Special forces

[BenTaylor]

I have wondered about special forces actions before such as commando raids on infrastructure like St Nazaire.

Would it be possible to build in such kinds of actions or is the game scale too large?

Examples of how this might work would be allowing rail to be attacked in a similar manner to aircraft by a ground unit (was mentioned by Wandering Head I think as a non starter), which would reflect the actions of commandos and Brandenburgers. In a similar way supply could be a target for attack by groups such as the LRDG in Africa.
Perhaps airfield attacks.

Seeing as these groups were often claimed to be disproportionately successful maybe this is worth modelling.

First we need to decide if their effectiveness was indeed skewed.

Then how might it be modeled if we think there was such effectiveness.

It could be abstracted in that units attack an adjacent region representing their need to be physically present but cause some kind of different sort of damage, it might be that successful action damages supply in that region (say 1, 2 or critical 3 to be worthwhile). Or 1, 2 or 3 units can not move next turn out of a region even if in supply (represents disruption to enemy intel and moral, logistic inefficiency).

Actions against political and state organisation might result in a loss of security, intel or increase partisian activity. Certain political event % could be modified (e.g. Germans attempt to stir up Iraq)/

Similarly observation points might be established such as Germany set up around Gibraltar to watch shipping. I think the Germans even tried this in the Arctic but got caught.

Mind you it seems only certain countries did well in certain theatres. And it could be argued the game builds this abstraction in through the sigint and security functions.

But it is fun to relate some kind of physical presence to the abstracted consequences a bit like Partisan actions in the game.

Anybody got comments on such a wish list.

I need to start figuring out modding to do this, would love to try some whacky stuff like let Canada build a special kind of "iceberg" carrier such as Habakkuk.

[christian brown]

I think special forces in the Second World War are/were overrated in their success/expense ratios, sure there were some notable unconventional attacks (the Norwegian commando raid on the heavy water plant comes to mind) but overall tended to be more costly than worthwhile in the end (the Chindits being the most egregious example.) Even semi-conventional forces like airlanded/airdropped light infantry were less than successful most of the time, and the game as it is tends to reflect that (who builds more than 1 or 2 airborne units?) That said however, I like the concept of hitting supply alone, it might almost be worthwhile to add "Attack Supply" as an option when attacking with air. Come to think of it, this probably ought to be an option.
But yeah, in the final analysis, this game is modeled on far too large a scale to include units of a sub-divisional character.....for those of us who like "special units" the airborne counter is already a bone, IMO.
Good luck with the modding, please tell us how it works out!

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: christian brown
But yeah, in the final analysis, this game is modeled on far too large a scale to include units of a sub-divisional character.....

I think that this is most true.

It seems like "special ops" are by definition unique missions with unique targets, sort of impossible to model in a game this scale.

I would argue that the airborne units ARE your special forces, then think on what they could do to make them more special. But nothing like this will be implemented at this stage, it would be too difficult for too little value.

The only special rule I like (in my dream mode as though this were possible) is: if dropped from air, get to attack rail before regular combat (to remove defensive bonus).

[BenTaylor]

What about the idea of attacking supply?

Was this ever done well in WWII from the air in a CONTENDED or even dominated air theatre? I mean did the Russians ever try bombing German fuel stores etc.?