Transportation

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v456
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Transportation

Post by v456 »

New to posting, but have been thinking about this as I play. Wondering about transportation with air and land. Was thinking of interesting ways to better improve this loading and unloading of units. Sure you can just click on an infantry and say air transport, but sometimes you want to attack in force. Loading each land unit to an air transport is tedious. Would be nice to highlight all of the land you units and click to all available and just have the game load all in the transports. Or something of the sort. Open to other ideas. As for land transport, it is tedious again to load marines and such in supply tracks for transports over larger distances. Same above would help there as well. Maybe this issue is just a me thing.
YoMomma
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Re: Transportation

Post by YoMomma »

I dont have issues with that, i still only use the old school way of manual loading. By now i excactly know how much each air transport can hold. Which isnt that hard cause there is only 1 heli which can hold a full stack of special forces i think.

Then it's just organising. 4 transport heli's like Russian Yak-60, which can hold 7 special forces, is perfect for my operations. So if you check in air department and scroll all below you find what you are looking for, i just scrap all transport stuff which cant be used for these kinda operations. For special forces i dont use transport trucks, but just filter the special forces in an area if i can't find them and bring them to a central area and do something else for a cpl of days if needed. I really dont see issues with this.

For other transportation it's just the same way, get your transport stuff to a central area and scrap all transport stuff with low capacity. So yeah not sure, in my opinion it should take a little effort, since computer opponent isnt the greatest at this. Imho transporting troops over sea feels like cheating to me with these merchant marines, but i use it anyway.
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Uriens
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Re: Transportation

Post by Uriens »

I'm actually with original poster on this. If this could be achieved for the player then AI could use it too. Imagine AI that uses air transports to move troops or do airdrops. OFC, how difficult that is to implement is a whole different story...
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Re: Transportation

Post by YoMomma »

If what can be achieved? Im confused. Loading to all available all of sudden let the AI do air drops? That sounds cool yeah. But yeah i would think this can be easily countered. I already have anti air on the front lines so yeah.

I can think of 1 thing that can be improved, moving my anti air and artillery.. dont shoot till you complete your moving order.
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Uriens
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Re: Transportation

Post by Uriens »

What OP and me are suggesting is that player would simply select a group of units, choose air transport command and then pick destination, the rest would be done by AI. Right now AI has problems with air transport command. Usually, even in small numbers, those orders never get carried out, or just partially carried out. Having units use airdrop order that would effectively load them into transports and then unload them behind enemy lines would be AI using air drops.

Most of the mechanics already exist in the game. You can already order unit to air transport to the location, its just that the command is unreliable - usually because there are no free transports to carry out that order. Big part of the problem is that AI planes stay waaaaaaay too long on supply missions, they supply same location for weeks needlessly. That makes them unavailable for other tasks and tends to get them shot down too if the supply area is close to the border. Just by reducing time transports stay assigned to supply tasks lots of this problems would be fixed.

Let me explain a bit what i'm talking about. When a unit runs out of supplies it sends a supply request and the AI minister assigns an air, land or ship transport (if any are available) for supply mission to that unit's location. Then those transports try to reach that location. Air transports in this case do it wrong because they stay on that assignment far too long. There is no scenario where air transport should be assigned to that supply task for more then 24 hours. Unit that requested resupply will start moving as soon as it starts receiving supplies and soon enough those planes circle around empty area while that unit is long gone. Reducing duration of that assignment would allow AI to assign those planes to much more missions, supplying more units and being available for transport tasks much more often. It would also expose them to enemy attacks for shorter periods of time and thus reduce losses.

Also, the best way to airdrop enemy is NOT by using helis. They have lower cargo capacity, low altitude (which makes them targetable by nearly anything), slower and they stay on the same hex that they make the air drop which usually gets them killed or at least heavily damaged as the defenders target them first. Transport planes are far superior for that task. Helis are good for getting your units BACK after drop if they can't get back themselves (like after airdrop on an island).

Being able to intercept them by your planes is completely irrelevant to this discussion. You can intercept merchant marines too, that doesn't mean that they should not be used or AI usage of them shouln't be improved. AI could send, for example, some fighters as air cover in drop area. Most of AA units in game would be limited to low altitude so they wouldn't be able to stop transport planes (they are mid altitude and don't need to go low to airdrop).

One possible usage of airdrops for AI - AI already does 'offensives' where it assigns a large force and tries to take a specific target (hotspot). It also quite often assigns air units to assist that offensive. This means that AI will be using both land and air units in specific area in an attempt to capture it. It COULD also assign transport planes to that same offensive that would load "airdroppable" units and try to unload them at the hotspot. It this case those transports would actually have much bigger chance of success since enemy defenses would be distracted by other units. AI could also try to use air drops on remote cities or poorly defended cities if it has air superiority. Lots of possibilities here. One of the scenarios that i see is when England and Germany go to war. They already send planes to invade each others territory but they don't really do anything real. If they would add airdrops to those raids, then you would see a whole different level of gameplay.
YoMomma
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Re: Transportation

Post by YoMomma »

Allright now we can all understand what's being proposed. Thank you for that. The regions i usually fight do have mid air anti air tho, so yeah it's about keeping them busy, which isnt that hard, i like options and heli's give you options.

I think this will come at a cost of 10 years complaints about that feature, just like merchant marines. Meantime there are so many easier improvements, maybe one of them will involve in better supply missions or registering cargo capacity efficiently. Maybe 10 years from now BG can bring out a game involving realistic air drops and transports.
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Ricardo007
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Re: Transportation

Post by Ricardo007 »

It is easy to present.
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