New Ability: Offensive Patrol

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    • New Ability: Offensive Patrol

      Divides patrol into two subtypes: Offensive Patrol and Defensive Patrol

      Defensive patrol is the patrol ability everyone is familiar with. Your aircraft patrol a small radius and attack any enemy that comes within

      Offensive Patrol is a new ability available to the following units:
      Attack Helicopter
      ASW Helicopter
      Air Superiority Fighter (Not stealth)
      Strike Fighter (Not stealth)
      NPA
      Corvette
      Destroyer
      Attack Sub
      Infantry Officer (Lvl 3+)*
      Helicopter Officer*
      Fixed Wing Officer*
      Naval Officer*
      Sub Officer*

      You will notice that all units mentioned above have a radar and/or a sonar. This is important for the functionality of the patrol

      When you select Offensive Patrol, you will be prompted to designate a patrol area (preferably a province center). The unit will go and patrol like normal, except they will also engage any enemy within their radar range. Once their engagement is complete, they will return to the spot that you marked. If they reach the edge of the radius, they will disengage.

      Mixing a unit capable of offensive patrol with a unit incapable of it will cause the option to disappear, so you cannot do it with, say, 2 AH + 2 HG or 1 DD + 4 Frig. This is not the case with officers, who will allow all units stacked with him to take advantage. Also note that trying to stack an infantry officer with MRL and MR to make an AFK doom stack will not work, as the radius is derived from the Officer controlling the stack and not the MR

      Here’s an example. You have a stack of destroyers that you want to guard a passage with. Normally, you would need many destroyers to cover the passage, and they would have to be split up and weakened. However, since you are using offensive patrol, your destroyer can cover the entire area of his radar. That way, when an enemy transport comes through the passage, your destroyer will automatically move to intercept them


      How will this improve the game?
      -Reduce the gap in capabilities between active players. Players that are simply inactive will still get beaten if taking advantage of this, but players that are ultra active will not be able to undermine other players so easily
      -Improvements to various units that will allow them to be utilized in more creative ways. Corvettes may find purpose as transport/sub hunters. Attack-oriented melee units like MBTs or Naval Infantry can be stacked with the infantry officer to set up ambushes in certain terrains and take full advantage of their stats
      -Less stress involved in monitoring a coast
      -Hit and Run becomes more drawn out and dangerous, but still viable
      -More variety in strategies. Offensive patrol has major advantages but is not objectively better than defensive patrol, because a smart player can very easily lure patrolling units into a death trap, especially with SAMs
      Yee Haw
    • yes the lack of any unit 'reaction' except by direct supervision by the player can make this game very time taxing when such basic reactions controlled by simple logic are actually one of the things computers do better than humans. I played the sister game New World Empire (early musket time) and also Conflict of Nation WW2 and whilst they did not have this sophisticate patrol mechanism, they sort of attempted to create the same sort of effect by having invading units move MUCH more slowly on hostile ground whereas CoN is only a little bit less than normal speed. The slow down gives the other player some chance to realistically respond = In CoN if you bundle up a big stack with a ground unit leader who moves faster and ignores bunkers/entrenchment you can often overrun 2-3 cities in someones homeland before they even have a chance to respond :(