Tank Landing Craft Capacities

[Paul Lewis]

I am designing a scenario that requires my TLC (Tank Landing Craft) to load three Churchill tanks and one Daimler Scout Car. This was the real capacity of the Royal Navy TLC's but it seems the game will not allow such a load!

It appears that the maximum load capacity of a single unit is 255, which isn't nearly enough for three tanks. The OOB Editor does not seem to allow numbers greater than 255.

Am I missing something? Can this not be changed?

Also, could someone please give me the rundown the abbreviations LCI, LCM, LCVP, and LCG? The only ones I know are the Royal Navy LCF (Landing Craft Flak), LCA (Landing Craft Assault), and LCL(P) (Landing Craft Light - Personal) I know there are a lot more than that and the whole thing gets confusing!

Any assistance would be appreciated!

[David F. Wall]

Of the abbreviations, the only ones I can identify off the top of my head are

LCI = Landing Craft Infantry
LCVP = Landing Craft Vehicle, Personnel

As for your question...

Warning: a technical and possibly boring speculation follows.

I suspect that the maximum of 255 is an artifact of only having eight bits to store the value for carrying capacity, and unless I'm very much mistaken, it can't be changed (at least, not in the context of what Matrix is willing to do to the game). All of the solutions that come to mind represent an effort of such labor intensity it makes me quiver.

There's a lot of this in SPWAW, probably all holdovers from the original Steel Panthers and its DOS heritage, which probably has a lot of data structure definition crafted in the name of saving memory. Remember, when the original SP came out it would run in 8MB, needed 16MB for some features to work, and at that time 16MB in a home PC was a big deal.

This same phenomenon manifests itself in the limitations on the size and content of OOB files.

[Paul Vebber]

I trick WB revealed a while ago that works for stuffing things in at set up is to load the TLC with 4 small infantry units, then once they are inside, change then using the editor into the tanks you want. They will never get back in

For Landing Ship and Craft specs see:
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/USN-ships.html#ls

And scroll down to Landing Ships & Craft and Small Landing Craft.

[Drake]

What you can do to is make a set of OOBs that have Churchills and Daimlers with a very low load cost and then after you load everything you can switch back to your normal OOBs and the units will stay loaded and every will look normal.

[Paul Lewis]

Hey, that seemed to work. I bought up some snipers, loaded them up into the craft, then once inside made them Churchills. It worked!

Now, anyone want to venture a guess on some of those abbreviations? I'm still wondering about "LCG" and "LCM"...

[McGib]

LCM is "Landing Craft, Mechanized, and I would guess LCG would be Landing Craft, Gun. A friend of mine's father was in the RCA(Royal Canadian Artillary) and present at D-day. He told me of 25lb's mounted in landing craft used for shore bombardment. Not sure but these might be your LCG.

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McGib
Ready Aye Ready

[Daniel Oskar]

LCG is Landing Craft Gun. Looks like LCT mk 4 modified to carry two 4.7" naval guns in ex-destroyer mountings. They also carried 1 or 2 20mm AA weapons.