Airborne, artillery and heavy fleets

[jadam12]

I'm trying to understand the pros and cons for different units. According to the manual if any of my infantry attribute increases so will the attribute of my airborne units increase. But then whats the point in researching airborne, why not just spend those researchpoints on infantry?
Is there anything special with artillery in land combat? I'm aware of the opfire capability if they are placed at the right places (islands, straights and so on) but the soviets just massacred my army and the only difference was that I did not have artillery but instead more armor units in the fight. I checked and their stats were inferior to mine in every categories, so I really dont understand why has that happened. Is there any difference between artillery and say infantry or armor land attack value (AFAIK its the same giving the number of dice rolled for combat for all units, but I'm not sure)?
Also what should I use heavy fleets for? Are they worth the investment, as they seem quite vulnerable to air attacks and subs are better at sneaking through enemy lines and destroying transports.
And a last one: will my subs automatically resupply with torpedoes if I move them into a friendly port to the next turn or do I have to give any orders to them?

Thanks

[christian brown]

1) Nice observation, there is NO POINT researching airborne attributes.
2) Artillery does not use a straight up hit or miss formula when attacking, instead, they cause suppression (and also get to "shoot" at amphibiously invading forces preemptively) to their enemies, which is very different. I recommend reading the section of the manual dealing with suppression and checking out the many many posts on this forum dealing with them, any specific questions will, of course be answered.
3) Heavy fleets are incredibly expensive to build, it is very rare for a player to invest in them ,again, your observations regarding their vulnerabilities are keen ones. It is no coincidence that no new battleships have been built from the keel up since that conflict

They are however useful in other ways, so there is generally no reason to throw away the ones you start the game with. Great Britain, for example, has so many of them that they help guard the home islands from a Sea Lion attempt.

[jadam12]

Thanks, will check supression again as it seems I did not pay enough attention to it when reading the manual.

[jadam12]

One other thing: what if the combat advisor sais that the estimated loss will be 0.36, can units take 0.36 dmg or will it be rounded/randomized?

[christian brown]

it will be rounded...also, because of "automatic" or "critical" hits, these estimations made by the combat analyzer are not.......hmmmm..to be fully trusted. The larger the number of units participating, the greater the accuracy of the prediction (law of averages, eh?) In a small battle, say 3 subs against a light fleet and a transport, things can be especiallly wacky because of the "failure to fire" formula when subs attack non transport fleets........
anway, there are no "hit points" per se (this is actually what suppression fires inflict as well as the ) only damaged and destroyed units...........

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: jadam12
One other thing: what if the combat advisor sais that the estimated loss will be 0.36, can units take 0.36 dmg or will it be rounded/randomized?

One hit results in a damaged unit, a second hit on the same unit in the same combat results in a destroyed unit (damaged units zip back to factories right away for repair, so they don't stick around until another combat to be hit again).

The combat analyzer runs the combat 100 times, and reports the average number of hits attained in those 100 combat trial runs. So 0.36 means that there were 36 hits in those 100 trials.

[jadam12]

I see, thank you guys!

[rjh1971]

ORIGINAL: christian brown

1) Nice observation, there is NO POINT researching airborne attributes.

...

They are however useful in other ways, so there is generally no reason to throw away the ones you start the game with. Great Britain, for example, has so many of them that they help guard the home islands from a Sea Lion attempt.

Christian you forget that R&D costs increase as you have more units of a certain type so it could happen that you have 30+ inf units at level 8 attack evasion or whatever and you still want to increase those levels for your parachutes, then as you would only have a few it would be cheaper to invest in them rather than in infantry, though I admit this case would be very exceptional.

Battleships are useful to soften up shore defenses in combination with airforce, by no means you should start building any new ones, even put on hold the one Germany has in the producticon queue.
When playing Japan you might consider dismantling the damaged ones in the production spiral for half the resources, that's handy when Japan is isolated by the US and needs them.

About your submarines I think they automatically resuply once they leave the port,iirc, but that's easy to check.

[christian brown]

I've found it better to click the "supply unit" button whenever I want my sub to "torp up" this leaves nothing to chance. Note that you can "torp up" subs OUTSIDE ports, they just need to be next to a supply point on land,

[rjh1971]

ORIGINAL: christian brown

I've found it better to click the "supply unit" button whenever I want my sub to "torp up" this leaves nothing to chance. Note that you can "torp up" subs OUTSIDE ports, they just need to be next to a supply point on land,

That's true as long as you can resuply and get out of the coast with remaining movement or you risk getting bombbed to the sea button by aircraft, just think of leaving them in the W. France sea region.