Amphibious Assaults

[BeeDub]

Can someone please give me the page number (Not the one on page 50) or try to explain to me how Amphibious Assaults work. No matter how many time I try an A.A., I can only get 1 unit to land and attack. It's driving me crazy.

[CharonJr]

Hmm, what kind of opposition do you face ? Basically an amphib-invasion is very hard as long as there is still an artillery in the attacked province since it is able to op-fire on the landing units.

CharonJr

[Tac2i]

Did you play through the tutorials? They may help a little. How many transports do you have in the area being amphibiously assaulted? If only two, then only one infantry may invade. Larger invasions require more transports. A "D-Day" sized amphib assault would take many transports. Transports have an amphib rating (capacity) and each land unit has an amphib value. If a unit's amphib value exceeds the transport(s) amphib capacity, the unit cannot invade.

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Roy, old wargamers never die

[aletoledo]

the transports have two numbers seperated by a slash. the right hand number is the total amphibious capacity. infantry cost 5 and tanks cost 10.

so if you want to take 2 infantry units you'll need 10 points. as the WA this will require at least 4 transports be in place next to the target.

each WA transport has a capacity of 3:
so 3 (capacity) X 4 (transports) = 12 (amphib capacity).

[BeeDub]

Ok, thanks.

I see what I'm doing wrong. I was reading the values wrong on the transports, I thought they were able to land more units then they actually could.

[aletoledo]

I can't tell you how long it took me to figure it out also.

[dgotrek]

The otherwise smashing manual does not seem to really mention the unit/transport ratio. [&:] I figured it was a bug or my failure to grasp the game.

I made my conceptual breakthrough, when in a rageful fit of most un-commander in chief behavior, I jammed every damned available transport off-shore Morocco. [:@]

Back in the day, I remember Eastern Front omitting the left click to load a vehicle and how much confusion that caused. This little gem of info should be stuck up at the top of the forum.

[slmintz]

I'm still not getting it. In the current scenario I am using, I transported an infantry unit from Egypt to my single transport in adjecent Mediterranian square and was able to successfuly load it onto a transport. On the Next turn, I tried to invade the Crimea which had no troops (only a train), but the cursor indicated "illegal move". I tried invading several other areas, some with troops, other without. All I got was "illegal move". Please help!!

[Toby42]

The way that this game handles Amphibious Assaults is really weird.. I don't care for it at all. I really can't warm up to the game. Nothing wrong with it and it works OK. Just my preference in games. I guess I don't care for "Generic" wargaming. I enjoy historical situations better.

[5cats]

slmintz, you don't need to "load" the unit onto the transport, you strat move your unit from start to landing point "along" the transports. You need several transports adjacent to the landing zone for amphibious invasions.

[Bradley7735]

BTW, what is accomplished by putting troops on the transports? You can't move loaded transports, and putting them on the ships just makes them vulnerable to attack.

Is there any reason at all to load a transport?

[TheVen]

Loading on transports is just an A&A thing. Unless you have some mathematical way you are preserving strat move points along a chain of transports I don't see the point. But I did try this myself because I was having trouble doing amphib assaults as well. The reasoning was "maybe if my trannie is sitting offshore with a unit on it at the beginning of the turn then I will be able to offload the unit onto the enemy beach". Of course, as I learned form this thread, my problem was that I was misreading the transport capacity for amphib assault versus strat move capacity. Thanks for the tips.

[MrQuiet]

BTW, what is accomplished by putting troops on the transports? You can't move loaded transports, and putting them on the ships just makes them vulnerable to attack.

Is there any reason at all to load a transport?

I have not done this yet but I can think of 3 reasons off the top of my head.

1) You would have more transport capacity from the trannys at the begining of the Chain on your next turn then you would if you had not staged units out a couple zones.

2) You could move the trannys at the beginning of the chain on your next turn. Handy if you are short trannys or need many for the invasion.

3) Your troops are staged that much closer to an Amph Assault on your next turn and there offenseive dice will not suffer as much of a penalty. (Assumeing they are moving more then 2 zones from original position to assault)

Of course you would have to weigh all this against the risk of the Transports being destroyed.

-MrQuiet

[TomFoolery]

Good Question. I was ready to scrap the game for want of the amphibious assault. Fortunately I looked here first. Just tried it with mutiple transports and this game will live to fight another day. Thanks.

[Krisanie]

I had the same problem, and maybe I am crazy, but my solution was to conduct an air assult before the amphibious assult. Maybe I just don't understand, but that seems to supress the Op-Fire.

[JanSorensen]

The op-fire is from ART units in the target area. Your air assault probably knocked out those art units letting your troops land safely. Thats normal procedure.

[rothaar]

This will probably be my last journal entry as CINC Allied Forces. A few hours ago 3 transports were sunk by the Japanese off the coast of the Marshall Islands with 2 tank units led by America's finest (albeit inexperienced) soldiers. It is the latest in a long string of attacks that have left virtually all of the allied forces under my command without a single transport in the inventory. My staff lieutenant is accusing me of not having read the manual and being too proud to ask for help when I am stumped. I have done those things and for the record, I did NOT hear her call for dinner two hours ago and I wasn't swearing, I was deep in thought and perhaps talking out loud.

The press is correct in that I have been incapable of carrying out an amphibious assault but it isn't for lack of trying. I have lined up transports in a silly way from the coast of friendly countries to the doorstep of our enemies. Yet our troops no matter their type, refuse to get off the boat into enemy territory even when it is unoccupied. I have let them sit in the transports, basking in full daylight for all to see (especially enemy aircraft and naval vessels) for a full quarter of the year (1 turn) to think about what they must do but when ordered they simply reply, "illegal move!". I am then forced to watch them be massacred by a cold, vicious enemy who manages to land his troops hither and yon with little more than a single transport at the beachhead. I have been impotent in my ability to defend the Pacific and I will forever rue the day when I lost Australia.

SIMPLE questions hound me in my sleep as the ghosts scream at me from the depths of Davy Jones Locker;

1. Exactly how many transports (new and shiny) does it take to move a single infantry or tank unit from friendly territory to the shore and eventual beachhead of enemy occupied territory?
2. If I have question 1, then the next is; if it takes two or even three, must each step of the silly transport chain also have the magic number of transports per step?
3. Can an attack force attack at the end of a strategic move or must they wait for hell, brimstone, and the next turn to attack the enemy?
4. Is an upgrade to this game that makes this all go away remotely possible? An upgrade that doesn't require me to have a battlegroup stationed in defense of transports at every single hexagon between the homeland and enemy territory?

The picture below is from a war correspondent no longer with us and shows my position before we lost the transports. It pains me to say that the correspondent was shooting footage when the Japanese carrier group shown in the North East took out his transport.

I may very well retire from the field before they come for me. There is a position open as head coach for a soccer league over in XBox. I would at least, be on time for supper.

[JanSorensen]

Rothaar,

Lets take a look at your transports in the area with your CV.

Below your units its says "13 10/3".

13 means you have 13 units present.
10 means you have a remaining capacity for strategic movement of 10.
3 means you have a remaining capacity for amphibious landing remaining.

Each land unit that you try to land by amphibious means requires 5 points of amph capacity (Armor requires 10). It also requires its normal capacity in strategic movement but thats rarely the problem. Finally, it needs to be in supply - but I doubt thats the problem.

Your problem almost certainly is that you lack sufficient amph capacity in the sea-area next to the invasion site.


Let me give an example of how it needs to be done. Lets say I want to invade Wake Island using the forces from Midway (1 MIL) and Hawaii (1 INF). Here we have the situation at the start. Note that I have 120 strategic capacity and 12 amph capacity off of Wake Island (continued)

[JanSorensen]

Now I have moved the INF from Hawaii to Wake.

Note that the strategic capacity has been lowered by 5 for each of the 3 sea-areas the INF had to cross.

Note that the amph cap has been lowered by 5 (from 12 to 7) in the sea-area off of Wake while the amph cap is unchanged for the other two sea-areas.

[JanSorensen]

Finally, I moved the MIL from Midway to Wake to also invade.

Because there was no supply on Midway I first moved 1 supply from Hawaii to Midway (using up 1 strat cap for each of the 2 sea-areas involved). After that I could move the MIL from Midway to Wake - using 5 strat cap in each sea-area and 5 amph cap in the sea-area off of Wake.

Now the remaining unused amph cap is down to 2 - so no more units can land unless I move more transporters into the sea-area.

If you do not play with advanced supply you can ignore the part about moving the supply.

I hope this helps.