fortifying an area should be an option to quell the super units

[GOOSESTEPPER]

one element that harry banana brought up in r game is that fortifying an area should or could be an option. i know that artillery and flak kind of serve that role. but im talking fixed fortifications theres no way to improve or even know if its there. if it is in the game, its kind of a crappy way of including it. fortifications would also encourage a more strategic approach to the game. fortifying an area could be like building the factory unit maybe even the same cost.it could be like the way gibraltar and sevstopol is fortified an attacker requires twice as many men to capture. historically fortifications were a major element in world war 2. the maginot line was breached by the germans with a drive thru the ardennes and the low countires. operation citadel was squashed when the russian intelligence intercepted the german plans to attack the kursk salient in july of 43. the wehrmacht encountered the most formidable defenses they had seen. the german defeat at kursk was the beginning of the end for the wehrmacht. and fortifications (lack of) played a big part in the success of d-day. hitler beleived the d-day invasion was going to be at pas de calaise so he began the fortifications for fortress europe there. the allie slanded in normandy where defenses were weaker thus obtaining the beachhead. irregardless the d-day landing s involved 3 million men and took 11 month sfor the allies to put an end to germany. 5 turns in the game. the japanese home islands were fortified making an asault super costly so they bombed em instead. lol.
ok i figure this:
fortifying an area would cost 8
take 4-8 turns to complete
would require the attacker to have 2x the amount of forces to occupy or it could be different alltogether
option 2-
it could add a defense bonus to every unit in the province thus fortification could be a unit an immovable unit that could be researched so accordingly a tech 1 fort. adds 1 to defending units evasion tech 2 fort. adds 2 etc. tech. 3 adds 3 etc.

[Svend Karlson]

There are already fortifactions in game, and they are clearly indicated. The fortification graphic is illustrated in the manual. So I guess when you say there is no way of knowing if they are there you are discounting both the manual & the graphics. West Germany provides an example. I believe Gibraltar & N.Italy are also fortified.

Futhermore these fortifications already provide a bonus, which from memory is +1 to the evasion of defending troops & a requirement of a 3:1 ratio in order to take the province (which is further increased to 4:1 if the province is rough terrain - again from memory only)

There is a major difference between the kind of temporary defence in depth fortifications that can & were constructed - for instance at Kursk - and the natural defences of the likes of N.Italy or Gibraltar. The latter cannot be fabricated short of a sustained & concerted effort such as that expended on the Maginot line.

[mcaryf]

There is a way you can already make a type of fortification without the designers having to change the code which I am sure they will not. There are some units that are not used by some of the sides, for example the Germans rarely develop CV's so their Carrier Air Group is not used. It is possible to modify the unit characteristics file to turn one type of unit into something completely different. Thus a CAG can become a land unit or even a ship or submarine just by changing the type entry in the unit file this is in addition to changing its particular land attack or evasion characteristics. Some units do have a specific capability thus a CAG can be attached to a CV and ride around on it. This special ability is preserved despite what other changes you might make. For example in a mod I have been working on I turn the German CAG into a V2 rocket but it can still attach to a CV making a Missile Cruiser.

However, I digress. If you want to make a fort unit, take the CAG, for example, and give it 10,10,10 for AA,LA and evasion. Make it supply use zero so it is like like one of Hitler's fortress garrisons (ready supplied), speed 0 so it cannot move once placed and give it a high capacity, say, 25 so you can build it and place it in position as a fort. It does not give any special extra protection to other units but it will stay where it is and provide defence in that location like the Atlantic Wall until overwhelmed.

You might wish to swap it for another icon as the plane image is rather inappropriate, I have used the Japanese mechanized for this (for both Germany and Japan) but if anybody has a nice bunker icon that would be even better.

Sadly my mod is delayed because it has developed a mysterious fault where it causes the game to loop but it is not a problem with the idea of making bunker units.

Regards

Mike

[GOOSESTEPPER]

hey svend,
i know about the fortified areas in the game i mentioned it, reread my post. and about a concetrated effort is what im talking. it would be nice if people, when reading threads, read the whole thread rather than skimming thru it like some speed reader. did you forget to notice the hypo stats i included at the end of the paragraph? anyways you didnt offer any ideas or suggestions, just hot air. As for mike rite on mang, at least your not narrow minded.

[JanSorensen]

ORIGINAL: GOOSESTEPPER
but im talking fixed fortifications theres no way to improve or even know if its there. if it is in the game, its kind of a crappy way of including it

Sorry, but you seem to be the one that did not read your own post. As far as I can tell Svend replied to this exact part of your post - so there is no reason to reply in the tone you just did.

As for your idea. I do not think that it is reasonable given the scope of the game. Building large field fortifications like Maginot, the Siegfried Line, Sevastrapol etc takes a much larger effort than can be expected during such a short time frame. The more impromtu fortifications build during the war are well enough covered by simply stacking up more ART/AA/INF units as far as I am concerned. I admit though that its a matter of personal preference more than actual fact so your point of view can be just as valid.

A friendly suggestion - use capital letters and paragraphs a bit more. It just makes reading your posts easier and hence increase the odds that someone will read them and care to reply.

[Lebatron]

I disagree with you there Jan. When I read Svend response, I knew he totally missed Gooses point. I understood that Goose was referring to a buildable fortification unit that would be immobile and expensive. Kind of like how you can make one in Hearts of Iron. It does appear to me that Svend read Gooses post way to fast as he apparently missed what Goose was trying to say. Mcaryf understood Gooses point too, and explained how such a thing can be added to the game with a mod.

I agree with Jan that Goose should learn to use caps[;)]

[JanSorensen]

Goosestepper: (emphasis mine)

but im talking fixed fortifications theres no way to improve or even know if its there. if it is in the game, its kind of a crappy way of including it

Svend:

There are already fortifactions in game, and they are clearly indicated. The fortification graphic is illustrated in the manual. So I guess when you say there is no way of knowing if they are there you are discounting both the manual & the graphics

It does not get any more clear than that. Goosestepper claims there is no way to know which areas are fortified. Svend points out the fact that this is obviously incorrect. Sure, that may not have been what Goosestepper intended to debate but by any reasonable account the reply Svend gave was both appropriate and accurate.

Goosestepper continues:

operation citadel was squashed when the russian intelligence intercepted the german plans to attack the kursk salient in july of 43. the wehrmacht encountered the most formidable defenses they had seen.

Svend replies:

There is a major difference between the kind of temporary defence in depth fortifications that can & were constructed - for instance at Kursk - and the natural defences of the likes of N.Italy or Gibraltar. The latter cannot be fabricated short of a sustained & concerted effort such as that expended on the Maginot line

So, Svend very much does adress the suggestion. This is hardly a reply made in haste or one that missed the point. Infact, its a reply that is extremely to the point.

So, the only thing Svend did not reply to would be the very last 3 lines of the original post - which afterall only contain the secondary suggestion. Sorry, but that does not warrent the rather rude reply from Goosestepper.

[Svend Karlson]

Folks,

The reason I did not specifically address the last lines of the original post was that I felt the proposal being made was based on two incorrect assumptions, one about the existence of fortifications in game & the second about the real life ability to construct fortifications on a similar scale to the Maginot line. The passage quoted below does not enable me to conclude that the author is correctly factoring into their appraisal the existence of fixed fortifications:

ORIGINAL: GOOSESTEPPER
fortifying an area should or could be an option. i know that artillery and flak kind of serve that role. but im talking fixed fortifications theres no way to improve or even know if its there. if it is in the game, its kind of a crappy way of including it.

Regarding the building of temporary fortifications, beyond saying it's not of personal interest to me, I really have no opinion on the matter, so I'll duck out now to let the discussion continue.

Cheers

[GOOSESTEPPER]

i dont care if you want to banter about my syntax and facts or if i read my post or not, im pretty sure i did seeing i wrote it but here it is right here, this is what i wrote in the post:

fortifications would also encourage a more strategic approach to the game. fortifying an area could be like building the factory unit maybe even the same cost.it could be like the way gibraltar and sevstopol is fortified an attacker requires twice as many men to capture.

so i got the ratio wrong big deal, its 4:1 and didnt add "in the game" to the sentence: "it could be like the way gibraltar and sevstopol is fortified" but i figured everybody would understand what i meant. bottomline it didnt take hundreds of years to build the maginot line or the west wall or the fortifications that were being built by the germans along the english channel.

why cant fortifications be included? mechanized infantry would be also an added twist to the game. how about long distance artillery ie v2 rockets, rail guns.

mechanized inf. could be exactly like the reg. inf. unit except it may cost 3 instead of 2, and have a speed of 2. but to make it on equal footing wiht the other units and not make reg. inf. obsolete there would have to be a movement penalty for the mech. unit. so after engaging in an attack whether it be only 1 movement point expended the mech. unit could move no more at all, unlike armor units which can move an additional point after attacking.

as for the long range artillery its artillery with a speed of 2 it could cover the v2 and the hvr arty like rail guns, but then you could have somebody hammering scotland from norway with arty lol. not plausble in the 40's.

the thing that seems to screw up the entire scope of the game is how movement is conducted, it doesnt make sense in that 3 months luftflotte 3 can only move from w. germany to. benelux, but the 6 panzer div. can move to normandy.
thats the biggest problem. if the game was hexxed it would be a lot more strategic and tactical.

anyways i did mean to use that tone but hindsight is 20/20 and i apologize to svend, irregardless i pointed it out in my thread that i new about the fixed fortifications and i was only offering a suggestion.

in conclusion the game map should be made bigger and hexxed, and have 8 movement phases thru out the year ie. early spring, late spring etc. that would make it more challenging rather than one invasion of western france and pattons fishing in the rhine.

[GOOSESTEPPER]

Hey Jan,

To defend my point about the way of knowing if an area is fortified or not as being crappy or not, i think it is a crappy way of including it, if that it is included by the lumping of flak/art/inf in an area, in the game.

And I'm not trying to save face about my knowing about the fortified areas; why then did i mention gibraltar and sevstopol in the present tense and not in the past- it could be like the way gibraltar and sevstopol is fortified. I may have possibly used the phrase to describe what i was trying to convey "like the way the seigfried line or maginot line was." But i didnt. For both you and Svend assumed something because you were blinded by what i thought of as being crappy or not.

Mike and Lebetron read it for its point, the possibility of having an option to fortify an area like those that are in the game.

Im sorry, if maybe my writing style is vague, from now on i will make sure to include references like "in the game". and by the way im not an elephant i cant remember attack ratios for assaulting fortified areas i just thought thats what it was, 2x's not 3:1 or 4:1 if theirs rough terrain. I have trouble remembering memories that i forgot i forgot.

[JanSorensen]

I think that if fortifications were to be buildable in the game they should most definitely be less effective than the printed fortifications - otherwise it would seem too good and "unrealistic" to me unless they were almost prohibitively expensive to build. If a decent balance could be struck though concerning their effect I dont particularly see any problem with buildable forts.

Mind, I doubt those will be introduced at this point in time in an official patch. Afterall, the game has been published and has been so for a long time - but its definitetely an idea idea for a sequel or a mod.

[mcaryf]

Hi Goosestepper
There are some weaknesses in the game as you point out but one of its strengths is that the developers have given us quite a lot of opportunity to mod files and hence change things to suit our own view of history.

Thus you can have motorized infantry (cost 3 speed 2), V2's etc and I have played around with mods that do this. My favourite recent change is that I have given German tanks range 2. This means they can fire twice to other players once which actually mirrors the advantage that they typically had. This change makes a big difference to the AI's ability to defeat Russia and so is quite a lot of fun.

The difficulty with this type of mod is that you would need to get other PBEM players to accept it or you just end up fighting the AI which means you need a lot of improvements as the AI is otherwise not a challenge. This is the track I have gone down at present and I now have a very strong Axis AI playing from Summer 1940. I have not published it yet because it sometimes causes the game to hang and I cannot identify why! If anybody wants to try it and help me debug it I will mail it to them.

In the meanwhile I am working on another mod that is again to be played v the AI but this time the human player gets the super weapons. The idea is that you are the Axis in Spring 1944 the Germans have the superior (range 2) tanks, V2's, jets and electro subs the Japanese have Kamikazes, but with all these super weapons can you stave off the conventional hordes available to the Allies and SU?

Mike

[BenTaylor]

This is an interesting topic that has grabbed my interest since watching a program on Channel 4 called "Real Dad's Army" which is about UK home defences in WWII. I don't know how foreign audiences can see this.

It had a very illuminating explanation of the defences set up in the UK post-Dunkirk. An absolutlely huge number of coastal and static in depth defences were set up. You still see remnants of these in Britain such as "Pill boxes" which are concrete/brick bunkers. What I didn't realise is just how intensive and extensive they were. There were over 50 so called "stop lines" which often ran tens of miles designed to comparmentalise the country. One of these, the GHQ, actually was an inner circle going around London and much of the industrial areas of the Midlands and North England. There were some stop lines even in Scotland.

They were true in depth defences with mutual support manned mostly by local Home Guard, who might have lacked the same abilities as regulars but had local knowledge. There were big trench systems alongside pill boxes with removable road block
systems. They built big tank obstacles in open countryside. There were arrangements for blowing bridges even in the smallest village. There were airfield defence systems. All these defences made ample use of natural features such as deep valleys, rivers and canals, disguising structures as civilian buildings etc. They were specifically built in mind with slowing up Blitzkrieg type tactics. Often coastal guns were designed to have 360 traverse so could fire inland aswell. The deception plan was also amazing, during the battle of Britain over 300 fake air fields were built by set designers recruited from the British film industry. On the east coast they even had a scale version of the Hull port which was used at night. Although quite small, a few fields, lit up at night it would look like the real thing from the air and they would even light petrol fires after the Germans bombed it to encourage them futher. They reckon tons of bombs were dropped on this fake.

This network was probably not properly operational until 1941 sometime as I understand it, a big part being that the Home Guard didn't have proper weapons to man defences until then.

This makes me think that England should get fortress status, but have to spend something to get it in terms of supply and it shouldn't happen until 1941 sometime.

Comparing France in comparison, apparently the Atlantic Wall was nowhere near as comparable even by 1944. I'm not sure why this is quite so except that the Germans didn't put the same effort in and the area to be covered is much bigger than the UK. They probably couldn't have manned it the same way Britain did, relying on loyal local defence forces. This could be worth a reply from those of you with an interest.