Game improvement suggestion/questions - put em here folks!

[valorius]

Is there a way to "select all" for mass disbandment?

there are times when the AI creates just hundreds of totally useless units in completely bizarre locations. Getting rid of them means manually selecting each one and disbanding them one at a time, which can take an hour.

If there was a way (or is there a way?) to select all similar units on screen at once and delete them en masse, it would REALLY make my life a lot easier. 

[valorius]

Another suggestion.... On the R&D upgrades, if you get a fuel upgrade of +1, it is really meaningless. Is it possible to make any fuel upgrade for a unit like +5% for each time it's upgraded in that category?

Also...is it possible for infantry to get upgrades? I have never seen an infantry unit get an upgrade in any version of the game i've played.

[teophrastusbombastus]

Apr 3, 2023 5:50:36 GMT valorius said:

Another suggestion.... On the R&D upgrades, if you get a fuel upgrade of +1, it is really meaningless. Is it possible to make any fuel upgrade for a unit like +5% for each time it's upgraded in that category?

Also...is it possible for infantry to get upgrades? I have never seen an infantry unit get an upgrade in any version of the game i've played.

Primo:
I have made a similar suggestion about the Max fuel +1.
Think it was 10% first bonus and progressively less on subsequent occasions.
To prevent shooting Max fuel up into infinite (too quick).
As a principle, saying in a different way, when possible, I like the idea of using percentage for the bonuses.
Maybe a "double percentage" system: say a positive on bonus chance resulting in a random percentage on the way to reach 1 point.
Game would have to keep track - adding the percentages of various positives and awarding a point each time 100% is reached.
There could be a specific "multiplier" for each kind of bonus in order to make it easier or harder to reach the bonus.
In the case of the Max fuel multiplier we would probably want it to be a bit easier than average to reach 1 point. Quicker progression.
In the case of Range (of fire) we would probably want it to be much harder to reach 1 point. Much slower progression.

Secundo:
Yes! I have seen Infantry bonuses but it is rare, perhaps the rarest Class to achieve bonuses in my experience.  
  

[jeff]

Theophrastus: I had been thinking the exact same thing. Just never got around to coding it. I will today. 10% per increase I think will be good.
While I am in that section I will check the infantry too.
Far, and away the best bonus to get is Artillery Range. Maybe just a bit tooo powerful. I am on turn 200 having had +1 to art range for about a year.
I is pretty overwhelmingly awesome. Even the 75mm Art air transportable artillery give the airbone troops very powerful capabilities. I have not totally won the war yet, but
I am pretty sure it is in the bag. I am sad. I want to get beaten so bad it hurts. Come on AI.
Speaking of AI...I found a bunch of AI goofs I was fixing the last couple of days. Kept me from posting a Friday update last week. I think I have all the bugs fixed.
I am pretty excited about the new Zone of Control rules. Naval not to land...land not to sea. I think they look pretty good.
I modified Rail movement a bit. Artillery, or AD units that move by rail will have support ability halved in the enemy's next turn.
I have tested that a bit last night. Seems to work pretty well. Mechanics stay the same. (I was going to leave them in a train until you unloaded them. But, I did not like that
too much.) I like this better ...works just like before, but get a nerf for the next phase. I guess you could say the unit dis-embarking, setting up sites, un-limbering, and
setting up communications, and stuff. They can still get some shots off, but not so accurate, or maybe without the full ammo load.
Better than having them not fire at all. (Which is what would happen if they moved in trucks, or half-tracks, or wagons.)
I think this will make Self-Propelled Artillery a bit more lucrative.
I have not been buying self propelled stuff for a long time. Just relying on the 'rail-hopping'.

[valorius]

I like the 10% fuel increase rule.

One of the few reasons to ditch many types of early war aircraft in the game is because of the fuel limitations inherent to them, but if they can get sizeable fuel bonuses (better fuel economy engines + drop tanks) then they'd stay more relevant later into the game.

Short range fighters REALLY hamper the Russians, probably more than any other nation.

1/2 reduction in rail mounted arty and AD sounds like a good number to me.

One area where i like SP artillery is in Diamond shaped formations where the unit closest to the axis of advance is an SP AT gun or a heavy tank, and the other 3 units in the diamond are heavy SP guns. You can use them as the vanguard of an advance and man are they hard (but not impossible) to stop.

[valorius]

SUGGESTION: Is it possible to get a game menu option to allow same turn airborne drops?
Making an airborne attack take 2 turns really removes the surprise element of airborne attacks, and makes them extremely easy to counter/nullify.

[jeff]

You mean Load into air transport, move to target, and drop in one turn ?

    Would that not allow you to load into an air transport, move to an enemy air field, and drop on the airfield, and capture it, even if the airfield was full
of enemy fighters ? 
   That would make them impossible to intercept.  The AI could fly in, and drop paratroopers on your cities without worrying about your fighters shooting them down.
Same mechanics apply to bombers.   The current game mechanics allow interceptors to catch bombers bombing targets.  The system is a bit abstract, but I think
it is necessary to work.

[teophrastusbombastus]

Apr 6, 2023 14:29:06 GMT jeff said:

You mean Load into air transport, move to target, and drop in one turn ?

    Would that not allow you to load into an air transport, move to an enemy air field, and drop on the airfield, and capture it, even if the airfield was full
of enemy fighters ? 
   That would make them impossible to intercept.  The AI could fly in, and drop paratroopers on your cities without worrying about your fighters shooting them down.
Same mechanics apply to bombers.   The current game mechanics allow interceptors to catch bombers bombing targets.  The system is a bit abstract, but I think
it is necessary to work.

I think I remember a brief period ages ago when paras (could be) dropped on ending the transport movement...
You may have taken that out for the reason you're talking about now...

Although I'm not entirely sure about the incoming transports not being intercepted in any case.
I'd say if they fly blind into an enemy Fighter stack over an airfield they get shredded as other air units.
But if the airfield is reckoned the maneuver will probably work.
Unless the para unit dropping action could be coded to count as a Tac Bomber attack to trigger Fighter interception against the paras...
Come to think of it the air transport dropping the paras should also be counted as a Tac Bomber attacking.
The principle taken to the extreme land units disembarking from land or sea transports should be counted as attacking for enemy fire support effects.      

Another interesting case on interceptions / supportings is what we can see in the OoB series.
The supporting class is AT not Artillery.
This results in sometimes a Tank unit being shredded because it attacked a juicy Infantry without spotting the supporting AT.
The Artillery has a different function in OoB. It wears down on enemy unit efficiency.
A unit bombarded by three or four Artilleries may suffer just light casualties but is rendered nearly uncapable of defending from any direct attack for the remainder of the turn.   

[valorius]

Apr 6, 2023 14:29:06 GMT jeff said:

You mean Load into air transport, move to target, and drop in one turn ?

    Would that not allow you to load into an air transport, move to an enemy air field, and drop on the airfield, and capture it, even if the airfield was full
of enemy fighters ? 
   That would make them impossible to intercept.  The AI could fly in, and drop paratroopers on your cities without worrying about your fighters shooting them down.
Same mechanics apply to bombers.   The current game mechanics allow interceptors to catch bombers bombing targets.  The system is a bit abstract, but I think
it is necessary to work.

If you flew into an airfield with fighters they would intercept you "out of the sun" when you flew over the hex, I believe. If not, we could change it as theo suggests into a situation where fighters treat the transports like tac bombers and automatically engage.

If we have to keep the airborne process 2 turns, maybe make the 1st turn the actual embarking, and then allow the flight and drop on the second turn? 
Because having to park over an enemy airfield or city and wait there just about totally ruins the element of surprise that airborne units absolutely rely on to succeed.

I cannot think of any time in history where enemy fighters successfully intercepted and prevented an airborne drop. Are you aware of any?

[valorius]

Apr 6, 2023 21:12:04 GMT teophrastusbombastus said:

Apr 6, 2023 14:29:06 GMT jeff said:

You mean Load into air transport, move to target, and drop in one turn ?

    Would that not allow you to load into an air transport, move to an enemy air field, and drop on the airfield, and capture it, even if the airfield was full
of enemy fighters ? 
   That would make them impossible to intercept.  The AI could fly in, and drop paratroopers on your cities without worrying about your fighters shooting them down.
Same mechanics apply to bombers.   The current game mechanics allow interceptors to catch bombers bombing targets.  The system is a bit abstract, but I think
it is necessary to work.

I think I remember a brief period ages ago when paras (could be) dropped on ending the transport movement...
You may have taken that out for the reason you're talking about now...

Although I'm not entirely sure about the incoming transports not being intercepted in any case.
I'd say if they fly blind into an enemy Fighter stack over an airfield they get shredded as other air units.
But if the airfield is reckoned the maneuver will probably work.
Unless the para unit dropping action could be coded to count as a Tac Bomber attack to trigger Fighter interception against the paras...
Come to think of it the air transport dropping the paras should also be counted as a Tac Bomber attacking.
The principle taken to the extreme land units disembarking from land or sea transports should be counted as attacking for enemy fire support effects.      

Another interesting case on interceptions / supportings is what we can see in the OoB series.
The supporting class is AT not Artillery.
This results in sometimes a Tank unit being shredded because it attacked a juicy Infantry without spotting the supporting AT.
The Artillery has a different function in OoB. It wears down on enemy unit efficiency.
A unit bombarded by three or four Artilleries may suffer just light casualties but is rendered nearly uncapable of defending from any direct attack for the remainder of the turn.   

We could make a situation where if a transport for any reason touches or moves adjacent to an enemy fighter, the fighters automatically attack it. That would solve that problem real fast. Or you could do what you pretty much have to do anyway if you have partisans turned on, which is garrison your airfields and cities. Which has always been the real world defensive measure vs airborne units.


As it is right now, Airborne units are very limited in usefulness.


That OOB AT gun support fire idea is pretty neat too.

[jeff]

I can not think of any airborne assaults where the attacker did not actually have air supremacy. (Not counting small scale commando drops.) Crete, Sicily, Normandy, Arnhem, Rhein (Varsity).  More than just dumping the troops. They would have to be supplied by air, until they linked up with ground forces.
   Escort the para’s with 4 fighters, and 3 tac’s.  
hmmmm which transport rule you guys using ? Stay on map, or the good old points.
I use points.
   I maybe test it out.

[valorius]

I use points also.

The main problem with 2 turn para drop sequence is not the enemy fighters really, it's that you're attacking an undefended target, enemy see's your transport when your turn ends (even if heavily escorted), and next thing you know the AI surrounds the target with a slew of AT guns or whatever in the turn that your transport is just sitting there, at which point you basically have to abort the airdrop.

[teophrastusbombastus]

Both two last points true I believe.

From the western Allies side there must have been little in the way of paratroop operations without massive air support, besides the pre existence of air superiority conditions. And when in doubt drop them by night...
That may not have completely been the case with Deutschland's use of paratroops.
We all know they gave up large scale airborne operations after Crete.
Although I'm under the impression they suffered the most with AD and Infantry defense.
Not exactly an airborne operation but there are also the German air supply operations in the eastern front.
The air bridge to supply Stalingrad had an immense cost against extensive Soviet AD defense and probably Fighters.
No surprise element whatsoever there... they were expecting the supply planes.
As the ones trying to supply Market Garden found much better prepared AD than the para drops themselves.  
Much less known are Soviet airborne operations.
I remember mentions of guerrilla type units being para dropped way beyond front lines.
Do not remember mentions of Soviet large scale airborne operations.
But information about the Soviet side of the war was always a trickle compared with the other major "players"...

And yes!
If the defender in the game has units in range with the air transport it can even place an AD or any other unit on most of the airfields and prevent the drop. I think game is not allowing air drop over an occupied hex (PG/AG old way), which in fact makes not much sense if we consider other cases in which stacking is allowed in PGX (when using rail, actually another transport or the infinite air stacking - paras are dropped from the air). 
One can argue in the opposite direction that however an airfield may be unguarded from the military point of view it will never be deserted and any enemy force would be detected with a high degree of an attack alert being sounded before the airfield crew could be dominated.
Unless the para drop was made some distance away from the airfield...
But when we take game scale into consideration things may get foggy.
A para drop "some distance away from the airfield" could probably be, in terms of game, still inside the airfield hex...

[jeff]

Am I the only one who has remembered to check the map on turn 25, and found the British, and Czech partisans have captured half of Bavaria?
Haha… I mist have missed that message from the local police.
I do not usually have any problems with the AI deploying new forces.
Use level bombers to destroy any primary city targets. (No new forces can build on cities with 200+ bomb damage.) red hex-outline.
AI usually is busted on emergency budget too. (Reserve/emergency savings.)
Isolate area by interdicting rail lines is re-inforcements likely.
The 42 hex range of the 109 limits my airborne operations until the FW-190s become available. Actually the ranges have been out of whack for years, and I still have not had time to fix it.
I have a miles per hex setting in the map file. So the Max-fuel value in the e-file should be set to actual range in miles.
Just a feature I forgot, and need to developer.

[teophrastusbombastus]

May 17, 2023 18:27:17 GMT jeff said:

Am I the only one who has remembered to check the map on turn 25, and found the British, and Czech partisans have captured half of Bavaria?
Haha… I mist have missed that message from the local police.
I do not usually have any problems with the AI deploying new forces.
Use level bombers to destroy any primary city targets. (No new forces can build on cities with 200+ bomb damage.) red hex-outline.
AI usually is busted on emergency budget too. (Reserve/emergency savings.)
Isolate area by interdicting rail lines is re-inforcements likely.
The 42 hex range of the 109 limits my airborne operations until the FW-190s become available. Actually the ranges have been out of whack for years, and I still have not had time to fix it.
I have a miles per hex setting in the map file. So the Max-fuel value in the e-file should be set to actual range in miles.
Just a feature I forgot, and need to developer.

No!
Once I suddenly took notice there were some Polish flags where it wasn't supposed.
When I managed to get "someone" investigating what was going on "they" found Polish Tanks.
The whole area around Czechoslovakia needs garrisons, and at least one or two in Prussia.
And I usually garrison a big number of airfields with AD in Germany's western and central regions.
That completely prevents the arrival of airlifts and discourages paratroops.