened in real war).

No paratrooper unit took a big urban centre in WW2 and that should mean something. Not even a small town like Arhem was possible to be taken by an entire paratrooper division, let alone cities the size of Hamburg or Munich. Among others, key reason could be the lack of heavy equipment needed for surrendering a city of that size. But also the huge supply issues (British paratroopers in Arhem nearly run out of ammo which made things going from bad to worse) that a landing so far away from the main supply would have meant.

I myself have dropped paratroopers on empty cities that meant the sinking of a carrier units the port of Cagliari, Sardinia. Didn't feel like the best strategist ever for having done that. I rather felt that I just took advantage of a potential game simulation weakness. And, over time I began thinking that the game engine allowing such moves was rather ridiculous, unrealistic and unfair. Just look at the value in PP's of the units involved: 110 PP's vs 25 PP's for the paratrooper. Also, I use to properly garrison German and Italian cities in fear of paratrooper but many times I wonder why I should have to do that when real Germans and Italians considered that possibility as extremely unlikely?

By the way, hexes are 50 km wide in CEAW so here we have more reasons for considering to remove the entrenchment bonus in unit located in cities :mrgreen: .
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Re: GS v4.0 paratrooper issues

Post by AugustusTiberius »

Well the hex size makes my point even more and undermines the objection to airborne landing on cities/towns. Add in the 20 days in a turn and even more so.

As for fortifications, as you know of course, it is not all the terrain that counts but strategic positions inside a hex that count. Those are the objectives, pinch points, redoubts, road junctions, villages, heights, etc. that the battle revolves around. And for fortified cities, those are fortified, hence the fortification. As another example, the Maginot was not some massive completely linear Trumpian wall but rather was a series of interconnecting forts, strung points, etc. so by your logic, and description of a hex, there should be no forts, fortifications or terrain modifiers, Nice try on the straw dog though.

And yes, no airborne took a major city - probably because they were garrisoned and the losses would be so high that there are other ways to cook the goose as it were. Yes garrisons are abstracted but by the time an airborne is in range players should make the risk assessments. If Cagliari is lost that is their call. We all make mistakes. The real actors made mistakes. Don't confuse play and mistakes for a broken system.
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Re: GS v4.0 paratrooper issues

Post by dagtwo »

I'm really enjoying the give and take here about para drops in the game. But should we be concerned that in "fixing" para drops we unravel other parts of the game? There was a conversation about "garrison blobs" somewhere else (for example, in blocking the French coast against Overlord). My sense of it is that garrisons were meant to be soft requirements that could be ignored at a risk. If we make garrisons unnecessary for defending against para drops wouldn't that just make "garrison blobs" their main purpose? That's as opposed to what I suppose was their original design intent=garrisoning cities and strongpoints. Just my two bits.
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Re: GS v4.0 paratrooper issues

Post by Vokt »

AugustusTiberius wrote:Well the hex size makes my point even more and undermines the objection to airborne landing on cities/towns. Add in the 20 days in a turn and even more so.
You don't seem to understand that applying that same criteria, then city hexes should not provide entrenchment nor defense bonus because "what matters is the majority of terrain surrounding the city". We would have to redesign the entire game again.

So in CEAW, abstractly the whole city hex is city terrain, with the attributes for this type of terrain applying on the entire hex regardless. You just can't say that in case of a paratrooper operation, "we make an exception and the hex automatically converts from a city hex into a clear, rough or forest hex this representing the surroundings of the city". This IMO makes little sense as an argument. If you drop a paratrooper into a city hex, you do it into the city itself (not its surroundings), that's why you seize it. It's not like inside city hexes are two parts: the city and the surroundings. This doesn't exist. They are city terrain all over the hex.
AugustusTiberius wrote: And yes, no airborne took a major city - probably because they were garrisoned and the losses would be so high that there are other ways to cook the goose as it were. Yes garrisons are abstracted but by the time an airborne is in range players should make the risk assessments. If Cagliari is lost that is their call. We all make mistakes. The real actors made mistakes. Don't confuse play and mistakes for a broken system.
I disagree that the reason why, for example, when the Allies, at the end of 1944 when they were at the gates of the Siegfried Line, didn't drop a paratrooper unit into let's say, Munich, wasn't because they thought something like: "the city must be garrisoned an it would be risky to do it". That didn't keep them from dropping units there. Probably the reason was because there wasn't a strategic reason for doing that and it would have been rather dumb to say the least, to launch such an operation.

Why the Germans would be strongly garrisoning a city so far away from the front line like Munich when the maximum effort and the troops were much more needed in the Rhine to reinforce the positions vs the Allies? In fear of a possible airborne landing over the city? Seriously?

If we want a fantasy WW2 game then let's keep paratrooper rules as they are now with nonsensical droppings with no strategic goal, just "to bother a little the enemy". But if we want to significantly improve the game in terms of simulation we should favour the use of paratroopers in much the way they were used in real war, that is, as first wave units of a major amphibious or a major offensive operation. Airborne units were used mostly as support units of mentioned operations which meant that they had to be dropped at a reasonable distance (no more than 100 kms, that is 2 hexes) from the front line in order to later link with the bulk of the army. Symptom that we should make some change here is that in CEAW those units are rarely used that way, on the contrary they are much used in the way that we are seeing in the games of the AAR section.
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Re: GS v4.0 paratrooper issues

Post by Vokt »

dagtwo wrote:I'm really enjoying the give and take here about para drops in the game. But should we be concerned that in "fixing" para drops we unravel other parts of the game? There was a conversation about "garrison blobs" somewhere else (for example, in blocking the French coast against Overlord). My sense of it is that garrisons were meant to be soft requirements that could be ignored at a risk. If we make garrisons unnecessary for defending against para drops wouldn't that just make "garrison blobs" their main purpose? That's as opposed to what I suppose was their original design intent=garrisoning cities and strongpoints. Just my two bits.
Completely agree there. That issue, the garrison blob or, in other words, spamming a scenario with garrison units is in my opinion another "big one". I mean, game needs review on this matter either.

Garrison units through the years have earned a role of "cheap and quick to deploy infantry units". Here the type of unit, a garrison, contradicts it's real role in the game. So the same way as with paratrooper units, we have here a different use for this type of units related to the use of garrison and territorial units had in WW2.

So unless we change names of things or create "upgrades" of garrison units we have here an inaccuracy between unit names and tasks for which those units are used.

BEF blob was one of the ways by which garrison units were used in a spamming way. This sometimes much delayed Fall of France so devs had to set a penalty morale loss for leaving empty of units the UK. Don't know if this was really effective since I ocassionally find some opponents still sending rather large BEF's no matter the penalty.

Overlord garrisons blob is another one which everyone has had occasion of seeing what that's about in my game vs supermax. In this case, my personal opinion is that again here, game simulation capability resents. So I don't judge here if stuff like that affects game balance or if it's effective or not, it's just something not nice to see if you allow me.

As possible ways to fight this thing, I would suggest allowing garrisons to be railed ONLY from city hex to another city hex as it should be keeping in mind their role as units aimed at garrisoning cities. Garrison blobs are easily formed because players are able to rail garrisons also to the ADJACENT hexes of the cities, the unit directly blocking beach hexes that way when railed to coastal cities. If the garrison wasn't possible to be railed out of the city hex the possibilities of a "quick garrison deployment" would much reduce. Player would have then to move the garrison from a city to make available for 1 more railing.

Territorial role of garrisons also contradicts they sometimes participating in landings. Most "funny" case could be Persian or Iraki transported garrisons seeking for an empty Italian city in the Med scenario. From my point of view garrisons shouldn't be allowed to be loaded (like in vanilla game) unless applying to them some sort of upgrade in order to be used overseas or if that is too much, to allow them to be loaded but to make them only possible to be unloaded in sea ports.
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Re: GS v4.0 paratrooper issues

Post by Peter Stauffenberg »

Paratroopers were usually dropped as a part of a major operation where the land or sea offensive hoped to link up with the paratroopers eventually. The goal of the paratrooper unit was to disrupt enemy operations so the land or sea offensive got a better chance of achieving its goals. We saw that very well in Overlord where the paratroopers grabbed key points like bridges, gun positions etc. so the amphibious landings had a better chance. One from taking out the guns and one from delaying the Axis reinforcements by holding villages, bridges etc.

Sending paratrooper units on suicide missions just to destroy an air unit or whatever was rarely used.

So maybe a solution could be to look at the number of paratrooper units each country can have. I'm not thinking about the max total number, but the rebuild number. It should hurt to lose a paratrooper unit and that means you shouldn't be able to immediately rebuild ut. Or maybe the cost of the para unit should become higher.

These are the values we have:
PARA_INCREASED_COST_GARRISON 15 /* PP's that must be paid to upgrade unit to Para status */
PARA_INCREASED_COST_CORPS 35 /* PP's that must be paid to upgrade unit to Para status */
PARADROP_COST_CORPS 25
PARADROP_COST_GARRISON 10

These could maybe be increased slightly. E. g. the paradrop cost is rather cheap knowing how much effort went into the planning of a para operation.

Another area to alter could be
MAX_DAMAGE_FROM_DROP_INTO_CLEAR 3 /* 0 .. 10. 99 = not possible. Includes desert. Effective number increases by 1 for each enemy unit adjacent to drop hex plus the air defense inside the hex */
MAX_DAMAGE_FROM_DROP_INTO_ROUGH 4 /* 0 .. 10. 99 = not possible. Includes desert hills */
MAX_DAMAGE_FROM_DROP_INTO_RESOURCE 5 /* 0 .. 10. 99 = not possible. Includes capital, city, fortress, oilfield, mine */
MORALE_LOSS_PER_STEP_LOSS_FROM_DROP 10

Maybe we can increase the max damage from dropping into a resource from just 5 into 7 or 8. That means you can still drop into such hexes, but you have a risk of taking heavy losses. That could simulate flak in the city shooting at you or defenders firing at you when you're in the air. We know that the Allied paratroopers unlucky enough to land too close to villages in Overlord were shot at by German defenders on the ground. Quite a few were killed before they even hit the ground.

We also see that if the para unit takes heavy losses dropping into a resource the morale will drop significantly so the nearby defenders can finish it off easily.

Here is another area tweaking is possible
ALLOWED_PARA_BUILDS_1939 1 /* Number of para units allowed to build per country in 1939 */
ALLOWED_PARA_BUILDS_1940 2 /* Number of para units allowed to build per country in 1940 */
ALLOWED_PARA_BUILDS_1941 2 /* Number of para units allowed to build per country in 1941 */
ALLOWED_PARA_BUILDS_1942 2 /* Number of para units allowed to build per country in 1942 */
ALLOWED_PARA_BUILDS_1943 2 /* Number of para units allowed to build per country in 1943 */
ALLOWED_PARA_BUILDS_1944 3 /* Number of para units allowed to build per country in 1944 */
ALLOWED_PARA_BUILDS_1945 3 /* Number of para units allowed to build per country in 1945 */
PARA_BUILD_OFFSET_GERMANY 0 /* Number added to yearly para build for country */
PARA_BUILD_OFFSET_ITALY 0 /* Number added to yearly para build for country */
PARA_BUILD_OFFSET_UK 0 /* Number added to yearly para build for country */
PARA_BUILD_OFFSET_USA 1 /* Number added to yearly para build for country */
PARA_BUILD_OFFSET_USSR 1 /* Number added to yearly para build for country */

This determines how many paratropper units a country can build per game year. Maybe the values are too high so players don't care if they send para units on suicide missions.

We could consider dropping the build for 1940 and 1941 from 2 to 1 and 1944 from 3 to 2. The offset means that USA and USSR has a build number 1 higher than shown. These values must not be confused by the max number of para units allowed. Those are separate, but usually with an increase of 1 per year starting at 1 or 0 in 1939. Some countries like Italy end with a max of 2, UK with a max of 3.

So the para build values are the total number of builds (new paras and replacement of destroyed paras) allowed. So a lower number here means a player would try to avoid losing any para unit because it will take time to replace the lost unit. Maybe you even have to wait until the next game year.

I'm not saying we have to or should implement changes to the above. I just show the possibilities we can tweak without having to change any game code.
Vokt
Lieutenant Colonel - Panther D
Lieutenant Colonel - Panther D
Posts: 1222
Joined: Tue Jan 29, 2013 3:11 pm

Re: GS v4.0 paratrooper issues

Post by Vokt »

I think the most effective way to deal with this is to change the code so paratroopers cannot directly land into cities. Exploit mentioned by @Gog the Mild about an air unit making an air attack over an enemy emptied city hex, then the hex becoming spotted and then that theoretically allowing for a paratrooper drop over referred hex is something we should just remove.

Increasing damage of a paratrooper unit when landing over a city wouldn't suffice: paratroopers surviving at 1 step the landing would still be able to surrender an Axis minor or to sink a carrier in port which is simply non sensical.

My feel is that, generally speaking, rules that allow to make game exploits should be removed. So the fix for me is not to make moves trying to counter those exploits (in this case garrisoning cities in fear of an airborne landing). The fix for me comes from removing the possibility of doing such game exploits.

As mentioned in other posts we would be treating this in terms of type of terrain suitable for a paratrooper jump: cities would account as terrain not suitable for a direct airborne landing into the city hex.

I think costs and build limits per year are just fine if we take into account that theoretically paratrooper units are division sized units. Another matter is the capability of rebuilding paratroopet units. It's here where exploits could come. You just use paratroopers in a suicidal but profitable way (e.g. To destroy an air unit), confident that you will be able to easily replace it.so
I would vote for making it harder the chances of rebuilding paratroopere.
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