Some design questions

[Ormand]

I am trying to design a historical scenario involving an amphibious landing (actually two), and I am trying to figure out how to do a couple of things and understand how some things work. I was wondering if I could tap some of the knowledge here.

1) The second landing on new beaches occurs on turn two. I see two potential problems. First, I don't think I can use the events to create units that are embarked on transports. Is this true? For this scenario, I could put them on ships at start, and then let the player land them the next turn. But, if it is several turns away, what then?

2) With the reinforcement event, is it possible to set up the HQ hierarchy? In this case, an entire regimental combat team would be embarked on ships including its HQ. Even if I did this on land, individually with the editor, it seems to me that I would have to start with the HQ, and then possibly the new units would be subordinate to this HQ if that was the closest, correct?

3) Assuming I am correct on 1) and 2), I suppose the workaround is to put land in the map, and put reinforcements there, and let the player load and launch the assault from there. Ugly, but doable.

4) It looks like ships at sea don't need an HQ. Is there any benefit to having them? Do, they get an HQ bonus at all?

5) Is there a way to resupply ships at sea via events? For the purpose of the scenario, it is possible that the time scale and the length of the scenario might overrun the supplies stocked in the counters, and thus the ships might prematurely run out of supplies. And since this scenario won't need ports, this could be a problem. It looks like the event just gives supplies to HQ's. Of course, an alternative is to change the supply carry for each ship, but this could be painful.

6) As a future feature, it might be nice to have cargo ships carry supplies that can then transferred back to an HQ or to a ship. This doesn't seem to be possible at present.

Thanks

p.s. It would be nice to have a description of each of the new events, i.e., those that aren't in the AT manual.

[GrumpyMel]

ORIGINAL: Ormand

I am trying to design a historical scenario involving an amphibious landing (actually two), and I am trying to figure out how to do a couple of things and understand how some things work. I was wondering if I could tap some of the knowledge here.

1) The second landing on new beaches occurs on turn two. I see two potential problems. First, I don't think I can use the events to create units that are embarked on transports. Is this true? For this scenario, I could put them on ships at start, and then let the player land them the next turn. But, if it is several turns away, what then?

2) With the reinforcement event, is it possible to set up the HQ hierarchy? In this case, an entire regimental combat team would be embarked on ships including its HQ. Even if I did this on land, individually with the editor, it seems to me that I would have to start with the HQ, and then possibly the new units would be subordinate to this HQ if that was the closest, correct?

3) Assuming I am correct on 1) and 2), I suppose the workaround is to put land in the map, and put reinforcements there, and let the player load and launch the assault from there. Ugly, but doable.

4) It looks like ships at sea don't need an HQ. Is there any benefit to having them? Do, they get an HQ bonus at all?

5) Is there a way to resupply ships at sea via events? For the purpose of the scenario, it is possible that the time scale and the length of the scenario might overrun the supplies stocked in the counters, and thus the ships might prematurely run out of supplies. And since this scenario won't need ports, this could be a problem. It looks like the event just gives supplies to HQ's. Of course, an alternative is to change the supply carry for each ship, but this could be painful.

6) As a future feature, it might be nice to have cargo ships carry supplies that can then transferred back to an HQ or to a ship. This doesn't seem to be possible at present.

Thanks

p.s. It would be nice to have a description of each of the new events, i.e., those that aren't in the AT manual.

Ormand,

I don't have all the answers to your questions, but I do have some suggestions that can serve as a workaround.

For 1 & 2,

You could create the reinforments including thier command heiarchy as units of a seperate (sleeping) regieme. Place them on the map at start....and then have an event either join the regiemes or give those individual units to the players regieme.
This basicaly puts the units where and how you want them, but doesn't allow them to be touched until you are ready to have them become active.

For #4 - Ships and aircraft really don't benefit from being attached to an HQ...other then as a means to draw supply.

#5 - I'm not sure if there is a command to give supply to individual units as I've never messed around with it before. You need to determine whether you want supply to be a factor in the scenerio or not. If you don't want it to be a factor then you can simply set the units to not consume supply at all (I think there might also be a rule-var that turns off supply as well). If you want it to be a factor then not having ports will likely be a problem..... and it may create issues for land & air units in an amphibous scenerio as well.

#6 - One workaround that you can use, at least for cargo ships carrying supplies to HQ's is to create an SFT for supplies and then use events to check for the presence of that SFT type in a given hex and convert it to supplies for an HQ occupying that hex. You can look at how the Murmansk Convoys are handled in my ETO scenerio for an example of that mechanism. In your case, you might want to use an Action Card that is played by the player on a specific hex that triggers the conversion....that would give the player some level of control over when/where the SFT gets converted to supply.

Hope these suggestions help. I'm a bit rusty with the editor, as I haven't had a chance to spend much time on scenerio's lately.

[Ormand]

Thanks GrumpyMel.

These are interesting ideas. The sleeping regime is interesting, and I believe I saw an event to change regimes.

Supply on or off is also interesting. I have to think about this and how to integrate it into the engine. Supply can play a role since the invaders need to get supply on shore, and the defenders need a large enough stockpile to keep fighting. In one battle, supply mattered twice: early on, contaminated water was delivered, and later there was a typhoon for three days that prevented supplies from reaching shore. This was late in the campaign, which was already into the late phase of trying finish off the battle. In the first case, this would be properly modeled by lowering readiness. In the second, not delivering supplies is the best way. I am more worried about the ships not being running out of supply before they can complete their support missions. For ground forces, the event will work OK.

OK, but, with supply consumption off, how does restoration of readiness work? I have seen readiness drop from combat results, in this case does readiness stay high, or do I have to intervene?

[GrumpyMel]

ORIGINAL: Ormand

Thanks GrumpyMel.

These are interesting ideas. The sleeping regime is interesting, and I believe I saw an event to change regimes.

Supply on or off is also interesting. I have to think about this and how to integrate it into the engine. Supply can play a role since the invaders need to get supply on shore, and the defenders need a large enough stockpile to keep fighting. In one battle, supply mattered twice: early on, contaminated water was delivered, and later there was a typhoon for three days that prevented supplies from reaching shore. This was late in the campaign, which was already into the late phase of trying finish off the battle. In the first case, this would be properly modeled by lowering readiness. In the second, not delivering supplies is the best way. I am more worried about the ships not being running out of supply before they can complete their support missions. For ground forces, the event will work OK.

OK, but, with supply consumption off, how does restoration of readiness work? I have seen readiness drop from combat results, in this case does readiness stay high, or do I have to intervene?

Resoration of readiness works just fine with supply off...it just doesn't get factored into the equation.

You can also turn supply off by SFT type, by simply reducing thier supply consumption to zero.

With amphibous operations in ATG....typicaly the attacker wants to be able to get control of some sort of port...as that's where supply gets routed through when going overseas.

Though I guess it depends upon how you are modeling supply....are you using production at all or are you just having events assign it to an HQ (or do you just give HQ's huge stockppiles and thats it?)

[Ormand]

At this point, since the scenarios should be fairly short (although one could go 90 turns) production isn't didn't seem to make sense. Actually, the idea is a campaign involving several amphibious operations in the Pacific Theater, Saipan, Tinian, Guam, Peleliu & Anguar, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and Operation Olympic at 1 day/turn, 1km/hex, mostly battalion sized units for the US. Japan would be battalion and company sized units (they need to be able to cover the land some). Only the last two are fairly large in scale. For the most part, it looks like human vs. AI since other than Olympic or Okinawa there isn't a lot of room for grand defensive strategy (a variant with Okinawa would be to keep the regiment sent to Taiwan). Another options would be to do the Philippines (between Peleliu and Iwo). This could be two player and is where supplies transported on shore would be a big deal, since the whole purpose of the Leyte Gulf was to get at the Imperial Fleet in to attach the landing areas and prevent supplies landing for the troops.

It is possible that they will come out to be boring, but deadly. Operation Chrysanthemum (aka Divine Wind) during Okinawa might have some interesting features. The first four are a furious battles for about 2 weeks with stubborn end points with severe attrition. US troops also move on from one scenario to the next, so success can be modeled somehow (not that I have gotten that far), e.g. 2nd MarDiv at Saipan and Iwo Jima, 1st MarDiv at Peleliu and Okinawa. The last three battles were (would be) longer, and replacements are needed during the game (1st MarDiv suffered ~100% casualties on Okinawa and for the first time, replacements were inserted during the battle). Anyway, for a map some 20-30 km long for an island operation it isn't clear that supply production would make a lot of sense. For the Japanese, one large depot or two would work at the start with maybe some modest production for the larger islands. For the US the trouble is to supply troops and ships. I am trying to see how stockpiling works for ships, and then use events to supply the ground troops. I kind of like the idea of a supply transport system to give the US player a bit of a headache to figure out how make things work.

I've started with Peleliu, and perhaps the biggest problem will be getting the AI to defend properly. That is not to come out good defensive terrain to form line, but to stay in the Mountains. I am playing around with events and rulevars to get this to work. In one start, even though the Japanese came out to form a line, US casualties on D+1 were satisfying in that three battalions 1/1, 2/5, 3/5, where hit hard, and it made no sense to push further north because the odds were bad. Historically, 1st Marines was nearly annihilated in just seven days (50% losses). Seventh and fifth Marines made it a little further, but in 20-30 days they too had suffered ~50% losses. One of the problems to be solved for the US is how to secure the entire island quickly without getting annihilated in the process.

Your idea of a sleeping regime could work well for this case, as the 81st ID landed on Anguar on D+1 and some 10 days later one RCT replaced 1st Marines on Peleliu as a corps reserve. The fact that the Army and Marines didn't work together well, can be modeled nicely with separate allied regimes.