LCUs aboard sunken ships.......

[HansBolter]

Has there ever been any consideration given to reporting to the player the LCUs that go down with the ships?

One of my biggest frustratiuons with the game is not knowing what LCU won't arrive at it's intended destination because the ship transporting it was sunk.

I certainly can't speak for others, but I usually have so many ships at sea transporting so many LCUs to so many destinations it is a bit much for me to keep mental track of what each ship is carrying.

How do others deal with this? Do you keep a written list off to the side fo your computer tracking what each ship is carrying so you will know what LCU was lost when a given ship is sunk? Seems like a lot of bookkeeping for a player to have to do when we have so lazily become accustomed to having the comp do the bookkeeping for us.

Has there ever been any consideration given to providing a list of destroyed LCUs instead of just a victory point value total? This would at least allow the player to check the destroyed LCU list the next turn after a laden transport is sunk and associate the lost LCU with the sunken transport if there is never any implementation of a reporting of lost LCUs along with the report of the ship sinking.

Before any one jumps down my throat for complaining or descrying tha game as broken, please take note that I am asking in a civil manner if any consideration has ever been given to expanding the reporting regarding LCU losses, while inquiring as to how others may deal with what sometimes becomes a frustrating issue for me.

[castor troy]

If there´s only one ship in the TF and it sinks it´s hard (impossible) to tell if you can´t remember what was on there. If there are more ships in the TF then you will get a message of "TF xy rescuing survivors of yx unit".

[dazoline II]

Another variation is when I lose a single AK on a computer cargo run to some far off island and have no way of finding out which island it was. It would be nice to have some type of tracker table for recently sunk ships/tfs their cargo manifest i.e. troop load and final destination.
 
Of course my workaround is to save the new turn in a new slot and open the old turn and look for the ship/tf in question. Although it is a pain and time waster.

[baghdadbob]

Hans,

I am happy you brought this topic up. This is a small issue but a huge issue logistically. The domino effect can be huge, depending on what LCU is lost at sea. Right now I keep a running log of LCU's being shipped and it is very time consuming. I have to account for every LCU arrival and movement which can be quite cumbersome. The only reason I do this, is in case one of my troop transports carrying a LCU is sunk. A repot showing what LCU's are lost with a sunken transport would definatley help with this issue.

[bsq]

Since a single transport can only carry a single (or part of a single) LCU, then the advice given elsewhere would seem to apply here. Don't place an LCU in a single ship. That way (barring disasters) a single ship sunk will only take part of the LCU and the rest (providing the devices are still in the pool or production) will slowly re-constitute.

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: dazoline II

Another variation is when I lose a single AK on a computer cargo run to some far off island and have no way of finding out which island it was. It would be nice to have some type of tracker table for recently sunk ships/tfs their cargo manifest i.e. troop load and final destination.

Of course my workaround is to save the new turn in a new slot and open the old turn and look for the ship/tf in question. Although it is a pain and time waster.

Agreed. Not knowing which island isn't going to receive the intended dose of supply or fuel is a big logistical handicap. Since when I try to point out things that could be improved in the game I am often accused by the fanbois of denegraing the devs, I stepped gingerly into this one by listing only what I see as the the most negative impact of not receiving such reporting, ie....not knowing what troops were lost and will not arrive at thier destination. I'm glad some one chose to expand the issue to include more negative aspects.

I sometimes use the same technique of loading the last turn to investigate the data I wish the game was providing to me.

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: bsq

Since a single transport can only carry a single (or part of a single) LCU, then the advice given elsewhere would seem to apply here. Don't place an LCU in a single ship. That way (barring disasters) a single ship sunk will only take part of the LCU and the rest (providing the devices are still in the pool or production) will slowly re-constitute.

Yes, the most common and sensible work around is to avoid the loss of the entire unit by spreading it across multiple transports. The same is true for supply and fuel transport missions. Thius is a great solution in a perfect world full of unlimited shipping.

However, since shipping is generally recognized to be at a premium with both sides suffering from a shortage of adequate transport shipping to fill their needs using more ships than is necessary is a decided luxury most of the time. Using more than one ship also sometimes simply puts more ships in the path of the offending submarine to be sunken along with the first ship. I have seen a thread where some one complained about losing 6 tankers and the standard response was if you send them out individually you only risk the loss of one ship in each TF. So, prevailing wisodom regarding how ro avoid catastrophic shipping loss argues against the technique of multiple ship transport TFs when not necessary.

Ideally, in a perfect world there would not only be adequate ships to afford the use of multiple ships where not necessitated by load requirements, but there would also be adquate numbers of escorts for all TFs. Alas, thus is not the case so we send out single ship, unescorted TFs and have to have crystal balls and/or total recall and/or copius bookeeping to glean what we lost when those ships are sunk.

From my perspective, and apparently from the perspective's of at least a few other players, a feature that reports the content of the ship lost and ideally, the ships destination, would be an improvement to the game. It falls to a developer to tell us if this is a feature that has been considered and rejected as too difficult and taxing to implement for the return value, or if it is a feature that they never considered and have yet to evaluate the work effort necessary to implement it, or if they disagree regarding the value of such a feature.

[n01487477]

I'm sure Floyd and I could do something about that in Tracker, but I thought that a LCU sunk onboard ship, gets replaced ... iirc ??? Need to test that I guess

[floydg]

I just checked the save file and it appears that the sunk ships still point to the loaded unit. That means it should be fairly straightforward to add an alert for the loss of the unit.

Also to note that I think an airgroup can't be split when loading, so if that transport goes down, so does the whole group.

Floyd

[bradfordkay]

It was my understanding that airgroups lost during transport are respawned. Am I incorrect in this thinking? 

[Smeulders]

You can buy them again, but it will cost you PP.

[bradfordkay]

Fair enough... I can respawn the important ones and not worry about those for whom I have no planes anyway... 

[floydg]

Does anyone have saves for the turn before an LCU goes down with a ship and also the turn after? Trying to add this to WitPTracker and I can't find a pre- and post-case.

Thanks!