Long-Range Amphibious Transports are Overpowered

[Argothair]

Mostly I quite like this game and think it's a big improvement over the 'classic' version. However, one thing that really bugs me is how overpowered the long-range amphibious transports (LRATs) are. America, Britain, Germany, and Japan can build basically as many of them as they need to; there's almost no reason to ever build a regular amphibious transport, because you're not going to run out of LRATs. Yes, the LRATs are 25% more expensive, but for the price you get much faster movement, much more stable supply, and (I believe) an improved ability to both attack while at sea and then land and make a follow-up attack on the same turn. A single LRAT can usually destroy an enemy garrison in a single turn, whereas a normal amphibious transport will often need 2-3 turns just to reach its destination, followed by 3-4 more turns to slowly wear down an enemy defender, which can keep reinforcing itself relatively well despite naval/aerial bombardment.

Part of why the LRATs bother me is that they mean nothing and nowhere is safe. In real life, if Japan owned every island in the Pacific Ocean west and south of Hawaii, then the Japanese home islands would have been quite safe -- there would be no way that even America could stage a credible amphibious invasion of, e.g., Hiroshima from Honolulu; the amount of gasoline that you'd burn trying to ship troops and ammo and food that far without any place to store it in depots would mean that the whole thing just becomes logistically infeasible, even if you're willing to spend an unlimited amount of cash on the project. But in the game, you could launch armies directly from San Francisco (let alone Hawaii!) and still have them arrive in Tokyo in fine fighting condition a couple of months later. This makes the island-hopping campaigns more than a little irrelevant.

Similarly, in the Atlantic, Germany used to want to invade Iceland and Newfoundland (or the Azores and Guyana) to form a bridge over to the United States after a successful Sea Lion. At the very least, you would need to take Quebec and send some heavy naval/air support for troops that would be weakened by the long sea voyage. In this game, though, you can launch troops directly from France to Washington, DC. It all just seems a bit silly. In my opinion, the extended range and clear superiority of the LRATs needlessly ruin the struggle to control suitable launching points for amphibious assaults, and that struggle used to be one of the most interesting aspects of the game.

I've read some people suggest that LRATs are needed to give the AI the ability to conduct meaningful trans-oceanic attacks, but in the older version of the game, if you took away the AI's islands, then it would just launch from the closest available point and do its best to protect the vulnerable amphibious transports while they slowly made their way to your shores. This solution seemed to work well enough at the time, and I would strongly prefer it to the current arrangement where everything just magically sneaks across an entire ocean.

Does anyone have thoughts on how to rebalance (or eliminate) LRATs without breaking the game? I don't want to entirely rewrite all of the AI's amphibious invasion scripts, but I'm thinking of making LRATs more expensive, or slower, or reducing the number of LRAT slots in each nation's force pool, or all of the above. I might also look for ways to make ordinary amphibious transports stronger; maybe they should be more combat-effective somehow. I've read people complaining that amphibious transports get too much attack power as you develop higher tech levels...maybe only normal amphibious transports should benefit from the tech level bonus to attack power? Would love to hear other people's suggestions.

[Elessar2]

One issue is that Lothos found that both types confuse the AI when it comes to launching invasions-he had to give each country one type or the other. One thing which bugs me is that they can be put into Naval Cruise, and even worse can then land at the end of their move!

[Chernobyl]

Pardon my ignorance but why is a short range amphib less powerful in combat? I actually didn't know this

Generally yeah I think they could be tweaked down a bit. Lower the force limits and/or remove naval cruise. I believe one of the developers is currently rethinking some of the unit and/or terrain defense values vs amphibs.

I think they are also rethinking which units should be allowed to become amphibs (AAA unit is kind of cheesy). Personally I would suggest limiting amphibs to Corps and SF units only (Corps should cost a higher % than SF) but I don't know if there is any way to change this without altering the sourcecode.

It's tough to model because historically sometimes invasions were done across long sea distances (Torch) and other times you apparently needed close-range harbors and airfields for support or the invasion wasn't gonna work (Overlord, Downfall).

[Taxman66]

Technically it isn't. It may be due to the supply reduction each turn they sit in the water is affecting their morale/readiness in their attack.

[Chernobyl]

Oh yeah definitely taking longer to get there resulting in lower supply is a factor!

[James Taylor]

I have been trying for years(maybe decades at this point ) to get Hubert and Bill to see the historical implications of using units other than corps and SF for amphibious operations.

The amphibious rules should of course be attached to the technology levels.

Instead of the garrison unit or perhaps in conjunction with, we need that division unit. Initially, level 1 should allow only the division and the SF unit to conduct the amphibious mission. After that, well there's room for negotiations, but still limited to the corps and SF units, making naval and air strikes very important for the successful operations.

[Argothair]

Yes, good point, James; the kinds of units you can put into amphibious transports, especially at lower tech levels, should be sharply limited.

I actually like having garrison units, but I'm not sure how I feel about giving them the option for tech upgrades, and I think they should have 0 strikes (i.e. no ability to attack other units). Garrisons don't attack; they defend.

What is your vision for how an infantry division unit would behave in this game? How would you differentiate their stats from the stats of an infantry corps, and how would that affect gameplay? I don't quite see why we couldn't just treat corps as the default unit for an amphibious assault, but I'm open to being persuaded otherwise.

I will probably make a mod soon to implement some of the ideas I've been ranting about on the forum. Has anyone written a how-to guide on how to use the editor and edit scripts? I know there are some guidelines within each script text file, but I'm looking for more of an overview that lays out what is and isn't possible, e.g., what's hardcoded into the .exe file and what you can change.