Leo's "recipe" for best possible (for me) loading of troops on "Transport" TFs..

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

I know that many UV players find troop loading very cumbersome in UV and that
they have problem(s) loading troops on transport ships in "Transport" TFs.

I never had...

This is how I do it...


Leo's "recipe" for best possible (for me) loading of troops on "Transport" TFs

#1
Write on paper the names of units you want to load. Also write how much space
they will take on ships.


#2
Create separate TF for each unit you want to load. The size of such TF depends
on available ships and other issues (i.e. larger ships are faster but they
load/unload slower - it's your choice).

The cargo space in any such created TF should be equal to or larger than unit
you want to load on it (i.e. if you want to load Japanese Inf regiment with
6900 load points you must create TF with at least 7000 points of cargo space).


#3
If there are more transport ships (i.e. APs and AKs) in harbour than what you
need put them all in one auxiliary/temporary TF. This is to stop UV to
automatically add ships to your "Transport" TFs if it thinks you allocated
insufficient cargo points on ships).


#4
Load every unit on appropriate TF (the units will start loading).


#5
Join all TFs into first one.

Now all ships are in single TF and they will continue to load their allocated troops.


#6
Disband auxiliary/temporary "Transport" TF (it is no longer needed).


This way you effectively create single TF and have all the ships load all
units you want in manner you want.

Nice and easy - isn't it !!!


I hope you will like this... this method never failed me...

Enjoy!


Leo "Apollo11"

[oldsneak]

can you load troops in all scenarios ?

i'm exhausted---cant get a k-ration in life ring

[Rainerle]

Hi,
as if it were that easy. Some of my units cannot be loaded whatever. The unit in question is the IJN 230th Rgt.'s guns sitting at Finchhaven (Squads and personnel have been airlifted to Rabaul). Now when I try to load the remains of said Rgt. onto a transport TF nothing happens (load troops only - and the next turn an empty TF heads to Rabaul 8-( ). The same happened with the 2nd AT, no chance to load them. Then, there are still some parts of the 230th at Buna, involved in fighting. I tried to load them on transports but that too was not possible (maybe one cannot load own troops. when enemy is in hex? - but I own the base?). Then, when I try to load some troops on barges, not the selected ones appear, but the 6th SeeBees !!!! Then in an effort to load the correct troops I unloaded the allied troops which promptly appeared at my bases, fighting at the next turn !!!
This is all very weird indeed.

[CEDeaton]

I actually had a situation recently where I sent in a US sub to pull out a couple of squads of Infantry that were acting as Raiders that had taken up residence on one of the small islands around The Slot for a few turns. The IJN had landed a large force on the island the turn before and I expected to lose them if I couldn't get them loaded and out of there.

I didn't notice it when I actually loaded the unit because I just saw that the right sized force had been loaded, but rather than load my troops, it chose to load a Jap Regiment instead! Actually it was about 500 units of Supply and a Jap Colonel. Yes, all that stuff was loaded in one turn. Those boys were sure throwing things down the hatch of that sub FAST. Must've been Saki!

Anyway, since it was a PBEM game and we had some time invested in it already, we played it out to see what would happen when the sub eventually had to come home. I sent the sub back to Townsville (no sense sending him somewhere where he could really mess me up) and the unit did unload and reconstitute itself onshore - still with no troops, but when I attacked with a full Aussie Regiment the following turn, my odds were still only something like 3 to 1 (but we did destroy the unit).

Anyone else seen anything like that yet?

[popejoy1]

Hi!

I have had one problem with this approach: the game does not appear to zero out TF contents when merging TFs, so when you merge all the TFs the now-deleted TFs still "remember" their original contents, load orders, etc.

For example:

1) Use Leo's method to load a few units - say, the 2nd Marine Division at Noumea.

2) When you're done merging all the Noumea Transport TFs into one, create a transport TF re-using one of the TF ID's you just merged , e.g., TF 210, somewhere else (e.g., Brisbane).

3) When the time for turn execution comes, don't be surprised if your "new" TF 210 in Brisbane (with the old TF ID) has "teleported" the same unit it was loading when it was part of the lift for the 2nd Marine Division. The ships are different, but the TF ID number (and its associated data) is the same and that seems to be the root of the problem.

This may explain the "defection" of the Japanese colonel with 500 tons of supplies and the mysterious appearance of the 6th Seabees.

I have reported this as a bug (with save game files) to Matrix, but no response as yet....

Paul

[CEDeaton]

Thanks Paul.

It's interesting that you had a similar problem to. I think this might be a somewhat common problem after all and maybe a lot of people just don't notice when they are transporting enemy units since they assume the load worked fine and when they unload it's sometimes going to be into a "hot" zone, so I can understand where, in at least some of those cases, the error gets completely overlooked in the heat of the battle reports.

I was just now sitting here playing UV as the Japs vs the Allied AI and somehow managed to load part of the Australian 15th Division onto a fleet of Jap AGs at Tulagi. I had been trying to load a partial Regiment of IJA for shipment back over to it's parent unit on Lunga during a period of inactivity in the area. This is made all the more remarkable by the fact that just a moment before, there wasn't an Aussie any closer than Port Morseby that I could tell and given the fact that I had just thumped the American carriers hard a few days before, I don't think the AI would have tried to drop any 'Diggers' in on me that turn unless it did it with subs!

Luckily, it was 11:30pm and not 2:30am, and I spotted the bug as soon as it happened this time and saved the turn right away. Could you let me know if there is someone in particular that would be the best person over at Matrix to send my save game file to in case they want to take a look at it?

I'll dig around the board a bit tommorrow and probably find some sort of a contact name over there, so unless you already know the person's name, please don't go to any trouble to find out.

[Mr.Frag]

Much safer to break things up into smaller TF's, give them a destination of a sea hex with do not retire set. Each individual TF will load and set sail, all meeting up at the coordinates.

Then you are free to merge them all up and reset a new destination hex safely without any risk of screwing up the load commands and having ships take off quarter full or having units vanish by being confused.

[Mr.Frag]

Could you let me know if there is someone in particular that would be the best person over at Matrix to send my save game file to in case they want to take a look at it?

If you have the turn saved from right before it happens and can make it happen by loading that turn and repeating, fire it off to Dan (see anchored post in Bugs forum).

The big problem seems to be that we get caught not noticing these things till 1-2 turns AFTER the event actually happened and have zapped the actual save just before it went wrong. I think a rotating auto-save feature would be very helpful. Hard drive space is cheap